FRIENDSHIP IS A SAFE PLACE

Friendship imposes no conditions and recognizes no danger. It is a safe place. The world of today is in danger of feeling more alone than ever. At the same time we are conquering nature and sending spacecraft to Mars and Saturn, we are somehow powerless to give an answer to the question of our own existence. We are in solitude of the cruelest kind, one in which man asks himself if love is reality or myth, if God is real or only a theory. This is a solitude that closes the door on hope. When one is confronted with this solitude and loneliness, which is due in great part to the conditions of modern living, I believe that the road to the Father and the reality of God, our very path of faith, must of necessity pass through the pleasant fields of friendship. I am convinced that we will find God especially through other people.

These other people are seen as friends, as second selves in whom we can affirm our own existence, on whom we can lean, in whom we can find ourselves, discover ourselves, realize ourselves and contemplate ourselves. Much of our seeking is in solitude but after solitary search we need safe friends to help us find our way.

“You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you”. Jesus