Word to the Wise
Friday, March 1, 2019 - Friday in the 7th Week in Ordinary Time
[Sir 6:5-17 and Mark 10:1-12]A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he who finds one finds a treasure. A faithful friend is beyond price, no sum can balance his worth. A faithful friend is a life-saving remedy, such as he fears God finds; for he who fears God behaves accordingly, and his friend will be like himself. [Sirach]
It has been said that God has given humans three fundamental gifts: life, other people to love, and a place to live. The second of those three gifts - other people to love - certainly features in today's scripture from the Book of Sirach. St. Thomas Aquinas says that the best analogy for the human relationship to God is that of human friendship. A true friend always wants the best of a friend and God wants the best for us.
I can speak from personal experience that friendship has literally pulled me from the depths of sorrow and I can never be grateful enough to the friends whose love made that happen. They (and their children) continue to be a source of inspiration. Each morning, when I walk on the campus and pray the rosary, I try to remember all the people in my life who continue to give me life by their friendship. All the internet stuff that I see on aging includes over and over again the advice to tell one's friends that you love them and to keep on doing it.
I pray also for the students I meet who are really just beginning to develop the friendships that will sustain them in the long haul. It takes effort and patience and mistakes and misunderstandings until one day one realizes that it would be hard to imagine life without this friend. It is then that we realize how great God's love for us really is because we are experiencing that love through a true friend. AMEN