THE GROWTH OF FRIENDSHIP
You do not love your friends if you love them for something that is other than themselves. (Sermon 41, 3).
Not to believe in your friends is to hate them. (Sermon 306, 8).
You love your friends if you hate what hurts or damages them. (Sermon 49, 5).
Love your friends, but do not love any wrong that they may do. (Sermon 49, 6).
One truly loves a friend who loves God in that friend [because it is already the same God who is in him or her] (Sermon 336, 2).
Love an enemy so that a friend be made. (Sermon 299, D, 1).
Bad friendships are deceiving and they make us enemies of God. (Sermon 125, 11).
Those who, for love of a friend, separate themselves from God, are the enemy of both themselves and their friend. (Sermon 299, D, 6).
Augustine placed so much value on friendship that he included it in the list of what is enjoyed in heaven. Indeed, he taught that in heaven we will live with our friends in the presence of God (Sermons 87, 15 and 299 D, 6-7).
For Augustine eternal life will be the perfection of the ideal which he dreamt and sought in his earthly life, i.e., to live with friends, no longer looking for but actually attaining and enjoying forever the presence of God.
(Continued on the next page.)
Celebrating Friendship.
Celebrating Friendship is the outline for a workshop prepared in 2006 by Fr John Byrne O.S.A. of Orlagh, Co. Dublin, Ireland. He graciously offered this material to Augnet. Click here.
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