Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Some of the greatest blessings in life are friends. They are there for you to share in your joys and comfort you in sorrow. The best friends help you to be the best version of yourself, which is sometimes easy, and sometimes a bit painful. St. Augustine of Hippo had a beautiful reflection on friendship from his book The Confessions:
Friendship had other attractions which were very important to me – we could talk and laugh – help each other in small ways – we enjoyed doing lots of things together – reading some book – going somewhere – sometimes we would be very serious together – sometimes we were able to act the fool together. Sometimes when we argued with each other it was not a bitter argument but like the kind of argument you might have with yourself. In fact, sometimes the argument was the kind only friends can have when they have some disagreement – it sometimes made our usual harmony more meaningful. Each of us had something to learn from each other and something to teach in return. If someone was absent for some time they were missed and we welcomed them back warmly.
Maybe as I read St. Augustine’s description, your own memories with friends came to your mind, and the good and difficult times you made it through.
But, as good as friendship is (and St. Thomas Aquinas calls friendship one of the highest goods on earth), we hear a very different message from the Prophet Jeremiah today as he proclaims, “Thus says the Lord: Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the Lord.” Did St. Augustine and St. Thomas decide that Jeremiah got God’s message wrong? Does God not want us to have friends?
Friendship is a gift from God, and in fact, Jesus calls tells the apostles, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves…I have called you friends.” So maybe Jeremiah did get it wrong! God seems to encourage friendship, which necessarily entails trust in other humans.
Of course, there’s a way to see this to brings together Jeremiah and Jesus, and Scripture and St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. As with everything, it deals with the proper ordering of goods. Ordering good things is one of the harder tasks in life, because we don’t have to reject what is evil, but decide which good is a higher good than another.
As good as friendship with our fellow human beings is, our friendship with God is even more important. And this is the message that Jeremiah is getting at in the first reading. If all we do is trust in our fellow man, then we’re missing out, and in a great way! There are things that only a human friend is going to accomplish (short of a miracle): helping you work on your house, throwing a birthday party, and the like. And so it can be very natural in any need to turn to a friend to find comfort or to rejoice. But our human friends are limited by time and space, whereas God is not. So to neglect going to God first is to wrongly order our loves. And, ironically, the Psalmist says, “Unless the Lord build the house, in vain do the builders labor.” And St. Paul tells us to rejoice in the Lord always. So even with fixing up a house, or throwing a party, we should start by turning to the Lord. We may still need friends to accomplish the manual labor, but unless that effort is done according to the will of God, it won’t be as successful as it could be, and may even be a disaster.
In my own life, the temptation to turn to friends first is most evident and most seductive when I’m feeling down. Again, there’s nothing wrong with turning to a friend to find some comfort and consolation. But my friend, as well as he knows me, does not know me as well as God does. And my friend cannot see how certain things are meant to happen in the grand scheme of things. So his advice is going to be limited by whatever finiteness he has, whereas God is infinite, and is limited by no external factors. When I need a friend to lean on, God wants me to turn to Him first. I might still turn to my human friends, but God gets first billing, or at least, that’s what he deserves and that’s what will help us the most.
Relying on God first is precisely the principle behind all of the Beatitudes that we heard today in the Gospel. The poor, the hungry, those who weep, and those who are hated do not seem to be blessed. But they have to rely on God first, and when you get that right, everything else can be put into its proper place. Those who are blessed are those who know that they need God, first and foremost. Those who are cursed are those who think they can get by on their own, and do not need God. Why? Because God has made the world contingent on Him and His will, and truly to succeed in life means acknowledging and living by that reality. We may not always like it, but that’s the way the world works. In the same way, we have this force called gravity. We may not always like it, but if we try to live as if gravity didn’t exist, eventually we get to a place where gravity imposes itself on us, whether we like it or not, and reminds us that we have to live according to that force.
Friendship is a great gift. “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship,” wrote St. Thomas Aquinas. “Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.” But, friendship with God, and relying on Him first is the key to any true friendship, and not only natural but supernatural friendship. May we not only develop our friendships on earth, but also the friendship that will last into eternity: our friendship with God.
