TNS - "Heaven & Friendship" Ft. Father Gregory Pine, OP

[Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] me [Music] me to [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] me me me [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right hi guys i'm john and here are this week's announcements um for mass we are in need of liturgical ministers if you're interested please email john moore for more information for works of mercy we will be feeding the hungry this week as we will come to the chapel this friday at 10 am to help us prepare meals for the lamb center which will help those um less fortunate also for sunday we will be having our next sunday night gathering are you a villager or a mafia well come find out because we will be playing mafia invite your friends this sunday for this classic game of social intrigue tk night will be tomorrow october 2nd at 6 pm at the chapel and will also be including a virtual option for next friday we will be having a new event dwell a night of prayer and praise join us this october 9th from 8 00 pm to 10 pm live livestream on youtube also in person and we will be having an evening of confession meditation and praise and worship followed by all night adoration from 10 pm to 8 pm sign ups for both will be down below other than that we will have our zoom discussion for after the talk as well as community comp line this week all right other than that let's get to the speaker father gregory pines okay thank you for being present here in different senses of presence um so i let's see i have some thoughts before i give my thoughts um first concerns the announcements which i thought were excellently handled so a hearty congratulations um i was thinking about the game mafia which is a fascinating game because it's like the experience of a suspended moral universe because ordinarily in life if you lie it's bad right because it does great harm to your soul but in this game if you lie it's good question mark uh because it seems to advance your aims of winning the game but it also loses you friends temporarily sometimes and permanently in other occasions so that's my encouragement for you to attend this week's game of mafia it's very fascinating you'll place incredible stress on all of your relationships and wonder what happened in the aftermath just kidding but also serious um so like you said my name is father gregory pine i think i heard a little stray s at the end of pine it sounded like father gregory pines but that's because john was probably going to describe some noun after my name this is father gregory pine's talk or this is father gregory pine's podium or this is father gregory pine's filling the appropriate blank viewer at home you know it's probably an audience engagement technique so again i salute him for his announcements excellently handled uh so let's begin in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit amen grant us grace a merciful god to desire ardently all that is pleasing to thee to examine it prudently to acknowledge it truthfully and to accomplish it perfectly for the praise and glory of thy name who live and reign for ever and ever amen our lady seed of wisdom saint thomas aquinas pray for us in the name of the father and the son of the holy spirit amen the theme of tonight's talk is divine and human friendship so uh in the words of a wise poet let's go all right uh so i think our experience of life rises and falls with our experience of friendship so i think that flourishing or happiness or just general enjoyment however we would go about describing what it means to be successful at life is very much bound up with friendship there's a study that was done over the course it might actually still be in process but a longitudinal study of a group of men from harvard college and then a group of boys from south boston and a group of psychologists asked them a battery of questions about whether or not they were happy over the course of sometimes like 80 85 90 years in the case of the very small boys fewer years in the case of the harvard grads but what they have come to discover is that there are a variety of factors that contribute to flourishing right wealth has something to do with it fame honor whatever glory power has something to do with it pleasure has something to do with it but the most consistent contributing factor is meaningful relationships those are family and of friends so those who have meaningful family and friend relationships would describe themselves as happy as fulfilled as not having regrets and those who do not do not which is fascinating because it doesn't necessarily square with what we might think at the outset so it seems that our experience of life rises and falls with our experience of friendship and that can be said in a human way simply so-called without bringing god into the equation but i also want to argue that our human friendships are deeply kind of enmeshed within our relationship with god so in this talk just simple simple proposal we're going to clarify the nature of friendship and then just kind of give ourselves some tools some resources for thinking through the theme well uh thinking through it profitably so that in our conversations with our friends we would have fodder for for the growth further conversion and that would spark in us a desire for deeper relationships more lasting relationships uh and to be in living encounter with the mysteries that lie therein so i have five points which is like three points except different uh it's five points um so the first is friendship which will come as some surprise the second is trinity the third is instrumentality the fourth is incarnation and then the fifth is from friendship to friendship so you can track those uh as we go along and draw courage from the fact that we are approaching the end so first friendship i like a definition that's given a friendship uh by a professor from st louis university her name is eleanor stump hearing her speak about saint thomas aquinas on the nature of love was for me an occasion of deep conversion and she describes friendship as a kind of office that obtains among persons and you're like what what does that mean okay so like an office is a place where you do work what do you mean okay in the sense of like a kind of social arrangement okay so you and i occupy the social arrangement of passing acquaintance uh but john and maria occupy the offense of like mentor and mentee i occupy the office of mentee with respect to maria in this case because she's quite excellent in that regard so sit at her feet and you will learn much so so we have different expectations of relationships depending on the place that the other occupies in our life so you might have father son you might have husband wife you might have friend you might have classmate etc and within that context we would call that a friendship where we observed two mutually enriching and complementary desires the desire for the good of the beloved and desire for union with the beloved okay so the desire for their good namely their flourishing you want to advance their pursuit of their goals provided that their goals are good goals right provided those goals actually conduce to their happiness holiness as it were and then you want to be with that person okay you want to be with that person so basic sense of friendship is i want your good and i want to be with you as you strive towards it and i want to be an integral feature of your striving towards it and what is more i want you to will my good and i want you to be present to my striving for it and bound up deeply implicated in that pursuit so why do i start here well i think to kind of throw the focus on offices and then think about these two mutually enriching desires it brings to our attention this fact that um you don't necessarily choose your friends okay which will sound strange but you don't necessarily choose your friends think about it this way if you were to show up on campus okay and let's say that you observed this you know welter of human beings hustling and busting going hither and thither um never mind okay so uh i just said hither and thither what's up all right so uh and you think like my best friend is among the ranks of these virtually anonymous individuals how will i go about discerning which of them is called to that high thing you could do any number of things all right so you could take a kind of personality inventory of yourself and then establish a personality that would be compatible with your own and then you could make a spreadsheet which tracked for all of those different factors and then you could table on the main quad and ask people to input their information and then run an elaborate excel macro that would output the most compatible person and then you could you know kind of confront them with this knowledge and then begin a life of amicable bliss you could do that but i would say that you ought to do that because that's creepy okay so rule number one don't be creepy okay so how do you actually come to befriend this person typically it's just by happenstance you know you're in a class together or you come to the chapel together or you have the same walk from the gym to the parking lot it just so happens to be the case that you've fallen in together and in the course of that common life you strike up a common conversation and then you come to discover that this person and you see reality in similar fashion okay you you look on the truths and esteem them in similar fashion because in a certain sense you have suffered life in a similar fashion so i think that there's this element in friendship of vocation which is to say it's something to which you are called so if i were to like go around campus and be like guys guys guys i've never had a best friend before like will you be my best friend okay i think you'd observe a series of people give me more than six feet of distance they'd be like all right you my friend are insane never come around me or my family all right or there'll be consequences so if i were to do something like that it'd be very unstable uh it would be very destabilizing uh it would be a source of great consternation for others right because in order to have friends you need to want something more than friends okay you want to live reality in a way that's genuine that's sincere you want to look at the truth and be shaped by it and when you do that you come to discern that there are fellow travelers to be had and that your knowing of the truth and loving of the good is very much bound up with those fellow travelers and if you don't have them your pursuit of the true and the good is practically impossible insupportable terribly sad and just vexed okay so friendship is a vocation all right so you don't choose your friends rather you kind of come into these different relationships whether of being born in this family or baptized in this church or going to this class or attending this university okay and then you come to find along the way that there are people who see reality as you do because they have suffered it as you do all right they're able to see the same truth from a similar vantage and as a result of which you strike up a common life and a common conversation and i think it's in this context that these classic definitions of friendship that you might stumble across they take on their um i don't know their their true proportions maybe so like aristotle will say that friendship is mutual benevolence with communion with communication as it were right so it's i will your good all right benevolence i will your good you will my good that is to say there's mutuality there's equality to it and then there is communion there's a shared life so if i will you're good and you will my good but we never meet each other that's really i mean not a friendship it would be i think strange or inappropriate to call that a friendship in the true sense right so if a guy has like a real intense relationship with somebody that he plays i don't know what people play but like warcraft or something like that he's like yeah some super meaningful relationships on the internet super meaningful relationships or video games i just like encounter the passion of our lord jesus christ and these singer player shooters and i know that like this is the way that the lord is molding my humanity that's weird okay that's weird i'm not against you okay i'm not saying that that video games are intrinsically evil okay maybe i'm saying that i'm just kidding no but seriously okay yeah so what i am saying though is if you don't have a common life with the other person right then it's very difficult to describe that as a friendship and i think that something that's so tenuous as a virtual existence in a game where you kill like i don't know zombies or aliens i don't think that constitutes a friendship because a friendship is somebody with whom you share your secrets somebody with whom you share the whole substance of your life because you can entrust them with it because that friend is another self and you do not fear being alienated from that person because they are so closely bound up in your own good that you cease to think about them as thou and you cease to think about yourself as i but rather can say truly and genuinely we and will a common good and will it as something for the other and for yourself that doesn't think in terms of egoism and altruism but just in terms of a common pursuit of something beloved okay so friendship that's our first point now the whole trajectory of the rest of the talk is that our vocation is divine friendship okay our vocation is divine friendship and the way that the lord communicates divine friendship is through friendships that we experience in this world all right the lord loves us through our friends i'm going to say that again the lord loves us through our friends not in spite of our friends not in addition to our friends not um in the context of sacramental worship the life of prayer penance exclusively right irrespective of friends but the lord loves us through our friends in a quasi-sacramental way i don't mean that in like wild and wooly ways that would trivialize the importance of the eucharist or confession i'm not saying that but i'm saying that the lord loves us through our friends so we're going to talk about friendship as it were in the trinity all right and then how the lord uses instruments and the communicating of that perfect and beatific life focusing especially on the incarnation but then talking about our friends i just recapitulated the four remaining points that's for you because i care okay all right so second trinity there is a kind of friendship that obtains in the life of the most blessed trinity this is to speak improperly and i know like you know three quarters of our viewers um are systematic theologians with peculiar care about the trinity and you guys are going to be very offended about some of the ways that i'm imprecise but i i ask you to pardon me in advance okay so there's a kind of friendship that obtains in the life of the most blessed trinity all right so one of the ways that the father of the church will describe the trinity is according to a kind of analogy of word and love so this is made famous i suppose by saint augustine but it's picked up by subsequent thinkers among whom are numbered uh saint thomas aquinas for one so the analogy of the word and love basically goes like this that god from all eternity has a thought a thought that is infinitely rich the depths of which cannot be sounded because god thinks himself okay so god is his being god is his very act of to be but beyond that god is his knowing god is his intellect but god also is his act of knowing no shadow of division between his capacity for and his actuating of his knowing and god is the object of his knowing all right so god knows himself from all eternity he he plumbs the depths of himself he exhausts by comprehensive knowledge who he is what he is i suppose okay and that thought is so rich is so personal lacks nothing um it is so abundant right it's so teeming with life that that thought proceeds from god as a word spoken god speaks that word from all eternity and that word is the second of the most holy trinity that word is the son and because the word is not sterile because the word is with not without fruit the father and the son go out to each other in a kind of ecstasy of love right so it's spoken of as a word that breaks forth in love that spills over into love that kind of sings spontaneously in love so at the heart of the most blessed trinity the father begets the son the father speaks the son and father and son breathe forth the love of the holy spirit who is described as their mutual love okay so in the heart of the most blessed trinity there is inter personality all right so the three persons of the blessed trinity are related to each other right so the father is related to the son the son is related to the father the father and the son are related to the holy spirit the holy spirit is related to the father and the son saint thomas will go on to say that the father just is his relation the father's is god is god subsisting which is like a technical term but you don't need to get tripped up by it subsisting as towards the sun and towards the holy spirit what distinguishes father from son son from holy spirit holy spirit from father is the fact of their being towards each other so the father is god towards the son and towards the holy spirit the son is god towards the father and towards the holy spirit the holy spirit is god towards the father and towards the son that's how they're distinguished so at the heart of the most blessed trinity there is relationality there is communion there is a kind of friendship so what we hope to enjoy at the end of our days is a kind of assimilation to that reality okay so as a christian you're not called merely to be like good or kind in like an anemic sense okay to follow the rules well um to observe six feet of distance and wear your mask okay you're called to something much much greater than that something that exceeds it by an infinite proportion okay you are called to know god with his own knowledge of himself and to love god with his own love of himself such that by being caught up in the life of the most blessed trinity you would be assimilated to the most blessed trinity which is to say that you would be divinized you would be like gods and sons of the most high as the psalmist sings you would be made a partaker of the divine nature as the apostle peter says okay so this is the trajectory okay this is the destiny of friendship the purpose for which is that we are to abide at the heart of god with god in god and for god in these rich um and eternal relations okay so this is what we mean by friendship at the heart of the triune life now i'm going to introduce a little hinge piece which will not seem to issue immediately from the second thing but which will help us with the fourth and here we're going to talk about instrumentality okay so everyone has a kind of experience of instrumentality what would your ordinary experiences of instrumentality be okay i'll talk about the time that i shoplifted um so i was little um right he's like everyone back there is like when were you little you like strangely proportioned gawky man all right it happened it was a long time ago all right so i was little and i was at a mall i think in oregon with my family if i recall correctly and um you know i was just toddling around a shopping mall and looking at all these different kind of shiny and delicious things and um i wanted to acquire all of them as is true of most human beings simultaneously right but i remember being taken at this one toy store with one of those hands i don't know if these things are still whatever yeah i mean like you have cell phones what need have you with this um so it's like you had this little thing that you held on to and you could like manipulate each finger of this like extendo robot arm holy moly i was enthralled okay so like my little like three-year-old fingers were like let's go all right so i was pumped out of my mind but then i was like mom we need to purchase this yesterday and i need 10. and she's like great idea sweetheart how would you put it back and i won't punish you i was like good talk no my mom would never say that um so i put it back and then i waited for my parents to leave the store and then i was like but what if i took it again and then i did okay and then i left the store and then an alarm went off and then i was had but here's the thing that story is not entirely necessary except to say that sometimes we deploy instruments okay sometimes we deploy instruments because you can pick a thing up right with your hand but how much greater the delight is there in picking a thing up with a strange extendo robot arm okay one it frustrates your brothers and sisters because you can tap them from a farther distance etc need i mentioned uses two and three okay so an instrument is just a thing whereby we extend the reach or the efficacy of our power all right now when you talk about instrumentality in like church circles there are some examples that help to illumine the concept so one would be the composition of scripture so god is the author of sacred scripture so you have a bible right that bible is composed of 73 discrete texts each of which texts has a human author all right maybe multiple human authors right we don't know but each of those texts has a human author so god didn't just etch those books from on high he actually communicates his revelation his saving revelation through the instrumentality of individual human beings okay who might have been born in the 10th century bc who might have been born in the first century a.d who might have been a native hebrew speaker or aramaic speaker or greek speaker or scythian whatever he communicates through a variety of different people and when you read those texts you can see the peculiar contributions of each of those inspired authors so for instance just think of the gospels the gospel of luke for instance is composed in very elegant fashion so the language of it is more elevated and the discourse is consciously historiographical so he's writing with a conscious attendance to what would have been considered as like the critical apparatus of history of the day all right whereas that's just not the case with the gospel of john for instance or it doesn't have the same attention to that the gospel of john is more soaring discourses on the divinity of christ given to us by apostle who loved him most and was most loved by him who reclined on his breast who had from his lips the deepest secrets of his heart okay so you can see in those two different texts different concerns different considerations different contributions of the human instrument so when we say that god inspires them we don't mean like okay they just wrote books and then like centuries later the church said yo these are great books you know we should put these in a thing you know we should sell it this would be great okay no we're not saying that okay nor on the other hand are we saying that god just takes over their humanity and they just become entranced for a period of whatever eight hours until such time as the last pen stroke is finished and they don't remember anything of the experience they're like whoa wild prophecy bro okay we're saying something in between that all right that has really nothing to do with either of those so god is using them god is working within them god is deploying their humanity in such a way as to make a concrete contribution to the composition of the text which bears the marks of their personality but god is also present so we would say that this is the work of god god is the author of sacred scripture sacred scripture has the capacity to reveal the lord jesus christ because it has breathed within it the grace of the holy spirit in peculiar fashion okay but that is given to us through a human being so who caused this text god caused it and the inspired author caused it both caused it a hundred percent to speak in crass material terms so god is the cause he is the primary cause he need depend on no other cause but he chooses to use this secondary cause for the purpose of communicating in a way that is somehow addressed to us that's more personal i don't know i don't know exactly how you describe it or capture what it is that the instrument contributes but like think about it okay you receive a letter from a friend okay let's say that that letter is on one of those pieces of notebook paper that's been pulled out about 120 sheet like spiral bound and then it's um with a dull pencil that the person was evidently pressing on very hard and like some of the ease are backwards words are misspelled and it's taped shut with a band-aid okay i've actually received a communique that fits those specifications okay you might look in that and think like dude's crazy okay whereas if you receive it on stationary purpose for the occasion which evidently the person had held up you know to some like light source and then like lined paper so that way you can account for the fact of it being so straight they used a fountain pen they used a in pen okay um and then they like had worked on their calligraphy precisely with the end in mind of communicating to you in the most beautiful fashion that says something different okay so an instrument can make all the difference all right whether you pick up a dull pencil or a fountain pen whether you etch it in heavy terms or whether you you know kind of communicated elegantly in calligraphy these things make a real contribution and they they shape the message it might be the exact same thing that's actually written on on both sheets of paper but but they say different things okay so the instrument makes a contribution so god is the primary cause but god chooses to communicate through secondary causes and you can appreciate the like the goodness for which so think of it like what if you were to receive all sacramental graces just sitting alone in your room okay the only necessary prerequisite was that you had to be on a futon i was like i only give graces to people sitting on futons it's like okay one that's weird but also like think how weird it is to just receive grace and isolation given how sensitized we have been to the sacramental order all right we get grace through other people all right when you're baptized someone pours water over your head and says i baptize you in the name of the father and the son of the holy spirit and that water which signifies cleansing actually effectuates it in your heart okay when you go to confession a lot of times people who do not sympathize with the catholic church and its practices will say like why can't i just confess my sins to god and there are a variety of reasons for which one could give but isn't it so much more humane to do that in the context of a real sacramental encounter and to have the certainty when you walk away that you are forgiven because god has laid to hand has has deployed his instrument for you that priest has been ordained for you in a really really intense and specific way all right that's it that's what we're talking about when we talk about instrumentality okay so god uses instruments so as to communicate all of these wealth of riches i just kind of like touch upon some of them tangentially but you can also think about how good it is to be an instrument all right so we receive them things but we also get implicated in the giving of some things right so god answers your prayers which is wild okay god can bring about all of his ends directly and without intermediary so why then muddy the waters why make it harder as it were by trying to allure a variety of free creatures into doing what is for their good by appealing to their feckless wills why bother because god loves you that's why okay because god loves you enough not only to give you grace but to make it so that you can participate in the giving of grace all right he imparts to you the dignity of causing which is awesome so god binds himself in a certain way to the dispensation of grace such that he will bring about the conversion of your friend by your prayers god has ordained it such that he will bring about the conversion of your friend through your prayers which is awesome it's really beautiful okay so this is a role that we can exercise so we receive from instruments but we can also act as instruments that's a third point fourth point which will be brief fifth point which will be a little less brief okay so fourth point incarnation let's think about the greatest instrument that god ever deployed the greatest instrument that god ever deployed all right the lord jesus christ okay the lord jesus christ took to himself a human nature suffered died rose from the grave ascended to the right hand of the father and intercedes on behalf of the human race so that we might never be alienated from him it's awesome god quit the halls of his heaven took to himself the form of a slave so that we who labored in this valley of tears under the veil of darkness could see in his divinized humanity a way up and out of our lamentable fate so the second person of the most blessed trinity wedds to himself in his person a human nature suffuses that human nature with grace and deploys that human nature as the instrument for your salvation as the instrument for your salvation if that's like too high flying just think about it in this way the lord jesus christ drew near to you so that you would know that he loves you and in drawing near to you he draws you up draws you up into the very life of god think about it like why did the lord jesus christ take human flesh right so we have this problem of sin that he's dealing with okay but he could have pardoned our sin in any way he saw fit he did not need to take need to take human flesh he could have just snapped his immaterial divine fingers and then we would have been set back to rights but instead he takes human flesh he suffers hunger thirst fatigue bodily pain death he suffers all of it he suffers all of it for love of us what about that's fitting well you see a variety of things in his flesh one you see that sin really really stinks okay there's no denying it at this point sin kills god every time you look at a crucifix you see that right you see that sin kills god and that we're complicit in that we don't need to dwell on that too terribly long because oftentimes the thought of hell makes me really nervous okay so so sin kills god but also you see how grand how excellent how elevated is human nature that it can be wed to the godhead that the lord jesus christ saw fit to take it to himself he did not despise it rather he embraced it and you see what human nature can attain to at the crown of creation in its most excellent expression you see the destiny for which we ourselves are desirous now mind you we are not made to be natural sons of god in the sense that the lord jesus christ is but we are made to be adopted sons and daughters of god patterned on his own adoption as it were all right the lord jesus does not need to be adopted we do though and we see what it looks like to be a sun in the sun which is pretty sweet okay so he takes human flesh to show us how terrible is sin to show us how great is human nature to show us perhaps most manifestly how much god loves us again you cannot deny the depth of the love of god for you that he takes the most atrocious crime ever perpetrated in the history of the world and makes it redown to the greatest gift ever imported such as the nature of the transforming power of divine love and that love is trained on you that love is addressed specifically to you that love is to be availed of by you so we see how bad is sin we set out we see how dignified is human nature we see how much god loves us and we see our destiny we see that we are meant to be divinized we see the end of the road we see that in the luminous clarity of the transfiguration we see that in the glorified wounds of the resurrection because everything that you suffer in this life has a purpose just as everything that the lord jesus christ suffered in his life has a purpose and just as the martyrs will be pictured with the engines of their torture so we will be pictured with whatever it is that brought us back home because the lord jesus has borne it up and carried it aloft and we are meant to follow after him who is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith so in the instrumentality of his sacred flesh we see what it means to be human we see what it means to love we see what it's what it means for god to act through humanity and how does the lord choose to express it what is the means by which he draws near what is the means by which he expresses concretely what it is he is about oh yeah you guessed it that's what's up friendship friendship john 15 12 through 16 okay read it read it tonight i no longer call you slaves i call you friends for i have shared with you everything i have from my father the lord jesus has seen fit to call us and to make us friends you're like wait wait wait wait wait wait wait i can't be friends with god you say that friendship was mutual benevolence with a shared life okay i mean i i suppose he can will my good though it doesn't always feel like it but what does it mean for like for me to will god's good or what does it mean for me to like have a shared life with god i can't even see him okay this is crazy this cannot be upheld especially in the present evil age no way well the lord jesus gives us everything that we need to live the divine friendship to which he invites us so he gives us his own love with which to love him okay that's just what we mean by charity when we say that in charity we love god for his sake and our neighbor for the same what we're talking about is that the love of god has been poured into our hearts whereby we cry abba father which is the cry of adopted sons and daughters which love just is the grace of the holy spirit which is the new law the new covenant which the lord forged in his blood by the shedding of his blood so the lord pours out an abundance of this grace of this charity from the cross so that we could be made partakers thereof and our own interior life could be transformed so as to resemble his so that when it comes time to love another person we do so for love of god not in a strange patronizing or condescending way where it's like you know i find you detestable you know but the lord jesus told me to love you and so i will deign to bestow on you my loving presence no no one wants that okay i want to be loved because i'm lovable and and the revelation of the life of charity is that you are lovable right because god loved you unto the cross right god chose you for life with him in heaven god graced you with his own interior riches so that your nature could be healed and elevated so is more perfectly to resemble his so when we say that we can have friendship with god we mean that we can will the good of god in which god delights for all eternity we can will that by his own resources and that we can have a shared life with him in grace which endureth unto glory and that what we await in heaven is a communion of saints where all will no longer say mine and thine will no longer count the cost or keep score but will delight in the common good of the whole universe which is to say will delight in god but each with a peculiar intimacy each known each scene is loved in a way that is specific to you you will not be lost in the crowd in heaven you will be attended to perfectly by a god who has foreseen and foresuffered and that is what we await and that was what we speak about in terms of friendship and the lord jesus christ makes that present in a way that is tangible in a way that is tasteable in a way that abides sacramentally in the tabernacle so then finally from friendship to friendship okay from friendship to friendship friendship is not in competition with divine love our friendship with our friends you know classmates folks that we meet at the catholic center whomever right it is not in competition with our love of god how do we know that because the lord jesus made it evident in his flesh that a human nature can be used for the loving of another unto god for friendship unto friendship and the lord jesus is not done with using instruments all right so he uses the instrument of his sacred humanity all right if you want sweet technical scholastic definitions we would call this the adjunct instrument okay he uses excuse me we call it the conjoined instrument he uses the church which is a further instrument which extends his humanity through time and space that i'm going to call the adjunct instrument he uses the sacraments which apply the merits of his passion death and resurrection throughout the course of time one by one to each individual believer who approaches him by the inspiration of a helping grace we call those separated instruments but then he also uses ministers whether of baptism of the eucharist of penance etc but then we can think about how he just uses everything okay and i don't mean for you to get lost in the anonymity of everything because it might just be the case that you are ordained for the loving of one particular person in a peculiar and excellent way which communicates to that person that god loves them in a peculiar and excellent way which will effectuate their healing and growth in the life of grace which will conduct them ultimately to the life of heaven and which will be the occasion for the sacrament for their rejoicing in god so that's i think what we just see in marriage for instance a man and a woman are appointed to the saving of each other and we can say that they are meant to save each other not because they're substituting for christ but because they are actually making christ present through sacramental means but in this present dispensation you you can assume that role you can be that cause you can be deployed as that instrument all right and in your friendship with other human beings you can bring about the reign of the kingdom of god in really really excellent and delightful ways okay so i think that uh what we're i mean effectively talking about now is just love you know just love in a very basic and human sense we don't have to make it sound like too wild too wonderful um i don't know too dramatic because then it can seem to be divorced from our experience what we're talking about is just practicing friendship steadfastly okay so i think about this like okay guys what are what is a characteristic temptation of men well when things get tough the men get running okay right so there's this kind of fraught social interaction and the man suspects the woman of being dramatic or overreacting he doesn't want to implicate himself in all of these like potentially volatile exchanges and so he just slowly backs away and stops responding to text messages okay that is not being deployed as an instrument for god saving designs now mind you like do you have to continue to be friends in like a kind of optimal and crazed frantic way for everyone whom you currently know no because again what we're talking about here is a vocation i think it's only possible to have a few best friends i think it's possible to be friendly to a lot more people but i think it's only possible to be like really good friends with a few best friends and those people have a kind of claim on your life they have a kind of authority over you which is to say that they can recognize in you one cent to them and place demands they need you to show up they need you to deliver you can't flake out right you can't beg off you can't purposefully schedule things at times when you know they might ask you to be of service because i don't know you just can't do it this time there's no taking nights off okay now mind you you're not married to them so you have to understand that claim within bounds and within limits and within healthy boundaries right if they continue to call you at two in the morning for weeks on end because they feel acute scrupulosity and just can't one like when their way through the sacrament then then maybe they need psychological help and maybe you're not supposed to be for them in that way all right so you have to sort this through and that's often you know like something that's really good to discuss with your chaplain you know with a spiritual director in the context of a mentor relationship right but what i do know is that we can't be afraid of belonging to another person all right nor of having them belong to us because i think that the language of possessiveness is entirely appropriate in friendship right i possess the beloved and the beloved possesses me we're afraid of commitment because it's terrifying because it's like seemingly awful but that's the only way through and that's the only way forward and that is precisely the means by which god wants to direct us to heaven because if there is one thing that we can say about heaven it is that it is committed so perfect is the beatific vision that you cannot look away so perfect is what is known and what is love that it entirely sates your intellect and your will so that there is no other end to be sought there is no real choice to be made except the various means which conduce perfectly there unto okay so in heaven you will be bound but in that being bound you will be made perfectly free because that boundedness is just what the lord means by covenant in heaven you will neither be married nor given in marriage right because to be married or given in marriage it's sacramental right it's a sign of something sacred but in heaven there will be no signs there will only be realities and in heaven you will be wed directly to god in such committed fashion that it will leave you lacking for nothing we are made now presently to image that covenant fidelity and to be a sign of that covenant fidelity to others and that will mean difficulty now mind you the delight leads the difficulty because i can't just wed myself to another out of a strange sense of duty because then they will sniff that out and feel even worse for the misusing but if you feel yourself drawn to another person as a friend you genuinely delight in them you have a common life in a common conversation then it entails a commitment right because you're friends forever or you're just not really friends all right if you go into a friendship thinking that has an expiration date or looking forward to the time when you're going to move away so that it can expire that's not real friendship all right that's just prolonged escape so i think that the lord jesus is going to use you as an instrument whereby to convey the riches of his divine friendship in this present age that will lead others unto the divine friendship which awaits them perfectly and unfailingly in eternity so that's for you to be asked for us to pray for in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit amen all glory be to the father and to the son and to the holy spirit as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end amen in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen all right i think we're going to take like a three four minute break and then when we come back i'll be wearing a tie-dye habit [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] all righty and we're back thank you so much for all those points that you shared with us um i know for me it's still very much sinking in oh yeah um but let's get into it so first question would you say that so you were talking at the end about friendship and how the way i understood it was if it's not you know intending to last for your life then it's not friendship at all it's more like escaping like a kind of a fade out um but would you say that they're actually meant to be friendships that only last for a season um so from a certain vantage yeah but i don't know that we have access to that vantage so when i talk about friendship i'm typically talking about friendship in the fullest and strictest sense so this would be like best friends okay and for best friends i think that um yeah i think you go into that relationship with the intention of you know being friends forever as it were and it's not to say that on day one you show up and say like we are very compatible you know we are in we are intended to be friends forever um let us you know join hands now and then cease and then cease holding hands in 64 years um one your hands will get clammy and too that's weird um but i think that like as it grows and as you respond organically uh to the manner in which it grows you begin to get the impression that there's no real limit you know there's no limit to the sharing there's no limit to the mutual entrustment there's no limit to the enjoyment the delight that issues from it and i think that like we know this kind of instinctually by um the the distance that we experience in friendship and how we feel that distance to be a kind of um poison or it's like something that's like lethal at the heart of friendship that we would wish banished and i think that that's supposed to be there because we experience friendship you know this side of eternity only ever in limited ways only ever in partial ways only ever and in perfect ways and we we encounter those limitations and those circumscriptions or whatever we encounter those as obstacles really to our perfect sharing our perfect giving of ourselves to the other and receiving of the other um but we have the kind of aspiration for a perfect giving and receiving which i think is characteristic of our life in heaven and so i think that once you've once you've tasted um the the difficulty that's kind of present at the heart of friendship you really want it you would wish it otherwise but when you begin to wish it otherwise you're you're hoping for heaven um so i think it's in that sense that that it has the promise of being forever but if you get comfortable with that kind of distance and you realize that i can't really trust this person with my secrets because they're just going to leverage them or i can't trust this person with my you know with my aspirations because they won't really be attentive to them you know they won't care for them and they won't care for me as it were then that's that spells the end you know that spells the end of a best friendship you begin to kind of manage that relationship you share with them just enough so they feel satisfied but not enough so you can get hurt by it and i don't think that anymore you know can qualify as friendship in the strict sense oh thank you for clarifying that um another question is from nick buckner and he's asking how can i best remain an effective instrument of divine love for those entrusted to me while also remaining receptive enough for them to be the same for me yeah yeah yeah that's a great question um yeah here i think i i mentioned just briefly this kind of distinction between egoism and altruism right a lot of times we think that like i am loving well to the extent that i'm being altruistic right i'm forgetting myself and giving to the other being present to the other and i'm failing in a relationship to the extent that i'm being egotistical right considering my own needs i think that's a bad paradigm for thinking about friendship because what you end up with is say we're in a conversation and we're trying to you know in a conversation i'm trying to get to mutually engaging things right because i'm just like what's your name you're like nicole fetterman like what you're like you're a i'm a junior and i'm asking you like a variety of other questions it feels like an interview and then if you're like oh no all of this conversation has been about me maybe i should ask return questions and then you do that we haven't grown in friendship right because we haven't adopted a common vision of reality we've just done an exchange and ensured that we shared an equal number of times for an equal number of minutes but that's that's just like a kind of debased justice okay and i think that's what you get with egoism and altruism so i think that you have to recognize that in a friendship what you're willing to another is their good right uh which has usually very concrete instantiations but part of you're willing that good is willing yourself to the other you're part of the equation okay and i don't i don't give myself to another because i pity them or because they're a charity case or because the bible told me so i give myself to them because i feel myself kind of caught up i am attracted right i see something that's that's lovable i desire it i take a delight in it that that it happens to be a person and i come to discover that there's a common life and a common conversation to be had and that my flourishing is very much bound up with that and so i think that like being an instrument for the other and then being willing to receive is also recognition that like you're part of what's given and you are to receive them right so if there's a kind of inequality baked in where you only ever serve and are never served that's weird right so like let's say theoretically you suffer like a knee injury and you've got one of those little machines you know that circulates cold whatever water through one of those little pads and you have to have the water changed every so often so it stays super chilly and you just insist on getting up on your crutches and toddling down you know whatever to the freezer to the ice maker and refilling it yourself when your friends are like just ask me to do it i want to do it and you're like no no i couldn't possibly like what does that say like effectively what does that say it's like i value my own liberty my own autonomy i fear too much the thought that the other would feel um oppressed by or put upon by my making of demands right but then that's not real friendship right that's a kind of strange contractual arrangement you have to be able to place demands and to be demanded of in a relationship and um yeah i think that being a good instrument and then receiving others uh is a matter of just really like kind of like letting delight lead and then getting over this whole egoism altruism thing and also i mean one has to get over his or her pride right and individualism and kind of self-dependence right would you say and this might be an over simplistic example but um letting ourselves be served and letting ourselves be loved would you say even um sometimes i know i experience this too but just having an issue with receiving gifts and always feeling bad like when someone gives things to you do you think it'd be a practice in friendship to even just practically like if someone offers to pay for you to just not not argue with that or like do you think that'd be a practical thing to grow in friendship because then you you let yourself be served more yeah i mean paying for things is it's just a little bit complicated because there's a whole social script that goes with it right so you have to say no um i'll pay for myself and then they insist and then you say no again and they insist a third time and that at that point i think you're free to receive the gift but if you don't observe the social script then you seem presumptuous right um so i think that that's that's like a little bit of a fraught exchange um so i don't know quite about okay so like well i don't know how helpful this example is but i'll tell you one time that i was mortified by receiving um i think like at one point my senior i expressed just like a kind of downtroddeness to one of my friends and maybe like a week and a half later he orchestrated the a greg pine appreciation day so like all these ladies on campus were wearing black and this is my senior year of college we're wearing black and white for like dominican colors and then all of my friends were wearing my clothes and they were all carrying balloons that they themselves a decorator that said greg pine appreciation day and we're like staging flash mobs around campus in celebration of me which as you might imagine is mortifying uh-huh um yeah it's like awesome also never mind i won't tell that part of the story um no no i went to so i went to mass that evening at st peters down the hill and there's this one i think his name was john there's a homeless man there and i would chat with him sometimes some not other times because i'm i'm imperfect and uh he asked for money and i don't remember exactly how i responded him to but i was dismissive um and he that registered i mean he was he was like a little bit gone you know so his his reactions to things were erratic but i said something he reacted negatively to it and i realized that i had given him occasion to react negatively i was not good to him and so i was like thrown for a loop and i felt silly and dumb and bad and um like i sent my i sent my friend back with whom i had driven and i like tracked down john and tried to chat with him and i ended up like showing up to dinner in the cafeteria like 20 25 minutes late and at that point it was like it was like the it was like the orchestrated greg pine chant and i was just like i was just yeah it was it was it was just such a bizarre experience where i felt like i had been a knave you know not that anyone in the 21st century says nave except shakespeare scholars but i felt like a bad person all right and here i am being celebrated and i think that's just what life is okay so i don't think that like we need to worry too terribly much about whether or not we merit the gift or the word of affirmation or the physical affection or the act of service or the time span i don't think i don't think it matters to entirely much whether we are owed it because loving is more about the lover really and the lover responding to something in you and if a lover is good the lover will find in you what is good and then they will express it in the means appropriate and so like yeah i mean our lives are relatively uninteresting and kind of dull uh but okay get over it i suppose so yeah i think um that that's i think that's just part of the deal but i think it takes like a whole life to kind of get somewhere approaching comfortable with that wow well that's incredible i love what you said about loving being more about the lover and letting them find the goodness and i mean that obviously relates directly to god too um awesome we have a question from kristin friendship requires trust how can i actively increase my trust in god this is a big one yeah yeah okay so maybe just like a sense in which friendship requires trust um so when you entrust yourself to another you have to have the confidence that they will receive you right because when you're whether you're sharing information or expressing affection you need to have the confidence that they will receive that gesture but effectively what they're receiving and receiving that is receiving you um and i think that all of us have a kind of late in fear that we will not be received or not will be will not be received well right um that someone will find us to be burdensome um extra um taxing just entirely too much dramatic you know all different ways in which we give expression to this and i think wow this is kind of like maybe gender stereotyping but i think that this is a an especially feminine fear definitely um it's like a kind of fear and this is said by a friend but a fear of being at once too little and too much right right so like not enough for the other person but also entirely too much yeah in the sense of like yeah just they won't be able to handle it right they won't be able to bear the weight um because yeah we just we can't really envision anyone receiving us well right um now i mean if you have parents who love you like half of the battle is one because i think a lot of this yeah it's just a lot of this is determined from a young age and i think that you're dealt a kind of hand when it comes to good healthy happy psychological adjustment in human relationships and sometimes you're dealt a good hand but sometimes you build a bad hand and i think when you are dealt a bad hand that the focus shouldn't be so much on perfect psychological integration as it should be on progress you know because i think if we hold up a kind of standard of the prototypical well-adjusted perfectly loved very confident individual we'll always suffer by comparison because there's like three of those people out there um and so i think that like so what does it mean to kind of grow and trust and in relationships i think um it means you know taking small steps and i think part of it is this language of placing demands right and and asking that one being abandoned of so uh yeah for like a certain period in my life i struggled with i couldn't sleep well um so i'd spend the night just awake anxious about the fact that i wasn't asleep and i expressed this at one point to a friend and that friend said like why didn't you just why don't you just wake me up you know i was like well i mean what good does it serve because not only am i not sleeping now you're not sleeping and he said something simple like yeah but you're you're not sleeping alone right kind of like gripped by fear and anxiety and i'd love to you know i'd be honored so that's like a very like simple thing right right i think of another example where um i went to franciscan university of steubenville we've got all kinds of times available for a confession and um i think as a result of which sometimes students feel nervous to ask priests to hear their confession outside of the scheduled times because the priests there just get absolutely devoured by the sacramental needs of the students and i remember having heard of you know a conversation one woman she couldn't get to the scheduled hour she approached this particular priest who since passed father harkins who was a very excellent man and she's like father i'm so sorry you know like i can't get blah blah i can't get at a time i just would like to go to confession it's not super urgent but if you can't you know she she nuanced it you know out out the wazoo and he just said no no don't worry he said i was ordained for you wow so just like simple i think that we grow and trust as we express to others um that they can trust us right so it's a kind of mutual phenomenon um so to to give and to receive our related habits and i think that um you'll recognize in your life when your priority when you're prioritizing something to people so if you have in your mind you know i need to study for 35 hours this week and so whenever one of your friends comes to ask you a favor they see in your eyes this kind of hunted look like here is one who i'm interrupting who is absolutely terrified at the prospect that they might be diverted for 15 minutes it's like that's not good i don't think that's good yeah i think that's something that like ultimately you have a kind of integrity about your work and maybe you study in a particular place where you know you're not going to be disturbed but when you're available to your friends you should be available to your friends right right and mind you you know your principal vocation in this setting is one you know knowledge and love of god and as expressed through your academic pursuits but i think that you can't draw hard and fast distinctions between like god study and friends i think that it's all thrown together and i think that there are various means that the lord deploys basically to bring you to where he wants you oh i love that they can't be compartmentalized because they're so intertwined yeah that's awesome um something you said stood out to me and it relates to a question we have from jane she was asking any advice on how to trust friends and you said something about how um show them that they can trust you but any other i guess you already answered this but do you have any other i guess tips on um how to trust friends or with god too do we have to trust god before we trust friends or do we trust god through our friends any thoughts on that yeah i don't think that it's anything sequential i think it's you know it's kind of interrelated intermixed right and instrumental you know um things for trusting your friends is um i think that at a certain point we've got to just kick out the ladder um and what is the ladder to which i am referring well i think that uh sometimes in friendships we get caught up with rights and duties right if we feel kind of put out by an encounter with a friend we begin to build a case against them in our minds like this person you know always feels the liberty to express her problems to me but whenever i go into mine she has no patience for it you know what is that um when's the lack of compassion you know or where's the two-sidedness or something or you might think like um you know in this particular friendship whenever i bring up a difficult thing um this person you know overreacts why why can't i rely upon them to like take something which i think to be you know relatively uh of moderate importance why does it get blown out of proportion or something like that or like yeah i mean there's any number of things that you can cite to that uh to that effect but i think that like counting the cost it just never ends well right right i think that you can place demands and have domains placed but i think that you should be zealous um to pardon right you should you should get out ahead of the other in affection because like um in in religious life we talk about fraternal correction if somebody's doing something that's self-destructive you know you want to tell them that it's self-destructive and express it to him in love but you want to be able to take an inventory and say like does this matter can this person change and do i love them okay but for me in my experience those fraternal corrections from which i have most profited are ultimately like the witness and example of the brothers and then their love they're very like dedicated love for me so you might say like you know gregory you're you know filling the appropriate you know compound swear word um and uh you really need to work on this thing and i hate your stinking guts and you might be true like you might be true down the line those might all be accurate assessments but i think that the the chances of that motivating a real conversion in my life are low right whereas if you love me to a higher state i think the chances of that are are better um and so i think that like in friendship we should we should have this kind of focus on on getting a how to getting out ahead of the other in love and goading the good out of the other rather than insisting on our rights and their failure to meet them because then you get into this whole game of mind reading right and you're feeling sullen but they don't know how you're feeling until you express it and when you express it it's usually embittered and then they're not in a place to receive that because it's like you've been over here the whole time brooding on injury apart from them you've been thinking apart from your friend and how are they to grow in a relationship with you when this significant venture they've been excluded from it you know right so i just don't think like you have a tense encounter with another person i think you need to immediately text them and tell them that you love them wow right because you're wait you're looking at your phone you're waiting for them to apologize to you and i can guarantee that they're looking at that she's looking at her phone waiting for you to apologize to her and that can last for hours and days oh yes so i think if you hang up you clear the cobwebs and then you just express your affection wow that's amazing and you then you don't waste all this time just like you said brooding over these faults yeah that's great i think that that's such a practical thing too like always be trying to just get ahead in love and affection yeah wonderful um all right we have a question from maria brock how do you continue to deepen friendships with your best friends is it something continually active that you can do or is it just passively deepened through time and mutual benevolence so i think both end i think that um you'll encounter periods of great growth and friendship and you'll also encounter certain plateaus in friendship and you have to be content to kind of suffer the lord's timing as it were uh without getting impatient for this kind of constant exponential trajectory it's like you know the lord will grow as he sees fit to grow right but i think sometimes uh it can be a temptation to like rest on the laurels of your friendship to grow contented with your experience and to tell the same stories but i think like talking about a friendship and kind of regaling each other with the gems of your friendship it's second second-order discourse and it's reliant on first-order discourse which is that common activity right so like it might seem you know when you're 18 you have infinite energy to have all kinds of fun experiences in the area but you're kind of like over it by the time you're a senior right you know you're like oh man that's such a freshman thing to do yeah you know like let's get our mattresses off our dorm you know like beds and sleep on the roof of you know st robert bellam in chapel or something like that that sounds fun not that anyone would ever do that like you're ready to rock you know your freshman year but your senior year you're like i'd rather get a good night's sleep yeah you know you're like so tired so so tired um but but the threat is that in your friendship you can just become so so tired right but if you if you don't continue to invest in these they don't have to be new or novel but they do have to be like intentional deliberate right like you know you think about a couple that's been dating for however long or who have been married for however long you still need to go out on dates you know yes you can't just continue to save money on babysitters unless you're really financially strapped but you know like you're always going to have an excuse as to why you ought not make time you know because there are always going to be other things to attend to but here's the thing like your house will always be in need of repairs yeah one of your kitchen appliances will always be broken who cares all right you need to invest in that common life because then the second order discourse that follows from it provides just as much if not more delight but it presumes that first order discourse wow that's great i like what you said about you know all things will always be broken but that's okay it is okay yes um okay a question from charlie chalkley he's wondering how can i be a good instrument to good friends who have later turned away from their own good yeah so yeah in instances like this i think it's helpful just to be concrete so you think about like somebody who ceases the practice of the faith or somebody who um you know begins a pattern of addictive behavior like in college you know like a lot of people will start smoking pot yeah and like not really attribute much importance to it and then they'll like start cheating on tests and then they'll start sports betting and then you know they become like little dip monster frat lords where they carry around their little pull and spring bottle and are just constantly filling it with tobacco juice and you're like what is what is what is your life you know all those things you know uh in a constellation prove kind of difficult to relate to um so i think that like okay so if that's the case then how do you continue loving that person well i think that there's a recognition that if there isn't sufficient grounds for a common life then it's really going to kind of attenuate your relationship and you have to be honest about that because if you keep struggling for a thing that's not there um then you're just going to be living a lie as it were right and i think that the other person will begin to see that right and then they'll begin to resent you right so i think it's you know it's in certain instances if somebody chooses to drift then they choose to drift right okay you can't force what is a mutual thing um and when you try to force what is a mutual thing then the other begins to feel like the object of your ministry um and there are very few things that people like less than to be the object of someone else's ministry right they want to be your friend right they don't want to be judged right they want to be encouraged but they don't want to have chapter and verse cited at them right and so i think it's a really delicate balance right and you don't want to do it in such a way that it imperils your own good but i think you remain present to that person in the in the way that it's appropriate so the office of love might change you might go from being a best friend to being a friendly acquaintance you might go from being a friendly acquaintance to just a classmate you might go from what you know the nature of that level change and i think the responsibility is attendant upon that will change and the kind of love that you are capable of expressing will change but i think that you remain faithful to what is actually the truth rather than thinking back nostalgically or regretfully to what has been or even thinking kind of magically about what could be just respond to what is um wow thank you thank you for that advice um okay question from christina catterton how do you maintain a best friendship if you're doubting the friendship yeah yeah that's a scary thing yeah that's a scary thing it depends i mean on the person on the time on the place on the circumstance sometimes you wait on it right but sometimes you know there's a tradition in the life of the church you may have heard of saint alread of revo who lived in the 12th century a cistercian monk and he has a book called spiritual friendship and he advocates for the practice of testing friendships uh which is a little bit weird um but i think makes sense in context but like you know if you never place demands then how will you know if it's a real friendship right yeah if you never ask anything of your friend then i mean you're just gonna get what you ask for effectively if the person's not especially generous especially if the other person's a man because men tend to think only rarely of anything beyond the satisfying of their hunger and thirst um so if you want you know your boyfriend to do something for you you're going to have to ask him often right and and kind of instill in him the habit of attending to you uh because he might you know he might make kind of wild flourishes at the outset um but beyond that you can rely upon him to be relatively uninspired and that's not just like you know uh i guess man hatred is misandry what's up that's a little vocab word um that's not just that's just like a kind of reflection of the fact that women tend to mature more quickly than men yes and one of the places where you see that most acutely is in high school and college yeah right and part of maturing i think is is getting out from your own immediate needs to those of others you think about the maturation of a child a child will just kind of fixate on its need for food drink a clean diaper adequate rest you know that's just like all really the child isn't like condoling with its mother like you must be so tired you know i i wish i weren't crying right now either you know and i wouldn't ordinarily especially given the bags under your eyes but let me just you know like no two-year-old is going to have this discourse with his mom he's just like i am hungry you know my body hurts okay i think men are like that basically until the age of 26. good to know thanks for the advice yeah so like in in that if there's a man involved you're going to have to communicate that you know and you can't expect him to read your mind right because he can't and i think it's an injustice to expect him to um as concerns like you know a friendship between or among women i mean it's harder um it's but you know like women have their own kind of characteristic means uh of communication and um i mean it depends in here i don't actually think that gender stereotypes are terribly helpful because it usually falls more along temperamental lines right but it's a matter of you know discerning how this person is loved and expresses love and recognizing love received and love profit for what they are right which will which will you know it's a transformation that happens in both individuals so those are those are some thoughts awesome thank you um we have a couple more questions uh one from james smith advice on long distance friendships i guess most people now are long distance given this situation all right i'll give you first the bad news and then then i'll give you the bad news okay oh okay great so i don't know i don't know to what extent long distance long distance friendships are possible all right but i want them to be possible so right now i'm just working off aspiration um i know that they i have had them in the past but they are usually followed by a reuniting all right so like i think that in order to fuel that friendship you need to have a common life in a common conversation and like the way that aristotle expresses it it's a common life is conducted in the context of the city right which doesn't exceed 200 000 persons you know you can kind of get to know a lot of people and you live within the same walls for the entirety of your life and you have the same neighbors practically speaking you know so there's a real real sense there of rootedness in the kind of principle expression of friendship but now with things being as mobile as they are it's harder right and i think um yeah i think that uh your friendship will rise and fall to the extent that you have a common life right and a common conversation and i think that you have to find ways by which to um you have to find ways by which to secure that and i think that it always and everywhere means prioritizing meeting in person if there's one thing that the last seven months have convinced us of it's that virtual is not a substitute for personal you know and oftentimes it can it can almost be worse than nothing right because it's like a big open wound a big reminder of what ought to be in isn't um and especially when people are telling you that it's just as good for it to be virtual and you feel almost guilty thinking like maybe i'm just not as good at reconciling myself to my present state maybe i'm selfish for thinking myself robbed of part of my undergraduate education maybe maybe dot dot fill in the blank yeah i don't i don't think those things are invalid i think those are completely valid responses to the present circumstances because men and women are meant to be together right physically and there's so much that is not only communicated by proximate presence but that is like genuinely shared okay um like known loved you know how do you feel seen by another person who has to look at their camera and away from your face in order to communicate eye contact right you know there's so much like falsity in it it's just a room of mirrors yeah um so i think that like with long-distance friendships one thing is get together as much as possible and plan your life around that other person okay if you're if you're making a cross-country chip and this person lives in iowa city take i-80 okay don't take i-70 you might shave off an hour in i-70 but you should take i-80 and you should also take an extra day or two there right and you should invite them to come the rest of the way and then offer to pay for their flight from denver back to iowa city this investment yeah yeah yeah it's you you tell that person by gestures like that that i want this to last forever right okay so prioritize being with that person even if it means you know deflecting you from otherwise well-laid plans right because there is no richness like the richness of friendship right right there is no i don't i don't know that there's like a greater good on offer and people like well what about the eucharist well i think that's an expression of friendship yeah okay i think the lord wants to be with us and that's how he expresses himself all right so i'm not drawing kind of hard and fast distinctions in between or among these things and i just think that friendship is all that matters yeah and i think that to the extent that you can communicate to that person at a distance you afford them the hope this will last so prioritize in person you know like do the other things that people do uh you know call or facetime or whatever um and then like write letters right so like communicate in as personal and mode as possible my handwriting is atrocious and i stink at it so i type them you know but it's still it it makes a difference you know a typed and sent letter makes a difference based you know like by comparison to an email or something like that right you know it's noticeable it's appreciable and also you should be always ready like ready in spirit to drop whatever happens or drop whatever comes in response to that person it's like the kind of funeral mentality there's certain people in your life that if somebody beloved to them dies you're going to be there right right things will have to be rearranged things will have to be canceled your life will have to be upset but you have to be there yes otherwise what you are living with that person is a farce you know it's not actually real and substantial so i think to have the kind of preparation of spirit for that those are some things i mean you can list other things that's what i got that's awesome i love that okay all right so um we're gonna wrap it up now um but thank you so much for answering these questions i feel very enlightened there's a lot to simmer in um so thank you and we're gonna have john come up here and give some closing announcements so yeah so you can just walk off and then he'll go on by himself all right all right thank you thank you again father for helping us out all right thank you now some for some closing announcements um yeah we'll be having our zoom discussion right now uh the link will be down below after that our community comp line will be at 9 00 pm tonight and okay for next week we're gonna have a special tns it will be a wombat sorry wombat means works of mercy best action team takeover um they they will be hosting our tns about faithful citizenship featuring the chapel staff other than that thank you guys so much for watching don't forget to hit the like and subscribe button so you never miss out on tns every week and get all those updates other than that have a good night guys

Channel: GMUCCM

Views: 1,101

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: V1jziO20OW4

Length: 90min 30sec (5430 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020