For the Fun of It: Discussing Friendship with C.S. Lewis (Part Two)

(Please read Part One, the previous posting,  to pick up the train of thought.)

M: Sorry to break off our dialogue so abruptly last week, but I ‘m grateful for the chance to continue the discussion.  We were talking about male friendship, and the theory that homosexuality is somehow the basis of every friendship among men.  As I recall, you definitely disagreed.

CSL: “The homosexual theory…seems to me not even plausible.”

M: Yet, historically, it is a fact that some soldiers, warriors, etc. were homosexuals and friends, or homosexual friends.

CSL:  “Certain cultures at certain periods seem to have tended to the contamination. In war-like societies, it was, I think, especially likely to creep into the relation between the relation of the mature Brave and his young armor-bearer or squire. The absence of the women while you were on the warpath had, no doubt, something to do with it.”

M:  So, you believe these instances of homosexual friendships are the exception and not the rule, even though the theory would hold otherwise? How can we be sure, either way?

CSL: “ In deciding, if we think we need or can decide, where it crept in and where it did not, we must surely be guided by the evidence (when there is any) and not by any a priori theory.”

M: I suppose it depends on what you consider to be evidence. What about physical gestures of affection? Are they sufficient evidence?

CSL: “Kisses, tears, and embraces are not in themselves evidence of homosexuality. The implications would be, if nothing else, too comic. Hrothgar embracing Beowulf, Johnson embracing Boswell  (a pretty flagrantly heterosexual couple) and all those hairy old toughs of centurions in Tacitus, clinging to one another and begging for last kisses when the legion was broken up…all pansies? If you can believe that, you can believe anything.”

M: Well, today, everything has become believable. Kisses, tears and embraces between men in America today are evidence of homosexuality. I know in some countries men can still hold hands or walk arm in arm, and no one would give it a thought.  But that’s not culturally acceptable between men in the USA, unless you want to be seen as gay. Times sure have changed!

CSL: “On a broad historical view it is, of course, not the demonstrative gestures of Friendship among our ancestors but the absence of such gestures in our own society that calls for some special explanation.  We, not they, are out of step.

M:   “We not they are out of step?!!   I am surprised to read that. Can’t friendship lead into erotic love? And isn't the converse true as well: can’t Eros lead to friendship?”

CSL:  “But this, far from obliterating the distinction between the two loves, puts it in a clearer light. If one who was first in the deep and full sense your friend, is then gradually or suddenly revealed as your lover, you will certainly not want to share the Beloved’s erotic love with any third. But you will have no jealousy at all about sharing the friendship. "

M:  Hmm, share friendship but keep the erotic love to yourself….What do you see as the difference between friends and erotic lovers?

CSL:” Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends, hardly ever about their friendship. Lovers are usually face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest…Friendship is the least biological of our loves…true friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth. “

M: That makes a great deal of sense to me, but how do you explain the case of the person who is the clingy, possessive, controlling, possessive friend, or a friend who doesn’t really care about anything, or any cause,  except to collect more and more and more friends? The first case seems to contradict your premise that friendship is side by side, or, directed outward and open; the second, that moving towards a common interest greater than the friends themselves is the unifying factor.

CSL:  “…those pathetic people who simply ‘want friends’ can never make any. The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else beside Friends.  Where the truthful answer to the question Do you see the same truth? would be ‘I see nothing and I don’t care about the truth; I only want a Friend’,  no Friendship can arise – though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers.”

M: I agree with your reasoning, although many people today would not. I’m not sure what kind of “Affection” would arise out of a Friendship that isn’t about anything but itself, however.

CSL: “Friendship is utterly free from Affection’s need to be needed. We are sorry that any gift or loan or night-watching should have been necessary, - and no, for heaven’s sake, let us forget all about it, and go back to the things we really want to do or talk of together. Even gratitude is no enrichment to this love. The stereotyped ‘Don’t mention it’ here perfectly expresses what we really feel.”

 

M: What about the old maxim which says, “A friend in need is a friend indeed?” how does that apply?

CSL: “The mark of a perfect friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.“

M: I have to thank you for these insights. I don'think I ever came across anyone who explained what a beautiful and noble blessing true friendship is as clearly as you did. 

CSL: Don't mention it.

For the Fun of It: Discussing Friendship with C.S Lewis (Part One)

I have been reading  The Four Loves by C.S.Lewis, and conversing with the text as I go along. The topic is Friendship. M stands for me, and CSL for the great master himself. CSL's remarks are in quotation marks, because I am getting them directly from the text. I plead guilty for placing what he says in the context of my questions and comments, but I do not think I do violence to his meaning or intent.

M: I know friendship is downplayed today, and I was wondering, was it like that in the old days too? 

CSL: "To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it."

M: So, how did this seismic shift regarding friendship take place? If it was so esteemed in the old days, why is it so unappreciated today?

CSL: "The first and most obvious answer is that few value it because few experience it."

M: How can you say that? Today more and more people have tons and tons of friends. When I get online for example, I can get connected to friends all over the world by email and/or Facebook. And even off-line, I can be talking to or texting some friend or other all day long on my cell phone. Friendship seems to be more omnipresent and appreciated than ever before. Don't we have a natural hunger for friendship which, as human beings, moves us to connect to other human beings? It seems to me that friendship is a basic, natural instinct hardwired into our make-up. Isn't friendship as natural to us as breathing and loving?

CSL: "Friendship is...the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious, and necessary. It has least commerce with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing that quickens the pulse or turns you red and pale. It is essentially between individuals; the moment two men are friends they have to some degree drawn together from the herd. 

M:  That's astounding. Are you telling me that erotic love is more basic than friendship? That Eros is more elementary than friendship? That friendship is not erotic? What about affection? Isn't affection basic to our human nature? Isn't affection also part of friendship? Doesn't Eros always enter into affection? Aren't Eros and affection always mixed together, and aren't both always a part of friendship?

CSL: "Without Eros none of us would have been begotten and without affection none of us would have been reared; but we can live and breed without Friendship. The species, biologically speaking, has no need of it." 

M: I'm not used to thinking about Eros, affection, and friendship in a way that distinguishes them so clearly from one another. But I think I see what you mean. Eros used to be enough to ensure propagation of the species. Affection used to get us through the trials of raising children.  So friendship didn't necessarily have to enter the picture. Still, I don't understand why you think most people today are not eager for friendship or open to it. The way you talk about it, I'm tempted to believe you see us moderns as closed to friendship.

 

CSL: "The pack or herd - the community- may even dislike and distrust it. Its leaders very often do. Headmasters and Head mistresses and heads of religious communities, colonels and ships captains, can feel uneasy when close and strong friendships  rise between little knots of their subjects."

M: But why? Why do moderns object to friendship whereas the Ancients valued it? Why do we set more of a store on Eros and affection, whereas the Ancients thought friendship was higher or more noble?

CSL: The "(so to call it) 'non-natural' quality in Friendship goes far to explain why it was exalted in ancient and medieval times and has come to be made light of in our own. The deepest and most permanent thought of those ages was ascetic and world-renouncing. Nature and emotion and the body were feared as dangers to our souls, or despised as degradations of our human status. Inevitably that sort of life was most prized which seemed most independent, or even defiant of mere nature.  Affection and Eros were too obviously connected with our nerves, too obviously shared with the brutes. You could feel these tugging at your guts and fluttering in your diaphragm. But in Friendship - in that luminous, tranquil, rational world of relationships freely chosen- you got away from all that. This alone of all the loves, seemed to raise you to the level of gods or angels."

M: That's a marvelous way to put friendship into words: "the luminous, tranquil, rational world of relationships freely chosen." It makes me think of the knights of the round table discussing the best way to defend Camelot, or writers discussing their craft, or even a few research scientists planning how to develop a cure for a life threatening disease. They can be cool and collected, or aroused and passionate, in their discussion, but no matter how hot and heavy the discussion becomes, the group keeps it rational and level-headed searching for the answer that will illuminate their way to a good course of action.

 You know, just saying that makes me realize that I do think we are too self-absorbed to have many real friendships today, and to sense you may be right after all, when you say the old timers were more capable of friendship than we are.  What happened after the age of friendship to produce the age of sentiment, if I can put it that way?

CSL: "Then came Romanticism and "tearful comedy" and the "return to nature' and the exaltation of sentiment; and in their train all that great wallow of emotion which, although often criticized, has lasted ever since. Finally the exaltation of instinct, the dark gods in the blood; whose hierophants may be incapable of male friendship. Under this new dispensation all that had once commanded this love now began to work against it..."

M: Excuse me. I hate to interrupt, but I have to grab my dictionary and look up that word hierophant. As a modern, I am not as literate as your generation was... Okay , got it. Please, go ahead. You were explaining how we humans began to prize feelings and instinctual drives over and above reason and intelligence, how that tendency took over our culture and today predominates in most places.

CSL: "....that outlook which values the collective above the individual necessarily disparages Friendship; it is a relation between men at their highest level of  individuality. It withdraws men from collective togetherness as surely as solitude could do; and more dangerously, for it withdraws them by two's and three's. Some forms of democratic sentiment are naturally hostile to it because it is selective and an affair of a few. To say 'These are my friends' implies 'Those are not'. For all these reasons, if a man believes as I do, that the old estimate of friendship is the correct one, he can hardly write a chapter on it except as a rehabilitation. "

M: So friends don't necessarily adopt the party-line or engage in the group-think that the current ideology may seek to blanket society with? Friendship calls us to stand apart and speak the truth to each other, even when such an activity may be unpopular?Am I understanding you correctly? Is that why men seems to have less friends than women? Because women open up and communicate what they are thinking and feeling, but men today hesitate to do that with each other? Do you think I'm right when I say men have less friends than women?

CSL: "This imposes on me at the outset a very tiresome bit of demolition. It has actually become necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual."

 

M:  Do you think men in this era are afraid of friendship because they think it  has a trace of homosexuality in it?

CSL: "The dangerous word really is here important.To say that every friendship is consciously and explicitly homosexual would be too obviously false; the wise acres take refuge in the less palpable charge that it is really - unconsciously, cryptically, in some Pickwickian sense - homosexual. And this, though it cannot be proved, can never be refuted. The fact that no positive evidence of homosexuality can be discovered in the behavior of two Friends does not disconcert the wiseacres at all: 'That', they say gravely, 'is just what we should expect.' The very lack of evidence is thus treated as evidence; the absence of smoke proves that the fire is very carefully hidden. Yes,- if it exists at all. But we must first prove its existence. Otherwise we are arguing like a man who should say 'If there were an invisible cat in that chair, the chair would look empty; but the chair does look empty; therefore there is an invisible cat in it.' "

M: I can't wait to see where you are headed with this line of thinking.  I"m looking forward to picking up your book tomorrow. 

The Four Loves,  C.S.Lewis, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanich  pp.87-91

Christ Receives Himself in the Eucharist?!

Aquinas makes an observation in his commentary on Hebrews which made me sit up and take notice, (probably because I tend to not notice what he, Thomas Aquinas, notices!)  He is speaking of Christ as a partaker of the same flesh and blood we are, and exploring what that means. 

He says: It included the possibility of suffering, because he assumed our nature capable of suffering. Because we are persons, then, we suffer. Suffering is built into our human nature as part of what we in substance are.  It is built into the flesh and blood of Christ too, since he shares our human nature. 

 So far so good, I found all of that logical and consistent. Christ, in his person, is the Word made flesh. So suffering is built into his nature. Fine. But then Thomas goes a step further. He says there is another way to understand how Christ is flesh and blood:

“By flesh and blood can also be understood the flesh and blood of Christ according to the statement:  he that eats my flesh and drinks my blood (John6:55)…of which the apostles partook at the Last Supper, and of which Christ partook, as Chrysostom expressly says about Matthew 26: he drank his own blood. Hence, with desire I have desired to eat this Pasch with you, before I suffer." (Luke 22: 15) There is is. Chrysostom saw it, Matthew saw it. Luke saw it. Aquinas saw it. John saw it. How come I had read it a thousand times and I had never seen it? He  drank his own blood ! How can Aquinas toss off a gem like that so casually?

The two Scriptural quotations from Matthew and Luke amazed me. I had never thought about it that way. Christ went to communion along with his disciples at the Last Supper!  When he did that, he was eating his own flesh and blood, his humanity and divinity, in the sacrament of the Eucharist. But what did that mean? Why did he do that? What was the significance of the act for him?

(Questions suggest themselves once Thomas makes me sit up and take note. But answers never come as easily as questions. Even when they do come, they are not always right.)

I always thought the quote from Luke 22:15 cited by Thomas (with desire I have desired to eat this Pasch with you, before I suffer) simply meant that Christ was eager to get into his suffering and death, perhaps eager to get it over with, or simply anxious to start things moving, for the sake of our redemption. Now it seemed to mean more.

How do Luke’s words help us understand why Christ would receive his own flesh and blood in Holy Communion? Our Lord does nothing without a purpose, we know that. The complete depths of his actions are beyond our limited understanding; we know that too.  He, the person, as well as his words and his acts, measure us: we don’t measure them. But we try to dig into them for all we can get, and beg that his grace stretch our minds and hearts so we can begin to receive what he is offering us.

What is he doing when he goes to communion with the disciples? We are what we eat, the truism says.  It looks like he is taking his sacrificial act, his outpouring of his life on the cross, and by eating it,  is accepting it, embracing it,  and surrendering to it. By consuming it, he makes it part of who he is, part of his human nature.  He is embedding it in his human nature so that when we and the disciples receive him in the Eucharistic Bread, he can embed his capacity of loving self sacrifice in us. Our Lord knows that being self-gift may come to him naturally because it is who he is supernaturally,  but self-giving is not something I am inclined to do by  my nature! 

Divine/human self-gift is how he is embodied in the Bread of Life. Certainly, he could not be giving himself in sacrifice without pouring out all that he is as the Father’s gift to us. But it is new for me to think of him receiving communion so he can embed that self giving act into his human flesh/bread, as a way of communicating it to us, and make us capable of living his sacrifice in our flesh. Yet it makes sense to me, because that is the only way I could ever even consider obeying his next, outrageously  impossible command at the Last Supper: ” Love one another as I have loved you.” 

Litany to Our Lady of the Annunciation

Mother of the Good News

Apple of God's Eye 

God's Possession 

Favorite of the Father

Mother of the Divine Mercy 

Enflesher of the Word  

Ocean of Eternal Fruitfulness 

Christ Bearer

Dispenser of the Spirit  

Fountain of All Grace 

Sea of Infinite Increase

Lady Wrapped in Mystery 

Pillar of Fire 

Spouse of the Spirit

Cloud of Divine Presence  

Fountain of Fruitfulness 

Birth of Our Salvation  

Mother of the Most High 

Queen of Eternal Life 

Mother of the Church 

Barren Woman

Consecrated Virgin 

 Fruitful Mother 

Mother of Faith 

Mother of the Hope 

Mother of Love 

Mother of Christ's Life 

Mother of Christian Life

Bearer of the Holy One 

Mother of the Christ

Anointer of the Faithful 

Font of the Unforeseeable 

Dispenser of Divine Surprises

Humble Handmaid 

First Disciple 

Total Yes, 

Treasure Chest of Divine Life 

First Disciple

First Apostle 

Mother of Evangelists 

Silent Proclaimer 

Eloquent Witness 

Converter of Nations

Bearer of the Good News 

Center-Point of Triune Life 

For the Fun of It: Doubting Thomas, the first Male Chauvinist Psychologist

 John: 20: 25 ".....I will not believe!"

James: What do you mean I will not believe? We told you, we saw him!

Matthew: Why would we lie about something like that? We really did see him!

Andrew: You know all of us. You can trust us.

Thomas: You're all acting like a bunch of hysterical women. I never heard anything so crazy in my life.

 

Nathaniel: What do you mean by that?

 

Thomas: By what? 

Nathaniel: By calling us a bunch of hysterical women?

Thomas: If you do what women do, you deserve to be called women. Women always let their feelings carry them away. They think that just because they feel something, that's how the situation really is. And the more they feel something, the more they are convinced they are one hundred percent right! They never listen to reason.

Nathaniel: Really, we did see him. You can't expect us not to be excited about that! 

Thomas: No, no! You'not excited because he was really here. You're excited because you are still hysterically deluding yourselves. That is exactly what women do! They get worked up,  exaggerate some feeling or emotion to the maximum possible, and then convince each other that the feeling they talked one another into is really the way things are out there. It's real alright! But real, only inside them! What's real is how silly they are to let their feelings delude them!

Peter: What's it going to take to convince you?

 

Thomas: I told you: I want to touch him with my own hands, actually handle him, then I'll believe.

 

Nathaniel: Why do you need to touch him?

 

Thomas: Because touch can't be fooled. You can't touch what is not there, even though you can imagine it!  If you touch it, you can be certain-sure it is real. My hands can't be fooled. Maybe my eyes could, if I let myself get worked up the way you girls did. But not my hands, not my fingers. I'm a hard headed realist!

 

John: But even your hands can't touch what is spiritual! Sure, you could touch his body,  but doing that would not prove he is the divine Son of God. All it would prove is that the Jesus who died on the cross is still alive. 

Thomas: That would be enough! I need some concrete real evidence, not distraught, female ravings. I'm ashamed of you guys.

John The Beloved Disciple

John the beloved disciple, when speaking of himself in his Gospel, never calls himself by name, but always identifies himself as “the one whom Jesus loved.”  Usually a name is what gives us some identity as a person. Our first name, and last, points out to others who we are. Of course we are more than those two names put together. An infinite number of other factors could be mentioned to identify us, such as gender, family, nationality, culture, work, friendships, education, etc. Yet no matter how many identifying facts are mentioned, the person I am is never adequately or fully described. We are more than their sum total. Why? It is because at root, and also in the last analysis, our name, who-we-are, is a relationship with the Infinite.

The Ever More (than I am) gave me the gift of life and called me into being. He sustains and maintains me as I journey through this life. He is the goal and destiny of my existence. He is my future right now and will be when there is no longer any such thing as created time. That is why John’s identifying himself as the-one-whom-Jesus-loved fits him as a God-given name, for it is a perfectly complete and full description of all John ever was historically and is now eternally. He is called into being by Love, sustained by Love and inspired by Love as he lives on earth, and taken up into the fullness of Love’s life and light in the Resurrection.

Safe to say, we are defined by our relationships, and especially by our relationship with Christ, the Son of God, in whom for whom and through whom all things are made.He gives consistency to everything. Somehow, our relationships with everyone else are relationships in Him. Ultimately, when all is said and done, how He identifies us, or, our identity in Him, is the only thing that matters.

So John is not emotionally overwrought, nor a sloppy sentimentalist, nor some awestruck hero-worshipper, when he uses his relationship with Christ to explain who he, John, truly is. Relationship with the God-man is the only precisely accurate measure and definition of John, and of each and everyone one of us.

The Twelve are called to be, and to be with one another because they are loved. That is what breaks them out of their self absorption and shapes them into a band of brothers. But it took Pentecost for them to finally understand this. Even after the Resurrection  they were locked into their fears, worries, and anxieties. They wouldn't have hid behind closed doors otherwise. It takes an explosion of the Spirit to make us see that God's love  for us cannot be reduced to an ego possession.

 Obviously Christ's love is is not exclusive nor closed. We are to live our relationship with the Lord in communion with others who have been called and made a decision to follow. Liberation come from the communion.The  very call to exist is a call to relate to others in love. Our existence is meant to be friendship, companionship, and fellowship in the Church as a priestly people. Intellectual knowledge of that wondrous truth is never enough. It has to be Biblical knowing, verification by lived experience. Only the Spirit of Love  can make us capable of that.