“In the history of philosophy, friendship was always considered a value, but Saint Thomas is the first to make charity a kind of friendship. In order to reach this conclusion that charity is indeed a form of friendship, he takes pains to reason very rigorously. He asks himself what are the characteristics of friendship. He discovers three of them:
1. First of all, it is a love of ‘benevelonce.’ In this regard, it is necessary to recall the classic distinction between two sorts of love: the love of concupiscence or of desire, which is self-directed (amor concupiscentiae), and the love of benevolence or friendship, which is directed toward the other (amor benevolentiae).
2. Furthermore, reciprocity is necessary: this is the ‘mutua amatio.’ I can love someone, but if that person does not love me in return, he is not truly my friend, and there is no real friendship.
3. Finally, there has to be something in common between the true friends: this is the ‘communicatio.’—Jean-Charles Nault, O.S.B., The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times
_____
In the yellow light of day’s begin, he read by the hearth, pages of Aquinas, and he thought of God and love. He read an explanation of charity and true friendship’s necessity of reciprocity for true and meaningful connection—friendship, rare and something more than the modern connection that is really none at all.
“Reciprocity, that’s the one gets me,” he spoke simple. “Benevolence is there, share of commonalities, but the reciprocity—real and meaningful affinity—I’ve never been good at that. Sometimes I’m the giver. Reciprocity is not returned, or non-existent. It’s great for fiction, not much for anything more. Sometimes I’m the receiver: aware and conscious of all I am given, receiving, gifted—and by something of me, or absence of, I fail or struggle to return. For all I am aware of another’s affinity: my own is not there.
Maybe that’s why true friends, real and lasting, are rare. Life is a surround of connections—spirits and souls existing near, entering and exiting in junctures of time then passing on in continuance of their own life and journey.
The treasure is the few, the small and quiet few that stick around; affect your soul, refine your spirit, raise existence into life.
I don’t think you can force them. They are found. Found, it takes risk, or openness, to affirm. Without showing of ourselves, we never truly see the other; are only haunted by a sensing: premonition of a greater soul-meaning.
I’ve never been the best at that either, taking the risk, daring to be open, allowing myself to be seen and learned in hopes of finding and sharing in its reciprocity.”
He paused in its words. She listened with compassion and empathy. Guarded still, but opening.
Often, he spoke through other’s words—quotes from books or own ideas spun from another’s starting page. He did this then. Such was effort to be open while still retaining guard. He was still learning to live and speak as his own full soul.
“I just wanted to say—thanks for being here, for sharing this time, these times by the fire and closeness of time and mind and the spirit that I feel.”
She smiled still, empathetic, compassionate; making sense and finding meaning in his words. Nearer to him, her body leaned. Hand brushed his side of face, her eyes reading the unguarding of his own, meek windows into soul.
She kissed him, lightly, gently, delicately as one regards a heart in its first opening.
He smiled after, eyes warmed, changed, becoming mirrors to her own.
Reciprocity in open, gifted meekness.