St. Teresa of Jesus of Avila told her nuns that, since Jesus has so few friends in the world, they should strive to be good friends to him.  

Unfortunately, friendship, like love, is a word that has been trivialized in society. By and large, even our best friends come and go as we grow up. Many friendships are based simply upon shared interests or time-of-life availability. The people we pal around with in one decade may well move on to other circles of friends in the next. And nowadays, we may be Internet friends of people we’ve never met and never will!

We don’t see many examples of true friendship — that type of friend we should be to Jesus.

So let’s take a peek at someone who was an expert: Aelred of Rievaulx, a Cistercian monk from the 1100s who greatly valued true friendship and who obviously pondered what that meant.

In his classic book, “Spiritual Friendship,” Aelred identifies three levels of what might be called friendship “because of some similarity in feelings.” Carnal friendship, he says, “springs from mutual harmony in vice.” Worldly friendship “is enkindled by the hope of gain.” And spiritual (true) friendship “is cemented by similarity of life, morals, and pursuits among the just.”

Note that worldly friendship may well be wonderful. Consider this description of a friendship, attributed to St. Augustine in Aelred’s book: “to converse and jest together, with good-will to humor one another, to read together, to discuss matters together, together to trifle, and together to be in earnest; to differ at times without ill humor … and even by a very infrequent disagreement to give zest to our very numerous agreements; to teach one another something, or to learn from one another; with impatience to long for one another when absent, and with joy to receive one another when returning.”
But such an enjoyable friendship, as described, lacks what is necessary for spiritual friendship. What is missing? Aelred states firmly that true friendship (such as Teresa encourages) must be rooted in God and the virtues.

Any friendship that comes to an end, he adds, was not in that third, true, category. Haven’t we all had some lovely friendships that lessened or ended after moves or marriages or other partings of interests? Aelred and Teresa both point to something more enduring — something worth striving for.

There can be no friendship without love, Aelred says, “and yet, not all whom we love should be received into friendship, for not all are worthy of it.” And later he says that “divine authority approves that more are to be received into the bosom of charity than into the embrace of friendship. For we are compelled by the law of charity to receive in the embrace of love not only our friends but also our enemies. But only those do we call friends to whom we can fearlessly entrust our heart and all its secrets, (and they can entrust themselves to us,) bound to us by the same law of faith and security.”

Obviously, such friendships are not lightly undertaken, and such potential friends are not abundant in this or any age. Aelred calls it necessary to test a person who may or may not become “a guardian of love or, as some would have it, a guardian of the spirit itself … (and where) out of many are made one.”

In seeking to become good friends of Jesus, we can begin by looking at how Jesus is the ultimate example of a friend who offers us that “greater love” exemplified in his death. The better we imitate Jesus, the closer we come to being a true friend to him … and to others.

We don’t have to fret about how far we are from that benchmark, because we can grow. “True friendship,” Aelred says, “advances by perfecting itself, and the fruit is derived from feeling the sweetness of that perfection.”

St. Teresa says it is difficult for us to be certain that we are growing in love of God, but adds that if we are growing in love of our neighbor, we also are improving in our love of God.

If we are becoming a good friend to others, surely we are becoming a good friend to Jesus, too.