A Friend is a Fortress
One
Slippery Slopes
When you are climbing a very slippery slope it’s really helpful to have a friend who can give you a hand up. Well, today’s culture can be a very slippery slope to sin and vice so we need a few good friends.
St. Francis de Sales writes, “In the world those who aim at a holiness require to be united one with another by a holy friendship, which encourages them in virtue. Just as men traversing a plain have no need to hold one another up, as they have who are amid slippery mountain paths, so those who are living in the world require such for strength and comfort amid the difficulties which beset them…
Very often we are walking on slippery, sloping ground. We’re standing on the instability of secular culture, with all its inconsistent terrain and its random disruptions, it’s a lot easier to lose your balance. So we all need good friends. We need someone you can hang onto for support so you won’t fall.
That’s what a virtuous friendship is. That’s what the Old Testament Book of Sirach calls a friend, “a sure support.” And that’s what all of us living in the world need.
Two
Sirach on a Friend
The Book of Sirach has this to say about friendship, “A faithful friend is a fortress, whoever finds one has found a rare treasure. A faithful friend is something beyond price, there is no measuring his worth. A faithful friend is the elixir of life, and those who fear the Lord will find one. Whoever fears the Lord makes true friends, for as a man is, so is his friend.”
That’s pretty strong language: fortress, rare treasure, the elixir of life. It sounds kind of like Scripture is recommending that we find virtuous friends. So we should probably get on it.
Three
How is a Friend a Fortress, a Sure Support?
It’s an interesting fact of human psychology, but we were made not to trust ourselves too much. That's why it's important to have someone else confirm your perspective to feel confident you're seeing things correctly.
For instance, if a mom is home a lot with a bunch of crazy kids, she might sometimes wonder whether she’s the one going crazy. But then the dad comes home, she tells him what happened today, and they both have a good laugh at how crazy their kids are. In other words, until there’s another adult at home that she can share her sanity with, she can’t really enjoy the truth.
That’s true of everything. If everybody else around you is acting crazy, you can’t really feel confident that you’re the only sane one until a friend reassures you. When they say, “Oh yeah, you’re totally right. What they’re saying is nuts.” Then, and only then, do you say, “Right? Okay. Good. I was starting to think maybe I was missing something.”
A good friend is a sure support because they ground you in the truth. When the people or the culture around you make you feel doubts about what seems like it should be clear, a good friend puts your mind at peace. That’s why it’s so important to find a faithful friend. A friend that’s not only faithful to you but faithful to the truth.
Four
Who Fears the Lord
The Book of Sirach says, “Whoever fears the Lord makes true friends, for as a man is, so is his friend.”
The point is, you want to find a friend who is like the person you want to be. As we just said, a good friend is someone who grounds you in truth. But that means a virtuous friend must themselves be grounded in truth. And for that, you need both a lot of holiness and a healthy dose of common sense.
And guess what? Both of those come primarily from daily meditation and a resolution. In other words, if you want to be a good friend to someone else, you should practice daily mediation and a resolution. If you want to find someone who will be a good friend to you, then find someone who also practices daily mediation and a resolution.
Someone like that will ground you in the truth. If there’s something important you don’t see, they’ll help you see it. If there’s something important you do see, they’ll ground you in it so that you don’t give in to the misperceptions and the misguided pressure all around us.
That’s what a faithful friend is. That’s why a faithful friend is a sure support, and a friend is a fortress.
Five
One who Fears the Lord Will Find Him
The passage from Sirach says one more thing about a good friend. It says, “A faithful friend is a life-saving remedy, such as he who fears God finds.”
Life-saving. A good friend can save your life, your spiritual life, not just your physical life. It says too that one who fears the Lord will find such a friend. That statement is probably not just descriptive, it’s probably prescriptive. In other words, it’s not just saying that if you fear the Lord, one day a good friend will happen to come your way. It’s saying that if you are the sort of person who fears the Lord. If you are the sort of person who cares about clinging to the truth of faith, if you are someone who wants to walk steadily and surely along the path of salvation, if you are a God-fearing man or woman, then you’d better get busy finding yourself a virtuous friend.
We need such a friend, if we wish to avoid a fall, in this slippery, sloping, secular world. May God lead us to such friends, and may we have the sense to hang on to them when we find them. Amen.