Welcome to the Tumistic Institute podcast. Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual

tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square. The lectures on this

podcast are organized by university students at Tumistic Institute chapters around the world. To learn

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to mystic institute.org. Even though my specialization in theology is the study of a church's

teaching about woman, I'm very interested in the topic of friendship. I taught theology at all

different levels, including in the high school or secondary school before in

the university. And one of the things I realized in my life is that friendship is really central

to happiness. And as a moral theologian and as an ethicist, I'm very interested in the

question of human happiness. How do we actually flourish? I do not believe

God made us to have a life that is dull, uninteresting, and disconnected. I mean, he said,

I came that you might have life and have it to the full. And I think that if we're going to live

well, the question of friendship is actually more important than we might realize, both divine

friendship and human friendship.

So this is actually a topic I've studied quite a bit about.

And one I like to share thoughts on and hopefully after the talk when we have some Q&A, I'd

also like to hear what are your questions on it.

But I hope that these thoughts gleaned from both Aristotle and St. Thomas will be quite practical to you.

I mean, sometimes people think of philosophy and theology is kind of out there and kind of

esoteric, but it's not. I think it's very much about our day-to-day living and are living well.

I think sometimes we kind of just go by and we're surviving, but we were meant to thrive.

We were meant to live a life that's really full.

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