So I want to start by thinking about why does friendship matter?

Without not merely love, but the specific love of friendship, human history would have to be rewritten.

Had Jonathan and David not enjoyed a friendship so deep that one could speak of the other as another self, and David describe their love as

more dear to me than the love of a woman. Jonathan would never have risked his life to warn

his friend David of the life-threatening rage of his father, and had King Saul killed David,

not only would the history of Israel, but of the entire world, been

changed by the lack of a king after the Lord's own heart, and consequently of the King of Kings

descended from him. Had there not been a deep and true spiritual friendship between

Teresa of Avala and John of the Cross,

the world would never have read some of the most beautiful mystical poetry ever composed.

And the living flame of love would have been quenched in a dark prison cell of the very unfriendly rejection of John by his own religious brothers.

If two friends had not discussed life, literature, and the very possibility of Christianity

over a friendly pint of ale at a pub in Oxford, not only might Middle Earth and Narnia have been far less magical,

but Aslan might never have even been born a cub in Lewis's imagination

if he had lacked Tolkien's amicable challenge to his friend's agnosticism. These few examples among

many point to the reality that friendship can hardly be ignored without dire consequence for humanity.

If we take God's word for it, both the rareness and the value of friendship have been attested in the book of Syrac,

where it is written, a faithful friend is a sturdy shelter. He that has found one has found a

treasure. There is nothing so precious as a faithful friend.

Whoever fears the Lord directs his friendship aright, for as he is, so is his neighbor also.

Long before the coming of Christ, the Greek philosophers pondered the diverse loves that

enriched the human experience.

...