The Devoted Friend and Today’s Gospel

 I use Oscar Wilde’s story The Devoted Friend for a dual purpose when I teach.  As a former middle school literature teacher I know one of the hardest skills for kids at this age is to love a book they don’t like.  And so I begin:

I hate this story:  the plot, the characters, especially the ending!  But I love Wilde, and so I know if I hate the plot, the characters and the ending, he intended it.  He wants to teach me something.  And because I approach it this way, I still hate the plot the characters and the ending, but I love what he has taught me.  I use it often in my life.  By learning what he clearly believes is not devoted friendship, I ask myself:  am I being a Hans or the Miller:  am I being taken advantage of or using another?

We then switch gears to study friendship.  We take the stated tenants of friendship and analyze them.  One is that a good friend will do anything for friendship.  Is this true?  Should you lie or cheat for a friend?  Would a true friend even ask? Are there times friendship requires you don’t keep their secrets…

I also ask:  if your friend asks you to help move them to a new apartment, should you?  Yes, of course.  But what if to move them, you miss your daughters first communion or the funeral of your parents?  Should you help your friend?  No.  Friendship requires it be put in a proper order.  It must strengthen relationships with more priority, not diminish them.

In today’s gospel Jesus says, “let the dead bury the dead.”  I have always found this harsh, as my students often struggle to put friendship in its proper order.  But isn’t this just another way of saying the same thing.  Should we bury our dead?  Yes, of course.  But not if it diminishes our primary relationship, our friendship with Christ.  

In my last reflection on the Devoted Friend we came up with something I had not thought of before:  the Devoted Friend is not the story of friendship, but it is the story of a saint.  Hans gives up everything, even his life, for a misguided notion of friendship and a person he believes is a friend but is merely a tyrant.  But if the story had been called The Devoted Follower and he had done all he did for love of Christ in the face of a tyrant, we would hate the Miller but love Hans.  

I wonder if Wilde intended us to make this connection, it wouldn’t surprise me.  But if not, we at least have learned that to be used by a friend isn’t friendship and that to make friendship our primary focus diminishes its role in our lives.  And when we hear Jesus today, we know how to nurture all our relationships:  put Him first.

Happy belated Father’s Day!

When we think about the family as a living icon of the Trinity, what has always been forefront in my mind is the Love between the Father and Son which begets the Spirit:  marital love is so powerful and beautiful it creates not just children, but the proper environment for them to flourish.  It is not what we give our children which benefits them most, not even the unconditional love we have for them.  No, our greatest gift is our love for each other which creates in them a sense of well being and security.  My children have often questioned my love for them, this is natural when they do not understand why I denied what they wanted.  But they have never questioned my love for their father nor his love for me.  And it is that love which begets their security in a world with so few certainties.

But lately I have thought a bit differently about this icon.  My nephew recently got married and on his marriage certificate was a painting of a Bishop hearing the vows of a couple.  It clearly brought to my mind Rublev’s icon of the Old Testament Trinity.  But as I contemplated it, my thinking was stretched in new ways.

The bishop shares the spot of Christ in the triangle.  This makes sense as the church is His representative on earth.  But the bride held the place of the Father which made me contemplate how mothers are like God the Father.  The comparisons between earthly fathers and the divine Father are many.  But why does the future mother sit at His seat at the table?  

But more interesting is that the future father sits in the place of the Holy Spirit.  This is worth contemplating.  Mary is of course the bride of the Holy Spirit.  One of the most profound things I have read was from Maximilian Kolbe where he states that beget from the Father and Son, the spirit is THE immaculate conception, and thus Mary as the mortal Immaculate  conception is the bride taking her spouses’ name.  I love that!

But also, when we think of the father’s role in the family, he is the spiritual life blood.  While mothers primarily deal with the day to day, the father must be more forward thinking.  While we feed and comfort, nag and cajole, to make sure they are prepared for the world, he must lead his children to be prepared for eternity. We teach them to imitate Christ, he teaches them to be the force behind Christ: The unseen power that turns a seed into a tree.

It is for this reason that men must again take seriously their job of spiritual leader in the family.  For too long this has fallen to moms.  We are as spiritual, do not mistake my meaning, but the child sees in his earthly father a different sort of leader.  If our children see eternity as the stuff of women, even our girls may turn away.  They, boys and girls, must see eternity as the stuff of warriors, the stuff of heroes, the stuff of their father!