Friend, Friendship
See also the antonym: Enemies.
A friend is someone with whom one willingly shares moments of one's life, in mutual goodwill. Friendship can be based on different things, good or bad. One or some bad friendships, as well as a bad example, can lead down the slope of sin.
In "The Gospel as it was revealed to me"
- Friend! But do you know, Ishmael, the meaning I give to this word? For many a friend means an acquaintance, for others an accomplice, for others a servant. For Me it means: faithful to the Word of the Father. Whoever is not that cannot be a friend to Me, nor I to him.[1]
- If a man who is guilty of serious sins could and wanted to speak, to say how he came to these sins, one would see that at the origin there was a bad friendship...[2]
- It is that in your affections, you are pagan, O Woman. It is not your fault. It is the fault of the age in which you live and of the Gentile world in which you grew up. Only he who is in the true Religion knows how to give affections their value, their measure, and their proper manifestations.[3]
In the Notebooks
- Catechesis of October 2 and 3, 1943: "Entrust to Me your affections, your interests, your hopes, your pains, children whom I love as myself, as I have taught you. See in Me, not only the Lord, but above all the Friend, the Brother, the one who loves you with a perfect love just as His nature as God is perfect."[4]
- Catechesis of March 30, 1949: The parallel of the Passion of Jesus with the passion of Maria Valtorta; the friends of Jesus during His Passion.
See the downloadable PDF "The parallel of the two passions" where Jesus comments on the episodes of His Passion and draws a parallel with the passion experienced by Maria Valtorta.[5]