Friends in Faith

Do you ever ask yourself “what should I be doing with my time right now?” To be honest we are not the best arbiters of our own schedules, we go to great lengths in the recesses of our minds planning how to organize everything, it almost seems like that by thinking about how to accomplish a goal we’ve actually accomplished it. However, when we sit down to make it happen all that enthusiasm is gone and we are confronted with a certain acedia. Throughout my adult life this encounter with my own inability to bring fruition to my plans has always been a humbling reminder of my fallenness and a double edged sword, on one hand it causes me great anxiety when I try to rely on my own strength to overcome it; however, by the same token it brings to attention that I cannot merely rely on myself, when I try to lift up my cross without the Divine aid of faith my life seems subject to fate like a leaf in the wind. Only once I realize that my life is not my own do I ask God for his aid, only when I pray that His will be done and not my own, does the anxiety subside and I find the courage to tackle what is before me.

Truly by our own merits we merit nothing and only through grace are our abilities realized. In Scripture we are told, “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself” (Mt 6:33-34). It is only in light of this sobering reminder that the world does not revolve around our fantasies to control everything but rather to providence that we can have genuine friendships, true models from which we can learn and grow. Since returning to campus after a year off, the new friends I have made have left an influence on my life that is disproportionate to anything I deserve. What is a friend but someone whom you love and who loves you in return? Since this is the nature of friendship, your friends become a part of you (which is why you have to be prudent about who you surround yourself with). The parts of me transformed by my friends I now consider gifts, things given to me through love that would not have been had I not met the friends I did. There aren’t enough words in the English language to name all the blessings my friends have accorded me with over the last two years, but for the sake of substantiation I’ll list three and to embarrass my friends I’ll name those who were directly responsible, though all my friends have contributed so please do not feel left out if you aren’t mentioned by name—the word “friends” by definition encapsulates you.

The first major change in my perception of faith was from Nick Letts (and read his Torch articles; they’re far better than mine), from whom I learned that God is not merely someone you address for a few minutes each day in prayer, but rather your entire schedule should revolve around Him. Start your day, live your day, and end your day with God. He is your Father but He isn’t absent at work from 9 to 5, talk to and adore him always.

The second is from my friend Max Montana who taught me the most profound definition of idolatry I’ve ever heard, “idolatry is anything you’d rather do than pray,” when we have nothing to do we often waste our time and suffer the same slothfulness I described earlier. For example, at the end of the day we may complain that it is too late to pray and insist to ourselves that we’ll make up the prayer tomorrow. Here we are making prayer some afterthought like religion class in middle school, when prayer should take priority above all else; everything other than prayer should fall into place in relation to our sacred time with God.

The third I learned from my friends James Pritchett and Marcello Brownsberger, and that is the value in frequent reception of the Eucharist which not only centers my day on Christ, but it humbles me as it forces me to be attentive to my spiritual state and make chronic examinations of conscience, many habitual sins I suffer from, especially pride and envy, I find are only defeated through daily Mass and the Holy Eucharist. The beauty of what I have learned from my friends is not something they sat me down and told me, but rather they are their habits that I have observed over the course of my friendships with them. This shows that this goodness is a part of them and not some hypocritical “do as I say, not as I do” sort of business. As I prepare to graduate I cannot think of anything, save for my family, that I am more grateful for during my daily prayers of thanksgiving than my friends.