The significance of friendship in the process of maturing: a Christian view

Abstract

The idea behind this paper is to remind us of the value and importance of friendship, to remindus how important friendship is for growing up and maturing, for achieving the original humanityin us. Friendship does not depend on any kind of belonging, friendship is voluntary and withoutulterior motives and requires no special operating program. In friendship the freedom of choiceand sense of equality are important.Friendship differs from other forms of love, whether as the cause, the content or the form ofexpression, it is true love, and love is also the ability to converse. Friendship is the only truetreasure and real happiness which shows itself as a direct effect of friendly love in the form ofhappiness, happiness which springs from the heart and which can coexist perfectly with povertyand even pain.For all these reasons friendship requires educating, above all spiritual education, which canenable an individual to overcome his childish fantasies and place himself in actual reality, toaccept a new responsible "me", cleansed of awakened tendencies from the past. An authenticfriend is thus spiritually free, knows how to understand himself and others, depending on thesituation, knows to be available for the complete acceptance of others, knows to give love whichexists and lives for a friend.