We use the term “friend” loosely, introducing casual acquaintances as “My friends Lucy and John.” But what is friendship, really?
Fr. Mike uses Aristotle’s three kinds of friendship—pleasant friendships, useful friendships, and virtuous friendships—as guidelines.
While all three can be good, the first two can end up being flimsy and fleeting; but the third kind, virtuous friendships, really get to the heart of what good friends are to us. They are on the same mission, they have many of the same goals, we can even kind of see another self within these friends.
Fr. Mike emphasizes the need for us to have more of these kinds of friendships, saying that if we don’t think they matter we may just be distracting ourselves from our loneliness.
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