Chastity August 28
In accepting chastity as our way towards love, we wish to strive for a spontaneous, cheerful forgetfulness of self and a willingness to bear the suffering and burdens without which love cannot come to fulfillment (Const. 11.3).
There is not another human experience more formative for learning the dynamics of relationship than friendship. Happy is the person who is and who has a friend! Friendship was the desire of St. Augustine for his community. Friendship can happen between people of different ages and social status, between men and women. A saint and a sinner can be friends, as well as a rich person and a poor person, a smart person and someone less gifted, a married person and a celibate, a student and a teacher, a religious and a lay person. Friendship is inevitable because every human being searches to not be alone and is concerned about that the other thinks of him or her. Friendship, then, is indispensable. True friendship promises quality human existence. In the experience of friendship, a person feels well and lives with optimism about life and other people. In friendship, self-esteem is affirmed, people know their potential and limitations better, people are inspired to grow and become open and welcoming to others. Friendship leads to a new awareness of God. It is senseless to stop friendship from happening in religious life.
Left alone, iron rusts. (Madagascar)
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