Lectio
“Poemen said that someone asked Paesius this question, What am I to do about my soul? I have become incapable of feeling and I do not fear God’ He said to him, ‘Go, and live with someone who does fear God: and by being there, you too will learn to fear God.’”
— The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks
Meditatio
Our associations matter. God did not put us here to be alone, to fend for ourselves, or to live as islands unto ourselves. He gave us one another. Not every relationship will build us up in virtue. Not every relationship will draw us closer to God. Not every relationship will make us more faithful to who we are called to be. For we are either moving closer to God or further away from Him, and the people around us have a strong pull, like a kind of relational gravity, in whatever direction they, themselves, are headed. As the Proverb says, “Iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens the wits of another” (Proverbs 27:17, NRSVCE). Conversely, weak company can dull, chip, or rust the very same blade of love that good company sharpens, for as Paul warns the Corinthians, “Bad company ruins good morals” (1 Corinthians 15:33, NRSVCE).
Nowhere is this more vivid than in the stories of David and Samson, whose lives were each deeply affected by their relationships, but in opposite directions. David’s friendship with Jonathan is the most beautiful friendship in all of scripture. Jonathan, the king’s son, strips himself of his robe, his armor, his sword, his bow, and his belt, giving them to David — a gesture of profound covenantal love and loyalty. And through the years of Saul’s murderous jealousy, it is Jonathan who repeatedly strengthens David’s hand in God, who reminds him of his calling, who refuses to let the weight of the court’s corruption crush the man God had anointed. Good company does that. It reminds us of who we are, and who God wants us to be, when we have forgotten. Samson, by contrast, is undone not by superior strength but by intimate proximity to someone whose loyalties lay elsewhere. Delilah does not take Samson’s strength — she creates the conditions in which he surrenders it out of loyalty to her instead of to the Lord. What bad company so often does is not destroy us outright but wear down our resistance, our vigilance, our memory of what we are called to be, until we have drifted so far from who God knows us to be that we can no longer feel his grace, and then, in the words of Thomas Merton, we become unknown of God and that is entirely too much privacy.
Scripture gives us these stories not merely as warnings, as if we have the power on our own to choose to be either David or Samson, but as mirrors — so that when we find ourselves in a friendship like David’s with Jonathan, we might, by God’s grace, cherish and nurture what He has given us, and when we find ourselves in a relationship like Samson’s with Delilah, we might have the grace to recognize what it is doing to us before we have surrendered more than we know and squandered the gifts the Lord has entrusted into our care.
In reality, we most likely live as both David and Samson simultaneously, with mixed associations that pull us in many directions, and we may also be Jonathan or even Delilah at times for others. This is why, as with the unnamed man in Poemen’s story, we not only need wise counsel like that of Paesius, who can help us to discern what the Spirit of the Lord is trying to tell us in and through our relationships, but also, as Paesius points out, to draw near to those who fear God so that their humble faithfulness might inspire the same in us. And when our own faith has grown too dim to light the way, we can, for a time, borrow the faith of those whose flame still burns brightly — trusting that proximity to the living flame is itself a form of grace, until our own capacity to feel it is restored and we can be that same light unto others. In the end, fear of God is not fear of his wrath or disappointment, but fear of drifting so far from his presence that we lose the capacity to feel it at all. Being in the presence of those who remain in his presence, then, means being in the presence of love, a love that not only heals and restores those who receive it, but that also draws those who are willing into itself and, therefore, into right relationship with the God who is Love.
Oratio
By The Prayers Of The Faithful
by the love of the faithful
I am risen
resurrected
from the ashes
of a self unknown of God
consumed upon a funeral pyre of love
set ablaze
by the prayers of the faithful
whose fear of the Lord
was shared
with me
like one candle
to another
to another
to another
across time
from eternity
to eternity
by the hands of the faithful
the hands of Christ in the world
Contemplatio
Have you ever borrowed the faith of someone else to carry you through a season when your own had grown too dim — and has anyone ever borrowed yours?
Related Scripture
“A friend loves at all times, and kinsfolk are born to share adversity.” — Proverbs 17:17 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like When the Dead Remain: On Grief, Friendship, and the Communion of Saints, which reflects on how another person’s quiet faithfulness can shape our own faith across decades — and how the presence of those who loved us into belief does not simply end when they are gone.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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