In an age that idolizes speed and measures the value of relationships through algorithms, speaking of friendship almost sounds anachronistic. And yet, already Aristotle—who certainly did not live under the pressure of notifications—understood that the most human and at the same time most fragile bond was precisely friendship. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he devotes not a marginal paragraph, but two entire books to this theme. As if to say: one cannot understand the good life without understanding with whom and for whom one lives.
The treatment of ethics does not settle for abstract virtue: it needs to incarnate itself in bonds, faces, relationships. It is only through the other—and with the other—that goodness can truly flourish. “No one would choose to live without friends, even if they possessed all other goods” (EN, VIII, 1, 1155a). A phrase as concise as it is uncomfortable for those who today conceive the good life as a sum of achievements, pleasures, or conquests. Aristotle, instead, digs into the most human ground: friendship is not a luxury, but a necessity of the rational and political soul.
Three types of friendship, only one that endures
The philosopher distinguishes three forms of friendship: that based on utility, that on pleasure, and finally the one that rests on virtue. The first two, though legitimate, are by nature unstable, tied to what is ever-changing: need and desire. Only virtuous friendship is lasting, because it is born of a shared good: “A friend is one who wills the good of the other for the other’s sake” (EN, VIII, 3). This is the highest form of friendship: walking together towards what is right and good, a mutual recognition in the shared striving for the good.
Friendship and priestly vocation
If friendship is a condition for living well, how much more will it be so for those called to serve the lives of others—to be, as the Fathers would say, “pastors of souls”? The gravest risk for a priest is not merely solitude—though real and widespread—but the confusion of relational planes. Pastoral collaboration is often mistaken for friendship, professional esteem for personal bond, ministerial agreement for genuine affection. But these are not the same thing. Authentic friendship, free and selfless, operates on a different level: that of freedom and reciprocity, not of function and usefulness.
Today’s formation, moreover, often lacks precisely what matters most: emotional education, relational maturity, and the ability to inhabit deep bonds without trying to possess them. Thus, it is not uncommon to settle for superficial connections, for comfortable but hollow ties, or to fall into the search for easy and fleeting gratifications, which have nothing to do with friendship. But no priest can endure for long without the support of true, free, and selfless relationships. Not those that revolve around the role, but those that recognize the man, the friend, before the minister.
The priest needs friends, not only collaborators. People who do not stop at the cassock, but know how to look beyond. Who know how to correct him frankly and console him without sentimentality. Who ask him for nothing but support him in everything. The friend, in this sense, is a guardian of humanity. And if the priest is called to be an image of Christ, he cannot do so without living in a network of sincere affections that anchor him to reality, and help him not to get lost in the profession of the sacred.
“I have called you friends”
Jesus, in the Gospel of John, says one of the most striking phrases of the entire New Testament: “I no longer call you servants, but friends” (Jn 15:15). It is a declaration that changes everything: it is not about obeying out of fear, but about participating out of love. For Jesus, friendship is not a sentimental ornament, but the form of revelation: “Everything I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” With these words, Christ not only reveals the heart of His relationship with the disciples, but also points out the path for every authentic human relationship. No hierarchy can suffice, no function is enough: it is friendship that saves, redeems, accompanies. It is also the only true way to educate. One does not guide a soul unless one loves it. And no one can love unless one accepts to be vulnerable, that is, to be a friend.
In a time when everything is converted into performance, the Aristotelian and evangelical call echo as necessary provocations. True friendship is not for something, but for someone. And every priest, like every man, will not be able to say he has truly lived unless he has had at least one friend to whom he could say, truthfully: “You were with me, even when I had no words.”
p.A.T.
Silere non possum