11 September 2012

Devotions from the Visitation Sisters, a Week with Sr. Anne Francis

Live + Jesus!

Eternal friendship

The friendship that can end was never true friendship . . .

Friendship based on the world passes away, but our friendship which is from God, in God, and for God never ends.

A spiritual friendship never changes, except into a more perfect union of spirits, a living image of the blessed friendship existing in heaven.

Saint Francis de Sales sees the love of friendship as the beginning of the kind of happiness that we will experience in heaven, where we will be a source of joy to one another.

He says this explicitly in the meditation on paradise in the Introduction to the Devout Life: "The blessed give joy to one another in ineffable contentment and live in the consolation of a happy and indissoluble union."

Thus friendship is not a stage that falls away after we have used it to come to divine intimacy and universal love of mankind.

Francis de Sales says that friendships begun in this world will be taken up again, never to be broken off.

This is such a consolation for all of our loved ones, and the entire people of God.


Sr. Anne Francis

3 comments:

liz said...

l feel encouraged for now l know sure l will see my sweet grandma.she was so dear to me.

melisa said...

pray for me to have such a great faith sister.

Iggy said...

beautifully said.