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Question

Good morning Father,

I would like to ask you something that has been bothering me for a while.

In the Bible, it is written that we shouldn’t socialize with immoral people, adulterers, fornicators and so on… does it mean that I shall not foster  friendships with those who don’t uphold to Christian moral standards? May I be friend with fornicators and joke with them while keeping a pure heart, avoiding being influenced, maybe even influencing them?

In the past years, before becoming Christian, I socialized with people who used drugs, but I never got influenced by them; I would rather say that this experience taught me to be stronger against temptations.

Then in the first letter to the Corinthians (7, 12-16), Paul advises converted people whose spouse remained pagan to stay with them, if they both agree upon it: in fact the pagan spouse and descendants become holy thanks to the christian member of the couple.

How am I supposed to act with non-believers? 

I hope I don’t have to leave my friends, but if this is the Will of God I must accept it… He is our only true God, after all, and my friends aren’t gods: He has the first place… Even in the Lord’s Prayer we clearly say ‘thy will be done”.

Thanks for your answer, may God bless you.

Best regards

Answer

My dear friend,

I am going to give you a twofold advice.

1. First, I advise you to consolidate your Christian life more and more.

This means that you should strengthen the most important and precious of all friendships: the one with Jesus Christ.

Given the fact that friends enjoy being together and sharing, you should gladly rest in prayer with Our Lord, and talk with Him through Sacred Scripture.

Dedicate some time to this every day.

2. If you increasingly strengthen yourself, the friendships that could be detrimental for your soul won’t damage you. That’s because you’ll be like the house of which Our Lord spoke when he said: “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock” (Matthew 7, 24-25).

3. I also advise you to pray the Holy Rosary daily to involve Our Lady in the relationships with your friends. 

It was Saint Thomas Aquinas who pointed out that Our Lord decided to start from Our Lady to begin His work of redemption. 

When He started His public ministry, with the miracle at Canaan He manifested His divine glory through the intervention of Our Lady.

If you entrust your friends to the Lord with the recitation of a daily Holy Rosary it will be like lighting a sun in their lives. It will illuminate and warm them, even if at first they’re quite remote from it.

4. Well established in friendship with Our Lord, you’ll be with your friends like a messenger, an announcer of the Lord beside them.

Saint Thomas said that the most beautiful sign of our love for the Lord is a burning and constructive desire to bring men to His friendship.

This is not only about bringing your nice presence among them as much as it is about generating God in their hearts through the mysterious and invisible ways of God’s Grace.

5. Saint John Chrysostom, one of the four great Eastern Doctors of the Church, also held in great regard by Saint Thomas, said that “there is nothing that is more appreciated by God than the salvation of souls, because He wants everybody to be saved and to reach the knowledge of the Truth. And also: I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked man, but rather in the wicked man’s conversion, that he may live” (In 5 Homily).

6. Even Saint Gregory the Great takes the same view: he said that “no work makes us more God-like and divine as the apostleship, bringing souls to Jesus Christ. Actually, this is the work that had the greatest cost for Our Lord: he created the world with a single word, but he bled, suffered and died tormentingly for the salvation of souls. No sacrifice is dearer to God Almighty than the zeal for souls” (22, Homilies on Ezekiel).

7. Saint Thomas refers to it as a kind of spiritual charity or almsgiving, and he also says that in an absolute sense (“simpliciter loquendo”) spiritual almsgiving is more precious than corporal charity, because of the kind of good which is offered, even though there are cases when corporal charity is more urgent: for instance, when nourishing someone who’s starving (cf. Summa Theologiae, II-II, 32, 3).

8. That’s my opinion on the subject.

For some of your friends, your presence among them might even be the last attempt made by God to draw them to Himself and pull them out from what might happen in their future life.

However, there is one condition for you to take them to the Lord: you mustn’t let yourself be contaminated by evil, neither in speech nor in feelings and least of all in your behavior.

I will gladly accompany you with my prayer; I also bless you and wish you all good.

Father Angelo