Scottish Catholic Observer

My college friend quoted the following proverb from Aesop’s The Fox and the Lion to me as I described the community of Catholic friends my family has participated in forming: familiarity breeds contempt.

He was not trying to be critical or cynical, but simply realistic. As people grow closer, quirks and peccadilloes that at first seem minor are progressively magnified. Peculiar tics become

annoying habits; eccentric opinions become concerning symptoms of poor reasoning; and, most dangerously of all, hidden sins and struggles become apparent—or sometimes very real—signs of moral weakness.

To commit to truly knowing another person in his or her fullness is always to commit to experiencing disappointment. Rare indeed is the person who appears increasingly good and pure under closer and closer inspection. I can think of only two off the top of my head—a Mother and her Son.

The advice this friend gave was not to disengage from the community we were forming, but just to be aware of the challenges that come with closeness. But as I mulled over this later, I realised that I’m already quite aware of the pitfalls of intimacy: after all, I’m married.

Marriage is both the most dynamic proof of ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ and the most beautiful example of why we must press forward nevertheless. The complete revelation of the self to another—physically, emotionally, and even spiritually—is at the heart of what marriage is; this is why we can analogise it to the mystical relationship between Christ and His own body, the Church.

But the truth is that no human being can bear such scrutiny, nor can any human being bear the weight of another’s entire personhood unveiled and entrusted to him. We cannot, on our own, muster the trust to disclose ourselves so completely, nor can we muster the understanding to regard a person’s fullness laid bare without experiencing a mite of judgment or disappointment. There will always be conflict, frustration, disillusionment. This is our fallen nature.

Must we admit what the secularists like to claim—that true marriage is unrealistic, maybe even impossible? Must familiarity, everywhere and always, breed contempt?

There surely is one being for whom this is not the case; in fact, for Him, a pervading and piercing familiarity only heightens the love He has for us. He knows every hidden fault and stray thought we have, and yet He still allowed Himself to be tortured for us. And we are commanded to love as He loves; just as importantly, we are forbidden to fall into despair over the possibility of doing so. The beautiful truth is that we can break the cycle of intimacy and discord with God’s help—with the gift of grace that allows us to become, right here and right now, more like Him.

This is why matrimony is a Sacrament. Jesus knows that even though true marriage accords with and helps to perfect our nature as human beings, after the Fall that nature cannot endure the burden of marriage’s immense responsibilities. And so He instituted a Sacrament that creates an endowment of grace for us, from which we can draw every day without ever exhausting it.

This grace is how an old man can look at his spouse of many decades and say with honesty that he adores even those quirky habits that he has never been able to understand.

What, then, of friends who desire to grow in intimacy and love for one another? Are we doomed always to dance tactfully around accumulating grievances until one day the whole thing comes crashing down?

While Christ may not have instituted a distinct sacrament proper to friendship, He does offer us several means of calling down His grace upon our relationships.

The most obvious, of course, is prayer, which can be shared among and for our friends. We can partake regularly of the Eucharist, perhaps setting up special times to go to Mass together with our friends. And remember that the healing power of the confessional radiates outward from us to all our relationships.

Like marriage, robust friendships challenge us because they are so good for us, and for the Church. Let us not despair of the compatibility of trust and intimacy by begging God every day for the grace to show the world that love can endure—between husband and wife and among the friends they cherish together.