T O finish treating the subject we set out to do, — how true holiness must be based on natural probity, — it only remains for us to say a word about loyalty and fidelity. Being loyal and faithful is also a way, and perhaps the most important, of telling the truth.
As we saw in previous articles, (1) truthfulness makes us tell the truth; righteousness, doing the truth in our general conduct. Loyalty also makes us do the truth, but not precisely in our general conduct, such as rectitude, but in the special field of commitments that bind men to each other, whether they are commitments properly speaking, that bind for justice, such as contracts. , debts, etc.; whether they are simple promises that only bind by fidelity; already in matters of affection, especially in the case of friendship.
Loyalty adds persistence to the idea of loyalty, that is, fidelity is not temporary or occasional loyalty but permanent, habitual, definitive.
We will not stop to ponder how necessary fidelity is in fulfilling our formal commitments, in respecting our pledged word of honor, in paying debts, salaries, etc., in due time. All this is too clear and this is required jointly by social duties and personal dignity itself.
But we want to focus on a special point that, however neglected, deserves that we make some reflections on it: it is punctuality or accuracy.
Punctuality is the courtesy of kings, someone has said. And lateness — not the occasional and involuntary, but the voluntary and habitual — is the lack of civility that most reveals disorder or fatuity.
The cause of lateness is multiple:
Some are unpunctual as by nature. It has been gracefully said of them that they came into the world one hour late, and all their lives they run to catch that hour, without ever succeeding.
Others are so because of carelessness, carelessness, impudence; they think with a certain cynicism that it is not worth rushing to arrive on time for an appointment, since those who rush and are punctual are forced to wait for those who arrive late...
Others are for lack of spirit of order. Lack of punctuality is nothing more than disorder in time, caused by the general disorder in which they live. So an unpunctual person is ordinarily disorderly in the general arrangement of his life, and experience amply shows it.
Giving ourselves the luxury of making us wait for no just reason and even when it is not about superiors, is a very embarrassing lack of consideration for others.
It also has a certain reason for injustice, because it is a robbery, and a robbery of that thing as precious as time. The unpunctual wastes the time of those who are exact, and wasting time is wasting life.
On the contrary, a punctual man. That he has an hour for each occupation and an occupation for each hour, is what makes his life more productive, the one who has time for everything, the one who uses it better than anyone else.
Such is among many others one of the advantages of religious life, which cannot be conceived without punctuality, accuracy, regularity.
So, if we want to respect others, and above all, if we don't want to waste time miserably, let's put order in our lives, starting by ordering our time through punctuality and accuracy.
But whoever speaks of fidelity cannot stop thinking about love, about friendship.
After sincerity, it is what we seek most in love, do you really love me? - is the first question asked by a heart that loves- Will you always love me? - is the question that necessarily comes next.
Because love is life; and just as it is not true life that ends: true life must be immortal; thus it is not true love that dies; love must be faithful if it does not want to be irony and lies.
What is love worth if it is only to be a passing act, like lightning in the dark night? That is why we seek nothing so much in love as fidelity. In friendship, above all.
Every heart that rises above sad vulgarity; every noble heart, every heart that vibrates, feels the need to find another heart that understands it and can unburden itself of the fullness that overflows it- pains and joys, sadness and hopes, illusions and disappointments: it needs a friendly heart.
Peo What is a disloyal friend, a friend who betrays? What is an unfaithful friend worth? No ingratitude tears deeper than betrayal. And betrayal is all infidelity in a friend.
Sincere friendships are rare. But among friends, very rare are the faithful. I will say more; The poor human heart is so weak, so limited, that sooner or later it gets tired... abandoned to its own strength, it does not know how to be faithful with that fidelity that goes beyond the grave.
That fidelity is the flower of Christianity and the fruit of grace and the fruit of grace and virtue. The love of Christ, far from destroying legitimate natural affections, exalts them, purifies them and infuses them with that stability, that fidelity that ignores human weakness.
Who has lived many years has not experienced this bitter truth? Friends of our childhood, friends of our youth, when the virgin heart of all disappointment, spontaneously opened to love, where are you? Friends of prosperous days, when the hour of humiliation came, when misfortune struck us down, when men turned their backs on us, friends of better days, where are you?
The heart of the great Lacordaire, an illustrious model of Christian friendship and its most exalted panegyrist, experienced this sharp disappointment in the last days of his life.
In the great park of Sorenze, perhaps seeing the dry leaves fall from the trees in the splendid sadness of autumn, he wrote melancholy: “ Friendship is for me an old tree of which only a few autumn leaves remain. Will I even see those fall one day…?
Well known is the case of the famous Fr. Didon, greater in exile and trial than in the triumphs of his conferences at the Trinity in Paris.
Accused and persecuted by the good, the harshest of persecutions, he was removed by his superiors from every ministry and confined in the solitary convent of Corbara, on the island of Corsica. The friends who had encouraged and sustained him in his prosperous hours let him sink into disrepute without his voice being raised to defend or justify him. Suffering this rude blow, he wrote from his exile this magnificent page where the nobility of his soul and the bitterness of his pain throb: " God has given me the grace not to keep in my soul, in these days of exile, the slightest resentment" .
It is necessary not to ask men for more than they cannot give. I will say more: it is necessary not to expect anything and to give everything.
When they are good and selfless, they are blessed; when they are hostile and indifferent, they are also blessed… Christ has taught us these great virtues: we have only to follow in his footsteps.
A friend… a friend… do you know what that is? He is a being who never doubts you, because the greatest injury that can be done to a man is to doubt him.
A friend is a being who does not demand anything from you and who is willing to give everything.
A friend is a Newfoundland who jumps into the water to save you.
A friend is a faithful dog that jumps at the neck of those who attack you.
A friend is a clairvoyant being who has the courage to tell you: You did wrong!
A friend is a magnanimous heart that forgets and forgives.
A friend is a being who is committed to serving you.
A friend is a pearl that at the bottom of the seas... True friends! Where are you?... I, I know one! And I could say, and I do say, That friend is enough for me! O beloved Christ! You, you don't betray! You are severe and sweet; You are infinitely good; You correct and save, You, you are not, You do not hold grudges; You are bigger than us, poor and miserable beings of a day that we dream of in eternity and that… we do not know how to love! We believe that our earthly passions are love, and that our selfish love is the bottomless and shoreless love that we can only find in You!”
The Imitation of Christ had already said it masterfully:
“Without a friend you cannot live long: and if Jesus is not your very special friend, you will be very sad and disconsolate. Well, madly you do it if you trust someone else and you rejoice…”
Only Jesus should be loved singularly, because He alone is most faithful above all friends... Never have ambitions to be loved singularly by anyone... because such love is due only to God, who has no equal”.
We must not, however, arrive at the pessimism of not believing in human friendship at all. Supernaturalized by grace, it can have a stability that, if not comparable to that of the Heart of Christ, nevertheless participates in it.
Lacordare himself said: “It would be as difficult for me to be incredulous in friendship as it would be in religion, and I believe in the adherence of men as in the goodness of God. Man deceives and God never deceives, and in this they differ; but man does not always deceive and in that he resembles God. A weak and fallible creature, his friendship is all the more valuable when he carries it in a fragile and brittle vessel. He loves sincerely in a spirit subject to selfishness, he loves chastely in a corrupted flesh, he loves eternally in a day that declines and dies...” What a great truth, my God!
Let us have charity towards everyone, but let us reserve our friendship for a very select few. But with those few let us be faithful and loyal at all costs. Let us rather try to give than to receive, for in this there is a more intimate and noble joy, according to the words of the Holy Books: "Beatius es magis dar quam accipere", let us be indulgent in forgiving, quick to forget offenses, generous in always forgive.
And so in spite of everything, those holy effects that sweeten exile so much come to die, may it not be our fault, may we have the consolation of having been faithful to the end, and that on the ruins of those friendships that they were, may the ever-living one of our fidelity and our memory still flourish...
But it is impossible to speak of fidelity without thinking of our good God who with such remarkable insistence is called in the Holy Books: "FIDELIS DEUS" because his gifts are without repentance, because his promises are infallible, because his mercy and his love are eternal.
Who is faithful like God?... Who is the man who, in the torture of remorse, in the desperate bitterness of the fall, in the abandonment of creatures, if he turns to God, has not tasted the sweetness unspeakable fidelity of his love? When have we looked for him without later finding his open arms, forgetting all our betrayals? When have we gone to cry on his lap without his hand wiping away our tears? When, if after fallen and stained we have returned to Him repentant, have we not then found His love that comes to meet us, wrapping our indigence with the royal mantle of His forgiveness and His mercy? Who is faithful like God?...
Source Father JG Treviño.
Adaptation. Father Arturo Vargas Meza.
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