Good Walking Friends
December 11, 2023 | By Morgan Vannell MC ‘27
image description: green grass field near snow covered mountains under blue sky during daytime
A hymn rose and fell so beautiful and somber from the church on the evening of Holy Thursday. On that day, when the Last Supper and the First Mass of our Lord are commemorated, we watched a procession of altar servers and the priest at the end carrying our Lord in the Eucharist, make its way through the church. The solemn song drifted softly around them and mingled with incense rising from the train. At the end of that long train there were two altar servers, young men dressed in red cassock and white surplice, and behind them was our Lord in the Eucharist held in a shining gold ciborium carried by our priest. The ciborium was round on the sides and flat on the bottom, like a shallow bowl with a lid. The sound of singing was accompanied by the occasional light chime of metal on metal–a censer carrying incense and hanging from thin metal chains in one of the servers’ hands. As the procession walked through the church, he would raise the censer with two hands and swing it gently towards our Lord, consecrating the path on which He would be carried with the sweet smelling smoke. To do this, he had to face backwards, towards the end of the procession, and still continue to move along with the rest of the train. He stepped one foot behind the other in rhythm with the rest without glancing to the front. A hand on his shoulder guided him–the second server at his side, facing the front and leading the first by a bracing palm.
One facing the end and one facing the front they walked together.
The warmth of tears pushed its way behind my eyes as I watched. Without the other, how could one have done even this simple thing for our Lord? The question flickered and burned in my chest and rested on me heavily as I followed the procession out of the church. With my father beside me, we made our way to the sanctuary prepared across the street. Here we would stay awake for some time with our Lord, remembering the agony He felt in the garden of Gethsemane as he prayed before He would suffer and die for us.
I continued there to wonder why I was so moved when I saw the two servers walking. I’d now suggest it has something to do with friendship.
Much of what we long for in friendship was modeled there so beautifully. C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves considers the posture of friendship as two standing side by side facing one shared love. “Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.” [1]
They see together some beautiful truth or profound meaning in something and together strive to live it out. For example, two might become friends over a shared interest in some kind of music. The two recognize the beauty of some singer or genre and together strive to fully understand the depths held within that interest.
In the greatest of friendships, two come together in mutual pursuit of what it means to live out a life based on their shared love for God. Each helps the other along–at times leading and at times following, but always moving towards their mutual end. This may be part of what moved me as I watched the procession. Certainly it was for the sake of serving our Lord that the two walked together. But, they did not simply walk together so that they could have someone alongside them as they served. Rather, they depended on one another in such a way that alone they could not have done what was done together. They leaned on one another in trust, to serve one purpose, and this purpose was service of our Lord.
I may cry more often than most, but this moment deserved the tears of a moved heart: how we long to lean on another.
Yet, we live in fear of dependence and being a burden. I was once reminded that we were all burdens since the beginning of our lives. We were literally carried and then completely taken care of for years. Laziness and taking advantage of others are certainly things we should avoid. Let’s not ask people to send whole p-sets at 11:00 pm. However, let us also have the humility to lean on others when we need support, to allow others to love us. There is almost certainly someone who understands said p-set much better than you. Can we allow ourselves to ask them for real help, to really explain it to us? Can we lean on someone that much? The fascinating thing about giving is, we find at the end a greater gift in the one who gave. We simply learned our math or whatever else, the other got a moment to forget about themselves–to love.
Knowing this, let us also take up the burdens of others we have been given to as friends. This is not a ‘give and take’ where we’re either worried about what we’re getting out of this relationship or if we’ll be enough for the other person to stick around. I’m talking about carrying and leaning. I’m talking about a relationship where Love presides. [2] Can we look into the heart of another and find the face of Christ waiting there? Through them we can depend on Him, and through them we can serve Him. Don’t send them the p-set, teach them the math. Don’t just get a picture of a p-set, actually ask for help. But, of course our truest end is not just learning math, and so the truest friend sees even beyond this. The truest friend sees that we are made for Christ and anything less would be utterly dissatisfying. [3] And so this friend labors with great effort, that we should come to seek Him and to find Him. This friend is there at our sides, guiding our steps, so that we might offer a moment, and our whole lives, to Christ.
[1], [2] C.S. Lewis. The Four Loves. Published 1960.
[3] St. Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. Translated by F.J. Sheed. Published 2006.