Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension ... I'm gonna slow down
The cars are driving me crazy, you know?
I was like I'm gonna film at a different time of the day so that I can avoid all the cars
and apparently, I can't do that so I'm so sorry.
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
You know, this last summer I had the chance to go to a number of different events
and at each of these events, it was so great because there were at least one or two guys
who I don't get to see very often but I really connected with these great men of God—these great Catholic men
and almost every time I saw these guys, someone would say,
"Oh, look at you two. I can see you got that bromance going on."
I'm like, "What?!?" A bromance. You've heard the term bromance, right?
Take "bro" and connect it with "romance"
I mean, it's clever, I guess, in some ways, to kind of combine these two words
but I was like—I have to say this—I really dislike that term bromance
and not because of any kind of sexual connotation to it but because of this,
because I think the term bromance reveals something about our culture.
We look at everything, every significant relationship or every significant love
through the lens of romance.
It almost seems to reveal that
we don't understand love outside of some kind of lens of romance or some kind of context of romance.
and we look at everything—I mean, I think about every TV show, every movie, every song
almost that's on the top 40 list has to do in some ways with romance,
in some ways, with what the Greeks called eros,
and that kind of thing, that idea of reducing this huge thing called love
to this not-as-huge thing called romance or this not-as-huge thing called eros,
I find it a little bit annoying and here's why:
Again, eros is a great thing. Eros is a gift. Eros is actually a form of love,
but there are other forms of love that add this depth to relationship
and add this depth to our life experience.
And what we have, the Greeks would talk about this. They'd talk about eros it's the love, the desire,
the love of romance, essentially.
You have storge, which is the love of affection.
So if you're thinking like, "What's storge?"
Storge is when it's an autumn day and you go home,
like that smell of the house, when you walk into your home.
It's when you see your mom, you have storge for her, you have that kind of love for her.
The love you have for pizza is storge. It's all these things.
The love of affection, pretty much that's oftentimes the love you have for your family.
And so you have levels of storge as well— love for pizza, love of mom.
Hopefully, your love for your mom is a little bit deeper than your love for pizza but—
So you have eros, you have storge
and you have also this thing and it's extremely rare and it's called philia.
And philia is the love of friendship, I mean, the real friendship
and now, the other two loves that people point out, Aristotle's pointed this out.
C.S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves has pointed this out in a really profound and really insightful way,
that almost everyone on this planet experiences eros in some way or another.
And all of us experience storge in one way or another to one degree or another.
But he says it's very rare for a person to experience philia, this real friendship.
Now, not just the buddy-ship, you know, our pal-ship but real friendship.
Whether between men or between women, that's extremely rare because the others are easier.
But philia, true friendship, has this new characteristic to it, a new character to it
and that character is this:
the character is that I don't desire to possess anything from you.
I don't necessarily need to get anything from you.
When it comes to eros, romance, part of that whole thing is I desire this person.
I want to, in a certain sense, possess this person
not necessarily because I'm selfish or because I'm greedy
or because I'm honed in on myself or want to use them,
but there's a desire to kind of have and to hold, right?
That's kind of the language we use.
When it comes to storge, same kind of thing.
It's "I love the feeling I get when I'm home."
"I love the feeling I get when I eat pizza." I love this kind of affection.
It's really rooted in where I'm kind of getting out of this.
But in so many ways, philia it's not about us, it's not about holding on to this person.
The way in which C.S. Lewis described it in this book The Four Loves and he says is this:
Philia does not involve two people looking at each other.
Philia typically involves two people standing side by side, pursuing the same goal.
That's why when I talk to these guys who I get to see over the course of the summer,
I'm like, yeah, the reason we connect so much is because here's a man of God. I want to be a man of God.
I want to pursue Jesus with everything. They want to pursue Jesus with everything.
And that's why we get along—we're running the same race
and there's a certain kind of sense of getting that philia,
that just kind of gets eliminated when you start talking about bromance.
This is the reason that we can't watch Lord of the Rings and see Frodo and Sam be really, really close
and not think, "Oh, is there something going on there? Is there a romance going on?"
No, it's called philia.
These two men are living life side-by-side, pursuing the same goal
and helping each other pursue the same goal.
That's the reason why we can't read the Old Testament.
There's some people who read the Old Testament and say well there's David and Jonathan,
these two incredible friends from the Old Testament, "Oh, they must have had something else going on,
the Bible must been trying to say that they had a deeper, 'deeper' relationship than just their friendship,"
but there is almost nothing deeper.
We even know this.
That's why married couples, when they really love each other, yes, they have eros for each other
but when they really want to demonstrate to the rest of the world that they love each other,
with the unique love what do they say? They say, "Well, I married my best friend." Why?
Because they're saying, "Eros is good," and it is good,
but there's something even more pure and often richer than eros and that's philia.
And the fourth love, of course, is agape, which is the self-emptying love
that Jesus reveals fully on the cross and in the Eucharist that we're all called to as Christians.
But when it comes to philia, this natural love that can be transformed by supernatural grace,
a lot of times we don't have that experience
and you might be someone who's watching this right now and you're thinking like, "I wish I had that."
I'm gonna invite you to do this. I'm gonna invite you to pray for a friend,
like a deep friend, a true friend.
We have different levels of buddies or pals or acquaintances or people we spend time with.
I'm going to ask and invite you if you long though for friendship like real philia,
ask God.
God is the God of love not just of agape and not just of storge and not just of eros,
but God is also the God of philia.
Pray to God that he brings a friend into your life
that you can pursue the same goal side-by-side with them.
OK, Oh of course now once I stop talking,
the cars stop driving by.
Ridiculous, you guys, ridiculous!