Friendship is a fundamental and vital relationship for human beings: it is commonly said, in fact, that man is not an island, but needs to build relationships, to recognize themselves in the face of others, to feel understood, loved, and supported, and, at the same time, to offer understanding, support, and solidarity.
Friendship therefore has something to do with happiness, because it is one of its ingredients, as Cicero already reminds us: “Friendship enhances happiness and reduces unhappiness by doubling our joy and dividing our sorrow.”
It is precisely the fundamental importance of friendship that justifies the initiative of dedicating a World Day to it.
When was World Friendship Day established?
In 1935, this day was proclaimed by the United States Congress as National Friendship Day, to be held on the first Sunday of August. Since then, the celebration of National Friendship Day has become an annual event.
On April 27, 2011, the United Nations General Assembly officially established World Friendship Day, which is celebrated on July 30.
Why World Friendship Day?
This Day is useful for rediscovering the value of friendship on a personal level, certainly, but also on a social one: friends are capable of bringing color to and supporting each of our lives, but friendship is also a feeling capable of spreading love and solidarity, qualities that are more urgent than ever in a world divided by so many conflicts, violence, and every kind of poverty.
Seen in this light, friendship is therefore a relationship that speaks to us of hope, that same hope Pope Francis reminds us of in preparation for the Jubilee: a friend is always a light in the darkness and therefore an unmistakable sign of hope.
A saint experienced in friendship: Saint Francis de Sales
Saints, too, of course, experience this profoundly human relationship, while at the same time it is so exalted that it allows us, to some extent, to touch the sky.
A saint particularly experienced in friendship is Saint Francis de Sales, who left us some letters exchanged with his friends, in which we learn that friendship founded on the Lord shines with an even more intense light and is a friendship that knows no end: “We are naturally and culturally inclined to base friendships on similarities in character, shared interests, physical proximity, and attraction to the other person. And what suffering! At every age. Francis, keeping his feet firmly on the ground regarding our problems and our need to have genuine friends, simultaneously reaches higher and sees all this from a different perspective. It is God’s perspective, that of a free and unconditional gift, which enables the Most High to bring about in us a true inner, spiritual, and daily resurrection” (P. Mojoli, From the Letters. The Joy of Friendship, Saint Francis de Sales, 24 Steps in Everyday Life). Francis writes in a letter: “One quality of the friendships awakened in us by heaven is that they are imperishable, just as the source from which they flow is inexhaustible. Presence does not enrich them, just as absence does not impoverish or destroy them, because they are founded solely on God, who is everywhere.”
The Lord knows how to renew all things and enables us to experience them fully!
So, happy Friendship Day to everyone! Let us not forget to thank our dearest friends for the journey we have shared so far; let us not forget to remind them how important they are: “My friend, beside you I have nothing to apologize for, nothing to defend myself against, nothing to prove: I find peace… Beyond my clumsy words, you are able to see in me simply the man” (Antoine de Saint Exupery).
