Avoiding bad company
“There met him ten men that were lepers…As they went, they were made clean.”—Luke 17:12, 14
In today’s gospel we read that ten lepers of a certain town met Jesus Christ and begged him to heal them of the leprosy from which they suffered. The Lord told them to go and present themselves to the priests of the temple; but before they reached the priests, they found themselves cured along the way. Now we may ask: why did our Savior, who could have healed them at once, want them first to leave that place, and then heal them while they went? A certain author, Anthony of Lisbon, says that Jesus Christ foresaw that, had he cured them on the spot, they would have remained there and gone on conversing with the other lepers from whom they had caught the disease, and so would easily have relapsed into the same sickness. Therefore he first wanted them to depart from that place, and then he healed them.
Whatever we make of this reason, let us come to the moral sense we may draw from it. Leprosy is like sin. As leprosy is a contagious disease, so the bad habits of the wicked infect others who keep company with them. Hence those lepers who wish to be cured will never be healed unless they separate themselves from bad companions, as the common proverb has it: he who keeps company with the scabby becomes scabby himself. And this is today’s sermon: that to live well, we must flee bad companions.
1. “A friend of fools,” says the Holy Ghost, “shall become like them” (Prov. 13:20). Christians who live out of the grace of God are all fools—who deserve, as Father Master Avila used to say, to be shut up in a madhouse. For what greater madness can there be than to believe in hell and yet to live in sin? But whoever forms a friendship with these fools will soon become like them. He may listen to all the sermons of the sacred orators, and still he will remain vicious, according to the celebrated maxim: “Examples move us more than words.”
Hence the Royal Prophet has said: “With the elect thou wilt be elect, and with the perverse thou wilt be perverted” (Ps. 18:27). St. Augustine writes that familiarity with the vicious is like a hook that draws us to share in their very vices. Let us flee wicked friends, said the saint, “lest by their company we be drawn into a communion of vice.” St. Thomas therefore teaches that a great means of saving our souls is to know whom we ought to avoid. Firma tutela salutis est, scire quem fugiamus—“A firm safeguard of salvation is to know whom we should flee.”
2. “Let their way become dark and slippery, and let the angel of the Lord pursue them” (Ps. 35:6). Every living man walks in the midst of darkness and along a slippery road. If, then, a bad angel—that is, a wicked companion, who is worse than any devil—pursues him and drives him toward the precipice, how shall he escape death? Talis eris, says Plato, qualis conversatio quam sequeris—“Such you will be as is the company you follow.” And St. John Chrysostom said that if we wish to know a man’s character, we have only to observe the friends he keeps company with; for friendship either finds its friends alike or makes them so. Vis nosse hominem, attende quorum familiaritate assuescat: amicitia aut pares invenit, aut pares facit—“Do you wish to know a man? Observe whose familiarity he is accustomed to: friendship either finds equals or makes equals.”
This happens for two reasons: first, because, to please his friend, a man will try to imitate him; and second, because, as Seneca says, our nature inclines us to do what we see others do. And before all others, Scripture said it: “They were mingled among the heathens, and learned their works” (Ps. 106:35). According to St. Basil, as air that comes from pestilential places spreads infection, so by conversation with bad companions we contract their vices almost without noticing it. Quemadmodum in pestilentibus locis sensim attractus aër latentem corporibus morbum injicit sic itidem in prava conversatione maxima a nobis mala hauriuntur, etiamsi statim incommodum non sentiatur—“Just as in pestilential places the air gradually drawn in injects hidden disease into bodies, so likewise in bad company the greatest evils are drunk in by us, even though the harm is not felt at once” (St. Basil, Homily 9, ex var. quod Deus, etc.). And St. Bernard says that St. Peter, by keeping company with the enemies of Jesus Christ, denied Jesus Christ. Existens cum passionis dominicae ministris, Dominum, negavit—“Being with the ministers of the Lord’s passion, he denied the Lord.”
3. But how, asks St. Ambrose, can bad companions give you the fragrance of chastity when they themselves reek of impurity? How can they instill devotion to holy things into you when they themselves flee from it? How can they give you a sense of shame at offending God when they have cast it off? Quid tibi demonstrant castitatem, quam non habent? Devotionem quam non sequuntur? Verecundiam quam projiciunt?—“What chastity do they show you, which they do not have? What devotion, which they do not follow? What shame, which they cast away?”
St. Augustine writes of himself that when he kept company with the wicked, who boasted of their wickedness, he felt himself driven to sin without shame; and, so as not to seem less than they, he gloried in the evil he did. Pudebat, he says, me esse pudentem—“I was ashamed to be ashamed” (On Confession, Bk. 2, ch. 9). Hence Isaiah warns you to “touch no unclean thing” (Isa. 52:11). Do not touch what is defiled, for you too will be defiled. He who handles pitch, says Ecclesiasticus, will surely be soiled by it; and he who keeps company with the proud will be clothed with pride. The same holds for the other vices: “He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled with it; and he that hath fellowship with the proud shall put on pride” (Ecclus. 13:1).
4. What, then, are we to do? The Wise Man answers that we must not only flee the vices of these dissolute men, but also take care not to set foot on the paths along which they walk. “Restrain thy foot from their paths” (Prov. 1:15). That is, we must flee their company, their talk, their feasts, and all the enticements and gifts with which they will try to allure us, so as to catch us in their net. “My son,” says Solomon in the same place, “if sinners shall entice thee, consent not to them” (Prov. 1:10).
The bird does not fall into the net without the decoy, which fowlers use to catch birds. “Will the bird fall into the snare upon the earth if there be no fowler?” (Amos 3:5). The devil uses wicked friends as decoys, to catch so many souls in the snare of sin, as Jeremiah says: “My enemies have chased me and caught me like a bird, without cause” (Lam. 3:52). He says without cause. Ask one of these wicked men: why did you make that poor young man fall into sin? He will answer: For nothing; I only wanted to see him do as I do. This, says St. Ephrem, is the devil’s craft: once he has caught a soul in his net, he makes it into a net, or a decoy, to deceive others. Cum primum capta fuerit anima, ad alias decipiendas fit quasi laqueus—“When a soul is first captured, it becomes like a snare to deceive others.”
5. Therefore we must flee, as we would the plague, all familiarity with these scorpions of hell. I have said we must flee familiarity with them—that is, we must not make ourselves brothers of vicious men by eating or often conversing with them; for never to deal with them at all is, as the Apostle says, impossible. “Otherwise you must needs go out of this world” (1 Cor. 5:10). But it is indeed possible to have no familiarity with them. “But now I have written to you not to keep company…with such a one, not so much as to eat” (1 Cor. 5:11).
I have said scorpions, for so the Prophet Ezekiel calls them. “Thou art among unbelievers and destroyers, and thou dwellest among scorpions” (Ezek. 2:6). Would you trust yourself to live in the midst of scorpions? Then you must flee scandalous friends, who by their bad example and words poison your soul. “A man’s enemies shall be they of his own household” (Matt. 10:36). Friends, when they are wicked, and when they are most familiar and intimate with us, become the most pernicious enemies of our souls. “Who,” says Ecclesiasticus, “will pity an enchanter struck by a serpent, or any that come near wild beasts? So it is with him that keepeth company with a wicked man” (Ecclus. 12:13). Who will ever pity the man who chooses to deal with serpents and savage beasts, if he is then harmed by them? And so it is with the man who keeps company with a vicious person: if, by his scandal, he is contaminated and lost, neither God nor men will have pity on him, since he had already been warned to keep away.
6. One scandalous companion is enough to corrupt all who treat him as a friend. “Know you not,” says St. Paul, “that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump?” (1 Cor. 5:6). St. Thomas explains: by one sinful scandal, the whole company is defiled. One of these scandalous men can, by a single perverse maxim, infect all his companions. These are the false prophets whom Jesus Christ warns us to guard against. “Beware of false prophets” (Matt. 7:15). False prophets deceive not only by false predictions, but also by false maxims or doctrines, which do still greater harm; for, as Seneca says, they leave in the soul certain wicked seeds that lead to evil. Semina in animo relinquunt, quae inducunt ad malum—“They leave seeds in the soul, which lead to evil.” It is all too true, as experience shows, that scandalous talk corrupts the morals of those who hear it, as St. Paul writes: “Evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Cor. 15:33).
Some young man will refuse to commit a certain sin through the fear of God; but along comes an incarnate devil, a bad companion, and says to him what the serpent said to Eve: “No; you shall not die the death” (Gen. 3:4). What are you afraid of? So many others do it; you are young; God has compassion on youth. Then you will hear them say, as it is written in the book of Wisdom: “Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are present…let us everywhere leave tokens of joy” (Wis. 2:6, 9). Come with us; let us have our fun; let us spend our time merrily. O nimis iniqua amicitia, says St. Augustine, cum dicitur, eamus, faciamus: pudet non esse impudentem—“O too wicked friendship, when it is said, let us go, let us do it: it is a shame not to be shameless.” Then those who hear him speak this way are ashamed not to follow him, and not to be as brazen as he is.
7. We must be especially on our guard, when some passion is kindled within us, to see whom we take counsel from. For then that same passion inclines us to seek advice from those who will likely give the counsel most agreeable to the passion we feel. But from these evil counselors, who do not speak according to God, we must guard ourselves more than from any enemy; for the passion, joined to bad advice, can hurl us into horrible excesses. Once the passion within us has subsided, we shall recognize the error we committed and the delusion into which the false friend led us; but then we shall no longer be able to repair the harm that has been done. The good counsel of a friend, on the other hand, who speaks according to Christian truth and meekness, makes us avoid every disorder and restores us to calm.
8. Therefore the Lord warns us: “Depart from the unjust, and evils shall depart from thee” (Ecclus. 7:2). Flee, separate yourself from bad companions, and you will cease to commit sins. “Neither let the way of evil men please thee. Flee from it: pass not by it: go aside and forsake it” (Prov. 4:14–15). Flee even the paths these wicked friends take, so that you may avoid even meeting them. “Forsake not an old friend; for the new will not be like to him” (Ecclus. 9:14). Do not forsake your old friend, who is God, who loved you before you came into the world. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3).
Your new friends do not love you; they hate you more than any enemy, for they do not seek your good as God seeks it, but seek their own pleasures, and the satisfaction of having companions in evil, and of seeing you lost as they themselves are lost. But you will say: I feel a reluctance to part from such a friend, who has been so fond of me; it seems to me an act of ingratitude. What fondness? What ingratitude? God alone is the one who truly wishes you well, for he wishes your eternal salvation. That other friend wishes your eternal ruin: he wishes you to follow him, and cares nothing whether you are damned. It is not ingratitude to forsake a friend who leads you to ruin; but it is ingratitude to forsake God, who has created you, who died for you on the cross, and who wishes you saved.
9. Therefore flee the company of these wicked friends. “Hedge in thy ears with thorns, hear not a wicked tongue” (Ecclus. 28:28). Flee even from listening to the talk of such friends, for their very words can ruin you; and when you hear them speak wickedly, arm yourself with thorns and rebuke them, so that they may not only see themselves reproved, but may also amend. Ut non solum repellantur, says St. Augustine, sed etiam compungantur—“So that they may not only be repelled, but also pricked to the heart.”
Hear a frightful example, and see the harm that wicked friends do. Father Sabatino relates in his “Evangelical Light” that two friends of this kind found themselves together one day. One of them committed a sin to please the other; but after they had parted, he died suddenly. The other friend, who knew nothing of his death, saw his friend in a dream while he was sleeping and, as was his custom, ran to embrace him. But the dead man showed himself all girt with fire and began to curse him, reproaching him that through his fault he had been damned. At this the other awoke, and from his companion’s misfortune he came to his senses and changed his life. But meanwhile that unhappy man was damned; and for his damnation there is not, and never will be, any remedy for all eternity.
Points for Reflection
1. “Let us flee wicked friends, lest by their company we be drawn into a communion of vice” (§1)
2. “Do not touch what is defiled, for you too will be defiled” (§3)
3. “It is not ingratitude to forsake a friend who leads you to ruin; but it is ingratitude to forsake God” (§8)