Casey Beaumier, S.J., does not sign off his emails with a standard pleasantry. Instead, he ends them with “Your Friend.” Beaumier said that love is not always shared equally amongst people.
“Love is not dependent on reciprocity,” Beaumier said. “The more we give of it, the more we can trust to fall into it.”
Beaumier, director of Boston College’s Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, spoke on Tuesday at the first Agape Latte event of the school year, expanding on what it means to be a loving person and how to love without caution.
Beaumier said that in his 17 years residing in Fenwick Hall as a mentor and spiritual director, he has observed love manifest in many forms—one being the bonds between freshmen students.
He shared a story in which St. Ignatius of Loyola first encountered a group of friends who called themselves “the friends of the Lord” at the University of Paris. The friend group was composed of St. Francis Xavier, Peter Favre, and St. Ignatius. They never saw each other again after departing on separate missions, but their bond continued through a series of letters, Beaumier said.
“‘I give thanks, first of all, to God, and then to you for the fact that God has made you; that I derive such great consolation from bearing your names,’” Beaumier quoted Xavier’s last letter to Ignatius. “That’s a tangible sign of the depth of love that originated in student housing.”
Beaumier then moved to the issue of loneliness that many students feel, emphasizing that students must be vigilant against the “bad spirit.”
“Loneliness is of the bad spirit,” Beaumier said. “It’s the bad spirit suggesting that you’re not worthy, that everybody else has it figured out, and that’s not true.”
The facade of stability and social aptitude is especially prevalent at BC, Beaumier said.
“BC students are good at bluffing, right?” Beaumier said. “You can make it seem like you made your besties in 24 hours. I’m not buying it. I mean, it takes time to find each other.”
Beaumier also discussed his personal understanding of friendship.
“When I think about the gift of friendship, I often think about my little sister,” Beaumier said.
Beaumier and his sister have been exchanging the same birthday card for the last 45 years, he said. In his opinion, this perfectly encapsulates what friendship is about: the act of giving to others, with or without material goods.
But for the good spirit to manifest in friendships, it is imperative to seek out others—even strangers, according to Beaumier.
“There are people waiting to be found,” Beaumier said. “We’re meant to be together. We’re meant for each other.”
Students must open themselves to the possibility of deep, meaningful human connection through following their heart despite the chance of rejection, and BC aims to foster this type of environment, Beaumier said.
“First and foremost, we’re a university, but we’re a Jesuit, Catholic university, and that means that there’s a school of the heart for us to participate in,” Beaumier said. “The school of the heart is meant to train the senses of the heart. Heart has reason for which reason knows not.”
