Barlaam and Ioasaph · Chapter
Chapter XIII: The Parable of the Three Friends explained
Ioasaph, delighted by Barlaam's previous parable, asks for more teachings.
What happens
Ioasaph, delighted by Barlaam's previous parable, asks for more teachings. Barlaam responds with the parable of a man who had three friends: the first represents riches and worldly wealth, the second represents family and kin, and the third represents good deeds and virtues. The man, facing a dire reckoning with the king, finds that his first two friends abandon him, while the third, whom he had neglected, comes to his aid. Barlaam interprets the parable, explaining that only faith, hope, charity, and other virtues can help a soul at the hour of death.
Themes in this chapter
Renunciation of Worldly Wealth
The parable contrasts the fleeting help of riches and family with the enduring aid of good deeds, urging detachment from material wealth.
Spiritual Warfare
The debtor's struggle against dread creditors and the need for virtues to plead before the king symbolize the soul's battle against spiritual enemies at death.
Characters to notice
Key passages
“The first friend is the abundance of riches, and love of money, by reason of which a man falleth into the midst of ten thousand perils, and endureth many miseries: but when at last the appointed day of death is come, of all these things he carrieth away nothing but the useless burial cloths.”
The first friend represents wealth and greed, which lead to countless dangers and suffering, yet at death one takes nothing but burial shrouds.
Barlaam explains the first friend as worldly riches, which offer no help at death.
“By the second friend is signified our wife and children and the remnant of kinsfolk and acquaintance, to whom we are passionately attached, and from whom with difficulty we tear ourselves away, neglecting our very soul and body for the love of them. But no help did man ever derive from these in the hour of death, save only that they will accompany and follow him to the sepulchre, and then straightway turning them homeward again they are occupied with their own cares and matters, and bury his memory in oblivion as they have buried his body in the grave.”
The second friend symbolizes family and loved ones, who only accompany the body to the grave and then return to their own concerns, forgetting the deceased.
Barlaam interprets the second friend as family, who provide no lasting aid after death.
“But the third friend, that was altogether neglected and held cheap, whom the man never approached, but rather shunned and fled in horror, is the company of good deeds—faith, hope, charity, alms, kindliness, and the whole band of virtues, that can go before us, when we quit the body, and may plead with the Lord on our behalf, and deliver us from our enemies and dread creditors, who urge that strict rendering of account in the air, and try bitterly to get the mastery of us.”
The third friend, though neglected, represents good deeds and virtues like faith, hope, and charity, which intercede for the soul before God and protect it from spiritual adversaries at death.
Barlaam reveals the third friend as virtues that aid the soul in the afterlife.