Bianche Fontane
April 10th 2025
Good Friends

We left Taormina on Monday and drove down the coast to Syracuse. This was also the day that our group shifted from three sisters and their husbands to three couples who are friends. The first week of our trip was focused on family; both our family in Michigan along with my Sicilian relatives. This week is more about friendship.

Over the last few years, I have come to appreciate the importance of friendship. I have come to believe it is “the missing ingredient” in the lives of many contemporary Catholics. Four or five years ago, we were asked to facilitate a Faith Sharing Group in our parish. The people in this group have become good friends. These relationships have changed our lives.

I have come to understand that living a life of discipleship is a team sport. We are not meant to go it alone. The focus of Jesus’ earthly ministry was forming a group of friends who would change the world. God is inviting us to be His friends. One of the principal ways we become friends with God is to become friends with each other. The path to holiness and happiness is grounded in friendship.

Aristotle identified three types of friends – friends of utility, friends of pleasure, and true, or virtuous friends. Most of us have a good number of the first two types. The key to happiness, according to Aristotle, is having a few true friends. These are the friends who help you become the best version of yourself. These are the friends that will be there for you when you are in most need of a friend.

I highly recommend a book written by Dr. John Cuddeback, a professor of philosophy at Christendom College: “True Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness”. As the title implies, Dr. Cuddeback summarizes the teaching of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas on friendship, and shows the connection between friendship, the virtues and happiness. Robert and I will talk about this book sometime in the next few months.

Particularly today, living in post-Covid America, where so many of us are working from home and so many of our relationships are on-line, developing good friendships doesn’t happen as easily as it may
have in the era of our parents and grandparents. The best friendships are formed over years – sharing the joys and challenges of life. Spending a few days with friends experiencing a small taste of what this island has to offer is definitely in the joyful category.

Life is Good

Sitting on a balcony overlooking the Straits of Messina, I am struck by the beauty of this place. The coastline, the mountains, the sea. It can take your breath away. As an American whose grandparents immigrated from Sicily over a century ago, I have a human connection to this island in the middle of the Mediterranean. It has been ruled by a series of empires over the
centuries – the Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Normans, the Spanish, the Bourbons. All have left their imprint on this island. Its history has shaped who I am in ways that are difficult to understand.

Growing up in suburban Detroit, the son of Angelo and Mary Leone, owners of Louis Market, near the intersection of Mack Avenue and Mount Elliot, has also, of course, left its mark. I have fond memories of walking through Eastern Market with my father on chilly mornings, purchasing the produce and meat we would sell in the Market. On Sunday mornings, we would often go to Mass at St. Bonaventure’s Church – about a mile down Mount Elliot from Louis Market.

Over the last twenty years, I have grown to love being “up north”; particularly the Lake Huron shoreline in Presque Isle County – the quiet beaches, the lighthouses, the shipwrecks. They have left an imprint on who I am and how I see the world. And, in the last few years, I have started to learn about Venerable Bishop Frederic Baraga, “the Snowshoe Priest”, and his treks across the Upper Midwest serving first the native Americans in this region, and then the immigrants who came to work in the iron ore mines of the Upper Peninsula.

A couple days ago, we had lunch and dinner with about a dozen of my relatives who live in Alcamo – the town where my paternal grandfather and grandmother were born. They were welcoming, kind and generous. It was an absolute joy spending a few hours with them and learning about their lives and families. Over the next few years, I would like to get to know
them better and hopefully develop a few real relationships.

The food has been fantastic. Vita’s lasagna and spiedini were delicious. I have eaten pasta con sarde just about every chance I have had. I have become a big fan of casatella – a very Sicilian desert (shares pride of place with cannolis). For the next few days, I hope to begin to experience another Italian tradition – il dolce far niente (the sweetness of doing nothing).

Life is good.