Life (1110 - 1167)

Aelred, one of the most notable of English monks, was born into a noble family at Hexham in northern England. Having received a very good classical education, he spent some time in the court of David I, King of Scotland.

All in the royal Scots court admired him for his talent and even more for his gentle personality. An illustration: once, in the presence of the king, another courtier insulted Aelred, accusing him of many misdeeds. Aelred listened patiently. Then, when his accuser had finished, he quietly thanked him for his charity in telling him his faults. The accuser was so surprised by Aelred’s perfect humility that he forthwith asked him to forgive his intemperate remarks.

Even by that time the future saint was pondering a vocation to the monastic life. He hesitated to enter a monastery because it would have meant giving up the companionship of his many friends. Gradually, however, he came to see in his very hesitation a cowardly attachment to human beings rather than to God.

At age 24, therefore, he went back to England and asked admission into the Cistercian Abbey of Rievaulx. Rievaulx monastery had been established about two years before by a disciple of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), the second founder of the Cistercian monks. Aelred took to the Cistercian (Trappist) rigors like a fish to water. The strict rule was to mold him, and he in turn would help to mold the Cistercian spirit.

Father Aelred’s many gifts, natural and supernatural, were to attract the attention of his fellow Cistercians. In 1142 he was elected abbot of a new daughter monastery at Revesby, England. Five years later, he was brought back to RievauIx to head that abbey of some 300 monks. He accepted both promotions with reluctance. He knew that they would involve giving up much of his beloved silence. But of course he proved ideal for the role, accepting its duties as a cluster of necessary crosses.

As superior, nobody was stricter than Abbot Aelred, yet he ruled with winning gentleness. One of his major contributions to the monastic life and to spiritual life in general was his writings, one of which St. Bernard himself commissioned him to compose. They were theologically precise and fervent, yet their simplicity and literary expression made them very appealing. As a monastic leader, a learned man and a writer, Aelred naturally moved in the circles of abbots and bishops and kings. But he in no way allowed fame to turn his head. Like his master St. Bernard of Clairvaux, he refused more than once to accept an appointment to a bishopric.

Although Aelred was physically very infirm in his last years, his disciples were deeply grieved to lose him to death, so much did they love him. In his writing on Spiritual Friendship, the saint had once written a passage that could be used to describe the writer himself: He was one “whom I might fitly call friendship’s child, for his whole occupation was to love and to be loved.”

No wonder St. Aelred of Rievaulx, canonized, apparently, in 1191, was hailed as “the St. Bernard of the North.”

--Father Robert F. McNamara

Scripture (Phil 2:1-4)

(Year A). You need have no fear, son, since matters of such importance still remain to be said on the good of friendship that, if some wise person were to carry them through to the end, you would think we had thus far said nothing-Nevertheless, turn_your attention briefly to the manner in which ‘friendship is, so to say, a stage toward the love and knowledge of God. Indeed, in friendship there is nothing dishonorable, nothing deceptive, nothing feigned; whatever there is, is holy, voluntary, and true.” And this itself is also a characteristic of charity. In this, truly, friendship shines forth with a special right of its own, that among those who are bound by the tie of friendship all joys, all security, all sweetness, all charms are experienced. Therefore, in the perfection of charity we love very many who are a source of burden and grief to us, for whose interest we concern ourselves honorably, not with hypocrisy or dissimulation, but sincerely and voluntarily, but yet we do not admit these to the intimacy of our friendship. And so in friendship are joined honor and charm, truth and joy, sweetness and good-will, affection and action. And all these take their beginning from Christ, advance through Christ, and are perfected in Christ. Therefore, not too steep or unnatural does the ascent appear from Christ, as the inspiration of the love by which we love our friend, to Christ giving himself to us as our Friend for us to love, so that charm may | follow upon charm, sweetness upon sweetness and affection upon affection. And thus, friend cleaving to friend in the spirit of Christ, is made with Christ but one heart and one soul, and so mounting aloft through degrees of love to friendship with Christ, he is made one spirit with him in one kiss. Aspiring to this kiss the saintly soul cries out: “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.’’ (Spiritual Friendship)