“One can make a rather easy transition from human friendships to friendship with God himself.” St Aelred of Riveaulx –the ‘St Bernard of the North,’ is a true man of consequence for people who care about their development of the spiritual life but also for those are seeking God.
At the age of twenty-four Aelred took up his mission as a Cistercian monk at Rievaulx in Yorkshire, England. His biography relates:
“There he pursued with rigor the friendship of Jesus Christ, gladly submitting to mortification and hard labor, to constant prayer, meditation, and study. “This is the yoke,” he said, “which does not crush but liberates the soul; this burden has wings, not weight.”
“Gracious and sensitive toward his fellow monks, Aelred became Abbot of Revesby in Lincolnshire and later abbot of the great monastery at Rievaulx. There he presided over some three hundred monks. Under Aelred’s leadership the community became a living model of peace and charity, a true colony of the kingdom of heaven. There he wrote his book, Spiritual Friendship, warmly extolling the joy and strength of friendships, divine and human.
Let us pray.
O God, who endowed Saint Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx, with the gift of fostering Christian friendship and the wisdom to lead others in the way of holiness, grant to your people, we pray, that same spirit of fraternal affection, so that in loving one another we may know the love of Christ and rejoice in the eternal possession of your supreme goodness. (from the English Missal)