The lives of the saints often document the intensity of the feelings they held for their friends – a loving intimacy that by turns deepened their closeness to God
During my years as Bishop of Middlesbrough, a favourite outing was across the North Yorkshire Moors to the well-preserved ruins of Rievaulx Abbey, 20 miles to the north of York. Rievaulx was the first Cistercian monastery in the north of England, founded in 1132. In 1147 Aelred, born in Hexham, the son of a married priest, was elected abbot. By the time of his death in 1167, the community numbered more than 600 monks and lay brothers, a phenomenal scale of growth.
St Aelred emerges as one of the most attractive personalities of the Middle Ages. His kindness and gentleness won many to him. He called the monastery “a school of love”, and encouraged the cultivation of true friendship among his brethren as a reflection of their friendship with and love for Christ. Traditionally, monks are warned of the dangers in forming “particular friendships”, but Aelred insisted that a monk who suppressed his natural capacity for friendship was incapable of truly loving God: “God is friendship, and he who dwells in friendship dwells in God, and God in him.”
