The Year 2011 marks the 901st anniversary of the coming of St. Aelred into this world with his refreshing message of love and friendship. He tells the message with explicit references to his own loves and friendships.
Some years ago I did a lot of research into the life and writings and sex-positive theology of St. Aelred.
Sadly I admit that in recent times I am so involved with teaching and interacting with people in the free cyber seminar in Sex Positive Theology that I have not been able to advance my (Ateneo) library research and communication with Aelred scholars around the world who used to send me their own research and publications about St. Aelred.
As is pointed out in the Novena, St. Aelred was not a “gay activist” like we have among us here in the Philippines today (in the whole LGBT community).
He was an early Christian humanist who saw the Incarnation (becoming flesh) of Jesus and the very human loves and friendships of Jesus (the beloved disciple and others) as a clear indication that human love and human friendships are very much in conformity with the life of Jesus and the Good News.
As a young “gay” lad of about 15, his father, the “hereditary” Roman Catholic pastor of the parish in his hometown in northern England near the territory we know as Scotland, sent him to study, learn, and work as an aide to the king in the court of King David of Scotland. He tells us in graphic language, not “bakla ako,” but “my greatest delight was in loving and being loved.” And his loves were the sons of the king and other young men in the court.
Comparing him to the thousands of gays and lesbians I have known, lived with, counseled over the last forty-some years, I see us all pretty much in the same love boat, with him as our champion.
To make a long story short, he can be celebrated as the Patron Saint of Friendship.
Each year we remember his “pioneering” or “liminal” work in breaking away from St. Augustine’s “body is bad” teachings and proclaiming the truth of God’s approval of human love and friendship.
In celebration of his annual “feast day” we pray the St. Aelred Novena for nine days culminating on the day of his “feast,” March 3.
St. Aelred: Gay Saint of Friendship
By Brother Robert Lentz, OFM. ©1992
Courtesy of http://www.trinitystores.com/
(800.699.4482)
Collection of the Living Circle, Chicago, IL
Saint Aelred (1109-1167) is considered one of the most lovable saints, the patron saint of friendship and also, some say, gay. His feast day is January 12.
Aelred was the abbot of the Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx in England. His treatise “On Spiritual Friendship” is still one of the best theological statements on the connection between human and spiritual love. “God is friendship… Those who abide in friendship abide in God, and God in them.. he wrote, paraphrasing 1 John 4:16.
Aelred’s own deep friendships with men are described in “Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality ” by Yale history professor John Boswell. “There can be little question that Aelred was gay and that his erotic attraction to men was a dominant force in his life,” Boswell wrote.
Boswell’s account inspired the members of the LGBT Episcopal group Integrity to name Aelred as their patron saint. Visit IntegrityUSA.org for the full story on how they won recognition for their gay saint.
Aelred certainly advocated chastity, but his passions are clear in his writing. He describes friendship with eloquence in this often-quoted passage:
“It is no small consolation in this life to have someone you can unite with you in an intimate affection and the embrace of a holy love, someone in whom your spirit can rest, to whom you can pour out your soul, to whose pleasant exchanges, as to soothing songs, you can fly in sorrow... with whose spiritual kisses, as with remedial salves, you may draw out all the weariness of your restless anxieties. One who can shed tears with you in your worries, be happy with you when things go well, search out with you the answers to your problems, whom with the ties of charity you can lead into the depths of your heart; . . . where the sweetness of the Spirit flows between you, where you so join yourself and cleave to one another that soul mingles with soul and two become one.”
The icon of Saint Aelred was painted by Robert Lentz, a Franciscan friar and world-class iconographer known for his innovative icons. It includes a banner with Aelred’s words, “Friend cleaving to friend in the spirit of Christ.”
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This post is part of the GLBT Saints series at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints and holy people of special interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.
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Novena to St. Aelred of Rievaulx
Recommended: Feast of St. Aelred March 3
Anytime during the year
The Feast of St. Aelred, March 3, is usually the ninth day of the Novena in honor of St. Aelred. Of course, the beginning day and the final day can be adjusted. In many places the anniversary date of St. Aelred’s birthday in heaven, January 12, is also observed as St. Aelred Day.
Here’s how the Novena works. Each day of the nine day novena, read the novena commemoration of St. Aelred and the St. Aelred novena prayer.
Day 1. We remember Aelred as a youth
Aelred was born in Hexam in northern England in the year 1110 . His father was “pastor” of the Roman Catholic Church at Hexam.
For priests to marry was officially not permitted, but it was so common that it was not a scandal, even some popes were sons of priests. The other thing that is quite different from our time is that his grandfather and his great grandfather also were “pastors” of that church as it was a “hereditary” pastorate (a medieval “thing”).
Hexam was a parish which had many relics (tombs, bones, bodies of famous English saints). Aelred acquired his father’s devotion to these saints and later wrote about them.
Many years later, in Aelred’s lifetime, his father gave up the “parish” and entered a monastery for the remainder of his life on earth.
At the age of 15 or thereabouts, Aelred’s father sent him to live in the court of King David I of Scotland. He spent 10 years there and became a trusted aide of the King, who also was later proclaimed a saint of the church.
At the court Aelred got a good education, but his greatest delight, he tells us, “was to love and be loved.” He had loves and friends, but he also had a broken heart many times. In the intrigues of the court, True Friendship of the type Aelred yearned for, was virtually unknown.
Novena Prayer
O most kind and loving St. Aelred,
in union with you
I come into the presence of our beloved Jesus.
I pray that you will obtain God’s favor for me
as I imitate your life of holiness
and follow your teachings
of love and friendship,
through Christ Jesus, our friend
whose sweet name was always on your lips.
St. Aelred, pray for me.
St. Aelred, pray for us.
Day 2. Aelred enters novitiate
and takes up “religious life”
At age 25 in the year 1135, Aelred abruptly left the court and entered a new monastery, which was named Rievaulx, in northern England which St. Bernard, the abbot of Clairvaux in France, had sent twelve monks to establish just two years before.
It was a hard life and the weather was cold and severe (which may account for the mere 57 years of Aelred’s earthly life). The monks “camped” in temporary huts on the river banks in the valley of the beautiful, but often ice and snow covered, River Rye, while they and the workers constructed the monastery that eventually became the largest in all England.
While trying to adjust to this life so different from the court, Aelred began to yearn again for True Friendship, and to see the possibility of attaining True Friendship in a community centered on Christ. Slowly he began to explore what True Friendship could be.
Within eight years he was named novice master, with the heavy responsibility of guiding the spiritual formation of the new monks who were already entering the monastery in increasing numbers.
Novena Prayer
O most kind and loving St. Aelred,
in union with you
I come into the presence of our beloved Jesus.
I pray that you will obtain God’s favor for me
as I imitate your life of holiness
and follow your teachings
of love and friendship,
through Christ Jesus, our friend
whose sweet name was always on your lips.
St. Aelred, pray for me.
St. Aelred, pray for us.
Day 3. Abbot of Revesby
The Abbey of Rievaulx decided to establish a new abbey at Revesby, further to the east, but still in northern England. This was the first of the five daughter houses of Rievaulx, and Aelred was selected to be the first abbot of the new Abbey.
So he left whatever small comforts had been built into Rievaulx in those first ten years and went to Revesby and started all over again, with cold temporary huts, and much manual labor, back-breaking work that he flung himself into for the next two years from 1145-to 1147.
Novena Prayer
O most kind and loving St. Aelred,
in union with you
I come into the presence of our beloved Jesus.
I pray that you will obtain God’s favor for me
as I imitate your life of holiness
and follow your teachings
of love and friendship,
through Christ Jesus, our friend
whose sweet name was always on your lips.
St. Aelred, pray for me.
St. Aelred, pray for us.
Added Comment
Saint Aelred of Rievaulx
By Paul Zalonski
The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.
My soul, give thanks to the Lord, all my being, bless his holy name (Rom 5:5; Ps 102:1).
O God, who gave the blessed Abbot Aelred the grace of being all things to all men, grant that, following his example, we may so spend ourselves in the service of one another, as to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
The New Advent bio
Saint Aelred authored several influential books on spirituality, among them The Mirror of Charity and Spiritual Friendship. He also wrote seven works of history, addressing two of them to King Henry II of England advising him how to be a good king. The twentieth century has seen a greater interest in Saint Aelred as a spiritual writer than in former times when he was known to be a historian.
This year we honor the 900th anniversary of Saint Aelred's birth, though some the anniversary in AD 2010.
Day 4. Abbot of Rievaulx
In 1147 the first abbot of Rievaulx died and Aelred was elected to return from Revesby and become the Abbot of the “Motherhouse,” Rievaulx.
It is located in a scenic valley, dubbed the “valley of light,” ever massaged with the sound of water running through the monastery grounds in the stream of the River Rye. (This, by the way, is the inspiration of our own fountain of bubbling water.)
For the next 20 years St. Aelred was distinguished as a capable, gentle, and caring administrator of an ever-growing abbey, an abbot who never expelled a monk in 20 years.
The abbey reached a peak of 500 priests, brothers, and workers, and even today the massive shells of chapels, chapter rooms, dining halls, and dormitories are still a tourist attraction in northern England.
Archbishop Sentamu and St Aelred's anniversary photos
Source: http://www.google.com/search?q=Archbishop+Sentamu+and+St+Aelred%27s+anniversary+photos&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1
Novena Prayer
O most kind and loving St. Aelred,
in union with you
I come into the presence of our beloved Jesus.
I pray that you will obtain God’s favor for me
as I imitate your life of holiness
and follow your teachings
of love and friendship,
through Christ Jesus, our friend
whose sweet name was always on your lips.
St. Aelred, pray for me.
St. Aelred, pray for us.
Day 5. Holy Abbot
In addition to his administration of the Abbey, St. Aelred began to work on the writings which have earned him enduring recognition as one of the “late fathers of the church,” a vast array of writings on saints, history, love, friendship, religious life, and uncounted sermons and spiritual works.
Slowly in the monasteries of today his works are being translated from the original Latin into today’s English. (A few years ago I asked a Trappist monk from Boston if he “ever heard” of St. Aelred. He informed me that he was the one who is translating St. Aelred’s sermons.)
St. Aelred wrote the lives of several English saints, and became a sought-after preacher for special occasions. He delivered the funeral oration when King St. David died in 1153. He began writing his two best-known works, The Mirror of Love, and Spiritual Friendship.
Novena Prayer
O most kind and loving St. Aelred,
in union with you
I come into the presence of our beloved Jesus.
I pray that you will obtain God’s favor for me
as I imitate your life of holiness
and follow your teachings
of love and friendship,
through Christ Jesus, our friend
whose sweet name was always on your lips.
St. Aelred, pray for me.
St. Aelred, pray for us.
Day 6. St. Aelred, Apostle of Friendship
In Spiritual Friendship St. Aelred gives us his classic definition of “Friendship.” He says “Friendship is oneness of heart, mind and spirit, in things human and divine, with mutual esteem, and kindly feelings of approval and support.”
In Mirror of Love he departs from generalities and gets down to the nitty gritty of what a True Friend is and does.
“A True Friend is one with whom I am deeply united in bonds of love, can find rest, pour out my heart, have sweet conversation, find a harbor of calm, lay bare my secrets, receive a comforting kiss, cry with and rejoice with, talk with for advice, feel togetherness “even when we are far apart, and with heart and mind together we are bound in the closest ties of love.”
There can be no doubt what Aelred means by True Friendship. And that is his lifelong gospel. It is not that he deviates from the Gospel of Jesus or the teachings of John. He theologizes that if God is love as St. John teaches, then God is Friendship.
“St. Aelred is known as a Christocentric twelfth-century monastic humanist. His most famous work, Spiritual Friendship, which explores the relationship between spiritual and human friendship in a monastic context, reveals his own conscious homosexual orientation and gives love between persons of the same gender its most profound expression in Christian theology.” (Dictionary of the Middle Ages, Vol. 4, American Council of Learned Societies)
Added Comment
Saint Aelred of Rievaulx
By Paul Zalonski
Pour into our hearts, O God, the Holy Spirit's gift of love, that we, clasping each the other's hand, may share the joy of friendship, human and divine, and with Your servant Aelred draw many to Your communion of love; through Jesus Christ the Righteous, who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
On friendship
There are four qualities which characterize a friend: loyalty, right intention, discretion and patience. Right intention seeks for nothing other than God and natural good. Discretion brings understanding of what is done on a friend's behalf, and ability when to know when to correct faults. Patience enables one to be justly rebuked, or to bear adversity on another's behalf. Loyalty guards and protects friendship, in good or bitter times.
Novena Prayer
O most kind and loving St. Aelred,
in union with you
I come into the presence of our beloved Jesus.
I pray that you will obtain God’s favor for me
as I imitate your life of holiness
and follow your teachings
of love and friendship,
through Christ Jesus, our friend
whose sweet name was always on your lips.
St. Aelred, pray for me.
St. Aelred, pray for us.
Archbishop Sentamu and St Aelred's anniversary photos
Source: http://www.google.com/search?q=Archbishop+Sentamu+and+St+Aelred%27s+anniversary+photos&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1
Day 7. Lover, Friend, Christian Humanist
St. Aelred was very personal and honest in his writings about love and friendship. St. Anselm and some of Aelred’s other contemporaries wrote about love and friendship, but in a much more clinical way, even though they were also “gay,” as we would say.
Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx, on the other hand, in his self-revealing style, wrote about his teenage loves, about his “true” loves in the monastery, about his own yearnings and experiences.
In asserting the need for friendship and love, Aelred legitimized the physical and spiritual embrace of other human beings – and in the context of a religious community. In this context, all loves are reconciled in Jesus, and all are at peace in the love of the community.
Honored as a medieval Christian humanist, Aelred had a great optimism about the capability of human beings to love each other in good communities centered on Jesus. When he entered the monastery, he did not leave the world made by God or the exercise of love which gives harmony to every day life.
Therefore, obviously, if love and friendship were “good” within the hallowed monastery walls, how much more true is it “good” for all God’s children (who happen to be given the gift of attraction to persons of the same gender).
St. Aelred found his answer to the meaning of life in its human dimension in the love of the brothers at Rievaulx – brother to all in community life, lover to some in his True Friendships. He found the love of God made real and physical by experiencing together love of God and individual human beings.
St. Aelred unabashedly insisted on the need for human loves, and in his “Mirror of Love” he pours his heart out in lament over the death of the monk Simon, with whom he felt a True Friendship.
“St. Aelred deserves to be the patron saint of gays and lesbians because he was true to himself – never covering up his sexuality which was same-sex attraction, and he was not pulled fully into the prevailing sex-negative anti-body dualistic philosophy of St. Augustine,” writes one attendee at the conclusion of a seminar on the life and works of St. Aelred.
Novena Prayer
O most kind and loving St. Aelred,
in union with you
I come into the presence of our beloved Jesus.
I pray that you will obtain God’s favor for me
as I imitate your life of holiness
and follow your teachings
of love and friendship,
through Christ Jesus, our friend
whose sweet name was always on your lips.
St. Aelred, pray for me.
St. Aelred, pray for us.
Day 8. Suffered from arthritis
We all identify with Jesus who took on all the weakness and limitations of humanity to be one with us and died for love of us in the agonizing suffering of the passion and Cross.
St. Aelred especially identified with the sufferings of Jesus for us. The last ten years of his life on earth he was wracked with excruciating pain of arthritis.
His sufferings were intensified with the unbearable pangs of kidney stones. Sometimes when he had to stay in a little room near the infirmary, his friends would gather around his bed to cheer him up. (One’s imagination runs wild if gays gathered around his bed were as cheerful then as they are now in the Philippines.)
Novena Prayer
O most kind and loving St. Aelred,
in union with you
I come into the presence of our beloved Jesus.
I pray that you will obtain God’s favor for me
as I imitate your life of holiness
and follow your teachings
of love and friendship,
through Christ Jesus, our friend
whose sweet name was always on your lips.
St. Aelred, pray for me.
St. Aelred, pray for us.
Day 9. Patron of Sex Positive Theology
Patron of responsible sexuality
Many scholars have turned their attention to St. Aelred studies. Worldwide today there is an elite corps of “St. Aelred Scholars.” They are somewhat divided between those who speak frankly and openly of his same-sex orientation and those who would prefer, if they could, to sweep it under the rug. There are rumors that the Trappists don’t allow the monks to read Aelred’s works without permission. But Thomas Merton, a great world-renowned Trappist writer, wrote a biography of St. Aelred.
The Trappists and Benedictines and other orders are fearful that the monks will follow St. Aelred’s teachings of love and friendship in the monastery. Because of homophobia they are trying to be on guard against “special friendships.”
Our reason for joining the world-wide acclamation of St. Aelred as GLBT patron is primarily because of the holiness of his life and his inspiration for us to give our all for Jesus. The name of Jesus was always on his lips and the love of Jesus was always in his heart, but he felt that his love of Jesus could be strengthened by following the teachings of St. John that love of neighbor translates into love of God. “Those who live in love, live in God, and God lives in them.”
St. Aelred was not a modern day gay activist. There is no doubt that he sincerely embraced the celibate life as his vocation. He was a product of his times and caught up in the sex-negative theology of St. Augustine, but he was liminal, way ahead of his times, in his honesty about love and his loves. He is not a role model of gay activism, but a role model of holiness, and honesty, and coming out as appropriate in one’s state of life.
“St. Aelred deserves to be the patron saint of gays and lesbians because his philosophy of the unity of the flesh and spirit does not follow the hateful language of homophobic official literature, and he led a life of honest openness about loving people of the same sex physically,” wrote Oscar Atadero at the conclusion of a seminar on St. Aelred.
We celebrate the feast of St. Aelred because our understanding of life and love is enhanced by this great saint whom we have chosen as our patron.
Novena Prayer
O most kind and loving St. Aelred,
in union with you
I come into the presence of our beloved Jesus.
I pray that you will obtain God’s favor for me
as I imitate your life of holiness
and follow your teachings
of love and friendship,
through Christ Jesus, our friend
whose sweet name was always on your lips.
St. Aelred, pray for me.
St. Aelred, pray for us.
A History of Rievaulx Abbey
Source: http://cistercians.shef.ac.uk/rievaulx/history
'Everywhere peace, everywhere serenity, and a marvellous freedom from the tumult of the world.' Written over eight centuries ago by the monastery's third abbot, St Aelred, these words still apply to Rievaulx today.
Words are not the only links to Rievaulx's medieval monks. Over the past few years, the site has become something of an archaeological treasure, with unexpected discoveries shedding new light on the lives of the monks, and the extensive renewal and rebuilding of their abbey church in the Early English Gothic style.
Archaeologists continue to study the landscape around Rievaulx, revealing the remarkable extent of the abbey's influence and industry. Their discoveries are showcased in the on-site museum.
The abbey was founded by St Bernard of Clairvaux, as part of the missionary effort to reform Christianity in western Europe. Twelve Clairvaux monks came to Rievaulx in 1132.
From these modest beginnings grew one of the wealthiest monasteries of medieval England and the first northern Cistercian monastery.
Rievaulx also enjoyed the protection of Walter Espec of nearby Helmsley Castle, who provided much of the abbey's land. The monks of neighbouring Byland Abbey initially disputed land ownership with Rievaulx, but subsequently moved to their present location and relinquished the disputed land, thus allowing the major expansion of Rievaulx Abbey. You can still see traces of the channels dug by the Rievaulx monks.
A steady flow of monks came to Rievaulx, attracted by the prestige of Abbot Aelred, author and preacher, who was regarded then and later as a wise and saintly man. Following his death in 1167, the monks of Rievaulx sought canonisation for their former leader, and in the 1220s they rebuilt the east part of their church in a much more elaborate style to house his tomb.
Most of this 13th-century 'presbytery' still stands to virtually its full impressive height, a reminder of Rievaulx's original splendour.
Rievaulx was still a vibrant community when Henry VIII dissolved it in 1538. Its new owner, Thomas Manners, first Earl of Rutland, swiftly instigated the systematic destruction of the buildings.
However, the substantial remains constitute one of the most eloquent of all monastic sites, free 'from the tumult of the world.'
