Aelred of Rievaulx
Yorkshire is endowed with many medieval abbey sites, none more dramatic than Rievaulx, where my vicar, Chris Ellis, founder of the Fellowship* organised a fine sunny day (April 24th) for a 900th celebration of the birth of Aelred, 3rd Abbot of the C12th Cistercian abbey. We began the afternoon with a short pilgrimage from Helmsley Castle, lead by Archbishop Sentamu and informed by an English Heritage Guide. Four miles up the narrow valley (so the abbey is not quite oriented east-west), are the ruins of the gothic nave of Rievaulx, a dramatic setting, with a colourful congregation of 120, a choir of nuns from nearby Stanbrook Abbey, Wass and Whitby, and Cistercian monks from Mount St Bernard, Leicestershire, with Latin chants and modern hymns. Addresses were given by the Abbot of St Bernard (reflectively), and the Archbishop (powerfully on love) before he scooted off down the valley for his next appointment.

Sitting in the nave it was possible to see the transition from the simple Cistercian architecture brought from Clairvaux to the later Early English Gothic within the nave and presbytery but also to be able to look out over the grounds where as many as two hundred buildings stood before the Dissolution.

Aelred was born in Hexham in 1110 and it was fitting that the lesson from the First Letter of St John Chapter Four was read by the Rector of Hexham Abbey, Graham Usher (last seen by the writer in 2000 on a bus in the Holy Land). Aelred entered the abbey at 24 and became abbot in 1147, developing its commercial potential with lands stretching to Teesside and a population in and around the abbey of 600. His acclaimed spirituality was welcomed by Kings Henry I and II and David of Scotland and he became a national celebrity, dying in 1167. His process to canonisation began soon after and a shrine was built into the east end of the abbey church in 1250.

Here Aelred wrote “The day before yesterday, as I was walking round the cloisters, all the brethren sat together, like a most lovely garland. And I gazed on them, as Adam must have gazed on the leaves and the trees and the flowers and fruits amidst the delights of Paradise. And in the whole of the throng I could not find one by whom I was not loved. And I was filled with such great joy that it surpassed any delight that this world could give”.

Isn’t that just like sitting in Synod?

Anyone interested in the whole of the presentation or the Ecumenical Fellowship of Aelred of Rievaulx, please email me at roythompson2 [at] btinternet.com.

Roy Thompson

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
community of love; through Jesus Christ the Righteous, who lives and
reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.