St. Aelred of Rievaulx on Friendship

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While I’d love to post everyday, I will most likely not have the luxury of doing so. Instead, I shall make a sincere effort to post at least once every week. Toward that end, I will be posting my reflections based on the daily readings from Bert Ghezzi’s “Voices of the Saints” (© 2000, Image Books)

Today, by my calculations, is the 326th day of the year, but I will simply write a reflection based on the very first entry in this book (pg. 2)

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St. Aelred of Rievaulx (1110 – 1167)

And so praying to Christ for your friend, and longing to be heard by Christ for your friend’s sake, you reach out with devotion and desire to Christ himself. And suddenly and insensibly, as though touched by the gentleness of Christ close at hand, you begin to taste how sweet he is and to feel how lovely he is. Thus from that holy love with which you embrace your friend, you rise to that love by which you embrace Christ.

How glad I am that my own experiences of love and friendship were described by one who lived almost a millennium before! Indeed, it is almost distressing to pray in such a way as this for a friend. I have experienced this first hand. When filled with the “longing to be heard by Christ for your friend’s sake” and with that “holy love with which you embrace your friend” and then expressing it in prayer to Christ, one becomes aware of the development of an intimate connection between them and their friend. This is distressing in our modern age, where we are taught to remain disconnected and isolated, in a world unto ourselves, where autonomy and individuality have supplanted love as chief of the virtues. For, now, because of this intimate connection, one’s fate is in part caught up in that of their friend. They render themselves vulnerable to the other.

Even greater than this is that devotion and desire for Christ which springs up from this love. At first this may come as a surprise, and it may seem that this is merely incidental or secondary, but this is not so. No, for holy love, authentic love, has Christ as its beginning and its end. It streams forth from the heart of the Crucified and returns “from whence it came.” It can only come to be in Christ and it can only find its completion in him.

This shows us how we can tell whether or to what degree true love is present in our hearts. We can ask ourselves, “Does this thing I call ‘love of Christ’ cause an increase in my love of my neighbor? And does this thing I call ‘love of neighbor’ lead to a greater love of Christ?”

A brief reflection on the condition of our love reveals how little is actually present. But if we find ourselves in this condition (and who in this life could ever claim for themselves the perfection of love?), we should not despair. Not at all! Remember that this holy love comes from Jesus. It is not really ours at all. We cannot manufacture it, or cause it to be by mere force of will. Know that Jesus wants to fill us to overflowing with this love. All we need to do is ask him for it and to remain open to receiving it. He will not give it if we do not ask him, and he will not force us to take it, if we do not open our hearts to receive it. So, we ought to pray,

“Jesus, give me an ever greater love for you, for my dear friends, and for my neighbor.”

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