Aelred of Rivileaux wrote two tracts on Spiritual Friendship which are very beautiful. That is also the concept behind the old Irish (Celtic) Church’ “anamcara”, two people who come together in a deeply committed relationship, beyond mere friendship, in order to help each other grow and develop spiritually. It is a wonderful experience; the trick is to find that someone, especially these days.
Thank you for that Kmabba. I searched on the web for the tracts you mention but was unable to find anything. Do you or anyone else have a link to a site on St Aelred’s writings.
Here is all I was able to find:
Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx
The teaching of St Aelred, the twelfth century English Abbot of Rievaulx (feast day in the Traditional Roman Calendar, March 3rd)
St Aelred had a deep appreciation for friendship, and by that is meant the particular love between two individuals. Traditionally, we hear much about universal charity, the disinterested love every Catholic should have for all humankind. We hear little about the worthy love between two people, except in the context of marriage. Of all the gifts St Aelred has given the Church, the best is his joyous affirmation that we move toward God in and through our relationships with other people, not apart from or in spite of them. It is important to remember who those particular individuals were, whose love taught Aelred of the love of God. Aelred writes of his school days as a time when he thought of nothing but loving and being loved by men, and of losing his heart to one boy and then another. He was a man of strong passions, who spoke openly of the men for whom he had deeply romantic attachments. After the death of one monk whom he clearly loved, he wrote:
“The only one who would not be astonished to see Aelred living without Simon would be someone who did not know how pleasant it was for us to spend our life on earth together; how great a joy it would have been for us to journey to heaven in each other’s company …Weep, then, not because Simon has been taken up to heaven, but because Aelred has been left on earth, alone.”
In his famous book on Christian friendship, he extols same gender bonding. He drew upon his personal positive experience of love for other men in his ministry as a Cistercian Abbot, encouraging his monks to love each other, not just generally and in the abstract, but individually and passionately. He cited the example of Jesus and St. John as a basis for this comparing their relationship to a marriage:
“Jesus himself, is in everything like us. Patient and compassionate with others in every matter. He transfigured this sort of love through the expression of his own love; for he allowed only one - not all - to recline on his breast as a sign of his special love; and the closer they were, the more copiously did the secrets of their heavenly marriage impart the sweet smell of their spiritual chrism to their love.”
St Aelred describes the friendship that he so valued in the following passage:
“It is no small consolation in this life to have someone to whom you can be united in the intimate embrace of the most sacred love; in whom your spirit can rest; to whom you can pour out your soul; in whose delightful company, as in a sweet consoling song, you can take comfort in the midst of sadness; in whose most welcome, friendly bosom you can find peace in so many worldly setbacks; to whose loving heart you can open, as freely as you would to yourself, your innermost thoughts; through whose spiritual kisses – as by some medicine – you are cured of the sickness of care and worry; who weeps with you in sorrow, rejoices with you in joy, and wonders with you in doubt; whom you draw by the fetters of love into that inner room of your soul, so that though the body is absent, the spirit is there, and you can confer all alone, the two of you, in the sleep of peace away from the noise of the world, in the embrace of love, in the kiss of unity, with the Holy Spirit flowing over you; to whom you so join and unite yourself that you mix soul with soul, and two become one.”
