There is an excellent book written by Aelred of Rievaulx (1110 – 12 January 1167), who was an English Cistercian monk and abbot from 1147 until his death. The book’s name is De spirituali amicitia, or in English On Spiritual Friendship.
This work is one of the greatest works ever composed by St Aelred. Some equate it with Cicero De amicitia. In it we find the powerful insight that Christ is the source and the sole force for spiritual friendship. Drawing from his own life experiences, Aelred gives us some recommendations both for creating as well as cultivating lifelong friendships. In his book Brother and lover, Brian Patrick McGuire argues that Aelred believed that true love has a respectable name and a rightful place in good human company, especially that of the monastery. Furthermore, his emphasis on the centrality of friendship in the monastic life places him outside the mainstream of the tradition. In writing a special treatise dedicated to friendship and indicating that he could not live without friends, Aelred outdid all his monastic predecessors and had no immediate successors. Whether or not his need for friendship is an expression of Aelred’s sexual identity, his insistence on individual friendships in the monastic life meant a departure from what is implied in the Rule of St. Benedict. Hence, having the wider context of Christian monastic friendship, Aelred put friendship and human love at the core of monastic life as well as a viable instrument for one to come closer to divine love and gave some order to deep friendships between monks.
Concerning the author’s background we can say that Aelred’s life was one filled to the brim with both physical and contemplative prayer. However, Aelred found the right and just equilibrium in his life characterised by his hard work and solitary prayers with having spiritual conversations with friends who kept being present in his life even after he was chosen to be the abbot of the monastery and lived with his illness. On Spiritual Friendship remains a landmark in Christian spirituality especially when one keeps in mind the fact that in those times friendship was considered with utmost caution in the Church. Within this challenging context, Aelred kept sharing his heart with his friends and in so doing he found Christ. The date of the composition of De spirituali amicitia is the year 1157.
The starting point of St Aelred of Rievaulx is that spiritual friendship is a special relationship which is both an expression of God’s love and, simultaneously, it is also a powerful way of knowing God’s love. Aelred manages to share with us the immense richness of spiritual friendships thanks to some recorded conversations which he nourished with his friends.
Aelred’s treatise offers us some wonderful insights as to what real spiritual friendship is all about. Spiritual friendship is made up of three people, the two friends and Christ, the Friend of friends, in their midst. It is in the presence of Christ that a friend can easily talk his and her heart to the other friend. In that sense, friendship must surely be a great grace. Aelred writes: Here we are, you and I, and I hope that Christ makes a third with us. No one can interrupt us now, no one can spoil our friendly conversation; no one’s voice or noise will break in upon this pleasant solitude of ours. So come now, dearest friend, reveal your heart and speak your mind. You have a friendly audience; say whatever you wish. And let us not be ungrateful for this time or for our opportunity and leisure. Aelred repeats the same idea when he affirms: Christ is friendship’s principle and goal. In another instance during the conversation, St Aelred also says that the goal of spiritual friendship should be the enjoyment and knowledge of God. Obviously this will not happen at once but demands a path. He says: Friendship is a path that leads very close to the perfection which consists of the enjoyment and knowledge of God.
Moreover, spiritual friendship is centered on the Bible and the Name of Jesus, on whose mention every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:10-11). Aelred says: From the time when I began to recognize the sweetness of the holy scriptures and the honey-sweet name of Christ claimed my affection for itself, whatever lacked the salt of heavenly literature and the seasoning of that most pleasant name could not be tasty or attractive to me, no matter how cleverly argued what I read or heard seemed to me.
Spiritual friendship claims that both friends are the guardians of their reciprocal love and the wellbeing of their souls too. They keep the confidentiality of their sharing intact as well as correct one another to grow together. In a nutshell they accompany each other emotionally and spiritually. Aelred says: My friend must be the guardian of our mutual love, or even of my very soul, so that he will preserve in faithful silence all its secrets, and whatever he sees in it that is flawed he will correct or endure with all his strength. When I rejoice, he will rejoice; when I grieve, he will grieve with me.
Spiritual friendship touches the deepest recesses of intellectual and spiritual quest of the person. After all, when friends engage in such conversation they are trying to better understand themselves. Aelred reminds us about this when he says: It is the mark of a virtuous mind always to meditate upon lofty and difficult things, so that it either attains or more clearly understands and recognizes that which it desires.
During his conversations with his friends, Aelred came up with the great idea that one cannot love others unless he and she, first, loves himself and herself. Let us not forget the great commandment which Jesus taught us which goes: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10:27). To support his view Aelred says: He who does not love his own soul will in no way be capable of loving the soul of another.
The character of spiritual friendship is God himself. When paraphrasing 1 John 4:16 Aelred says about spiritual friendship: ‘He who abides in’ friendship ‘abides in God, and God in him’. When one abides in this kind of friendship it is logical that one partakes from its special kind of food. Aelred points out such a thought when he says: Perhaps our conversation here will be like spiritual food or drink for you.
Aelred is very aware of the waywardness of feelings. That is why he puts it under the guardianship of reason, honour and justice. He says: Often affection precedes friendship, but it ought never to be followed unless it is led by reason, moderated by a sense of honor, and ruled by justice. Furthermore, spiritual friendship should be founded by purity of its goal, the feedback of reason and the direction of temperance. These three virtues should be present from the very beginning of spiritual friendship. He says: The beginning of spiritual friendship should be marked, first, by purity of intent, the advice of reason, and the guide of temperance. St Aelred was wise enough in harmonizing the collaborative accompaniment of both reason and feeling during the whole process of spiritual friendship. He wisely advises us: [When] reason is joined to affection… that love is pure because it comes from reason, and agreeable because it comes from affection.
Real spiritual friendship is not about taking advantage of the friend in question. On the contrary, spiritual friendship is about being centered on and leads to the contemplation of God. Aelred states: He who seeks from friendship some profit other than friendship itself has not yet learned what friendship is. Friendship will be full of riches for those who cherish it when it is completely centered upon God; for those whom friendship joins together, it immerses in the contemplation of God.
Spiritual friendship makes one the friends who are in it. Aelred drives home this point when quoting St Ambrose who said: For a friend is the sharer of your soul, to your friend’s spirit you join and attach your own, and you so mingle the two that you would like for your two spirits to become one. Love always purifies itself, first and foremost rationally. On this point St Aelred asserts: Rid yourself of suspicions by contemplating love. Later on in the text this wise Cistercian Abbot returned once more on the need to avoid suspicion in friendship. He says: We must avoid suspicion before all else – it is poison to a friendship – so that we never harbor evil thoughts about a friend, nor give credence to or go along with someone who makes slanderous remarks about our friend. Adding to this point, authentic spiritual friendship is marked by faithfulness. St Aelred highlights this virtue when he says: In friendship there is nothing more outstanding than faithfulness, which seems to be both the nurse and guardian of friendship.
Coupled with faithfulness Aelred also proposes the love of God as the foundation of spiritual friendship. This criterion is essential because a true spiritual friendship is gauged if it is opened or opposed to the love of God. He says: A foundation must be laid for friendship, namely the love of God. To this love of God everything that has to do with friendship must be compared; one must examine whether the concerns of a friendship are in keeping with the love of God, or opposed to it. Most of all Aelred bestows on us the responsibility of testing a friend to see if that person is leading us to God and to our human growth or not. He says: Test [a friend’s] intent, to ensure that he is looking for nothing from the friendship except God and that natural good that comes from your mutual friendship.
Then, in his treatise on De spirituali amicitia Aelred has heaps of praise about friendship. He goes on to say that without friends there is absolutely no pleasure in life. Spiritual friendship is highly beneficial because God himself is at work pouring forth such great friendship and love between himself and his creation. While quoting again St Ambrose, Aelred repeats to us this life-giving perspective: A faithful friend is the medicine of life, and the grace of immortality. In other words, friendship is tantamount to happiness. The wise man (Seneca) says that ‘men would lead the happiest life if they would get rid of these two words, “my” and “your”.
De spirituali amicitia instills in us the hope that when human friendships are strong and authentic they can easily introduce us to the greatest friendship we can ever enjoy in our lives, that with God himself. St Aelred assures us with the following encouraging words: One can make a rather easy transition from human friendships to friendship with God himself. If that is the case then friendship is the primordial and eschatological sacrament of God’s relationship with us human beings. What a subline grace is spiritual friendship. It is the friendship of God himself with us, weak human beings!
