Aug 30, 2024

Aelred of Rievaulx

In a remote area of England is a tiny town called Rievaulx (pronounced Ree-voh), with a population of fifty people. It’s a popular tourist attraction as visitors walk among the impressive ruins of a famous twelfth century monastery. The monastery was begun by twelve monks, sent by Bernard of Clairvaux, abbot of a French monastery, to expand the influence of a strict order of Benedictine monks called Cistercians in England. Abbot, deriving from the Hebrew word “abba,” meaning father, designates the elected leader of a monastery. Two years after the abbey opened, Aelred of Rievaulx (1110-1167) joined the community. The brothers quickly recognized Aelred’s considerable leadership skills, generous spirit, and deep faith and elected him abbot in 1147, a position he held until his death twenty years later. Under Aelred’s leadership, the monastery grew to six hundred forty monks.
Aelred wrote Pastoral Prayer for his personal use in meditation that was published after his death. The metaphor of Jesus as Good Shepherd predominates throughout his lengthy prayer. Aelred prays for Jesus’ help in guiding and protecting the flock under his care. He petitions Jesus for assistance in understanding each member of his community, much as a good shepherd does in Jesus’ teaching who knows each sheep by name (John 10.3). It’s instructive to consider how Aelred prays for the monks entrusted to his care:

“Let me learn, let your Spirit teach me, to console the sorrowing, to strengthen the fainthearted, to set the fallen upright, to be weak with the weak, to be indignant with the scandalized, to become all things to all people in order to win them all…teach me, sweet Lord, to admonish the disturbed, to console the fainthearted, to support the weak and to accommodate myself to each one’s character, disposition, inclinations, aptitude or simplicity, according to the place and time, as seems best to you.”

The other striking feature of his prayer is his candor in expressing inadequacies as an abbot. Aelred’s repeated references to his unfitness as a leader stand in marked contrast to leadership in our day. Near the end of his confession, he prays:

May I find happiness in being utterly spent for them. Let it be done in this way, my Lord, let it be done in this way! All my feeling, all my speaking, all my rest and all my work, all my action and all my thought, all my success and all my hardship, all my death and all my life, all my health and sickness—all that I am, all that gives me life, all that I feel, all that I discern—let all this be expended upon them in all its entirety and entirely spent for their benefit, for the benefit of those for whom you yourself did not consider it unworthy to be utterly spent.

Marsha Dutton, “Introduction to Aelred’s Pastoral Prayer,” Academia.edu.

Rev. Dr. Peter James served 42 years as the senior of Vienna Presbyterian Church in Vienna, VA — 21 years in the 20th century and 21 years in the 21st century. He retired in 2021 and now serves as Pastor-in-Residence at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Even as a pastor, prayer came slowly to Pete. Read Pete’s story.