Aelred community sermon

St. AELRED  12 Wed 2011
Solemnity
Community Chapter Sermon by Fr. Hugh

Hugh Randolph ocso

The Saints are not merely historical figures, people dead and gone but very much our relatives in the extended family which is the Church of Christ. People who are interested in us, communicating with us by their example, their writings and their intercession.

St. Aelred is such a person, the patron of Nunraw after Our Blessed Lady. We know quite a lot about him, the things which made him tick. Like all the Cistercian Fathers he was utterly fascinated by man's ability to love. This was because God is Love and the fact that we have the divine gift of love means that we can share by grace in God's own life.

Aelred never thought he was living in a Golden Age of monast­icism or in a great age of the Faith. He rebuked a novice for thinking that there were no inauthentic monks. In every profession he said there are people who are not the genuine article. There were Bishops, and those who aspired to be bishops, who were filled with personal ambition. Yet Aelred was joyous because he could transcend these problems and also chronic ill health. It is fascinating to see how the greatest Abbots of the early Cistercian periods were very sick people for much of their lives. St. Bernard was in that category and so was St. Aelred yet this did not deter them from living a deeply contemplative monastic life.

Central to this was Holy Scripture. He calls the Bible the Star which leads to Jesus, it is here that he will be found. Vatican II in its Constitution on Divine Revelation says that it is here that: 'the Father meets his children with great love and speaks with them'. This is very much St. Aelred's thought. He sees Sacred Scripture as a privileged place of encounter With Christ who does not wish us to suffer from weariness and so visits us in different ways. This visitation can come from the words of others, or their good example or without any intermediary. It has its fruit in a more intimate and experiential knowledge of Christ. Sacred Scripture

has a special place in this. He says: 'I tell you brothers no calamity can befall us, nothing bad or sad come upon us which so soon as we take up the Sacred Text , will either disappear or be more easily born'. (Col 479)    

Aelred had to have special treatment as a sick man. He suff­ered from gout and gall stones. The latter was relieved by hot baths which he took in great numbers each day. A portion of the sick room he used was partitioned off as an oratory and there he kept his glossed Psalter, the Confessions of St. Augustine and the Gospel of St. John. He asked for these when he was dying saying that they had given him the great­est pleasure.

In these books he found people who had found God. He called' John 'He who knew the secrets' Aelred was intent on such a discovery. 'Experience alone teaches' he said. Not something highly emotional but calm and profound. 'Be still and know that I am God' He calls such moments Visitations.

In-one of his sermons he said: God does not cease to visit us. In prosperity and adversity, through the Scriptures and through the spoken word and through the sacraments, to rouse people and reward them, (AIl Saints I).

'Love is the hearts palate that sees that you are sweet, the heart's eye that sees you are good. and it is the place of receiving you .•• Someone who loves you grasps you.' (Spec. Ch.I)

Aelred's monastery stands now as an empty ruin, maintained from further dilapidation at great expense by the National Trust. It is like Melrose once teeming with monks and full of prayer. Many Years ago an American Cistercian Abbot, staying at Nunraw was taken over to see it. He was very impressed. Nothing like that in America. When he came back

he talked to us in Chapter and said: Our works fail us but the love which we do this is written eternally in the heart of God.

Aelred lives on in his intercession for Nunraw and the Order he loved in the lives of those who find inspiration and encouragement, in his writings.