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Please note:听This script may not exactly reflect the transmission. It may include editorial notes prepared by the producer, and minor spelling and other errors.

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Good morning and welcome to this Sunday Worship with me Fr Andrew Martlew.

Three miles north of the ancient market town of Helmsley, hidden at the bottom of a steep-sided valley, sit the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey. The soaring, honey-coloured church walls in this small, tranquil valley contrast with the dark woods on either side.听 The church now is open to the elements 鈥� roof and windows gone since Henry VIII ordered the abbey鈥檚 dissolution, but the three outer walls of the chancel, where I鈥檓 standing and where day and night the monks worshipped, still soar some 60ft into the heavens. 听Beside the church are the low walls, the ruins of the places where monks and lay brothers lived the rest of their daily routines following the Rule of St Benedict 鈥� where they worked, studied, ate, slept, were nursed and died. 听I鈥檝e been here many times over many years, and I鈥檝e always found it a very easy place to pray

Lord our God,

you give us places of beauty to renew our souls,

and the saints of your Church to inspire us;

may the light of past days strengthen our present faith

and the insights of the past offer us new ideas in our present days.

In Jesus鈥� name we pray.听 Amen

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听I first came to Rievaulx as a child with my parents 鈥� a very long time ago.听 Some years later, I stayed here on retreat, in a small cottage whose garden gate opens into the abbey, and in the quiet of the evenings, when all the visitors had gone, I seemed to hear the plainsong chants of the choir monks echoing through the old church.

Music 鈥� Veni Creator 鈥� The Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz

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900 years ago Rievaulx Abbey was busy 鈥� not with passing visitors like today but with a growing Cistercian community whose Abbot, Aelred, would come to write a lovely, difficult, treatise on spiritual friendship 鈥� and, yes, 鈥渓ovely鈥� is the right word, I think.

With me today, as the abbey ruins fill with visitors, is Dr Michael Carter, Senior Historian with English Heritage who look after this site today.

路听听听听听听 Interview with Dr Michael Carter

Music 鈥� Symphony of Psalms (Stravinsky) and Salve Regina (Hermann Contractus)

Reader:

We have said that love is the source of friendship, not love of any sort whatever, but that which proceeds from reason and affection simultaneously, which, indeed, is pure because of reason and sweet because of affection. Then we said that a foundation of friendship should be laid in the love of God, to which all things which are proposed should be referred, and these ought to be examined as to whether they conform to the foundation or are at variance with it.

Revd Andrew Martlew:

Abbot Aelred鈥檚 own words about the beginning and end of significant relationships. They鈥檙e not easy words, any more than Aelred was an easy character.听 He was described by his biographer as having 鈥渙bstinate kindness鈥�; a man who upset people, and his writings on friendship are far from easy for modern readers.听 Sometimes they are so practical 鈥� even hard-nosed 鈥� and at other times lyrical and sublime.听 When he writes about friendship he starts from the premise that we need help to do good 鈥� but no help to do evil and the Doctrine of Original Sin is very much in the background of his thinking.听 He gives us a formal, rational route into friendship 鈥� a systematic approach to the deepest possible relationship between two people.听 He was writing at the beginning of the 12th century for a community of monks, but I suggest his words still speak to anyone and everyone today who is beginning to move into a significant relationship.

Reader:

We have said that love is the source of friendship, not love of any sort whatever, but that which proceeds from reason and affection simultaneously, which, indeed, is pure because of reason and sweet because of affection. Then we said that a foundation of friendship should be laid in the love of God, to which all things which are proposed should be referred, and these ought to be examined as to whether they conform to the foundation or are at variance with it.听 Then we thought that one should pay attention to the four steps which lead up to the heights of perfect

friendship; for a friend ought 铿乺st to be selected, next tested, then 铿乶ally admitted, and from then on treated as a friend deserves. And speaking of selection, we excluded the quarrelsome, the irascible, the 铿乧kle, the suspicious, and the loquacious; and yet not all, but only those who are unable or unwilling to regulate or restrain these passions.听

Revd Andrew Martlew:

For him friendship is the supreme human relationship 鈥� indeed true friendship can only exist where Christ is present, a partner in the relationship.听 It鈥檚 an anticipation of our relationships in heaven, and will only come to its perfect fulfilment in heaven.

Music 鈥� Beati Quorum Via (Stanford)

For Aelred, friendship is a much more significant and deeper relationship than love.听 We are called by Christ to love our enemies, to love our neighbours, to love everyone, including ourselves.听 But true friendship is a rare, maybe once in a lifetime experience. Friendship requires love, comes from and with love, and is mingled inexorably and inevitably with the love of God, but is more than love.听 True, once-in-a-lifetime friendship has passed beyond the physical, has passed through the spiritual, and is a mystical relationship of two people and God-in-Christ.听

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Whenever I read Aelred on friendship I hear echoing in the background the words of St Paul on love. It鈥檚 a passage that Aelred quotes and refers to and it鈥檚 so well known that I fear we can hear it and forget it just because we鈥榲e heard it so often before.听 So we鈥檙e now going to hear 1 Corinthians 13 in the J B Phillips version which was new and exciting when it was first published, and may now be less familiar, which is why I鈥檝e chosen it

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Reader:

If I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal. If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that absolute faith which can move mountains, but have no love, I amount to nothing at all. If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing.

4 This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience鈥攊t looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.

5-6听Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.

7-8a听Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.

8b-10听For if there are prophecies they will be fulfilled and done with, if there are 鈥渢ongues鈥� the need for them will disappear, if there is knowledge it will be swallowed up in truth. For our knowledge is always incomplete and our prophecy is always incomplete, and when the complete comes, that is the end of the incomplete.

11听When I was a little child I talked and felt and thought like a little child. Now that I am a man my childish speech and feeling and thought have no further significance for me.

12听At present we are men looking at puzzling reflections in a mirror. The time will come when we shall see reality whole and face to face! At present all I know is a little fraction of the truth, but the time will come when I shall know it as fully as God now knows me!

13听In this life we have three great lasting qualities鈥攆aith, hope and love. But the greatest of them is love.

Music 鈥� How deep the Father鈥檚 Love

Revd Andrew Martlew:

Aelred practiced what he preached.听 During his lifetime he had two or maybe three close friends, special friends.

One was a young monk called Simon.听 Here is Aelred, writing about him in one of his early works, The Mirror of Charity.听 Again I struggle with this language.听 For him, friendship transcends love.听 For me I would unthinkingly use those words the other way round, but when I do stop and think, maybe there is wisdom in his language.听 And stopping and thinking is often a very good thing.

Aelred is writing after his friend Simon has died.听

(Music under: Alma Redemptoris Mater 鈥� Sarum Rite)

Reader:

See how I, who began to grieve, have found reason to rejoice. Clearly I have found reason, but in you, my beloved brother, not in myself. Do not weep for me, Jesus said, but for yourselves and for your children. For you, beloved brother, for you I rejoice, but for myself I feel keen sorrow. For you one should rejoice, yet I should be wept over, because I can live without Simon. What a marvel that I be said to be alive, when such a great part of my life, so sweet a solace for my pilgrimage, so unique an alleviation for my misery, has been taken away from me. It is as if my body had been eviscerated and my hapless soul rent to pieces. And am I said to be alive?

Revd Andrew Martlew:

For me, his expression of grief is quite heart-rending.听 It鈥檚 the grief of anyone and everyone who has lost the person they loved most dearly in life, it comes from the heart of Aelred鈥檚 Christian faith and from the depths of his soul 鈥� but just hear these few words chosen from pages of pain, and really understand what friendship meant to Aelred, and what Aelred can say today to all who have lost the person closest to them, whatever label we put on that relationship.

Reader:

O wretched life, O grievous life, a life without Simon! The patriarch Jacob wept for his son; Joseph wept for his father; holy David wept for his dearest Jonathan. Simon, alone, was all these to me: a son in age, a father in holiness, a friend in charity. Weep, then, poor fellow, for your dearest father, weep for your most loving son, weep for your gentlest friend.

Let waterfalls burst from your wretched forehead; let your eyes shed tears day and night. Weep, I say, not because he was taken up, but because you were left. Who will allow me to die with you, my father, my brother, my son?

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Music 鈥� Lead kindly Light

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[At St Hilda鈥檚 Priory]

Revd Andrew Martlew:

In its heyday, Rievaulx was a northern spiritual powerhouse.听

But now we鈥檝e left the wooded valley on the southern boundary of the North Yorks Moors and travelled 35 miles to the coast, to Whitby and St Hilda鈥檚 Priory, home of the Order of the Holy Paraclete.听 To a brand new building, I鈥檓 sitting in the garden with Sister Janet Elizabeth.

Interview with Sister Janet Elizabeth

Music 鈥� Baba Yetu 鈥� St Monica鈥檚 Catholic Choir

We鈥檝e moved again, this time to the chapel, the heart of this community and the place of regular daily worship.听 The chapel is very plain and simple.听 Not big but still spacious, A modern altar table, a small wooden lectern and clear glass in the windows.听 And above me a lantern鈥� It鈥檚 another place where it seems very easy to pray.

JE: Teach us, good Lord,
to serve you as you deserve,
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labour and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do your will.
Amen.

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A: Hear our prayer, merciful Lord, for all those who today are living in any kind of danger 鈥� from poverty, warfare, threats or prejudice.听

JE: Hear our prayer, merciful Father, for all who today are beginning a new relationship.听 And for those who today will lose someone they love, that your love may strengthen and hold them and bring them peace.听 Lord, hear us.

A: Lord, graciously hear us.

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JE & A: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name;

thy kingdom come;
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;

but deliver us from evil,

for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.听 Amen

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A: May I offer a prayer of Aelred 鈥� a prayer for anyone and everyone who knows how much they want to love the Lord Jesus, and how often they 鈥� I 鈥� fall short.

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Lord Jesus, let my soul grow wings in the nest of your discipline.

Let it rest in the clefts of the rock, in the hollow of the wall.

Let my soul meanwhile embrace you crucified and take a draught of your precious blood.

Let this sweet meditation meanwhile fill my memory, lest forgetfulness wholly darken it.

Let me meanwhile judge that I know nothing but my Lord, and him crucified, lest empty error lure my knowledge from the firm ground of faith.

May your wondrous love claim all my love for itself, lest worldly self-centeredness engulf it.

Amen

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Music听听听听听听听听听听 Alma Redemptoris Mater (Hildegard of Bingen)

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May God,

who kindled the fire of his love in the hearts of the saints,
pour upon us the riches of his grace.

May he give us joy in the fellowship of the saints in heaven and our friends on earth,
May he strengthen us to follow the Saints in the way of holiness
so that we come to the full radiance of their glory

and the fullness of the love of our heavenly Father.

And may the blessing of God almighty,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
be with us and remain with us and all those we love, in this world and the world to come.听 Amen.

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