One of the most remarkable saints of the past, Aelred of Rievaulx (1100-1167), served as the abbot of a thriving monastery in Yorkshire, northern England in the twelfth century.

When Aelred joined the community in 1134, Rievaulx had only a handful of men. He was elected abbot in 1147 and when he died in 1167, the community had grown to 650 monks and brothers. To obtain the Lord’s help in his service and to remind himself of the qualities he needed as a pastor, he wrote the following prayer.

“You know my heart, Lord, and that whatsoever you have given to me, your servant, I desire to offer wholly to my community and to consume it all in their service. . . . My senses and my speech, my leisure and my labor, my acts and my thoughts, my good fortune and bad, my health and sickness, my life and death, all my stock in the world, may it by used up in the interest of those for whom you did not refuse to be consumed yourself. Grant to me, Lord, by your indescribable grace to bear their infirmities with patient, tender, helpful compassion.

May I learn by the teaching of your Spirit to console the sorrowful, to strengthen the faint-hearted, to put the fallen on their feet, to calm the restless, to cherish the sick, conforming myself to each one’s character and capacity. And because of the weakness of my flesh and the cowardice and evil of my heart, I can do little or nothing to build them up, please grant that my humble service, my love, my patience, and my compassion may make up for my flaws. May my words and teaching enlighten them, and may my prayers be always their support.

You know, Lord, how much I love them and how my heart goes out to them in the most tender affection, and that I yearn rather to help them in charity than to govern them. Grant to me, Lord, that you will keep your eyes on them day and night. Tenderly expand your wings to protect them. Extend your holy right hand to bless them. Pour into their hearts your Holy Spirit, who will stand by them while they pray in order to refresh them with repentance, to stimulate them with hope, to make them humble with reverence, and to enflame them with love. May he, the kind Consoler, strengthen them in temptation and help their weakness in all the troubles and suffering of this life.”

Aelred behaved as he prayed he would. He tempered the harshness of his monks’ routines by encouraging them to develop relationships and allowing them to express signs of affection, like hugs. Unlike other medieval abbots, who discharged monks for minor infractions of the rule, Aelred did not dismiss a single monk in his twenty years as abbot. He governed with kindness, not laxity, and always found a way to help a troubled or troublesome brother. He regarded Rievaulx as a “community of love” and described it in a letter to his sister:  He once wrote: “As I was walking round the cloisters, all the brothers sat together . . . and in the whole of that throng I could not find one whom I did not love, and by whom I was not loved.”

All who have any care for others—parents, teachers, lay leaders of ministries, priests, and bishops—would do well to reflect on and imitate the behaviors of this twelfth-century pastor. We could begin by regularly praying with expectant faith his ever green pastoral prayer.