January 12
The saints and feasts remembered on January 12, each with a short life, a Bible passage and a prayer.
Saint Aelred of Rievaulx
Cistercian abbot who wrote about friendship as a path to God
Aelred was born around 1110 in Hexham, in the north of England, the son of a priest. As a young man he served at the court of King David I of Scotland, where he rose to be the royal steward. Around 1134, while travelling on the king's business, he visited the new Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx in Yorkshire and decided to stay.
He became novice master, then abbot of Revesby, and in 1147 abbot of Rievaulx, which he led until his death on 12 January 1167. Under him the community grew to hundreds of monks and lay brothers. His biographer, the monk Walter Daniel, remembered that he welcomed the weak and troubled whom others might turn away. In his last years, worn by painful illness, he still received his monks around his bed.
Christians still read his books, especially Spiritual Friendship, in which he argued that true friendship, rooted in Christ, can lead people closer to God.
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because everything I have learned from My Father I have made known to you.
John 15:13–15 · BSB
A prayer
Faithful God, you gave your servant Aelred a gentle heart, and through his friendships and his care for his brothers you showed your own love. Teach us to be true friends, patient with the weak and honest with one another, so that our love for others may draw us closer to you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saint Benedict Biscop
Built two monasteries in northern England and filled them with books
Benedict Biscop was born around 628 into a noble family in Northumbria, in the north of England, and served at the court of King Oswiu. At about twenty-five he gave up that career and set off for Rome, a journey he would make several more times. Between trips he became a monk at Lérins, an island monastery off the south coast of France.
Back home, he founded a monastery at Wearmouth in 674 and a sister house at Jarrow a few years later. He brought stonemasons and glassmakers from Gaul to build them, and returned from his travels with paintings, a teacher of church music and, above all, books. Paralysed in his last years, he urged his monks to keep the library together and not let it be scattered. He died around 690.
That library helped shape a boy who entered Wearmouth at seven: Bede, later England’s great early historian, who wrote Benedict’s life. Christians remember Benedict for bringing learning and beauty to a remote corner of the world.
Then He told them, “For this reason, every scribe who has been discipled in the kingdom of heaven is like a homeowner who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”
Matthew 13:52 · BSB
A prayer
God of wisdom, you led Benedict Biscop to leave a life of privilege and to gather books, art and teachers so that others might come to know you. Give us a love of learning that serves your truth, and the generosity to pass on what we have received to those who come after us. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The lives are written with AI help from public-domain histories and checked before publishing; the prayers are ours. Bible quotations are from the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), in the public domain. How we write.