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William of St. Thierry’s Advent Invitation

William of St. Thierry’s Advent Invitation

Last updated on: December 15, 2025 at 11:47 am by Billy Kangas

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William of St. Thierry’s Advent Invitation 2025-12-15T11:47:59-04:00 Billy Kangas

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In today’s (Monday of the third week of Advent) Office of Readings, the second reading comes from William of St. Thierry, a Cistercian abbot, active in the 12th century and friend of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. The reading comes from his treatise on the nature and dignity of love, one of his earliest and most influential works. I, for one, think it is one of the most concise and brilliant examinations of the economy of love that God invites us freely to have.

I’ve included the text from the Office of Readings below at the bottom of this article, but I wanted to take a moment to draw your attention to a few things in it that I found incredibly compelling. And I do encourage you to take some time this season of Advent to reflect on how God’s love is manifest in the coming of Christ and continues to be a manifestation in Christ’s continual invitation to love—an invitation we are so graciously invited to be a part of.

Salvation not merely external, but participatory

The first thing that I would note is that salvation is not identified here simply as salvation that’s external to the individual. We are called, in fact, to be participants in our salvation because our salvation is not an external, juridical declaration, but an invitation to participation.

“Truly, you alone are the Lord. Your dominion is our salvation, for to serve you is nothing else but to be saved by you.”

So what are we saved from? We’re saved from our inward focus and selfishness, from the patterns of life that bend the universe toward ourselves. Instead, we are saved to the economy of self-giving love that is divine nature from all eternity. Salvation is something offered to us, and what is being offered, in William’s words, is the gift of loving God or being loved by God. There is this mutual economy of love: we are saved into love so that we might love and we might receive love.

God’s loving initiative and our graced response

If we understand our salvation, then his hope is that we understand what the path toward salvation looks like. He emphasizes that the initiative to our salvation is God’s love that comes first. God makes an appeal to human hearts through love, and it is by that love that love within us, by grace, is stirred up.

He taught us to love him first by loving us even to death on the cross.

See Romans 5:8; Galatians 2:20; 1 John 4:10, 19—Scripture’s consistent witness that God is the first mover, the first lover, drawing forth our free response.

Freedom, righteousness, and the refusal of coercion

God loves us because he knows that for true love to be returned it cannot be forced or mandated, but elicited in total freedom. As William states:

“There is no freedom where there is compulsion, and where freedom is lacking, so too is righteousness.”

We cannot become the righteousness of God by being forced into such, because that is not righteousness—it is simply coercion, or even automation. Salvation, then, is the liberty of love under the Lord’s dominion.

The Spirit hovering: creation renewed in us

One of the most beautiful pieces of his reflection is the way that he connects the image from Genesis 1, of the Holy Spirit hovering over the waters, to our own lives. The Holy Spirit hovers, in a way, over our wildness and waste, and God’s Word and power are manifested through him, enabling us to return the love that God so freely offers.

In responding to that love, we actually become what we were created to be. Creation is happening in us as we respond in love. The reciprocity of divine love is, in fact, the purpose of the creation of humanity and our final end, i.e. our teleology.

Total gift: God’s love needs nothing, gives all

This creation—this salvation—is a total gift from God. God does not need our love; his love is defined as a self-gift, requiring nothing and yet giving all. God is not diminished in any way by our failing to love him. But we are glorified, and indeed saved, as we embrace the salvation of service.

By offering our lives under the Lord’s dominion (making his love ruler and guide of our life) we find the true freedom that God made us for.

Office of Readings text

From a discourse On the Contemplation of God by William of Saint Thierry, abbot
(Nn. 9-11; SC 61, 90-96)

He loved us first

Truly you alone are the Lord. Your dominion is our salvation, for to serve you is nothing else but to be saved by you! O Lord, salvation is your gift and your blessing is upon your people; what else is your salvation but receiving from you the gift of loving you or being loved by you? That, Lord, is why you willed that the Son at your right hand, the One whom you made strong for yourself, should be called Jesus, that is to say, Savior, for he will save his people from their sins, and there is no other in whom there is salvation. He taught us to love him by first loving us, even to death on the cross. By loving us and holding us so dear, he stirred us to love him who had first loved us to the end.

And this is clearly the reason: you first loved us so that we might love you—not because you needed our love, but because we could not be what you created us to be, except by loving you.

In many ways and on various occasions you spoke to our fathers through the prophets. Now in these last days you have spoken to us in the Son, your Word; by him the heavens were established and all their powers came to be by the breath of his mouth.

For you to speak thus in your Son was to bring out in the light of day how much and in what way you loved us, for you did not spare your own Son but delivered him up for us all. He also loved us and gave himself up for us.

This, Lord, is your Word to us, this is your all-powerful message: while all things were in midnight silence (that is, were in the depths of error), he came from his royal throne, the stern conqueror of error and the gentle apostle of love.

Everything he did and everything he said on earth, even enduring the insults, the spitting, the buffeting—the cross and the grave—all of this was actually you speaking to us in your Son, appealing to us by your love and stirring up our love for you.

You know that this disposition could not be forced on our hearts, my God, since you created us; it must rather be elicited. And this, for the further reason that there is no freedom where there is compulsion, and where freedom is lacking, so too is righteousness.

You wanted us to love you, then, we who could not with justice have been saved had we not loved you, nor could we have loved you except by your gift. So, Lord, as the apostle of your love tells us, and as we have already said, you first loved us: you are first to love all those who love you.

Thus we hold you dear by the affection you have implanted in us. You are the one supremely good and ultimate goodness. Your love is your goodness, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son! From the beginning of creation it was he who hovered over the waters—that is, over the wavering minds of us all, offering himself to all, drawing all things to himself. By his inspiration and holy breath, by keeping us from harm and providing for our needs, he unites God to us and us to God.

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