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Office Of Readings | Advent Monday Week 3 | A Reading From The Treatise By William Of Saint-Thierry On Contemplating God | He Loved Us First
‘He loved us first.’
William of Saint-Thierry reflects on salvation not as something we achieve, but as something we receive. From the beginning, he insists that God’s dominion is not oppressive power but saving love. To belong to God is already to be rescued, because serving God means being held within God’s care.
At the heart of this reading is a single conviction: love begins with God. God does not wait for human beings to reach out first. God loves, and that love awakens our ability to respond. William is careful to say that God does not need our love. Rather, we need to love God in order to become what we were created to be. Love is not an optional extra in the Christian life; it is the condition of our healing and fulfilment.
William places Christ at the centre of this revelation. The Son is called Jesus, ‘saviour’, because in Jesus God’s love takes visible and concrete form. Christ teaches love not primarily by instruction, but by example. His life, his suffering, and his death are all expressions of God’s appeal to the human heart. Everything Christ does and endures is described as God speaking to us, drawing us out of fear and error and into love.
A key theme in the reading is freedom. William stresses that love cannot be forced. God does not compel obedience, because compulsion would destroy both freedom and righteousness. Instead, God attracts. Love is ‘elicited’, gently drawn forth, because only a free response can be real love. Salvation, therefore, respects human freedom while healing it.
Finally, William turns to the Holy Spirit, whom he identifies as God’s living love at work in the world. The Spirit hovers over human instability, draws scattered hearts together, protects, sustains, and unites. Through the Spirit, God binds humanity to himself and restores the bond broken by sin. The Christian life, then, is a life lived within a prior love, sustained by a love that comes before every effort and remains after every failure.
A Reading From The Treatise By William Of Saint-Thierry On Contemplating God | 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 man whom you made strong for yourself, should be called Jesus, that is to say, Saviour, 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 men’s hearts, my God, since you created them; 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 men – 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.
Christian Prayer With Jesus
Lord God,
you loved us before we could love you.
You sought us when we were lost
and spoke to us through your Son.
Teach us to receive your love freely
and to respond without fear or compulsion.
May your Spirit draw our restless hearts
into unity with you,
so that loving you,
we may become what you created us to be.
Amen.
Glossary Of Christian Terms
William Of Saint-Thierry – A Twelfth-Century Monk And Theologian, Closely Associated With The Cistercian Tradition And With Saint Bernard Of Clairvaux.
Salvation – Not Merely Rescue From Sin, But Restoration To Life With God Through Love.
Jesus – The Name Meaning ‘Saviour’, Revealing Christ’s Mission To Heal And Redeem.
Freedom – The God-Given Capacity To Love And Respond Without Compulsion.
The Word – Christ, Through Whom God Fully Reveals Himself.
The Holy Spirit – God’s Living Love, Drawing Humanity Into Communion With The Father And The Son.
‘He Loved Us First’ – A Phrase Expressing That All Human Love For God Is A Response To God’s Prior Love.
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