He loved us first

Treasures of Our Faith with Deacon Richard Vehige

On Monday of the Third Week of Advent our Church invites us to first read and reflect on a passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah (30: 18-26) entitled “The promise of future happiness”. Our treasure, which follows, is from a discourse On the Contemplation of God by William of Saint Thierry, abbot.

William of Saint Thierry was a theologian and mystic, and so called from the monastery of which he was abbot. He was born at Liège about 1085. William came of a noble family, and made his studies at the Benedictine Monastery of Saint Nicaise at Reims, together with his brother Simon. Here both embraced the religious life, and were raised to the abbatial dignity. Prior to this William had known St. Bernard, and had formed with him a close intimacy, which lasted for life. His greatest desire was to live with the saint at Clairvaux, but the latter disapproved of the plan and imposed on him the duty of remaining in charge of the souls which Providence had confided to him. However after having assisted at St-Médard near Soissons at the first general chapter of the Benedictines, where he suggested wise regulations, William, on the pleas of long infirmities and more and more attracted to a life of retirement, resigned his dignity as abbot, and withdrew to the Cistercian abbey at Sign; he did not venture to retire to Clairvaux lest his friend Bernard would refuse to accept his abdication. Here, amid almost constant suffering, he divided his free time between prayer and study. He died at Signy about 1148.

ON CONTEMPLATING GOD, PRAYER, and MEDITATIONS were written while William was abbot of the benedictine monastery of Saint Thierry, within sight of the royal city of Rheims. The works reflect his deepening spiritual life, and the impatience and the hope, the frustrations and the joys he met.

Isaiah, one of the greatest of the prophets, appeared at a critical moment in Israel’s history. The Northern Kingdom collapsed, under the hammerlike blows of Assyria, in 722/721 B.C., and in 701 Jerusalem itself saw the army of Sennacherib drawn up before its walls. In the year that Uzziah, king of Judah, died, Isaiah received his call to the prophetic office in the Temple of Jerusalem. Close attention should be given to chapter six, where this divine summons to be the ambassador of the Most High is circumstantially described.

The vision of the Lord enthroned in glory stamps an indelible character on Isaiah’s ministry and provides a key to the understanding of his message. The majesty, holiness and glory of the Lord took possession of his spirit and, at the same time, he gained a new awareness of human pettiness and sinfulness. The enormous abyss between God’s sovereign holiness and human sinfulness overwhelmed the prophet. Only the purifying coal of the seraphim could cleanse his lips and prepare him for acceptance of the call: “Here I am, send me!”

The ministry of Isaiah extended from the death of Uzziah in 742 B.C. to Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C., and it may have continued even longer, until after the death of Hezekiah in 687 B.C. Later legend (the Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah) claims that Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh, executed Isaiah by having him sawed in two. During this long ministry, the prophet returned again and again to the same themes, and there are indications that he may have sometimes re-edited his older prophecies to fit new occasions.