Let us adore the Lord, the King who is to come.
Year: A(II). Psalm week: 3. Liturgical Colour: Violet.
About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:
Second Reading: William of St Thierry (c.1080 - 1148)
William was born in Liège (in modern Belgium) around 1080. Together with his brother, Simon, he became a Benedictine monk, and he was elected Abbot of the monastery of St Thierry, overlooking Rheims (now in France) in 1119. By then he has already met the great contemplative and reformer St Bernard of Clairvaux, and he longed to become a Cistercian like him and devote himself to the contemplative life; but Bernard told him to keep to his responsibility as an abbot and take care of his community.
He was instrumental in organizing the General Chapters of 1131-32, at which the Benedictines of his diocese adopted many of the Cistercian reforms. (The tension between ‘too comfortable’ and ‘too tough’ is a thread that runs all the way through the history of monasticism).
Finally, in 1135, William got his wish and, resigning his abbacy, became a monk of the newly-founded Cistercian house at Signy, also in the diocese of Rheims. There he prayed, studied, and wrote. He died on 8 September 1148.
William wrote on the contemplation of God and on the nature of love. He made a special study of the Song of Songs.
Liturgical colour: violet
Violet is a dark colour, ‘the gloomy cast of the mortified, denoting affliction and melancholy’. Liturgically, it is the colour of Advent and Lent, the seasons of penance and preparation.