On Contemplating God, Prayer, Meditations

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. It is in the Meditations that the reader becomes acutely aware of the difficult personal struggle which had overtaken Abbott William and which would lead him to resign his office and to enter the more austere and contemplative life of the Cistercians.