Bernard of Clairvaux

“Both meditated iniquity, affecting height: the one, of power; the other, of knowledge. For the foolish woman believed him who promised, but who was deceiving: "You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Had he not already first deceived himself, he who had persuaded himself that he would be like the Most High? For he who thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, deceives himself.”

“See for yourself if those three commands are not prescribed in the law when God says: "You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul and your whole strength." It seems to me, if no more suitable meaning for this triple distinction comes to mind, that the love of the heart relates to a certain warmth of affection, the love of the soul to energy or judgment of reason, and the love of strength can refer to constancy and vigor of spirit. So love the Lord your God with the full and deep affection of your heart, love him with your mind wholly awake and discreet, love him with all your strength, so much so that you would not even fear to die for love of him. Your affection for your Lord Jesus should be both tender and intimate, to oppose the sweet enticements of sensual life. Sweetness conquers sweetness as one nail drives out another. No less than this keep him as a strong light for your mind and a guide for your intellect, not only to avoid the deceits of heresy and to preserve the purity of your faith from their seductions, but also that you might carefully avoid an indiscreet and excessive vehemence in your conversation. Let your love be strong and constant, neither yielding to fear nor cowering at hard work. Let us love affectionately, discreetly, intensely. We know that the love of the heart, which we have said is affectionate, is sweet indeed, but liable to be led astray if it lacks the love of the soul. And the love of the soul is wise indeed, but fragile without that love which is called the love of strength. So then, to love with your whole heart, your whole soul and your whole strength means not being led astray by allurements, or seduced by lies, or broken by injuries.”

“You do not wish to be content with the common life. The regular fast is not enough for you, nor the appointed vigils, nor the imposed discipline, nor the measure which we apportion to you in clothing and food; you prefer private practices to the common ones. You who once entrusted the care of yourselves to us—why do you again interfere with yourselves? For that own will of yours, with which, as your consciences bear witness, you have so many times offended God—behold, now again you have it as your teacher, not me. She teaches you not to spare nature, not to yield to reason, not to comply with the counsel or example of your elders, not to obey us. Or do you not know that "obedience is better than sacrifices"? Have you not read in your Rule that whatever is done without the will or consent of the spiritual father will be reckoned to vainglory, not to merit?”

“And let no one trouble me, saying that I ought not to be so affected; since the kindly Samuel over a reprobate king (1 Sam. 16:1), and the pious David over a parricide son, satisfied their affection, and not to the injury of faith, not in reproach of the judgment on high. Absalom my son, Absalom my son, said the holy David (2 Sam. 18:33): and behold, more than Absalom is here. The Savior also, seeing the city of Jerusalem, and foreseeing its ruin, wept over it (Lk. 19:41). And shall I not feel my own present desolation? Shall I not grieve over my fresh and grievous wound? He wept in compassion, and shall I not dare to weep in suffering? And surely at the tomb of Lazarus he neither rebuked those who wept, nor forbade weeping; moreover he wept with those who wept: And Jesus wept, it says (Jn. 11:35). Those tears were witnesses indeed of nature, not signs of distrust. Finally, the dead man also came forth soon at the voice of him who wept, lest you should think at once that the feeling of one who grieves is a prejudice against faith.”

“The love of God begets the love of the soul, and his preceding intention makes the soul intent, and his solicitude makes it solicitous. For I know not by what closeness of nature, once the soul shall have been able to behold the glory of God with face unveiled, it is necessary that it soon be conformed to it and transformed into the same image. Therefore, as you shall have prepared yourself for God, so it is necessary that God appear to you. "With the holy he will be holy, and with the innocent man he will be innocent." Why not equally with one who loves, a lover; and with one who is at leisure, at leisure; and with one who is intent, intent; and solicitous with one who is solicitous?”

“And so through the greatness which it retains even when uprightness is lost, man passes through as an image, limping as it were on one foot, and become an alien son. For of such I believe it was said: "The alien sons have lied to me, the alien sons have grown old, and they have limped from their paths." Fittingly they are called alien sons: for sons, on account of the greatness they have retained; aliens, on account of the uprightness they have lost. Nor would he have said "they limped," but rather "they fell," or something similar, if men had entirely put off the image.”

“Nor do I say this so that we should be without affection, and with a dry heart move only our hands to works. I have read among the other great and grievous evils of men which the Apostle writes, this also numbered: namely to be without affection (Rom 1:31). But there is an affection which the flesh begets; and there is one which reason rules; and there is one which wisdom seasons. The first is that which the Apostle says is not subject to the law of God, nor can it be (Rom 8:7); the second is that which he affirms on the other hand to be consenting to the law of God, because it is good (Rom 7:16); nor is there any doubt that the contentious and the consenting differ from each other. But the third is far distant from both, which both tastes and savors that the Lord is sweet (Ps 34:8), eliminating the first and rewarding the second. For the first indeed is sweet, but base; the second is dry, but strong; the last is rich, and sweet.”

“And thence that lamentable voice from the psalm belongs to the wretched man bending himself down and brooding over the things that are upon the earth: "I am made wretched and bowed down utterly; all the day long I went about in sadness." In himself indeed he experiences the truth of that sentence of the Wise Man: "God made man upright, but he has entangled himself in many sorrows." And immediately the voice of mockery comes to him: "Bow down, that we may pass over."”

“A soul entangled in many sins can prepare for itself a certain ointment once it begins to reflect on its behavior, and collects its many and manifold sins, hems them together and crushes them in the mortar of its conscience. It cooks them, as it were, within a breast that boils up like a pot over the fire of repentance and sorrow, so that it can exclaim with the Prophet: "My heart became hot within me. As I mused the fire burned." Here then is one ointment which the sinful soul should provide at the beginning of its conversion and apply to its still smarting wounds, for the first sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit.”

“The soul is great in that it is capable of eternal things, and upright in that it desires heavenly things: the soul which does not seek or savor the things that are above, but the things that are upon the earth, is plainly not upright, but crooked, even though on account of this it does not cease to be great, remaining as it does even so capable of eternity. For it will never at any time not be capable of eternity, even if it never shall have been actually possessing it, so that it may be as it is written: "Surely man passes through as an image"; yet only in part, so that the eminence of the Word may be apparent from its very wholeness. For in what respect could the Word fall from being great or upright, since it so possesses these things that it is what it has? Or it is in part for this reason: lest, if the soul were deprived of the whole, no hope of salvation would remain. For if it should cease to be great, it would also cease to be capable. For the greatness of the soul, as I said, is estimated from its capacity. But what could it hope for, of which it were not capable? And so through the greatness which it retains even when uprightness is lost, man passes through as an image, limping as it were on one foot, and become an alien son. For of such I believe it was said: "The alien sons have lied to me, the alien sons have grown old, and they have limped from their paths." Fittingly they are called alien sons: for sons, on account of the greatness they have retained; aliens, on account of the uprightness they have lost. Nor would he have said "they limped," but rather "they fell," or something similar, if men had entirely put off the image. But as things stand, according to greatness indeed man passes through as an image; but as far as uprightness is concerned, as one limping, he is troubled and cast down from the image, Scripture speaking thus: "Surely man passes through as an image; but indeed he is troubled in vain." In vain altogether: for it follows: "He heaps up treasure, and knows not for whom he gathers it." Why does he not know, unless because, bending himself down to these lowest and earthly things, he heaps up earth for himself? Assuredly he does not know, concerning those things which he commits to the earth, for whom he gathers them: whether for the moth that destroys, or for the thief that digs through; for the enemy that plunders, or for the fire that devours.”

“For the favor of the kiss bears with it a twofold gift, the light of knowledge and the fervor of devotion. He is in truth the Spirit of wisdom and insight, who, like the bee carrying its burden of wax and honey, is fully equipped with the power both of kindling the light of knowledge and infusing the delicious nurture of grace. Two kinds of people therefore may not consider themselves to have been gifted with the kiss, those who know the truth without loving it, and those who love it without understanding it; from which we conclude that this kiss leaves room neither for ignorance nor for lukewarmness. So therefore, let the bride about to receive the twofold grace of this most holy kiss set her two lips in readiness, her reason for the gift of insight, her will for that of wisdom, so that overflowing with joy in the fullness of this kiss, she may be privileged to hear the words: "Your lips are moist with grace, for God has blessed you forever."”

“But we have witness too from the Father, how lovingly and how courteously he gives her the name of daughter, and nevertheless invites her as his daughter-in-law to the sweet caresses of his Son: "Listen, daughter, pay careful attention: forget your nation and your ancestral home, then the king will fall in love with your beauty." See then from whom this bride demands a kiss. O soul called to holiness, make sure that your attitude is respectful, for he is the Lord your God, who perhaps ought not to be kissed, but rather adored with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.”

“But we have witness too from the Father, how lovingly and how courteously he gives her the name of daughter, and nevertheless invites her as his daughter-in-law to the sweet caresses of his Son: "Listen, daughter, pay careful attention: forget your nation and your ancestral home, then the king will fall in love with your beauty." See then from whom this bride demands a kiss. O soul called to holiness, make sure that your attitude is respectful, for he is the Lord your God, who perhaps ought not to be kissed, but rather adored with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.”

“For this ointment is made from the gifts of God bestowed on the human race. Happy the man who makes it his business to gather these carefully for himself and keep them in mind with due thanksgiving. When they shall have been pounded and refined in the heart's receptacle with the pestle of frequent meditation, all of them fused together in the fire of holy desire, and finally enriched with the oil of gladness, you will have an ointment more excellent than the former, and far more precious. Enough proof can be found in the words of him who said: "Whoever makes thanksgiving his sacrifice honors me." No one doubts that the recalling of favors is an incentive to praise. Furthermore, since the only thing that Scripture says of the former ointment is that God does not despise it, it follows that the second one, which especially glorifies him, is the more highly commended. Therefore the former is applied to the feet, the latter to the head. St Paul says: "God is the head of Christ," so in speaking of Christ we may understand the head as referring to his divinity, and it is beyond doubt that he who offers thanks anoints the head, because he makes contact with God, not man. I do not mean that he who is God is not also man, for the one Christ is both God and man; I mean that all things which are good, even those of which man is the agent, really come from God rather than man. "It is the spirit," we are told, "that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer." Hence there is a curse on the man who puts his trust in man, for although our whole hope rightly depends on God made man, it is not because he is man but because he is God. Therefore the first ointment is applied to the feet, the second to the head, because the humiliation of a broken heart fittingly corresponds to the lowliness of the flesh, and honor is owed to majesty. See then what an ointment I have been describing for you, with which he before whom even the Principalities stand in awe, does not disdain to be anointed on the head. Rather does he regard it as a matter of signal honor, for he says: "Whoever makes thanksgiving his sacrifice honors me."”

“A soul entangled in many sins can prepare for itself a certain ointment once it begins to reflect on its behavior, and collects its many and manifold sins, hems them together and crushes them in the mortar of its conscience. It cooks them, as it were, within a breast that boils up like a pot over the fire of repentance and sorrow. Here then is one ointment which the sinful soul should provide at the beginning of its conversion and apply to its still smarting wounds, for the first sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit. And even though the sinner be poor and in want, devoid of the means to compound a better and more precious ointment, let him make sure in the meantime to prepare at least this one, no matter how degenerate the materials, because God will not scorn this crushed and broken heart. The more despicable he believes his offering to be because of his consciousness of sin, the more acceptable it will appear to God.”

“Rejoice then, you penitents; do not be afraid, you fainthearted ones. I am speaking to those of you who have recently come to us from the world, who have renounced your sinful ways and are inevitably gripped by the bitterness and confusion of the repentant soul that, like the pain of fresh wounds, torment and distract beyond bearing. Safely may your hands drip with the bitterness of myrrh in the course of this salutary anointing, because God will not scorn this crushed and broken spirit. This kind of anointing, that not only inspires men to amend their lives but even makes the angels dance for joy, must not be easily spurned nor cheaply priced.”

“You have indeed concerning him who is the image, that "being in the form of God, he did not consider it robbery to be equal with God." Where certainly both his rectitude in the form of God, and his majesty in the equality, are indicated to you: so that when rectitude is compared to rectitude, and greatness to greatness, that which is to the image and the image may appear to correspond to each other harmoniously on both sides; just as the image also no less corresponds in both respects to him whose image it is. For he is the one of whom you have heard holy David singing in the psalms, now indeed: "Great is our Lord, and great is his power"; and now: "The Lord our God is upright, and there is no iniquity in him." From this upright and great God, his image has it that it too is upright and great: the soul has it, which is to the image.”

“No one is saved without knowledge of himself, from which indeed the mother of salvation, humility, arises, and the fear of the Lord, which itself, just as it is the beginning of wisdom, so also is the beginning of salvation. No one, I say, is saved without that knowledge, who yet has the age and faculty of knowing. This I say on account of little children and the mentally deficient, whose case is different. What if you are ignorant of God? Can there be hope of salvation with ignorance of God? Not even this. For you can neither love one whom you do not know, nor possess one whom you have not loved. Know yourself therefore, that you may fear God; know him, that you may likewise appease him. In the one you are initiated into wisdom, in the other you are also brought to perfection, because the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and the fullness of the law is love. Both ignorances therefore must be guarded against by you, just as without the fear and love of God salvation cannot exist. The rest are indifferent, having neither salvation if they are known, nor damnation if they are not known.”

“But shall the hope of so great a joy be without joy? Rejoicing in hope, says the Apostle. And David said not that he would rejoice but that he had rejoiced, because he hoped he would go into the house of the Lord. He did not yet hold life, but he had assuredly reaped the hope of life; and he was experiencing in himself the truth of the Scripture that testifies that not only the reward but the very expectation of the just is joy.”

“Whoever among you therefore, after those bitter and tearful beginnings of his conversion, rejoices that he has breathed again into hope and, lifted up on the wings of grace, has flown forth into a certain serenity of heavenly consolation; he indeed already reaps, receiving the temporal fruit of his tears; and he himself has seen God and has heard the voice of him who says: Give to her from the fruits of her hands. For how has he not seen God, who has tasted and seen that the Lord is sweet? How sweet and gentle you were felt to be, Lord Jesus, by him to whom not only were his sins forgiven by you, but also the gift of holiness was granted; and not that alone, but moreover the promise of eternal life was added to the heap of good things! Happy is he who has already reaped so much, having in the meantime indeed his fruit in sanctification, but the end eternal life! Rightly he who wept upon finding himself rejoiced upon seeing the Lord; at whose merciful regard he has already lifted up such great sheaves: remission, sanctification, hope of life. O how true is the word that is read in the Prophet: They that sow in tears shall reap in exultation. Where both kinds of knowledge are briefly comprehended: the knowledge of ourselves indeed sowing in tears; but the knowledge of God reaping in joy.”

“Good works are the seeds, good pursuits are the seeds; tears are the seeds. They went, he says, and wept, casting their seeds. But what? Shall they weep forever? Far from it! But they shall come with exultation, carrying their sheaves. Rightly with exultation, when they carry back the sheaves of glory. This, you say, will be at the resurrection on the last day, and the waiting is too long. Do not be broken in spirit, do not fail from faintheartedness of spirit; you have in the meantime from the first fruits of the Spirit what you may reap in exultation for the present. Sow, he says, for yourselves unto justice, reap the hope of life. He does not send you now to the last day, when the thing will already be in reality and not in hope; but he speaks of the present. Truly great is the joy and much and exceedingly great the exultation, when life shall have come.”

“He whose gaze is held by the darkness cannot see the light. Bitterness holds him in its grip, the unpleasant recollection of his sins preoccupies his memory to the exclusion of every joyful thought. It is to souls like this that the Prophet says: "It is vain for you to rise before light." He points out that it is useless for you to aspire to the contemplation of truths that give delight, until the sins that disquiet you have been blotted out in the light of consolation.”

“Now indeed your neighbor, whom you are truly bound to love as yourself, that he too may savor to you as he is, will surely savor to you no differently than you to yourself, who is what you are: for he is a man. You therefore who love yourself only because you love God; consequently all who similarly love him, you love as yourself. Furthermore an enemy, since he is nothing, inasmuch as he does not love God: he cannot indeed be loved as yourself, who love God; yet you will love him so that he may love. But it is not the same thing, to love so that he may love, and to love because he loves. Accordingly that he too may savor to you as he is, he will savor to you, not indeed for what he is, since he is certainly nothing; but for what he perhaps will be in the future -- which is close to nothing, inasmuch as it still hangs in doubt. For concerning one of whom it is established that he will never return to the love of God, he must savor to you not close to nothing, but altogether nothing, inasmuch as he is nothing for eternity. That one therefore excepted, who is now not only not to be loved, but moreover to be held in hatred, according to that: "Did I not hate those who hated you, O Lord, and waste away on account of your enemies?" (Ps 139:21.) For the rest, charity -- rightly ambitious in this respect -- permits that not even the most hostile man be denied some small measure of affection. Who is wise, and will understand these things?”

“You have indeed concerning him who is the image, that "being in the form of God, he did not consider it robbery to be equal with God." Where certainly both his rectitude in the form of God, and his majesty in the equality, are indicated to you: so that when rectitude is compared to rectitude, and greatness to greatness, that which is to the image and the image may appear to correspond to each other harmoniously on both sides; just as the image also no less corresponds in both respects to him whose image it is. For he is the one of whom you have heard holy David singing in the psalms, now indeed: "Great is our Lord, and great is his power"; and now: "The Lord our God is upright, and there is no iniquity in him." From this upright and great God, his image has it that it too is upright and great: the soul has it, which is to the image.”

“For indeed he says: "I love those who love me, and those who watch for me at dawn will find me." You see how he not only makes you certain of his love, if indeed you love him, but also of his solicitude, which he bears for you, if he has perceived you solicitous for him. Do you watch? He also watches. Rise up in the night at the beginning of your watches, hasten to anticipate even the watches themselves as much as you will; you will find him, you will not precede him. Rashly in such a matter you attribute to yourself something either prior or greater; he both loves more and loved before.”

“Having taken occasion from the difference between the image and the soul which is made to the image, I thought it worthwhile to make this excursus, so that if any perhaps have at some time drunk something from stolen waters, which seem sweeter, having taken the antidote, they may vomit it up, and with the stomach of the mind purged, approaching what remains to be said concerning the likeness according to our promise, they may now draw purer things in joy not from our own, but from the fountains of the Savior, the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever.”

“Whoever among you therefore, after those bitter and tearful beginnings of his conversion, rejoices that he has breathed again into hope and, lifted up on the wings of grace, has flown forth into a certain serenity of heavenly consolation; he indeed already reaps, receiving the temporal fruit of his tears; and he himself has seen God and has heard the voice of him who says: Give to her from the fruits of her hands. For how has he not seen God, who has tasted and seen that the Lord is sweet? How sweet and gentle you were felt to be, Lord Jesus, by him to whom not only were his sins forgiven by you, but also the gift of holiness was granted; and not that alone, but moreover the promise of eternal life was added to the heap of good things! Happy is he who has already reaped so much, having in the meantime indeed his fruit in sanctification, but the end eternal life!”

“The soul was made not only to the image, but also to the likeness. You ask in what it is like? Hear first concerning the image. The Word is truth, is wisdom, is justice: and this is the image. Of what? Of justice, of wisdom, and of truth. For this image is justice from justice, wisdom from wisdom, truth from truth, as it were light from light, God from God. The soul is none of these things, because it is not the image. Yet it is capable of them, and desirous of them, and perhaps on that account it is to the image. A lofty creature, bearing the mark of majesty indeed in its capacity, and of rectitude in its desire. We read that "God made man upright," which also its great capacity, as has been said, proves. For it is necessary that what is to the image agree with the image, and not participate in vain in the name of the image, just as the image itself is not called image by a mere or empty name.”

“Why does he not know, unless because, bending himself down to these lowest and earthly things, he heaps up earth for himself? Assuredly he does not know, concerning those things which he commits to the earth, for whom he gathers them: whether for the moth that destroys, or for the thief that digs through; for the enemy that plunders, or for the fire that devours. And thence that lamentable voice from the psalm belongs to the wretched man bending himself down and brooding over the things that are upon the earth: "I am made wretched and bowed down utterly; all the day long I went about in sadness." In himself indeed he experiences the truth of that sentence of the Wise Man: "God made man upright, but he has entangled himself in many sorrows." And immediately the voice of mockery comes to him: "Bow down, that we may pass over."”

“For if we could clearly know in what state God holds each one of us, we should neither depart above nor below, acquiescing in the truth in all things. But now, because this counsel has placed darkness as its hiding place, and the word is hidden from us, so that no one knows whether he is worthy of love or of hatred, more justly and more safely surely, according to the counsel of Truth itself, we choose for ourselves the last place, from which afterward we may be led up higher with honor, than we presume a higher place, from which we must soon withdraw with shame.”

“SERMON 1 ON THE TITLE OF THE BOOK The instructions that I address to you, my brothers, will differ from those I should deliver to people in the world, at least the manner will be different. The preacher who desires to follow St Paul's method of teaching will give them milk to drink rather than solid food, and will serve a more nourishing diet to those who are spiritually enlightened: "We teach," he said, "not in the way philosophy is taught, but in the way that the Spirit teaches us: we teach spiritual things spiritually." And again: "We have a wisdom to offer those who have reached maturity," in whose company, I feel assured, you are to be found, unless in vain have you prolonged your study of divine teaching, mortified your senses, and meditated day and night on God's law. Be ready then to feed on bread rather than milk. Solomon has bread to give that is splendid and delicious, the bread of that book called "The Song of Songs." Let us bring it forth then if you please, and break it. 2. Now, unless I am mistaken, by the grace of God you have understood quite well from the book of Ecclesiastes how to recognize and have done with the false promise of this world. And then the book of Proverbs - has not your life and your conduct been sufficiently amended and enlightened by the doctrine it inculcates ? These are two loaves of which it has been your pleasure to taste, loaves you have welcomed as coming from the cupboard of a friend. Now approach for this third loaf that, if possible, you may always recognize what is best. Since there are two evils that comprise the only, or at least the main, enemies of the soul: a misguided love of the world and an excessive love of self, the two books previously mentioned can provide an antidote to each of these infections. One uproots pernicious habits of mind and body with the hoe of self-control. The other, by the use of enlightened reason, quickly perceives a delusive tinge in all that the world holds glorious, truly distinguishing between it and deeper truth. Moreover, it causes the fear of God and the observance of his commandments to be preferred to all human pursuits and worldly desires. And rightly so, for the former is the beginning of wisdom, the latter its culmination, for there is no true and consummate wisdom other than the avoidance of evil and the doing of good, no one can successfully shun evil without the fear of God, and no work is good without the observance of the commandments. 3. Taking it then these two evils have been warded off by the reading of choice books, we may suitably proceed with this holy and contemplative discourse which, as the fruit of the other two, may be delivered only to well prepared ears and minds. Before the flesh has been tamed and the spirit set free by zeal for truth, before the world's glamour and entanglements have been firmly repudiated, it is a rash enterprise on any man's part to presume to study spiritual doctrines. Just as a light is flashed in vain on closed or sightless eyes, so "an unspiritual person cannot accept anything of the Spirit of God.'' For "the Holy Spirit of instruction shuns what is false," and that is what the life of the intemperate man is. Nor will he ever have a part with the pretensions of the world, since he is the Spirit of Truth. How can there be harmony between the wisdom that comes down from above and the wisdom of the world, which is foolishness to God, or the wisdom of the flesh which is at enmity with God? I am sure that the friend who comes to us on his travels will have no reason to murmur against us after he has shared in this third loaf. 4. But who is going to divide this loaf? The Master of the house is present, it is the Lord you must see in the breaking of the bread. For who else could more fittingly do it ? It is a task that I would not dare to arrogate to myself. So look upon me as one from whom you look for nothing. For I myself am one of the seekers, one who begs along with you for the food of my soul, the nourishment of my spirit. Poor and needy, I knock at that door of his which, "when he opens, nobody can close,'' that I may find light on the profound mystery to which this discourse leads. Patiently all creatures look to you, O Lord. "Little children go begging for bread; no one spares a scrap for them;'' they await it from your merciful love. O God most kind, break your bread for this hungering flock, through my hands indeed if it should please you, but with an efficacy that is all your own. 5. Tell us, I beg you, by whom, about whom and to whom it is said: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.'' How shall I explain so abrupt a beginning, this sudden irruption as from a speech in mid-course? For the words spring upon us as if indicating one speaker to whom another is replying as she demands a kiss— whoever she may be. But if she asks for or demands a kiss from somebody, why does she distinctly and expressly say with the mouth, and even with his own mouth, as if lovers should kiss by means other than the mouth, or with mouths other than their own ? But yet she does not say: "Let him kiss me with his mouth"; what she says is still more intimate: "with the kiss of his mouth." How delightful a ploy of speech this, prompted into life by the kiss, with Scripture's own engaging countenance inspiring the reader and enticing him on, that he may find pleasure even in the laborious pursuit of what lies hidden, with a fascinating theme to sweeten the fatigue of research. Surely this mode of beginning that is not a beginning, this novelty of diction in a book so old, cannot but increase the reader's attention. It must follow too that this work was composed, not by any human skill but by the artistry of the Spirit, difficult to understand indeed but yet enticing one to investigate. 6. So now what shall we do? Shall we by-pass the title? No, not even one iota may be omitted, since we are commanded to gather up the tiniest fragments lest they be lost. The title runs: "The beginning of Solomon's Song of Songs." First of all take note of the appropriateness of the name "Peaceful," that is, Solomon, at the head of a book which opens with the token of peace, with a kiss. Take note too that by this kind of opening only men of peaceful minds, men who can achieve mastery over the turmoil of the passions and the distracting burden of daily chores, are invited to the study of this book. 7. Again, the title is not simply the word "Song," but "Song of Songs," a detail not without significance. For though I have read many songs in the Scriptures, I cannot recall any that bear such a name. Israel chanted a song to Yahweh celebrating his escape from the sword and the tyranny of Pharaoh, and the twofold good fortune that simultaneously liberated and avenged him in the Red Sea. Yet even though chanted, this has not been called a "Song of Songs"; Scripture, if my memory serves me right, introduces it with the words: "Israel sang this song in honor of Yahweh." Song poured from the lips of Deborah, of Judith, of the mother of Samuel, of several of the prophets, yet none of these songs is styled a "Song of Songs." You will find that all of them, as far as I can see, were inspired to song because of favors to themselves or to their people, songs for a victory won, for an escape from danger or the gaining of a boon long sought. They would not be found ungrateful for the divine beneficence, so all sang for reasons proper to each, in accord with the Psalmist's words: "He gives thanks to you, O God, for blessing him.'' But King Solomon himself, unique as he was in wisdom, renowned above all men, abounding in wealth, secure in his peace, stood in no need of any particular benefit that would have inspired him to sing those songs. Nor does Scripture in any place attribute such a motive to him. 8. We must conclude then it was a special divine impulse that inspired these songs of his that now celebrate the praises of Christ and his Church, the gift of holy love, the sacrament of endless union with God. Here too are expressed the mounting desires of the soul, its marriage song, an exultation of spirit poured forth in figurative language pregnant with delight. It is no wonder that like Moses he put a veil on his face, equally resplendent as it must have been in this encounter, because in those days few if any could sustain the bright vision of God's glory. Accordingly, because of its excellence, I consider this nuptial song to be well deserving of the title that so remarkably designates it, the Song of Songs, just as he in whose honor it is sung is uniquely proclaimed King of kings and Lord of lords. 9. Furthermore if you look back on your own experience, is it not in that victory by which your faith overcomes the world, in "your exit from the horrible pit and out of the slough of the marsh," that you yourselves sing a new song to the Lord for all the marvels he has performed? Again, when he purposed to "settle your feet on a rock and to direct your steps," then too, I feel certain, a new song was sounding on your lips, a song to our God for his gracious renewal of your life. When you repented he not only forgave your sins but even promised rewards, so that rejoicing in the hope of benefits to come, you sing of the Lord's ways: how great is the glory of the Lord! And when, as happens, texts of Scripture hitherto dark and impenetrable at last become bright with meaning for you, then, in gratitude for this nurturing bread of heaven you must charm the ears of God with a voice of exultation and praise, a festal song. In the daily trials and combats arising from the flesh, the world and the devil, that are never wanting to those who live devout lives in Christ, you learn by what you experience that man's life on earth is a ceaseless warfare, and are impelled to repeat your songs day after day for every victory won. As often as temptation is overcome, an immoral habit brought under control, an impending danger shunned, the trap of the seducer detected, when a passion long indulged is finally and perfectly allayed, or a virtue persistently desired and repeatedly sought is ultimately obtained by God's gift; so often, in the words of the prophet, let thanksgiving and joy resound. For every benefit conferred, God is to be praised in his gifts. Otherwise when the time of judgment comes, that man will be punished as an ingrate who cannot say to God: "Your statutes were my song in the land of exile." 10. Again I think that your own experience reveals to you the meaning of those psalms, which are called not Songs of Songs but Songs of the Steps, in that each one, at whatever stage of growth he be, in accord with the upward movements of his heart may choose one of these songs to praise and give glory to him who empowers you to advance. I don't know how else these words could be true: "There are shouts of joy and victory in the tents of the just." And still more that beautiful and salutary exhortation of the Apostle: "With psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles, singing and chanting to the Lord in your hearts." 11. But there is that other song which, by its unique dignity and sweetness, excels all those I have mentioned and any others there might be; hence by every right do I acclaim it as the Song of Songs. It stands at a point where all the others culminate. Only the couch of the Spirit can inspire a song like this, and only personal experience can unfold its meaning. Let those who are versed in the mystery revel in it; let all others burn with desire rather to attain to this experience than merely to learn about it. For it is not a melody that resounds abroad but the very music of the heart, not a trilling on the lips but an inward pulsing of delight, a harmony not of voices but of wills. It is a tune you will not hear in the streets, these notes do not sound where crowds assemble; only the singer hears it and the one to whom he sings - the lover and the beloved. It is preeminently a marriage song telling of chaste souls in loving embrace, of their wills in sweet concord, of the mutual exchange of the heart's affections. 12. The novices, the immature, those but recently converted from a worldly life, do not normally sing this song or hear it sung. Only the mind disciplined by persevering study, only the man whose efforts have borne fruit under God's inspiration, the man whose years, as it were, make him ripe for marriage years measured out not in time but in merits - only he is truly prepared for nuptial union with the divine partner, a union we shall describe more fully in due course. But the hour has come when both our rule and the poverty of our state demand that we go out to work. Tomorrow, with God's help, we shall continue to speak about the kiss, because today's discourse on the title sets us free to resume where we had begun.”

“SERMON 2 VARIOUS MEANINGS OF THE KISS During my frequent ponderings on the burning desire with which the patriarchs longed for the incarnation of Christ, I am stung with sorrow and shame. Even now I can scarcely restrain my tears, so filled with shame am I by the lukewarmness, the frigid unconcern of these miserable times. For which of us does the consummation of that event fill with as much joy as the mere promise of it inflamed the desires of the holy men of pre-Christian times? Very soon now there will be great rejoicing as we celebrate the feast of Christ's birth. But how I wish it were inspired by his birth! All the more therefore do I pray that the intense longing of those men of old, their heartfelt expectation, may be enkindled in me by these words: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth." Many an upright man in those far off times sensed within himself how profuse the graciousness that would be poured upon those lips. And intense desire springing from that perception impelled him to utter: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth," hoping with every fiber of his being that he might not be deprived of a share in a pleasure so great. 2. The conscientious man of those days might repeat to himself: "Of what use to me the wordy effusions of the prophets? Rather let him who is the most handsome of the sons of men, let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth. No longer am I satisfied to listen to Moses, for he is a slow speaker and not able to speak well. Isaiah is a man of unclean lips, Jeremiah does not know how to speak, he is a child ; not one of the prophets makes an impact on me with his words. But he, the one whom they proclaim, let him speak to me, "let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth." I have no desire that he should approach me in their person, or address me with their words, for they are "'a watery darkness, a dense cloud;" rather in his own person "let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth;" let him whose presence is full of love, from whom exquisite doctrines flow in streams, let him become "a spring inside me, welling up to eternal life." Shall I not receive a richer infusion of grace from him whom the Father has anointed with the oil of gladness above all his rivals, provided that he will bestow on me the kiss of his mouth? For his living, active word is to me a kiss, not indeed an adhering of the lips that can sometimes belie a union of hearts, but an unreserved infusion of joys, a revealing of mysteries, a marvelous and indistinguishable mingling of the divine light with the enlightened mind, which, joined in truth to God, is one spirit with him. With good reason then I avoid trucking with visions and dreams; I want no part with parables and figures of speech; even the very beauty of the angels can only leave me wearied. For my Jesus utterly surpasses these in his majesty and splendor. Therefore I ask of him what I ask of neither man nor angel: that he kiss me with the kiss of his mouth. Note how I do not presume that it is with his mouth I shall be kissed, for that constitutes the unique felicity and singular privilege of the human nature he assumed. No, in the consciousness of my lowliness I ask to be kissed with the kiss of his mouth, an experience shared by all who are in a position to say: "Indeed from his fullness we have, all of us, received." 3. I must ask you to try to give your whole attention here. The mouth that kisses signifies the Word who assumes human nature; the nature assumed receives the kiss; the kiss however, that takes its being both from the giver and the receiver, is a person that is formed by both, none other than "the one mediator between God and mankind, himself a man, Christ Jesus." It is for this reason that none of the saints dared say: "let him kiss me with his mouth," but rather, "with the kiss of his mouth." In this way they paid tribute to that prerogative of Christ, on whom uniquely and in one sole instance the mouth of the word was pressed, that moment when the fullness of the divinity yielded itself to him as the life of his body. A fertile kiss therefore, a marvel of stupendous self-abasement that is not a mere pressing of mouth upon mouth; it is the uniting of God with man. Normally the touch of lip on lip is the sign of the loving embrace of hearts, but this conjoining of natures brings together the human and divine, shows God reconciling "to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven.'' "For he is the peace between us, and has made the two into one.'' This was the kiss for which just men yearned under the old dispensation, foreseeing as they did that in him they would "find happiness and a crown of rejoicing," because in him were hidden "all the jewels of wisdom and knowledge.' Hence their longing to taste that fullness of his. 4. You seem to be in agreement with this explanation, but I should like you to listen to another. Even the holy men who lived before the coming of Christ understood that God had in mind plans of peace for the human race. "Surely the Lord God does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants, the prophets." What he did reveal however was obscure to many. For in those days faith was a rare thing on the earth, and hope but a faint impulse in the heart even of many of those who looked forward to the deliverance of Israel. Those indeed who foreknew also proclaimed that Christ would come as man, and with him, peace. One of them actually said: "He himself will be peace in our land when he comes." Enlightened from above they confidently spread abroad the message that through him men would be restored to the favor of God. John, the fore-runner of the Lord, recognizing the fulfillment of that prophecy in his own time, declared: "Grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ." In our time every Christian can discover by experience that this is true. 5. In those far-off days however, while the prophets continued to foretell the covenant, and its author continued to delay his coming, the faith of the people never ceased to waver because there was no one who could redeem or save. Hence men grumbled at the postponements of the coming of this Prince of Peace so often proclaimed by the mouth of his holy prophets from ancient times. As doubts about the fulfillment of the prophecies began to recur, all the more eagerly did they make demands for the kiss, the sign of the promised reconcilement. It was as if a voice from among the people would challenge the prophets of peace: "How much longer are you going to keep us in suspense? You are always foretelling a peace that is never realized; you promise a world of good but trouble on trouble comes." At various times in the past and in various different ways this same hope was fostered by angels among our ancestors, who in turn have passed the tidings on to us. 'Peace! Peace!' they say, "but there is no peace. If God desires to convince me of that benevolent will of his, so often vouched for by the prophets but not yet revealed by the event, then let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth, and so by this token of peace make my peace secure. For how shall I any longer put my trust in mere words ? It is necessary now that words be vindicated by action. If those men are God's envoys let him prove the truth of their words by his own advent, so often the keynote of their predictions, because unless he comes they can do nothing. He sent his servant bearing a staff, but neither voice nor life is forthcoming. I do not rise up, I am not awakened, I am not shaken out of the dust, nor do I breathe in hope, if the Prophet himself does not come down and kiss me with the kiss of his mouth." 6. Here we must add that he who professes to be our mediator with God is God's own Son, and he is God. But what is man that he should take notice of him, the son of man that he should be concerned about him? Where shall such as I am find the confidence, the daring, to entrust myself to him who is so majestic ? How shall I, mere dust and ashes, presume that God takes an interest in me? He is entirely taken up with loving his Father, he has no need of me nor of what I possess. How then shall I find assurance that if he is my mediator he will never fail me? If it be really true, as you prophets have said, that God has determined to show mercy, to reveal himself in a more favorable light," let him establish a covenant of peace, an everlasting covenant with me" by the kiss of his mouth. If he will not revoke his given word, let him empty himself," let him humble himself, let him bend to me and kiss me with the kiss of his mouth. If the mediator is to be acceptable to both parties, equally dependable in the eyes of both, then let him who is God's Son become man, let him become the Son of Man, and fill me with assurance by this kiss of his mouth. When I come to recognize that he is truly mine, then I shall feel secure in welcoming the Son of God as mediator. Not even a shadow of mistrust can then exist, for after all he is my brother, and my own flesh. It is impossible that I should be spurned by him who is bone from my bones, and flesh from my flesh. 7. We should by now have come to understand how the discontent of our ancestors displayed a need for this sacrosanct kiss, that is, the mystery of the incarnate word, for faith, hard-pressed throughout the ages with trouble upon trouble, was ever on the point of failing, and a fickle people, yielding to discouragement, murmured against the promises of God. Is this a mere improvisation on my part? I suggest that you will find it to be the teaching of the Scriptures: for instance, consider the burden of complaint and murmuring in those words: "Order on order, order on order, rule on rule, rule on rule, a little here, a little there.'' Or those prayerful exclamations, troubled yet loyal: "Give those who wait for you their reward, and let your prophets be proved worthy of belief." Again: "Bring about what has been prophesied in your name." There too you will find those soothing promises of consolation: "Behold the Lord will appear and he will not lie. If he seems slow, wait for him, for he will surely come and he will not delay." Likewise: "His time is close at hand when he will come and his days will not be prolonged." Speaking in the name of him who is promised the prophet announces: "Behold I am coming towards you like a river of peace, and like a stream in spate with the glory of the nations." In all these statements there is evidence both of the urgency of the preachers and of the distrust of those who listened to them. The people murmured, their faith wavered, and in the words of Isaiah: "the ambassadors of peace weep bitterly.'' Therefore because Christ was late in coming, and the whole human race in danger of being lost in despair, so convinced was it that human weakness was an object of contempt with no hope of the reconciliation with God through a grace so frequently promised, those good men whose faith remained strong eagerly longed for the more powerful assurance that only his human presence could convey. They prayed intensely for a sign that the covenant was about to be restored for the sake of a spiritless, faithless people. 8. Oh root of Jesse, that stands as a signal to the peoples, how many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see, and never saw it! Happy above them all is Simeon, by God's mercy still bearing fruit in old age! He rejoiced to think that he would see the long-desired sign. He saw it and was glad; and having received the kiss of peace he is allowed to go in peace, but not before he had told his audience that Jesus was born to be a sign that would be rejected. Time proved how true this was. No sooner had the sign of peace arisen than it was opposed, by those, that is, who hated peace;" for his peace is with men of good-will, but for the evil-minded he is "a stone to stumble over, a rock to bring men down." Herod accordingly was perturbed, and so was the whole of Jerusalem. Christ "came to his own domain, and his own people did not accept him." Those shepherds, however, who kept watch over their flocks by night, were fortunate for they were gladdened by a vision of this sign. Even in those early days he was hiding these things from the learned and the clever, and revealing them to mere children. Herod, as you know, desired to see him, but because his motive was not genuine he did not succeed. The sign of peace was given only to men of good-will, hence to Herod and others like him was given the sign of the prophet Jonah." The angel said to the shepherds: "Here is a sign for you," you who are humble, obedient, not given to haughtiness, faithful to prayer and meditating day and night on God's law. "This is a sign for you," he said. What sign? The sign promised by the angels, sought after by the people, foretold by the prophets; this is the sign that the Lord Jesus has now brought into existence and revealed to you, a sign by which the incredulous are made believers, the dispirited are made hopeful and the fervent achieve security. This therefore is the sign for you. But as a sign what does it signify? It reveals mercy, grace, peace, the peace that has no end. And finally, the sign is this: "You will find a baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger." God himself, however, is in this baby, reconciling the world to himself. He will be put to death for your sins and raised to life to justify you, so that made righteous by faith you may be at peace with God. This was the sign of peace that the Prophet once urged King Achez to ask of the Lord his God, "either from the depths of Sheol or from the heights above." But the ungodly king refused. His wretched state blinded him to the belief that in this sign the highest things above would be joined to the lowest things below in peace. This was achieved when Christ, descending into Sheol, saluted its dwellers with a holy kiss, the pledge of peace, and then going up to heaven, enabled the spirits there to share in the same pledge in joy without end. 9. I must end this sermon. But let me sum up briefly the points we have raised. It would seem that this holy kiss was of necessity bestowed on the world for two reasons. Without it the faith of those who wavered would not have been strengthened, nor the desires of the fervent appeased. Moreover, this kiss is no other than the Mediator between God and man, himself a man, Christ Jesus, who with the Father and Holy Spirit lives and reigns as God for ever and ever. Amen.”

“SERMON 1 ON THE TITLE OF THE BOOK 5. Tell us, I beg you, by whom, about whom and to whom it is said: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.'' How shall I explain so abrupt a beginning, this sudden irruption as from a speech in mid-course? For the words spring upon us as if indicating one speaker to whom another is replying as she demands a kiss— whoever she may be. But if she asks for or demands a kiss from somebody, why does she distinctly and expressly say with the mouth, and even with his own mouth, as if lovers should kiss by means other than the mouth, or with mouths other than their own ? But yet she does not say: "Let him kiss me with his mouth"; what she says is still more intimate: "with the kiss of his mouth." How delightful a ploy of speech this, prompted into life by the kiss, with Scripture's own engaging countenance inspiring the reader and enticing him on, that he may find pleasure even in the laborious pursuit of what lies hidden, with a fascinating theme to sweeten the fatigue of research. Surely this mode of beginning that is not a beginning, this novelty of diction in a book so old, cannot but increase the reader's attention. It must follow too that this work was composed, not by any human skill but by the artistry of the Spirit, difficult to understand indeed but yet enticing one to investigate.”

“SERMON 10 THE BREASTS AND THEIR PERFUMES I do not pretend that, left to myself, I can make any new discovery, for the reason that I lack sufficient depth of understanding and powers of penetration. But the mouth of Paul is a mighty and unfailing fountain, ever open to us all; and as I have often done before, so now too I draw from its resources in my attempt to interpret the breasts of the bride. "Rejoice," he said, "with those who rejoice, and be sad with those who sorrow." In these few words we find the description of a mother's affections, because she shares both health and sickness with her children. She cannot avoid being conformed to them in the depths of her being in these experiences. Therefore, following Paul's guidance, I shall assign these two affective movements to the bride's two breasts, compassion to one, joyful sympathy to the other. For if she were not prompt to rejoice with those who rejoice, and ready to be sad with those who sorrow, her breasts would still be undeveloped; she would be no more than a girl too immature to marry. Should a person devoid of these affective qualities be confided with the direction of souls, or the work of preaching, he will do no good to others and great harm to himself. How utterly shameful then, if he should intrude himself into these tasks! 2. But we must return to the subject of the bride's breasts, and see how the milk of one differs in kind from that of the other. Joyful sympathy yields the milk of encouragement, compassion that of consolation, and as often as the spiritual mother receives the kiss, so often does she feel each species flowing richly from heaven into her loving heart. And you may see her unhesitatingly nourishing her little ones with the milk of these full breasts, from one the milk of consolation, from the other that of encouragement, according to the need of each. For example, if she should notice that one of those whom she begot by preaching the Good News is assailed by temptation, that he becomes emotionally disturbed, is reduced to sadness and pusillanimity and therefore no longer capable of enduring the force of the temptation, will she not condole with him, caress him, weep with him, comfort him, and bring forward every possible evidence of God's love in order to raise him from his desolate state? If, on the contrary, she discovers that he is eager, active, progressive, her joy abounds, she plies him with encouraging advice, fans the fire of his zeal, imparts the ways of perseverance, and inspires him to ever higher ideals. She becomes all things to all, mirrors in herself the emotions of all and so shows herself to be a mother to those who fail no less than to those who succeed. 3. And if I may speak of those who have undertaken the direction of souls, how many there are today who reveal their lack of the requisite qualities! Only with a feeling of pain can I speak of this subject at all -- how they melt down in the furnace of their covetousness the insults endured by Christ, the spittle, the scourging, the nails, the lance, the cross, his death itself, and squander them in the pursuit of shameful gain. The very price of the world's redemption is bundled into their purses; and only in this do they differ from Judas Iscariot, that he reckoned the total value of these things at a paltry sum of money, while they, with a more ravening greed, demand riches beyond counting. They display an insatiable passion for gains that they constantly fear to lose, and bewail after they have lost. In this love of money they find their rest, provided they are ever free from the anxiety of securing, or even further increasing, what they have acquired. Neither the peril of souls nor their salvation gives them any concern. They are certainly devoid of the maternal instinct. Grown fat, gross, bloated to excess on the heritage of the crucified Christ, "about the ruin of Joseph they do not care at all." There is no pretense about a true mother, the breasts that she displays are full for the taking. She knows how to rejoice with those who rejoice, and to be sad with those who sorrow, pressing the milk of encouragement without intermission from the breast of joyful sympathy, the milk of consolation from the breast of compassion. And with that I think we may desist from further discussion on the breasts of the bride and the milk that fills them.”

“SERMON 12 ON THE PRECIOUS OINTMENT OF PIETY; AND ON THE REVERENCE TO BE SHOWN BY SUBJECTS TOWARD THEIR PRELATES 11. But hear a brief word on the present chapter. Whoever both inebriates with words and is fragrant with good deeds, let him consider it said to himself: Because your breasts are better than wine, fragrant with the best ointments (Song 1:1-2). And for these things who is sufficient? Who among us possesses even one of these fully and perfectly, so that he is not at times both more barren in speaking and more lukewarm in doing? But there is one who rightly and without doubt glories in this praise: the Church, assuredly, who from her universality never lacks both that with which she may inebriate and that with which she may be fragrant. For what is lacking to her in one, she has in another, according to the measure of the gift of Christ and the moderation of the Spirit, who distributes to each as he wills (Eph 4:7; 1 Cor 12:11). The Church is fragrant in those who make friends for themselves from the mammon of unrighteousness; she inebriates in the ministers of the word, who pour the wine of spiritual joy upon the earth and make it drunk and bring forth fruit in patience. She boldly and securely calls herself the bride, inasmuch as she truly has breasts better than wine and fragrant with the best ointments. And even if none of us may presume to claim this for himself, so that anyone should dare to call his soul the bride of the Lord; yet since we are of the Church, who rightly glories in this name and in the reality of the name, not without right do we claim a share in this glory. For what we all together possess fully and entirely, each one of us without contradiction shares in. Thanks be to you, Lord Jesus, who have deigned to unite us to your most dear Church, not only that we might be faithful, but that we might also be joined to you in the manner of a bride in joyful, chaste, and eternal embraces, we too with unveiled face beholding your glory, which is yours equally together with the Father and the Holy Spirit unto the ages of ages. Amen.”

“SERMON 3 ON THE KISS OF THE LORD'S FOOT, HAND, AND MOUTH 1. Today we read in the book of experience. Turn to yourselves, and let each one attend to his own conscience concerning the things that are to be said. I would like to discover whether it has been given to any of you ever to say with full conviction: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth" (Song 1:1). For it is not given to any and every man to say this from the heart; but if anyone has even once received a spiritual kiss from the mouth of Christ, his own experience surely urges him on, and he gladly seeks it again. I think that no one can even know what it is unless he who receives it: for it is a hidden manna, and only he who eats will still hunger. It is a sealed fountain, with which no stranger may share; but only he who drinks will still thirst. Hear one who has experienced it, how he seeks it again. "Restore to me," he says, "the joy of your salvation" (Ps 50:14). Let not, therefore, a soul like mine, burdened with sins, still subject to the passions of its own flesh, which has not yet tasted the sweetness of the spirit, ignorant of and wholly inexperienced in the joys of the interior life, presume to claim this for itself. 2. I shall show, however, to such a soul a place in the way of salvation fitting for it. Let it not rashly rise up to the mouth of the most serene Bridegroom, but let it lie trembling with me at the feet of the most severe Lord, and with the publican, trembling, let it look upon the earth and not upon the heavens (Lk 18:13), lest the face accustomed to darkness, confounded by the luminaries of heaven, be overwhelmed by the glory, and, struck back by the unaccustomed splendors of majesty, be wrapped again in the blindness of a denser darkness. Do not let that place seem vile or contemptible to you, O whatever sort of soul you may be, where the holy sinful woman laid aside her sins and put on holiness. There the Ethiopian woman changed her skin, and restored to a new whiteness, she then confidently and truthfully answered those who reproached her with the word: "I am black, but beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem" (Song 1:4). Do you wonder by what art she was able to do this, or by what merits she obtained it? Receive it in few words. She wept bitterly, and drawing long sighs from her inmost depths, she was shaken within herself by wholesome sobs, and vomited forth her bitter humors. The heavenly physician came to her aid most swiftly: for "swiftly runs his word" (Ps 147:15). Is the word of God not a potion? It is indeed, and a strong and powerful one, "searching hearts and reins" (Ps 7:10). For "the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints also and marrow, and is a discerner of thoughts" (Heb 4:12). By the example, therefore, of this blessed penitent, cast yourself down, you too, O wretched one, that you may cease to be wretched; cast yourself down, you too, upon the earth; embrace the feet, appease with kisses, water with tears, by which, however, you wash not him but yourself, and you may become one of the flock of the shorn ones ascending from the washing (Song 4:2); so indeed may you not dare to lift up your face, suffused as it is with shame and grief, until you hear, you also: "Your sins are forgiven you" (Lk 7:37-48); until you hear: "Arise, arise, O captive daughter of Zion; arise, shake yourself from the dust" (Isa 52:1-2). 3. Having thus received the first kiss at the feet, you should not presume at once to rise up to the kiss of the mouth, but there shall be for you a step toward it, a certain other intermediate kiss, which you shall receive in the second place upon the hand: of which receive also such an account. If Jesus says to me: "Your sins are forgiven you," unless I cease to sin, what will it profit? I have put off my tunic; if I put it on again, how much have I advanced? If again I soil my feet, which I had washed, will the washing have availed anything? Filthy with every kind of vice, I lay long in the mire of the dregs; but it will without doubt be worse for one who falls back than for one who lay there. For he who made me whole, I remember, said this to me: "Behold, you are made whole; go, sin no more, lest something worse befall you" (Jn 5:14). But he who gave the will to repent must also add the virtue of continence, lest I repeat what must be repented of, and make my last state worse than my first. Woe indeed to me, even as a penitent, if he should at once withdraw his hand, without whom I can do nothing. Nothing, I say, because neither to repent nor to be continent. I hear therefore what the Wise Man counsels: "Do not," he says, "repeat a word in your prayer" (Sir 7:15). I tremble also at what the Judge threatens against the tree not bringing forth good fruit (Mt 3:10). I confess that for this reason I am not at all content with the first grace, by which I am now penitent for my evils, unless I shall also receive the second, that I may bring forth fruits worthy of repentance, and henceforth not return to my vomit. 4. This therefore remains for me first to seek and to receive, before I presume to touch things higher and more sacred. I do not wish to become suddenly the highest; I wish to advance gradually. As much as the impudence of the sinner displeases God, so much does the modesty of the penitent please him. You will appease him more quickly if you keep your measure and do not seek things higher than yourself. The leap from the foot to the mouth is a long and steep one, and the approach is not fitting. For what? Still sprinkled with fresh dust, will you touch the sacred lips? Yesterday dragged out of the mud, today you present yourself before the face of glory? Let the hand be your passage. Let it first cleanse you, let it raise you up. How does it raise you? By giving you grounds for confidence. What is that? The beauty of continence, and fruits worthy of repentance, which are works of piety. These will raise you from the dung heap to the hope of daring greater things. Indeed, in receiving the gift, kiss the hand: that is, give glory not to yourself but to his name. Give it once, and give it again, both for the sins forgiven and for the virtues bestowed. Otherwise see whence you will fortify your brow against these blows: "What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?" (1 Cor 4:7). 5. Now at last, having in two kisses a twofold proof of divine condescension, perhaps you will not be confounded in presuming to approach holier things. For as much as you grow in grace, so much are you enlarged in confidence. From this it comes about that you both love more ardently and knock more boldly for that which you feel to be lacking to you. Moreover, to the one who knocks it shall be opened. Now that highest kiss, whatever it may be, of supreme condescension and wondrous sweetness, I believe will not be denied to one so disposed. This is the way, this is the order. First we fall at the feet, and we weep before the Lord who made us for the things that we have done. Second, we seek the hand of the one who lifts us up and strengthens failing knees. Last, when we have obtained these things with many prayers and tears, then at last we perhaps dare to raise our head to that very mouth of glory, trembling and quaking I say, not only to gaze upon it, but even to kiss it; because "a spirit before our face is Christ the Lord," to whom, clinging in the holy kiss, by his condescension we are made one spirit with him. 6. To you, Lord Jesus, to you rightly has my heart said: "My face has sought you; your face, O Lord, I will seek." For you made me hear your mercy in the morning, when, as I lay first in the dust and kissed your reverend footsteps, you forgave what I had lived badly. Moreover, in the progress of the day you gladdened the soul of your servant, when next in the kiss of the hand you also granted the grace of living well. And now what remains, O good Lord, except that now in the fullness of light, in the fervor of the spirit, graciously admitting me also to the kiss of the mouth, you would fill me with joy with your countenance? Show me, O sweetest one, O most serene one, show me where you pasture, where you rest at midday. Brothers, it is good for us to be here; but behold, the trouble of the day calls us away. For those who are now announced to have arrived compel us to break off rather than to finish our welcome discourse. I shall go out to the guests, lest anything be lacking to the duties of that charity of which we speak, lest perhaps it should happen that we too must hear: "For they say, and do not do" (Mt 23:3). In the meantime, pray that God may make the free offerings of my mouth pleasing, for your own edification, and for the praise and glory of his name.”

“SERMON 4 THE KISS OF THE LORD'S FEET, HANDS AND MOUTH Yesterday our talk dealt with three stages of the soul's progress under the figure of the three kisses. You still remember this, I hope, for today I intend to continue that same discussion, according as God in his goodness may provide for one so needy. We said, as you remember, that these kisses were given to the feet, the hand and the mouth, in that order. The first is the sign of a genuine conversion of life, the second is accorded to those making progress, the third is the experience of only a few of the more perfect. The book of Scripture that we have undertaken to expound begins with this last kiss, but I have added the other two in the hope that you will attain a better understanding of the last. I leave it to you to judge whether this was necessary, but I do really think that the very nature of the discourse clearly suggests that they be included. And I should be surprised if you did not see that she who said: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth," wished to make a distinction between the kiss of the mouth and another or several other kisses. It might have been enough for her to have said simply: "Let him kiss me." Why then should she distinctly and pointedly add: "with the kiss of his mouth," a usage that is certainly not customary? Is it not that she wished to indicate that this kiss at the summit of love's intimacy is not the sole one? People normally say, do they not: "Kiss me," or "Give me a kiss"? Nobody adds the words: "with your mouth," or, "with the kiss of your mouth." When we wish to kiss somebody, we do not have to state explicitly what we want when we offer our lips to each other. For example, St John's story of Christ's reception of the traitor's kiss simply says: "He kissed him," without adding "with his mouth or with the kiss of his mouth." This is normal procedure then both in speech and in writing. We have here three stages of the soul's growth in love, three stages of its advance toward perfection that are sufficiently known and intelligible to those who have experienced them. There is first the forgiveness of sins, then the grace that follows on good deeds, and finally that contemplative gift by which a kind and beneficent Lord shows himself to the soul with as much clarity as bodily frailty can endure. 2. Perhaps I should here attempt a better explanation of my reason for calling the first two favors kisses. We all know that the kiss is a sign of peace. If what Scripture says is true: "Our iniquities have made a gulf between us and God," then peace can be attained only when the intervening gulf is bridged. When therefore we make satisfaction and become reconciled by the re-joining of the cleavage caused by sin, in what better way can I describe the favor we receive than as a kiss of peace? Nor is there a more becoming place for this kiss than at the feet; the amends we make for the pride of our transgressions ought to be humble and diffident. 3. But when God endows us with the more ample grace of a sweet friendship with him, in order to enable us to live with a virtue that is worthy of such a relationship, we tend to raise our heads from the dust with a greater confidence for the purpose of kissing, as is the custom, the hand of our benefactor. It is essential however that we should not make this favor the occasion of self-glorification, we must give the glory to him from whom it comes. For if you glory in yourself rather than in the Lord, it is your own hand that you kiss, not his, which, according to the words of Job, is the greatest evil and a denial of God. If therefore, as Scripture suggests, the seeking of one's own glory is like kissing one's own hand, then he who gives glory to God is quite properly said to be kissing God's hand. We see this to be the case among men. Slaves beg pardon of their offended masters by kissing their feet, and the poor kiss their benefactor's hand when they receive an alms. 4. This poses a problem for you? God is spirit, his simple substance cannot be considered to have bodily members, so then, you say, show us what you mean by the hands and feet of God; explain to us the kiss of these hands and feet. But if I in turn put a question to my critic about the mouth of God — for, after all, Scripture does speak of the kiss of the mouth — will he tell me that this of course does refer to God. Surely if we attribute a mouth to God we may also attribute hands and feet, for, if he lacks these latter he must lack the former too. But God has a mouth by which "he teaches men knowledge," he has a hand with which "he provides for all living creatures," and he has feet for which the earth is a footstool. When the sinners of the earth are converted from their ways, it is in abasement before these feet that they make satisfaction. I allow of course that God does not have these members by his nature, they represent certain modes of our encounter with him. The heartfelt desire to admit one's guilt brings a man down in lowliness before God, as it were to his feet; the heartfelt devotion of a worshiper finds in God renewal and refreshment, the touch, as it were, of his hand, and the delights of contemplation lead on to that ecstatic repose that is the fruit of the kiss of his mouth. Because his providence rules over all, he is all things to all, yet, to speak with accuracy, he is in no way what these things are. If we consider him in himself, his home is in inaccessible light, his peace is so much greater than we can understand, his wisdom has no bounds. No one can measure his greatness, no man can see him and live. Yet he who by his very nature is the principle through whom all creatures spring into being, cannot be far from any of us, since without him all are nothing. More wonderful still, though no one can be more intimately present to us than he, no one is more incomprehensible. For what is more intimate to anything than its own being? And yet, what is more incomprehensible to any of us than the being of all things? Of course when I say that God is the being of all things, I do not wish it to be understood in the sense that he and they are identical, but rather in the sense of the words of Scripture: "All that exists comes from him, all is by him and in him." He is the creator, the efficient cause, not the material, of every creature. Such is the way the God whose majesty is so great has decided to be present to his creatures: as the being of all things that are, as the life of all things that live; a light to all those who think, virtue to all who think rightly and glory to those who prevail in life's battle. In this work of creation, of government, of administration, of imparting motion, of steering toward particular ends, of renewal and strengthening, he has no need of bodily instruments. By his word alone he had made all things, both corporeal and spiritual. Souls have a need for bodies, and bodies in turn a need for senses, if they are to know and influence each other. Not so the omnipotent God, who by the immediate act of his will, and that alone both creates and governs at his good pleasure. His influence touches whom he wills, as much as he wills, without calling on the aid or service of bodily powers. What possible help could he receive from bodily senses when he decides to take cognizance of the things he brought into being? Nothing has the remotest chance of hiding from him, or of escaping that light of his that penetrates everywhere; sense awareness can never be the medium of his knowledge. Not merely does he know all things without a body's intervention, he also makes himself known to the pure in heart without the need for recourse to it. I have spoken extensively on this point in order to make it more plain for you, but now pressure of time demands that I come to an end, so we must postpone further discussion till tomorrow.”

“SERMON 5 ON THE FOUR KINDS OF SPIRITS 5 As you know, spirits can be divided into classes: that of the animal, that of man, that of the angel, and that of God who created all the others. Each of these, with one exception, needs a body or a body's likeness, either for its own sake or for the sake of others or for both. The exception is he whom every creature, whether corporeal or spiritual, is called on to acknowledge in sentiments like the Psalmist: "You are my God because you have no need of my goods (Ps 15,2)." If we consider the animal we see that its spirit, its life principle, cannot even exist without a body. When the animal dies its soul ceases to live at the same moment that it ceases to impart life. We indeed continue to live after the body's death, but only by means of the body do we gain those merits that lead to a life of blessedness. St Paul sensed this, saying: "The invisible things of God are understood through the things he has made (Rm 1,20)." All creatures that he has made, creatures that possess a body and are therefore visible, can be understood by our minds only through the body's instrumentality. Therefore our souls have need of a body. Without it we cannot attain to that form of knowledge by which alone we are elevated toward the contemplation of truths essential to happiness. If one of you will object that baptized infants who die before acquiring a knowledge of the material creation are believed nevertheless to enter heaven, I shall reply briefly that this is a gift of grace, not a reward of merit. For the moment this discussion deals with normal processes, not with the special interventions of God. 2. Let us now study the case of heavenly spirits. We can be absolutely sure that these have a need of bodies from those divinely inspired words: "Are they not all spirits whose work is service, sent to help those who will be the heirs of salvation?" (He 1,14) How will it be possible for them to fulfill this service without a body, especially among beings who possess bodies? Is it not true that only creatures with bodies can run to and fro and pass from place to place ? Do we not know on unimpeachable authority that angels have frequently acted that way? You recall how they were seen by the patriarchs of old, how they entered their tents, shared their meal, and had their feet washed. And so we see that though both animal and angelic spirits have need of bodies, it is not for their own sakes but in order to render some service to others. 3. The animal kingdom is destined by nature to serve, and that service is fulfilled in alleviating the temporal and physical needs of man; the animal spirit or soul is limited by time, it dies with the body. You know then "the slave does not continue in the house forever," but those who treat him well will discover that the usage of this temporal service will redound to eternal rewards. The angel, however, in the freedom of his spirit, applies himself with eagerness to the demands of his duty, which is to bring prompt and swift assistance to us mortals in our striving for the blessings that are to come. He knows that we are destined to be fellow-citizens with him; and co-heirs of the bliss of heaven. Therefore both the animal and the angel need bodies that they might be of help to us, the first that he may give us the service appropriate to his nature, the second that he may lovingly support us. What benefit they themselves may derive from a body I cannot see, at least with regard to eternal life. The spirit of the animal can indeed perceive corporeal things by means of the body, but is this body of such potential value to him that the material world which he experiences through the senses enables him to advance to a knowledge of spiritual and intellectual truths? Surely not. On the other hand, within the limits of its corporeal and temporal service, the body does provide a gateway to a knowledge of these truths for those who transmute their usage of the things of time into coin of eternal reward, "dealing with this world as though they had no dealing with it." 4. We must understand too that if the angel can soar to a grasp of the highest truths and penetrate their profoundest depths, he does so by the vital force and kinship of his nature rather than with the aid of a body, or with the awareness of things that bodily senses provide. St Paul implied this when he said: "The invisible things of God are understood through the things he has made," adding the qualification, "by the creature of the world (Rm 1,2)." Because this is not so for the creature of heaven. For, what the spirit clothed in flesh and dwelling on the earth strives to achieve gradually and little by little, through the knowledge it derives from the senses, that same the dweller of the heavens attains with all speed and ease, because of the native fineness and sublime quality of its being. No prop of bodily sense sustains its poise, no bodily member ministers aid to its effort, no bodily medicine whatsoever contributes to its vision. Why should they search for spiritual meanings among bodily substances when they can find them in the book of life without any discordance, and understand them without any hardship. Why should a man work his sweat out winnowing grain from the chaff, pressing wine from grapes and oil from olives if he has an abundance of all these things ready to hand? Who will beg his food from door to door when his own house is stocked with bread? Will he bother to dig a well, to explore with might and main for springs of water in the bowels of the earth, for whom a burbling fountain pours out full-flowing, limpid streams? Neither angelic nor brute spirit therefore can benefit from corporeal aids in acquiring the knowledge that makes a spiritual being happy. The brute's natural stupidity renders him incapable of that knowledge, while the angel, by a prerogative of splendor and excellence, has no need of a bodily intermediary. 5. We come now to the spirit of man. This, since it holds a middle place between the extremes of bestial and angelic spirits, manifestly has a twofold need of a body: without it the soul can act neither for its own advantage nor for the benefit of others. For, to say nothing of the other members of the body or of the duties they perform, how, I ask, can you instruct the listener if you have no tongue, or receive instruction if you have no ear ? 6. Therefore, since without the support of the body the brute spirit cannot offer the service it owes, nor the heavenly spirit fulfill its labor of love, nor the rational spirit of man succeed in providing for its own and its neighbor's salvation, it follows that every created spirit certainly has a need of bodily faculties whether it be mercy to assist others, or, as in the case of man, to assist as well as being assisted. What then if there be some living things whose existence seems to confer no benefit on themselves, nor to minister in any obvious way to the needs of humanity? Well, are they not good to look at, if not to use? They are for the mind's study rather than the body's utility, there their advantage lies. Even if injurious, and an obstacle to human welfare in this world, their bodies still serve a purpose for all those whom he had called according to his purpose to be saints. If these creatures do not provide food or perform a service, they certainly make man use his wits in accord with that progress in understanding common to all who enjoy the use of reason, by which the mysteries of God may be apprehended and contemplated through the things he has made. For both the devil and his satellites, whose intentions are always evil are ever bent on hurting those who do what is right. To these latter St Peter said "Who can hurt you if you are determined to do only what is right?" (1P 3,13) God forbid that they should be able to harm you. The truth rather is that in spite of themselves they benefit the good. 7. As for the rest, whether the bodies of angels be natural to them as bodies are to men; whether, immortal though they be, their bodies have an animal nature like man's, which in this life is not immortal; whether they change these bodies and turn them into whatever form and figure suits them when they wish to become visible, imparting to them the density and solidity that fits their purpose, while at the same time, in the reality of their own nature with its essential subtlety, they remain impalpable to us and beyond our power of vision; or whether again, while continuing to exist as simple spiritual substances, they merely assume bodies when they find a need for them and then, once the need has passed, allow them to dissolve again into the elements from which they were formed all these are questions which I prefer that you should not ask me. The Fathers seem to have held divergent views on the problem, and I must confess that I cannot come to a decision about the view I might be justified in teaching. But I am of the opinion that knowledge of these matters would not contribute greatly to your spiritual progress. 8. Try to understand this however, that no created spirit can of itself act directly on our minds. This means that without the mediation of a bodily instrument it cannot make contact with or infuse itself into our minds, so that thereby we either acquire knowledge or increase it, acquire virtue or improve on it. No angel, no created spirit has power to influence me in this way, nor can I influence them. Even the angels lack this power over each other. That is a prerogative reserved to that supreme and infinite Spirit, who alone, when he imparts instruction to man or angel, does not require an ear to hear him nor a mouth to speak. He communicates himself directly to the mind, he makes himself known directly; a pure spirit himself, he is received by us in proportion to our rectitude. He alone has need of no one, he alone, by reason of his omnipotent will, is sufficient for himself and for all. 9. Nevertheless, there are boundless and countless achievements that he carries through by means of his subject creatures, whether corporeal or spiritual, but he uses them as master rather than as suppliant. For example, he now employs my tongue for his purpose of instructing you, when he could certainly impart the same knowledge directly with greater facility on his part and more pleasure for you. This mode of acting that he has chosen represents an indulgence on his part, not indigence. He makes this promotion of your welfare an occasion of merit for me; it does not mean that he needs my assistance. This is a truth that every man should remember when he does good deeds, lest he give glory to himself and not to the Lord for the fruits of grace. There is furthermore the case of the person, be he bad angel or bad man, who performs good deeds against his will. It is plain that the good of which he is the agent does not benefit himself since no good can benefit one whose will is set against it. He is therefore merely a dispenser of good, but, I know not why, we seem to feel that the good which comes to us through an evil agent is on that account more gratifying and pleasurable. This is the reason why God makes use of the wicked to benefit the just; it by no means implies that he needs their help in doing good. 10. And who will doubt that God has less need still of those creatures that lack sense or reason? But when these do have a share in the doing of good we are reminded that all creatures are the servants of that God who can so rightly say: "The world is mine (Ps 149,12)." Again, because he knows the means that best suit his purpose, he does not choose a bodily creature for the sake of the efficacy of its action but rather for the fittingness of it. Granted then that bodily agents are often and opportunely used in promoting the works of God, for example, the showers that quicken the seeds, that multiply the crops and ripen the fruit, what need has he, I ask, for a body of his own when to his least desire all bodies, both in heaven and on earth, are equally obedient? A body of his own would be superfluous to one for whom none exists outside his sway. But if I were to include in this present sermon all the points that might be dealt with on this subject, it would be unreasonably prolonged, and I should perhaps overtax the endurance of some. We shall find another occasion to discuss them.”

“SERMON 6 ON THE SUPREME AND UNCIRCUMSCRIBED SPIRIT, WHO IS GOD: AND IN WHAT WAY MERCY AND JUDGMENT ARE CALLED THE FEET OF THE LORD 1. That the following sermon may cohere with the preceding one, do you retain what was given above, that the supreme and uncircumscribed Spirit alone does not need the instrument or service of a body for everything that he wishes to do or to have done? Let us therefore securely grant to God alone, as true immortality, so also true incorporeality: that he alone among spirits so far transcends every corporeal nature that he needs no body whatsoever for any work whatsoever, content with a spiritual nod alone, when he wills, for whatever things he wills to accomplish. Therefore that majesty alone is the one which needs the work of no corporeal instrument, neither on account of itself nor on account of another, at whose omnipotent decree every work is unhesitatingly at hand, every lofty thing bows down, every adversity yields, every creature complies, even with no bodily or spiritual aid intervening or assisting. He teaches and admonishes without a tongue; he gives and holds without hands; without feet he runs and comes to the aid of those who perish. 2. He was doing these things also with the fathers in earlier ages; men were experiencing his diligent benefits, but the benefactor was hidden from them. He indeed was reaching from end to end mightily; but disposing all things sweetly, he was not perceived by men. And they rejoiced in the good things of the Lord; and the Lord of Sabaoth, because he judged all things with tranquility, they utterly did not know. They were from him, but not with him; through him they lived, but not for him; from him they had wisdom, but not of him—alienated, ungrateful, senseless. Hence at length it came about that what they were, what they lived, what they understood, they did not attribute to the Author, but ascribed to nature, or certainly, what was more foolish, to fortune; many also arrogated many things to their own industry and virtue. How much did seducing spirits usurp for themselves! How much was given to the sun and the moon! How much was attributed to lands and waters! How much even was assigned to the manufactured and wrought works of mortals! To herbs, shrubs, and the most minute and worthless seeds worship was offered as to divinities. 3. Alas! Thus men lost and exchanged their glory for the likeness of a calf that eats hay (Ps 105:20). God, having pity on their errors, graciously going forth from the shady and thick mountain, set his tabernacle in the sun (Ps 18:6). He offered flesh to those wise in the flesh, through which they might learn to understand the spirit as well. For while in the flesh and through the flesh he does works not of the flesh but of God, indeed commanding nature and overcoming fortune, making foolish the wisdom of men, and conquering the tyranny of demons, he manifestly shows himself to be the one through whom the same things were also done before, when they were done. In the flesh, I say, and through the flesh, powerfully and openly working wonders, speaking salutary words, suffering indignities, he evidently shows that he himself is the one who powerfully, but invisibly, had founded the ages, wisely governed them, and kindly protected them. Finally, while he preaches the gospel to the ungrateful, gives signs to the unbelieving, and prays for his own crucifiers, does he not clearly declare himself to be the one who with his Father daily makes his sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and sends rain upon the just and the unjust? (Mt 5:45) For this is what he himself was saying: If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe (Jn 10:37). 4. Behold, he opens the mouth of his flesh, teaching the disciples on the mountain, who in silence teaches the angels in the heavens. Behold, at the touch of his bodily hand leprosy is healed, blindness is driven away, hearing is restored, the mute tongue is loosed, the disciple nearly drowned is raised up; and he is recognized without doubt as the one to whom David had said long before: You open your hand, and fill every living thing with blessing (Ps 144:16); and again: When you open your hand, all things shall be filled with goodness (Ps 103:28). Behold, lying at his bodily feet and repenting, the sinful woman hears: Your sins are forgiven you (Lk 7:48), and she recognizes him of whom she had read written from many ages past: The devil shall go forth before his feet (Hab 3:5). For where sin is forgiven, there without doubt the devil is expelled from the heart of the sinner. Hence he says universally of all the penitent: Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the prince of this world be cast out (Jn 12:31): namely, that God forgives the sin of the one who humbly confesses; and the devil loses the dominion which he had invaded in the heart of man. 5. Finally, he walks upon the waves with his bodily feet (Mt 14:25), he to whom, not yet clothed in flesh, the Psalmist had already sung: Your way is in the sea, and your paths in many waters; which is to say: You trample the swelling hearts of the proud, and you restrain the unstable desires of the carnal, justifying the ungodly and humbling the proud. Yet because this is done invisibly, the carnal man does not perceive by whom it is done. Whence he also adds: And your footsteps shall not be known (Ps 76:20). Hence again the Father says to the Son: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet (Ps 109:1); that is: Until I subject all who despise you to your will, whether unwilling and wretched, or willing and blessed. And so, because the flesh did not perceive this work of the Spirit (for the natural man does not perceive those things which are of the Spirit of God (1 Cor 2:14)), it was necessary that, bodily falling at his bodily feet and bodily kissing those same feet with bodily lips, the sinful woman should receive the forgiveness of sins; and thus that change of the right hand of the Most High (Ps 76:11), by which he wonderfully but invisibly justifies the ungodly, should become known even to the carnal. 6. But those spiritual feet of God, which the penitent must first kiss spiritually, I ought not to pass over. I know your curiosity, which allows nothing to pass by altogether uninvestigated of its own accord. Nor indeed should it be held in contempt to know with what feet Scripture so frequently commemorates that God now stands, as there: We will worship in the place where his feet have stood (Ps 131:7); now walks, as there: And I will dwell in them, and I will walk among them (Lev 26:12; 2 Cor 6:16); now even runs, according to that: He exulted as a giant to run his course (Ps 18:6). If the Apostle rightly judged it fitting to refer the head of Christ to the Divinity (1 Cor 11:3), I think it may also not unfittingly seem to us that the feet pertain to the humanity; of which let us name the one mercy, and the other judgment. These two words are known to you; and from many places of Scripture both together, if you reflect, come to mind. That God indeed took up the foot of mercy in the flesh to which he united himself, the Epistle to the Hebrews teaches, declaring that Christ was tempted in all things according to our likeness without sin, that he might become merciful (Heb 4:15). What of that other one, which has been called judgment? Does not God the man himself openly signify that it too pertains equally to the humanity he assumed, where he declares that power to execute judgment has been given to him by the Father, because he is the Son of Man? (Jn 5:27) 7. With these two feet, then, fittingly coming together under the one head of the divinity, born of a woman, made under the law, the invisible Emmanuel was seen on earth and conversed with men (Bar 3:38). With these certainly he passes through even now, doing good and healing all who are oppressed by the devil, but spiritually, but invisibly. With these feet, I say, he walks through devout minds, unceasingly examining and searching the hearts and inward parts of the faithful. But see whether perhaps these are those legs of the Bridegroom which the Bride so magnificently commends in what follows, comparing them, if I am not mistaken, to marble columns set upon bases of gold (Song 5:15). Most beautifully indeed; since in the incarnate Wisdom of God, which is designated by gold, mercy and truth have met together (Ps 84:11); for all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth (Ps 24:10). 8. Happy the mind into which the Lord Jesus has once fixed both feet! By two signs recognize the mind which is of this kind, which necessarily bears with it the impressions of the divine footsteps. These are fear and hope; the one representing the image of judgment, the other of mercy. Rightly is God well-pleased with those who fear him, and with those who hope in his mercy (Ps 146:11): since fear is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 1:7), and hope is its progress; for love claims for itself the consummation. Since these things are so, the fruit is not small in this first kiss, which is received at the feet; only take care that you be deprived of neither of them. For indeed, if you are now pierced by sorrow for sin and by the fear of judgment, you have pressed your lips to the footstep of truth and judgment. But if you temper your fear and sorrow by consideration of the divine goodness and by the hope of obtaining pardon, know that you also embrace the foot of mercy. Otherwise it is not expedient to kiss the one without the other; for the remembrance of judgment alone casts one headlong into the abyss of despair, and the deceitful flattery of mercy alone engenders the worst security. 9. It has been given even to me, a wretch, sometimes to sit beside the feet of the Lord Jesus, and to embrace now this one, now that one, with all devotion, insofar as his goodness deigned to admit me. But whenever, forgetful of his compassion, with my conscience goading me, I clung to the foot of judgment a little too long, at once, cast down by incredible fear and wretched confusion, and enveloped in dark horror, I could only cry out trembling from the depths: Who knows the power of your wrath, and for fear of you can reckon your anger? (Ps 89:11-12) But if, leaving that foot behind, it happened that I held the foot of mercy too much, on the contrary I was dissolved into so great a carelessness and negligence that at once both prayer grew more tepid, and action more sluggish, and laughter more ready, and speech more incautious, and in short the whole state of both the inner and outer man appeared more inconstant. Therefore, instructed by experience as my teacher, I will no longer sing of judgment alone, or of mercy alone; but of mercy together with judgment will I sing to you, O Lord (Ps 100:1). Forever I will not forget these justifications; both together shall be my song in the place of my pilgrimage, until, mercy having been exalted above judgment, misery falls silent, and my glory alone sings to you hereafter, and I am pierced no more.”

“SERMON 7 INTIMACIES OF THE LOVE OF GOD I can see now that I involved myself in more work when I thoughtlessly laid myself open to your questions! After I had introduced the subject of the first kiss I went on to explain, rather protractedly, the spiritual feet of God with their signification and names. Now you proceed to ask about the hand to which the second kiss is given. Well -- I submit! I must try to comply with your wishes; and even more than you wish; I shall treat not only of one hand but of two, each under a particular name. One I shall call liberality because it gives generously; the other fortitude because it powerfully defends whatever it gives. One who will not be found ungrateful must kiss each of these hands, in order to acknowledge and praise God as the giver and conserver of all-good things. I should think that by now I have said enough about these two kisses, so we shall pass on to the third. 2. "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth," she said. Now who is this "she"? The bride. But why bride? Because she is the soul thirsting for God. In order to clarify for you the characteristics of the bride, I shall deal briefly with the diverse affective relationships between persons. Fear motivates a slave's attitude to his master, gain that of wage-earner to his employer, the learner is attentive to his teacher, the son is respectful to his father. But the one who asks for a kiss, she is a lover. Among all the natural endowments of man love holds first place, especially when it is directed to God, who is the source whence it comes. No sweeter names can be found to embody that sweet interflow of affections between the Word and the soul, than bridegroom and bride. Between these all things are equally shared, there are no selfish reservations, nothing that causes division. They share the same inheritance, the same table, the same home, the same marriage-bed, they are flesh of each other's flesh. "This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body." The bride for her part is bidden to "forget her nation and her ancestral home," so that the bridegroom may fall in love with her beauty. Therefore if a love relationship is the special and outstanding characteristic of the bride and groom, it is not unfitting to call the soul that loves God a bride. Now one who asks for a kiss is in love. It is not for liberty that she asks, nor for an award, not for an inheritance nor even knowledge, but for a kiss. It is obviously the request of a bride who is chaste, who breathes forth a love that is holy, a love whose ardor she cannot entirely disguise. For note how abruptly she bursts into speech. About to ask a great favor from a great personage, she does not resort, as others do, to the arts of seduction, she makes no devious or fawning solicitations for the prize that she covets. There is no preamble, no attempt to conciliate favor. No, but with a spontaneous outburst from the abundance of her heart, direct even to the point of boldness, she says: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth." 3. Does not this seem to you to indicate that she wished to say: "Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides you." Her love is surely chaste when it seeks the person whom she loves, and not some other thing of his. It is a holy love, the impulse of an upright spirit rather than of carnal desire. And it is an ardent love, blinded by its own excess to the majesty of the beloved. For what are the facts? He is the one at whose glance the earth trembles, and does she demand that he give her a kiss? Can she be possibly drunk? Absolutely drunk! And the reason? It seems most probable that when she uttered those passionate words she had just come out from the cellar of wine; afterwards she boasts of having been there. David in his turn cried out to God concerning people such as the bride: "They shall be inebriated with the plenty of your house; and you will make them drink of the torrent of your pleasure." How great this power of love: what great confidence and freedom of spirit! What is more manifest than that fear is driven out by perfect love! 4. There is a certain modesty in the fact that she directs that utterance of hers not to the Bridegroom himself but to others, as if he were absent: "Let him kiss me," she exclaimed, "with the kiss of his mouth." A sublime favor is petitioned, and hence there is need that the petitioner should be commended by a becoming modesty in the manner of the request. One who seeks access to the interior of the home goes round to the intimate friends or members of the household to attain what he desires. In this present instance who might these people be? In my opinion they are the holy angels who wait on us as we pray, who offer to God the petitions and desires of men, at least of those men whose prayer they recognize to be sincere, free from anger and dissension. We find proof of this in the words of the angel to Tobias: "When you prayed with tears and buried the dead, and left your dinner and hid the dead by day in your house, and buried them by night, I offered your prayer to the Lord." I feel that you are fully persuaded of this from many other testimonies of Scripture. That the holy angels do condescend to mingle with us when we praise God in psalmody is very clearly stated by the Psalmist: "The princes went before, joined with the singers, in the midst of young damsels playing on timbrels." He also said: "I will sing praise to you in the sight of the angels." For this reason it makes me sad to see some of you deep in the throes of sleep during the night office, to see that instead of showing reverence for those princely citizens of heaven you appear like corpses. When you are fervent they respond with eagerness and are filled with delight in participating in your solemn offices. What I fear is that one day, repelled by our sloth, they will angrily depart. Too late then shall we remorsefully cry out to God: "You have turned my friends away from me and made me repulsive to them;" or again: "You have turned my friends and neighbors from me, my acquaintances from my misery;" or yet again: "They that were near me stood afar off, and they that sought my soul used violence." It is certain indeed that if the good spirits withdraw from us, we shall not easily withstand the obsessions of the evil ones. And so I must warn the slothful: "Cursed be he who does the work of God half-heartedly." It is not I but the Lord who says: "Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth." Be mindful then of these angelic princes when you go to pray or to sing the psalms; stand with disciplined reverence and be proud that your angels continuously see the face of the Father. Since they are all spirits whose work is service, sent to help those who will be the heirs of salvation, they bear our prayers to God in heaven and return laden with graces for us. Let us make use of the service of those in whose company our lot is cast, that by the mouths of children and babes in arms praise may be made perfect. Let us invite them: "Sing praises to God, sing praises!" And let us hear them in turn responding: "Sing praises to our king, sing praises!" 5. Joined therefore as you are in songs of praise with heaven's own singers, since you too are citizens like all the saints, and part of God's household, sing wisely. As food is sweet to the palate, so does a psalm delight the heart. But the soul that is sincere and wise will not fail to chew the psalm with the teeth as it were of the mind, because if he swallows it in a lump, without proper mastication, the palate will be cheated of the delicious flavor, sweeter even than honey that drips from the comb. Let us with the Apostles offer a honey-comb at the table of the Lord in the heavenly banquet. As honey flows from the comb so should devotion flow from the words; otherwise if one attempts to assimilate them without the condiment of the Spirit "the written letters bring death." But if like St. Paul you sing praises not only with the spirit but with the mind as well, you too will experience the truth of Jesus' statement: "The words I have spoken to you are spirit, and they are life;" the truth too of the words of Wisdom: "My spirit is sweet above honey." 6. Doing this your soul shall be delighted in fatness, you will find your holocaust acceptable; you will conciliate the king, give pleasure to his princes and win the favor of the whole assembly above. And when they smell this sweet fragrance in the heavens, they will surely say of you too: "What is this coming up from the desert like a column of smoke, breathing of myrrh and frankincense and every perfume the merchant knows?" "The princes of Judah," the Psalmist exclaimed, "are their leaders, the princes of Zebulun, the princes of Naphtali;" the angelic princes are the leaders of those whose work is the praise of God; who live lives of continence, lives of contemplation. Our angelic princes know how pleasing to their King are the praises of psalmody, the fortitude of chaste souls, the singleness of purpose of contemplatives; and they are eager to discover in us these and other first-fruits of the Spirit, which are none other than the first and purest fruits of wisdom. You are not unaware that in Hebrew the word Judah means one who praises or makes acknowledgment, the word Zebulun, a fortified dwelling, and Naphtali, a swift hind, whose powers of agile leaping signify the ecstatic ardors of the contemplative mind. As the hind penetrates the wood's dark avenues, so does the contemplative spirit penetrate the obscure meanings of things. And finally we have God's own words: "Whoever offers praise, his sacrifice honors me." 7. Now if praise is unseemly in a sinner's mouth, do you not see how entirely necessary is the virtue of continence, if you are not to let sin reign in your mortal bodies? Nevertheless, continence will gain you no credit before God if you flaunt it for the praises of men. Consequently there is the greatest need too for that uprightness of intention by which you will both strive to please God alone and find the strength to adhere to him. This adherence to God is nothing less than that vision of God granted as a unique favor only to the pure in heart. That David had this clean heart is evident from his words: "My soul clings close to you"; and again: "My joy lies in being close to God." His vision of God brought him close to God, his closeness assured the vision. The man who lives in this state habitually will have the angels for his frequent and familiar guests, especially if they frequently find him in prayer. How I desire, O benign princes, that through you my requests may be made known to God! I do not refer here to God's normal knowledge, for the very thought of man is known to him, but rather that they be apprehended in the actual presence of God, by those who abide with God, both the holy angels and the glorified souls of men. Who will raise me up, in my poverty, from the dust, in my indigence from the dunghill, that I may share a place with the princes and be assigned a seat of honor? I am convinced that they will welcome with joy into their mansions him whom it pleased them to visit on the dunghill. Is it possible that we should be snubbed in heaven by those whom our conversion here below made so happy? 8. I think, therefore, that it was to these members of the household and her companions, that the bride addressed her request, to these she revealed her heart's desire when she said: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth." See the familiar and friendly communication there is between the aspiring soul who is still in the flesh and those powerful heavenly spirits. Her desire is to be kissed, she asks for what she desires; but she doesn't call her lover by name, she is certain that they know him because he has been so often the subject of her conversation with them. Accordingly she does not say: "Let this one or that one kiss me;" but simply: "let him Kiss me." This was the way Mary Magdalen behaved; she did not mention the name of the person she sought when she spoke to the man whom she took to be the gardener: "Sir, if you have taken him away ...." Who is this "him"? She names no name, she takes for granted that what her own heart could not forget, even for a moment, must be plain to all. And so the bride's words to the Bridegroom's companions imply that they know her secret, that her inward state is manifest to them, and no name passes her lips in that impulsive pleading about her beloved: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth." Today I shall speak no more to you about this kiss, I shall detain you no longer, but tomorrow you will hear from me whatever your prayers may win from him whose anointing teaches about all things. For flesh and blood do not reveal such a secret, but only he who searches the depths of God, the Holy Spirit who, proceeding from the Father and the Son, lives and reigns equally with them for ever. Amen.”

“SERMON 8 THE HOLY SPIRIT: THE KISS OF THE MOUTH As I promised yesterday, and as you well remember, today we are to speak of the supreme kiss, that of the mouth. You must listen with more than usual attention to a theme that is sweet to the spirit above all others, that is so rare an experience and more difficult to understand. I think I should begin by considering the higher truths, and it seems to me that a kiss past comprehension, beyond the experience of any mere creature, was designated by him who said: "No one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." For the Father loves the Son whom he embraces with a love that is unique; he who is infinite embraces his equal, who is eternal, his co-eternal the sole God, his only-begotten. But the Son's bond with him is not less affectionate, for it led him even to death, as he himself testifies: "That all might know that I love the Father, rise, let us go." And he went forth, as we know, to his passion. Now, that mutual knowledge and love between him who begets and him who is begotten -- what can it comprise if not a kiss that is utterly sweet, but utterly a mystery as well? 2. For my part I am convinced that no creature, not even an angel, is permitted to comprehend this secret of divine love, so holy and so august. Does not Paul proclaim from his own experience that this is a peace which passes all understanding, even that of the angels? And hence the bride, although otherwise so audacious, does not dare to say: "Let him kiss me with his mouth," for she knows that this is the prerogative of the Father alone. What she does ask for is something less: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth." Do you wish to see the newly-chosen bride receiving this unprecedented kiss, given not by the mouth but by the kiss of the mouth? Then look at Jesus in the presence of his Apostles: "He breathed on them," according to St John, "and he said: 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'" That favor, given to the newly-chosen Church, was indeed a kiss. That? you say. That corporeal breathing? O no, but rather the invisible Spirit, who is so bestowed in that breath of the Lord that he is understood to proceed from him equally as from the Father, truly the kiss that is common both to him who kisses and to him who is kissed. Hence the bride is satisfied to receive the kiss of the Bridegroom, though she be not kissed with his mouth. For her it is no mean or contemptible thing to be kissed by the kiss, because it is nothing less than the gift of the Holy Spirit. If, as is properly understood, the Father is he who kisses, the Son he who is kissed, then it cannot be wrong to see in the kiss the Holy Spirit, for he is the imperturbable peace of the Father and the Son, their unshakable bond, their undivided love, their indivisible unity. 3. He it is then who inspires the daring spirit of the bride, he it is whom she trustingly petitions to come to her under the guise of a kiss. But this boldness in her request is justified by something that she knows. For when the Son said: "No one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son," he added: "and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." But the bride has no doubt that if he will reveal himself to anybody, it will be to her. Therefore, she dares to ask for this kiss, actually for that Spirit in whom both the Father and the Son will reveal themselves to her. For it is not possible that one of these could be known without the other. That is why Christ said: "To have seen me is to have seen the Father;" and John in his turn: "No one who has the Father can deny the Son, and to acknowledge the Son is to have the Father as well." From these declarations it is clearly evident that the Father cannot be known apart from the Son, nor the Son apart from the Father. Rightly therefore did Christ point out that one achieves supreme happiness not by knowing any one of them, but by knowing both, when he said: "Eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." As a consequence, those who follow the Lamb are said to have his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads," which is to be glorified by this twofold knowledge. 4. But one of you may interpose and say: "Therefore knowledge of the Holy Spirit is not necessary, because when he said eternal life consisted of the knowledge of the Father and Son, he did not mention the Holy Spirit." True enough; but where there is perfect knowledge of the Father and the Son, how can there be ignorance of the goodness of both; which is the Holy Spirit? For no man has a complete knowledge of another until he finds out whether his will be good or evil. So, although it has been said: "Eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent," still, if that act of mission demonstrates the good pleasure both of the Father lovingly sending his Son and of the Son freely obeying the Father, then the Holy Spirit is not passed over in complete silence, for he is implied in the mention of so immense a grace. The Holy Spirit indeed is nothing else but the love and the benign goodness of them both. 5. When the bride asks for the kiss therefore, she asks to be filled with the grace of this threefold knowledge, filled to the utmost capacity of mortal flesh. But it is the Son whom she approaches, since it is by him it is to be revealed, and to whom he wills. He reveals himself therefore, and the Father as well, to whom it pleases him. And it is certain that he makes this revelation through the kiss, that is, through the Holy Spirit, a fact to which St Paul bears witness: "These are the very things that God has revealed to us through the Spirit." It is by giving the Spirit, through whom he reveals, that he shows us himself; he reveals in the gift, his gift is in the revealing. Furthermore, this revelation which is made through the Holy Spirit, not only conveys the light of knowledge but also lights the fire of love, as St Paul again testifies: "The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given us." And that is perhaps the reason why, in the case of those who, knowing God, yet refused to honor him as God, we do not read that they knew by a revelation of the Holy Spirit; for even though they possessed knowledge they did not love. As St Paul states: "God has shown himself to them," but he does not add: "through the Holy Spirit," lest those impious minds should usurp to themselves the kiss of the bride. They were content with the knowledge that gives self-importance, but ignorant of the love that makes the building grow. The apostle actually tells us the means by which they knew; they perceived him in the things that he had made. From all this it is clear that even their knowledge was not perfect, because they did not love. For if their knowledge had been complete, they would not have been blind to that goodness by which he willed to be born a human being, and to die for their sins. Just listen to what was revealed about God to them: "his everlasting power and deity," says St Paul. As you see, they in their presumption of spirit -- their own spirit, not God's -- studied his attributes of sublimity and majesty. That he was gentle and humble in heart they failed to understand. Nor must we be surprised at this, because we read of their leader, Behemoth, that he beholds everything that is high, nothing that is humble. On the contrary David did not walk among great things nor in wonders above himself; he would not be a searcher of majesty lest he be overwhelmed by glory. 6. You too, if you would make prudent progress in your studies of the mysteries of the faith, would do well to remember the Wise Man's advice: "Do not try to understand things that are too difficult for you, or try to discover what is beyond your powers." These are occasions when you must walk by the Spirit and not according to your personal opinions, for the Spirit teaches not by sharpening curiosity but by inspiring charity. And hence the bride, when seeking him whom her heart loves, quite properly does not put her trust in mere human prudence, nor yield to the inane conceits of human curiosity. She asks rather for a kiss, that is she calls upon the Holy Spirit by whom she is simultaneously awarded with the choice repast of knowledge and the seasoning of grace. How true it is that the knowledge imparted in the kiss is lovingly received, since the kiss is love's own token. But knowledge which leads to self-importance, since it is devoid of love, cannot be the fruit of the kiss. Even those who have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, may not for any reason lay claim to that kiss. For the favor of the kiss bears with it a twofold gift, the light of knowledge and the fervor of devotion. He is in truth the Spirit of wisdom and insight, who, like the bee carrying its burden of wax and honey, is fully equipped with the power both of kindling the light of knowledge and infusing the delicious nurture of grace. Two kinds of people therefore may not consider themselves to have been gifted with the kiss, those who know the truth without loving it, and those who love it without understanding it; from which we conclude that this kiss leaves room neither for ignorance nor for lukewarmness. So therefore, let the bride about to receive the twofold grace of this most holy kiss set her two lips in readiness, her reason for the gift of insight, her will for that of wisdom, so that overflowing with joy in the fullness of this kiss, she may be privileged to hear the words: "Your lips are moist with grace, for God has blessed you forever." Thus the Father, when he kisses the Son, pours into him the plenitude of the mysteries of his divine being, breathing forth love's deep delight, as symbolized in the words of the psalm: "Day to day pours forth speech." As has already been stated, no creature whatsoever has been privileged to comprehend the secret of this eternal, blessed and unique embrace; the Holy Spirit alone is the sole witness and confidant of their mutual knowledge and love. For who could ever know the mind of the Lord, or who could be his counselor? 7. But I feel that one of you may now want to say: "What voice thundered forth to you a secret that, you insist, was made known to no creature?" Unhesitatingly I answer: "It is the only Son, who is in the Father's bosom who has made it known." But he has made it known, I will say, not to the sorry and unworthy creature that I am, but to John, the Bridegroom's friend, whose words these are; and not only to him but to John the Evangelist also, the disciple Jesus loved. For his soul was pleasing to the Lord, entirely worthy both of the name and the dowry of a bride, worthy of the Bridegroom's embraces, worthy that is, of leaning back on Jesus' breast. John imbibed from the heart of the only-begotten Son what he in turn had imbibed from the Father. Nor is John the only one, it is true also of all to whom the Angel of the Great Counsel said: "I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father." Paul drank of it, because the Good News he preached is not a human message nor did he receive it through men, it is something he learned only through a revelation of Jesus Christ. All of these indeed could say with felicity and truth: "It is the only Son who is in the Father's bosom who has made it known to us." And this revelation -- what can you call it but a kiss? But it was the kiss of the kiss, not of the mouth. Listen if you will know what the kiss of the mouth is: "The Father and I are one;" and again: "I am in the Father and the Father is in me." This is a kiss from mouth to mouth, beyond the claim of any creature. It is a kiss of love and of peace, but of the love which is beyond all knowledge and that peace which is so much greater than we can understand. The truth is that the things that no eye has seen, and no ear has heard, things beyond the mind of man, were revealed to Paul by God through his Spirit, that is, through him who is the kiss of his mouth. That the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son signifies the kiss of the mouth. But the kiss of the kiss we discover when we read: "Instead of the spirit of the world, we have received the Spirit that comes from God, to teach us to understand the gifts that he has given us." 8. But we must make a clearer distinction between the two. He who received the fullness is given the kiss of the mouth, but he who received from the fullness is given the kiss of the kiss. Paul was certainly a great man, but no matter how high he should aim in making the offer of his mouth, even if he were to raise himself right into the third heaven," he would still of necessity find himself remote from the lips of the Most High. He must abide content within the limits of his capacity, and since he cannot of himself reach that glorious countenance, let him humbly ask that it may lean down to him, that, the kiss be transmitted from on high. He however who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, since he could dare to say: "The Father and I are one," because he was joined to him as an equal and embraced him as an equal -- he does not beg for a kiss from an inferior position; rather on equally sublime heights mouth is joined to mouth, and by a prerogative that is unique he receives the kiss from the mouth. For Christ therefore, the kiss meant a totality, for Paul only a participation; Christ rejoiced in the kiss of the mouth, Paul only in that he was kissed by the kiss. 9. Felicitous, however, is this kiss of participation that enables us not only to know God but to love the Father, who is never fully known until he is perfectly loved. Are there not surely some among you who at certain times perceive deep within their hearts the Spirit of the Son exclaiming: "Abba, Father"? Let that man who feels that he is moved by the same Spirit as the Son, let him know that he too is loved by the Father. Whoever he be let him be of good heart, let his confidence never waver. Living in the Spirit of the Son, let such a soul recognize herself as a daughter of the Father, a bride or even a sister of the Son, for you will find that the soul who enjoys this privilege is called by either of these names. Nor will it cost me much to prove it, the proof is ready to hand. They are the names by which the Bridegroom addresses her: "I come into my garden, my sister, my bride." She is his sister because they have the one Father; his bride because joined in the one Spirit. For if marriage according to the flesh constitutes two in one body, why should not a spiritual union be even more efficacious in joining two in one spirit? And hence anyone who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. But we have witness too from the Father, how lovingly and how courteously he gives her the name of daughter, and nevertheless invites her as his daughter-in-law to the sweet caresses of his Son: "Listen, daughter, pay careful attention: forget your nation and your ancestral home, then the king will fall in love with your beauty." See then from whom this bride demands a kiss. O soul called to holiness, make sure that your attitude is respectful, for he is the Lord your God, who perhaps ought not to be kissed, but rather adored with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.”

“SERMON 9 ON THE BREASTS OF THE BRIDEGROOM 1. Let us come now to the book, and give an account of the reason and sequence of the bride's words. For they hang suspended, and totter precipitously without a beginning. And therefore we must set forth what they may fittingly cohere with. Let us suppose, then, that those whom we have called the companions of the bridegroom had come now also to the bride, for the sake of visiting and greeting her, as yesterday and the day before; and that they found her murmuring and weary, wondered at the cause, and addressed her, as it were, in this manner: What new thing has happened? Why do we see you sadder than usual? What is the cause of this unexpected murmuring? Surely when you went, turned away and estranged, after your lovers, with whom it went badly for you, compelled at last to return to your former husband, did you not press with many prayers and tears that you might at least deserve to touch his feet? I recall it, she says. What then? Having obtained that, and at the same time having received in the kiss of the feet pardon for your offenses, did you not again grow impatient, and by no means content with so great a condescension, but desirous of greater familiarity, petition and obtain a second grace as well, with the same urgency as before, so that in the kiss of the hand you gained not a few and not small virtues? I do not deny it, she says. And they: Indeed, are you not the one who used to swear and protest that if ever it were given you to attain to the kiss of the hand, it would be enough for you; that you would ask for nothing further? I am. What then? Perhaps you will allege that something of those things you had received has been taken away? Nothing. Or do you fear that what you had presumed upon, the pardon granted to you regarding your former evil manner of life, will be demanded back? No. 2. Come then, tell us how we might satisfy you. I will not rest, she says, unless he kiss me with the kiss of his mouth. Thanks for the kiss of the feet, thanks also for the kiss of the hand; but if he has any care for me, let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth (Song 1:1). I am not ungrateful, but I love. I have received, I confess, things greater than my merits, but certainly less than my desires. I am carried by desire, not by reason. Do not, I ask, accuse me of presumption, where affection urges. Modesty indeed protests; but love overcomes. Nor am I unaware that the honor of the king loves judgment (Ps 98:4); but headlong love neither waits for judgment, nor is tempered by counsel, nor is bridled by modesty, nor is subject to reason. I ask, I entreat, I demand: let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth. Behold, by his own grace, for many years now I take care to live chastely and soberly, I devote myself to reading, I resist vices, I apply myself frequently to prayer; I keep watch against temptations, I recall my years in the bitterness of my soul. I consider myself to live without complaint, as far as it is in me, among the brethren; I am subject to the higher powers, going out and coming in at the command of my elder. I do not covet what belongs to others; rather I have given both my goods and myself. In the sweat of my face I eat my bread: yet what is in all these things stands entirely upon habit, of sweetness there is nothing. What am I but, according to the prophet, a heifer of Ephraim taught to love the threshing? (Hos 10:11). Finally, in the Gospel, he who does only what he ought to do is reckoned an unprofitable servant (Lk 17:10). Perhaps I fulfill the commandments in some fashion; but my soul is like a land without water in them. Therefore, that my holocaust may be made fat: let him kiss me, I pray, with the kiss of his mouth. 3. Very many of you also, as I recall, are accustomed to complain to me in your private confessions about this kind of languor of an arid spirit and dullness of a stolid mind, that they are unable, namely, to penetrate the high and subtle things of God, that they perceive nothing, or very little, of the sweetness of the spirit. What do these do, but sigh for the kiss? They sigh indeed, and yearn for the spirit of wisdom and understanding: of understanding, certainly, by which they may reach those things; of wisdom, that they may taste what they have apprehended by understanding. I believe the holy Prophet prayed in this very affection when he said: Let my soul be filled as with fat and richness, and my mouth shall praise with lips of exultation (Ps 62:6). He was altogether seeking a kiss, and that kiss at whose touch, his lips having been suffused with the richness of a special grace, there would follow what the same man prays for elsewhere: Let my mouth be filled with praise, that I may sing your glory, all the day your greatness (Ps 70:8). Finally he also poured forth when he had tasted: How great is the multitude of your sweetness, O Lord, which you have hidden for those who fear you (Ps 30:20). This kiss has detained us long enough, and I do not yet trust, to tell the truth, that I have expressed it worthily enough. But let us pass on to the remaining things; because it becomes known better when impressed than when expressed. 4. There follows: For your breasts are better than wine, fragrant with the finest ointments (Song 1:1-2). And whose words these are, the author does not say, leaving us free to comment on which person they most fittingly belong to. For my part, I do not lack grounds for assigning them congruently either to the bride, or to the bridegroom, or even to the companions of the bridegroom. And first I shall indicate how they fit the bride. Meanwhile, as she and they were conversing together, he himself, of whom the conversation was, arrived. Certainly he gladly draws near to those speaking of him. This is his custom. Thus to those going to Emmaus, and conferring among themselves, he offered himself a pleasant and eloquent companion (Lk 24:15). For this is what he promises in the Gospel: Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am in the midst of them (Mt 18:20); and through the prophet: Before they cry, he says, I will hear them; and while they are yet speaking I will say: Behold, I am here (Isa 65:24). So therefore now also, uncalled, he was present, and delighted by the words, he anticipated the prayers. I think that sometimes he does not even wait for words, but is called by thoughts alone. Finally, the man who was found according to the heart of God says: The Lord has heard the desire of the poor; the preparation of their heart your ear has heard (Ps 9:17). Attend also, you yourselves, to yourselves in every place, knowing that God who searches hearts and reins knows all your things, he who formed your hearts one by one and understands all your works. The bride, therefore, perceiving that the bridegroom was present, stopped (for she is ashamed of the presumption in which she understands herself to have been caught, for she had thought it more modest to arrange the matter through intermediaries); and straightway turning to him, she tries to excuse her boldness as best she can: For your breasts are better than wine, she says, fragrant with the finest ointments. As if to say: If I seem to think lofty things, you have caused it, O bridegroom, who by the sweetness of your breasts have nourished me with so great a condescension, that with all fear driven out by your love, not by my boldness, I dare perhaps more than is fitting. I dare indeed, mindful of your tenderness, unmindful of your majesty. Let these things be said for the sake of the sequence of the words. 5. Now let us see what this commendation of the bridegroom's breasts is like. The two breasts of the bridegroom are the two proofs of his innate gentleness: that he both patiently waits for the one who sins, and mercifully receives the one who repents. A twofold sweetness of tenderness, I say, overflows from the breast of the Lord Jesus: longsuffering in waiting and readiness in giving. And hear that this is not my invention. You read indeed concerning longsuffering: Do you despise the riches of his goodness, and patience, and longsuffering? And again: Do you not know that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? (Rom 2:4). For to this end he long suspends the sentence of vengeance from the one who scorns, so that he may at some time bestow the grace of remission upon the penitent. For he does not will the death of the sinner, but that he be converted, and live. Let us set forth examples of the other breast as well, which was said to be the readiness of forgiving. You read also of this: In whatever hour the sinner shall groan, his sin shall be forgiven him (Ezek 33:11-12); you read: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him; and to our God, for he is abundant in pardoning (Isa 55:7). David beautifully comprehended both in few words, saying: Longsuffering and abundant in mercy (Ps 102:10). The bride, therefore, confesses that by the experience of this twofold goodness she has grown into such confidence that she dared to ask for the kiss. What wonder, she says, if I thus presume of you, O bridegroom, I who have experienced from your breasts so great an abundance of sweetness? Therefore, the sweetness of your breasts provokes me to daring, not the confidence of my own merits. 6. But when she says: Your breasts are better than wine, this is the meaning: The richness of grace which flows from your breasts is more efficacious for my spiritual progress than the biting reproof of prelates. And not only are they better than wine, but also fragrant with the finest ointments; because not only do you nourish those present with the milk of inward sweetness, but you also sprinkle the absent with the pleasing fragrance of a good reputation, having a good testimony both from those within and from those without. You have, I say, milk within and ointments without; since indeed there would be none whom you might refresh with milk, if you did not first attract them by the fragrance. But concerning these ointments, if they contain anything worthy of consideration, it will be seen hereafter, when we come to that place where she says in what follows: We will run in the fragrance of your ointments (Song 1:3). Now, according to our promise, let us see whether these same words, which have been given to the bride, may also fit the bridegroom. 7. While the bride was speaking of the bridegroom, suddenly, as I had said, he is present; he assents to her desire, gives her the kiss, and fulfills in her the word that is written: You have granted him the desire of his heart, and have not withheld the request of his lips (Ps 20:3). And this he proves from the filling of her breasts. For so great is the efficacy of the holy kiss that, from the moment the bride receives it, she conceives, her breasts swelling and, as it were, growing fat with milk, in testimony. Those of you who make it your practice to pray frequently have experienced what I say. Often we approach the altar with a tepid and dry heart, and apply ourselves to prayer. But for those who persist, grace is suddenly infused, the breast grows fat, an inundation of devotion fills the inward parts; and if there be one to press, they will not delay in abundantly pouring forth the milk of the sweetness conceived. Let him say, therefore: You have, O bride, what you sought, and this is your sign, that your breasts have become better than wine. By this, namely, you shall know yourself to have received the kiss: that you perceive yourself to have conceived. Whence your breasts have swollen, having become in the abundance of milk better than the wine of worldly knowledge, which indeed intoxicates, but with curiosity, not with charity; filling, not nourishing; puffing up, not building up; gorging, not strengthening. 8. But let us grant these words also to the companions to utter. Unjustly, they say, do you murmur against the bridegroom; for what he has already given is worth more than what you ask. For what you seek indeed delights you; but the breasts with which you nourish the little ones, whom you also bear, are better, that is more necessary, than the wine of contemplation. For it is one thing that gladdens the heart of one man, and another that builds up many. For even if Rachel is more beautiful, yet Leah is more fruitful. Do not, therefore, insist too much upon the kisses of contemplation; for the breasts of preaching are better. 9. There occurs also another sense, which indeed I had not proposed, but I will by no means pass over. For why should we not say that these words belong rather to those very ones over whom she presides in her care, as little ones to their mother or nurse? For the young and still tender souls do not bear with equanimity that she should be free for rest, whose teaching they desire to be more fully instructed by, and by whose examples they desire to be formed. Is not, in fact, the restlessness of such ones checked in what follows, where under a solemn adjuration they are forbidden to arouse the beloved until she herself wills it? (Song 2:7). These therefore, perceiving that the bride yearns for kisses, seeks privacy for herself, flees from public life, avoids crowds, and prefers her own rest to the care of them: Do not, they say, do not; for there is greater fruit in breasts than in embraces. For through them you deliver us from carnal desires, which war against the soul; you snatch us from the world and win us for God. This therefore is what they say: For your breasts are better than wine. The carnal pleasure, they say, by which a little before, as by wine, we were held intoxicated, is overcome by these spiritual delights which your breasts distill for us. 10. And beautifully do they compare carnal affection to wine. For as a grape, once pressed, no longer has anything more to pour forth, but is condemned to perpetual dryness, so the flesh in the pressure of death is utterly dried up from all its delight, nor does it ever again grow green for lusts. Whence the prophet: All flesh is grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass has withered, and the flower has fallen (Isa 40:6-7); and the Apostle: He who sows in the flesh, from the flesh shall also reap corruption (Gal 6:8); and again: Food is for the belly, and the belly for food; but God will destroy both the one and the other (1 Cor 6:13). But see whether not only to the flesh, but also perhaps to the world this comparison may apply. For the world itself also passes away, and the desire of it: and since all things that are in the world have an end, the end of them will not be the end. But the breasts are not so. For when they have been emptied, they draw again from the fountain of the maternal breast what they may offer to those who suck. Rightly therefore are the breasts of the bride declared better than the love of the flesh or of the world, because no number of nurslings ever dries them up, but they always abound from the bowels of charity, to flow again. For rivers flow from her belly, and there springs up in her a fountain of living water leaping unto eternal life (Jn 7:38; 4:14). Then the praise of the breasts is heaped further with the fragrance of ointments: that they not only feed by the savor of their words, but are also sweet-smelling by the reputation of their deeds. Now what the breasts are, with what milk they swell, with what ointments they are anointed, we shall show under another beginning of discourse, with the help of Christ: who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, God, through all the ages of ages. Amen.”

“SERMON 10 THE BREASTS AND THEIR PERFUMES 4. Now I shall try to explain the nature of the ointments of which the breasts are redolent, and so I ask the aid of your prayers that I may benefit my hearers by a worthy expression of the thoughts that inspire me. Just as the breasts of the Bridegroom differ from those of the bride, so do the ointments with which they are perfumed. In the previous sermon I have indicated the place in which I hope to speak of the Bridegroom's breasts. Here we must concentrate on the ointments of the bride with an attention worthy of the scriptural eulogy that commends them not merely as good but as the best. I mention several kinds of ointments, so that given a choice, we may select the ones that seem especially appropriate to the breasts of the bride. There is the ointment of contrition, that of devotion and that of piety. The first is pungent, causing some pain; the second mitigates and soothes pain; the third heals the wound and rids the patient of the illness. And now let us discuss each of these more extensively. 5. A soul entangled in many sins can prepare for itself a certain ointment once it begins to reflect on its behavior, and collects its many and manifold sins, hems them together and crushes them in the mortar of its conscience. It cooks them, as it were, within a breast that boils up like a pot over the fire of repentance and sorrow, so that it can exclaim with the Prophet: "My heart became hot within me. As I mused the fire burned." Here then is one ointment which the sinful soul should provide at the beginning of its conversion and apply to its still smarting wounds, for the first sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit. And even though the sinner be poor and in want, devoid of the means to compound a better and more precious ointment, let him make sure in the meantime to prepare at least this one, no matter how degenerate the materials, because God will not scorn this crushed and broken heart. The more despicable he believes his offering to be because of his consciousness of sin, the more acceptable it will appear to God. 6. However, if we say that this invisible and spiritual ointment was symbolized by the visible ointment with which the sinful woman, as the Gospel describes, visibly anointed the corporeal feet of God, we cannot regard it as entirely worthless. For what do we read in the Gospel? "The house," it says, "was full of the scent of the ointment." It trickled from the hands of a courtesan, pouring over the feet, the body's extremities; and yet it was not so paltry, not so contemptible, as to prevent the house's being filled with the power of its aroma, the sweetness of its scent. So if we consider how great the fragrance with which the Church is perfumed in the conversion of one sinner, what a sweet smell of life leading to life each penitent can become! Provided that his repentance is wholehearted and visible to all, may we not with equal assurance say of him: "The house was full of the scent of the ointment." We can even say that this perfume of repentance reaches to the very abodes of the blessed in heaven because we have the witness of Truth itself that there is rejoicing among the angels of God over one repentant sinner. Rejoice then, you penitents; do not be afraid, you fainthearted ones. I am speaking to those of you who have recently come to us from the world, who have renounced your sinful ways and are inevitably gripped by the bitterness and confusion of the repentant soul that, like the pain of fresh wounds, torment and distract beyond bearing. Safely may your hands drip with the bitterness of myrrh in the course of this salutary anointing, because God will not scorn this crushed and broken spirit. This kind of anointing, that not only inspires men to amend their lives but even makes the angels dance for joy, must not be easily spurned nor cheaply priced. 7. But there is another ointment, more precious still, compounded of far superior elements. To obtain the elements of the former we do not have to travel far, we find them to hand without any trouble, and may cull them from our little gardens as often as necessity demands. For does not every man know, unless he deceives himself, that he has it within the power of his will to commit manifold sins and iniquities? But these, as you recognize, are the elements of the ointment we have just described. The spices of this second ointment, on the contrary, are not produced on our earth at all, we seek to gain them for ourselves from afar. I mean that all that is good, everything that is perfect, is given us from above; it comes down from the Father of all light. For this ointment is made from the gifts of God bestowed on the human race. Happy the man who makes it his business to gather these carefully for himself and keep them in mind with due thanksgiving. When they shall have been pounded and refined in the heart's receptacle with the pestle of frequent meditation, all of them fused together in the fire of holy desire, and finally enriched with the oil of gladness, you will have an ointment more excellent than the former, and far more precious. Enough proof can be found in the words of him who said: "Whoever makes thanksgiving his sacrifice honors me." No one doubts that the recalling of favors is an incentive to praise. 8. Furthermore, since the only thing that Scripture says of the former ointment is that God does not despise it, it follows that the second one, which especially glorifies him, is the more highly commended. Therefore the former is applied to the feet, the latter to the head. St Paul says: "God is the head of Christ," so in speaking of Christ we may understand the head as referring to his divinity, and it is beyond doubt that he who offers thanks anoints the head, because he makes contact with God, not man. I do not mean that he who is God is not also man, for the one Christ is both God and man; I mean that all things which are good, even those of which man is the agent, really come from God rather than man. "It is the spirit," we are told, "that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer." Hence there is a curse on the man who puts his trust in man, for although our whole hope rightly depends on God made man, it is not because he is man but because he is God. Therefore the first ointment is applied to the feet, the second to the head, because the humiliation of a broken heart fittingly corresponds to the lowliness of the flesh, and honor is owed to majesty. See then what an ointment I have been describing for you, with which he before whom even the Principalities stand in awe, does not disdain to be anointed on the head. Rather does he regard it as a matter of signal honor, for he says: "Whoever makes thanksgiving his sacrifice honors me." 9. From all this we may conclude that the poor, the needy and the pusillanimous cannot prepare an ointment of this kind. Confidence alone can lay hold of its spices and ingredients, a confidence that is itself the fruit of liberty of spirit and purity of heart. The mind that is lacking in courage and of little faith, that is fettered by the scantiness of its own resources, is, through sheer indigence, deprived of the leisure that might be occupied with the praises of God or with that contemplation of his beneficence out of which praise is born. And if it does at times make a genuine attempt to scale the heights, almost at once it is pulled back to its native state by the pressing demands of domestic needs, and so by its very destitution it is forcibly confined within its own narrow limits. If you ask of me the cause of this miserable state, I shall reveal something that, unless I be mistaken, you will recognize as either present now in yourselves, or as having once been present. The weakness and misgiving exhibited by this type of person seem to me usually to arise from either of two causes, from the fact that he has been but recently converted, or because he lives in a lukewarm fashion even though converted for long years. Both of these conditions humiliate, depress, and agitate the mind, since either because of its lukewarmness or because of the recentness it perceives the old passions of the soul to be still alive and it is forced to concentrate on cutting out from the garden of the heart the briers of sinful habits and the nettles of evil desires. Such a man cannot get away from himself. How else can it be? Can he who is worn out with groaning exult at the same time in the praises of God? Isaiah talks of thanksgiving and the sound of music. In what manner will it sound in the mouth of a man given over to groaning and lamenting. It is just as the Wise Man says: "A tale out of time is like music in mourning." And of course thanksgiving is made after receiving a favor, not before. But the soul that still languishes in sadness is not enjoying a favor, rather it needs one. It has a good reason for offering prayers of petition, but scarcely a reason for returning thanks. How can it rejoice in the memory of a favor not yet received? Quite rightly then did I say that the man whose resources are poor is not called upon to prepare this ointment, for this is the work of one who can draw on the memory of divine favors. He whose gaze is held by the darkness cannot see the light. Bitterness holds him in its grip, the unpleasant recollection of his sins preoccupies his memory to the exclusion of every joyful thought. It is to souls like this that the Prophet says: "It is vain for you to rise before light." He points out that it is useless for you to aspire to the contemplation of truths that give delight, until the sins that disquiet you have been blotted out in the light of consolation. This second ointment therefore is not a product of impoverished souls. 10. But let us take a look at those who may rightly boast of possessing an abundance of it. "They left the presence of the Sanhedrin glad to have had the honor of suffering humiliation for the sake of the name of Jesus." They whose gentleness remained unshaken in the face both of reproaches and blows, had surely been filled from the overflowing richness of the Spirit. For they were rich in the charity that no amount of self-giving can exhaust; out of its resources they easily found what sufficed to offer up "fat holocausts." Those drenched hearts of theirs poured out at random a holy unction, with which they were more fully imbued, when they proclaimed in various languages, according as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech, the marvels of God. And surely we must believe that an abundance of these same ointments was lavished on those of whom St Paul says: "I never stop thanking God for all the graces you have received through Jesus Christ. I thank him that you have been enriched in so many ways, in all speech and in all knowledge; the witness to Christ has indeed been strong among you, so that you will not be without any of the gifts of the Spirit." How I wish that I were able to offer thanks for similar graces on your behalf, that I might see you men rich in virtue, prompt to sing God's praises, overflowing with an increasing wealth of this spiritual anointing in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

“SERMON 20 THREE QUALITIES OF LOVE I would like to begin with a word from St Paul: "If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus, let him be anathema." Truly, I ought to love the one through whom I have my being, my life, my understanding. If I am ungrateful, I am unworthy too. Lord Jesus, whoever refuses to live for you is clearly worthy of death, and is in fact dead already. Whoever does not know you is a fool. And whoever wants to become something without you, without doubt that man is considered nothing and is just that. For what is man, unless you take notice of him? You have made all things for yourself, O God, and whoever wants to live for himself and not for you, in all that he does, is nothing. "Fear God, and keep his commandments," it is said, "for this is the whole duty of man." So if this is all, without this, man is nothing. Turn toward yourself, O God, this little that you have granted me to be; take from this miserable life, I beg you, the years that remain. In place of all that I lost in my evil way of living, O God, do not refuse a humble and penitent heart. My days have lengthened like a shadow and passed without fruits I cannot bring them back, but let it please you at least if I offer them to you in the bitterness of my soul. As for wisdom -- my every desire and intention is before you -- if there were any in me, I would keep it for you. But, God, you know my stupidity, unless perhaps it is wisdom for me to recognize it, and even this is your gift. Grant me more; not that I am ungrateful for this small gift, but that I am eager for what is lacking. For all these things, and as much as I am able, I love you. 2. But there is something else that moves me, arouses and enflames me even more. Good Jesus, the chalice you drank, the price of our redemption, makes me love you more than all the rest. This alone would be enough to claim our love. This, I say, is what wins our love so sweetly, justly demands it, firmly binds it, deeply affects it. Our Savior had to toil so hard in this, in fact in making the whole world the Creator did not labor so much. Then he spoke and they were made; he commanded and they were created. But in saving us he had to endure men who contradicted his words, criticized his actions, ridiculed his sufferings, and mocked his death. See how much he loved us. Add to this the fact that he was not returning love but freely offering it. For who had given him anything first, that it should be returned to him? As St John said: "Not that we had loved him, but that he first loved us." He loved us even before we existed, and in addition he loved us when we resisted him. According to the witness of St Paul: "Even when we were still his enemies we were reconciled to God through the blood of his Son." If he had not loved his enemies, he could not have had any friends, just as he would have had no one to love if he had not loved those who were not. 3. His love was sweet, and wise, and strong. I call it sweet because he took on a human body, wise because he avoided sin, strong because he endured death. Even though he took a body, his love was never sensual, but always in the wisdom of the Spirit. "A Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord," jealous of us but with the jealousy of God, not man, and certainly not like that of the first man, Adam, for Eve. So those whom he sought after in a body, he loved in the spirit and redeemed in power. How sweet it is to see as man the Creator of humanity. While he carefully protected nature from sin, he forcefully drove death from that nature also. In taking a body he stooped to me, in avoiding sin he took counsel with himself, in accepting death he satisfied the Father. A dear friend, a wise counselor, a strong helper. Should I not willingly entrust myself to the one who had the good will, the wisdom, the strength to save me? He sought me out, he called me through grace; will he refuse me as I come to him? I fear neither force nor fraud which can snatch me from his hand. He is the one who conquered all things, even death, and tricked the serpent, the seducer of the world, with a holy deception. He was more prudent than the one, more powerful than the other. He took to himself a true body but only the likeness of sin, giving a sweet consolation to weak men in the one and in the other hiding a trap to deceive the devil. To reconcile us to the Father he bravely suffered death and conquered it, pouring out his blood as the price of our redemption. His divine majesty would not have sought me in chains unless he had loved me so tenderly, but he added wisdom to his affection by which he deceived the serpent. Then he added patience with which to appease his divine Father who had been offended. These are the qualities of love of which I promised to tell you. But I have shown them to you first in Christ, to make them so much more acceptable to you. 4. Christian, learn from Christ how you ought to love Christ. Learn a love that is tender, wise, strong; love with tenderness, not passion, wisdom, not foolishness, and strength, lest you become weary and turn away from the love of the Lord. Do not let the glory of the world or the pleasure of the flesh lead you astray; the wisdom of Christ should become sweeter to you than these. The light of Christ should shine so much for you that the spirit of lies and deceit will not seduce you. Finally, Christ as the strength of God should support you so that you may not be worn down by difficulties. Let love enkindle your zeal, let knowledge inform it, let constancy strengthen it. Keep it fervent, discreet, courageous. See it is not tepid, or temerarious, or timid. See for yourself if those three commands are not prescribed in the law when God says: "You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul and your whole strength." It seems to me, if no more suitable meaning for this triple distinction comes to mind, that the love of the heart relates to a certain warmth of affection, the love of the soul to energy or judgment of reason, and the love of strength can refer to constancy and vigor of spirit. So love the Lord your God with the full and deep affection of your heart, love him with your mind wholly awake and discreet, love him with all your strength, so much so that you would not even fear to die for love of him. As it is written: "For love is strong as death, jealousy is bitter as hell." Your affection for your Lord Jesus should be both tender and intimate, to oppose the sweet enticements of sensual life. Sweetness conquers sweetness as one nail drives out another. No less than this keep him as a strong light for your mind and a guide for your intellect, not only to avoid the deceits of heresy and to preserve the purity of your faith from their seductions, but also that you might carefully avoid an indiscreet and excessive vehemence in your conversation. Let your love be strong and constant, neither yielding to fear nor cowering at hard work. Let us love affectionately, discreetly, intensely. We know that the love of the heart, which we have said is affectionate, is sweet indeed, but liable to be led astray if it lacks the love of the soul. And the love of the soul is wise indeed, but fragile without that love which is called the love of strength. 5. See how many examples support what we say. When the disciples were sad at the departure of their Master just before his ascension, after they had heard him talk about this subject, they heard him say: "If you loved me you would rejoice because I am going to the Father." How can he say this? Didn't they love him when his departure made them so sad? In a way they loved him, and in another way they did not. Their love was more tender than prudent, it was sensual but not reasonable; they loved with the whole heart but not with the whole soul. What they loved was not for their own welfare, and so he said to them: "It is good for you that I am going," correcting not their feelings but their foresight. When he was speaking in the same way about his approaching death, Peter who loved him so dearly, tried to stand in the way. When, as you remember, he rebuked him, what was it but his imprudence that he was correcting? Finally what did he mean in saying: "You do not mind the things of God," except: you do not love wisely, you are following your human feeling in opposition to the divine plan. He even called him Satan because although it was in ignorance, he was impeding salvation in trying to prevent the Savior's death. Peter, who had been corrected, later when the sad prophecy was repeated, no longer objected to death but promised he would die with him. But he could not fulfill this promise because he had not yet reached that third degree where he would love with all his strength. Taught to love with his whole soul, Peter was still weak. He was well instructed but not well prepared, aware of the mystery but afraid of bearing witness to it. Obviously that love was not as strong as death which still yielded before it. Later, robed with strength from on high according to the promise of Jesus Christ, Peter began to love with such strength that when forbidden by the Council to proclaim the holy Name, he boldly answered those who gave the order: "We must obey God rather than men." Then finally he attained the fullness of love, when for love's sake he would not spare even his own life. Truly "greater love than this no man has, than that he lay down his life for his friends." Even if Peter did not actually surrender his life then, he did offer it. So then, to love with your whole heart, your whole soul and your whole strength means not being led astray by allurements, or seduced by lies, or broken by injuries. 6. Notice that the love of the heart is, in a certain sense, carnal, because our hearts are attracted most toward the humanity of Christ and the things he did or commanded while in the flesh. The heart that is filled with this love is quickly touched by every word on this subject. Nothing else is as pleasant to listen to, or is read with as much interest, nothing is as frequently in remembrance or as sweet in reflection. The soul prepares the holocausts of its prayers with this love as if they were the fattened offerings of bullocks. The soul at prayer should have before it a sacred image of the God-man, in his birth or infancy or as he was teaching, or dying, or rising, or ascending. Whatever form it takes this image must bind the soul with the love of virtue and expel carnal vices, eliminate temptations and quiet desires. I think this is the principal reason why the invisible God willed to be seen in the flesh and to converse with men as a man. He wanted to recapture the affections of carnal men who were unable to love in any other way, by first drawing them to the salutary love of his own humanity, and then gradually to raise them to a spiritual love. Were they not at just this level when they said: "See, we have left everything and have followed you"? It was only by the love of his physical presence that they had left everything. They could not even bear to hear a word of his approaching passion and death, although this was to be their salvation. Even after it had all happened they could not gaze upon the glory of his ascension without deep sorrow. This is why Christ said to them: "Because I have said this to you sadness has filled your hearts." So it was only by his physical presence that their hearts were detached from carnal loves. 7. Afterwards he showed them a higher degree of love when he said, "It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing." I think Paul had reached this level when he said: "Even if we once knew Christ in the body, we know him thus no longer." Perhaps this was also true of the Prophet who said: "A Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord." When he adds: "Under his shadow we will live among the heathens," he seems to me to speak on behalf of the beginners, in order that they may at least rest in the shade since they know they are not strong enough to bear the heat of the sun. They may be nourished by the sweetness of his humanity since they are not yet able to perceive the things which are of the Spirit of God. The shade of Christ, I suggest, is his flesh which overshadowed Mary and tempered for her the bright splendor of the Spirit. Therefore in this human devotion there is in the meantime consolation for whomever does not as yet have the Spirit which gives life, at least who do not have him in the same way as those who say: "A Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord," and again: "If we once knew Christ in the flesh we know him thus no longer." For there is no love of Christ at all without the Holy Spirit, even if this love is in the flesh, and without its fullness. The measure of such love is this: its sweetness seizes the whole heart, and draws it completely from the love of all flesh and every sensual pleasure. Really this is what it means to love with the whole heart. If I prefer to the humanity of my Lord someone joined to me by ties of blood, or some sensual pleasure, this would obviously prove that I do not love with my whole heart since it is divided between its own interests and the love of the one who taught me as a man, both by his words and examples. Would I not seem to give my love partly to him and partly to my own? As he once said: "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." To put it briefly, to love with the whole heart means to put the love of his sacred humanity before everything that tempts us, from within or without. Among these temptations we must also count the glory of the world, because its glory is that of the flesh, and those who delight in it without a doubt are men of the flesh. 8. Of course this devotion to the humanity of Christ is a gift, a great gift of the Spirit. I have called it carnal with comparison to that other love which does not know the Word as flesh so much as the Word as wisdom, as justice, truth, holiness, loyalty, strength, and whatever else could be said in this manner. Christ is truly all these things. "He became for us the wisdom of God, and justice, and sanctification and redemption." Take as an example two men: one of them feels a share in Christ's sufferings, is affected and easily moved at the thought of all that he suffered; he is nourished and strengthened by the sweetness of this devotion to good and honest and worthy actions. But the other is always aflame with zeal for justice, eager for the truth and for wisdom. His life, his habits are saintly, ashamed of boasting, avoiding criticism, never knowing envy, hating pride. He not only flees all human glory but shrinks from it and avoids it, every stain of impurity both in body and soul he loathes and eradicates; finally he spurns every evil as if naturally, and embraces what is good. If you would compare the feelings of these two men would it not appear how the latter was superior in respect to the former, whose love was somehow more carnal? 9. But that carnal love is worthwhile since through it sensual love is excluded, and the world is condemned and conquered. It becomes better when it is rational, and becomes perfect when it is spiritual. Actually it is rational when the reason is so strong in faith that in all things concerning Christ it strays in not even the slightest degree because of any false likeness of truth, nor by any heretical or diabolical deceit does it wander from the integrity of the sense of the Church. In the same way when speaking on its own it exercises such caution as never to exceed the proper limits of discretion by superstition or frivolity or the vehemence of a too eager spirit. This is loving God with the whole soul, as we said before. If, with the help of the Spirit, the soul attains such strength that it remains steadfast no matter what the effort or difficulty, if the fear of death itself cannot make it act unjustly, but even then it loves with the whole strength, this then is spiritual love. I think the name is very fitting for this special love because of the special fullness of the Spirit in which it excels. This is enough for those words of the bride: "Therefore the young maidens love you so much." In those things that are to follow may he open to us the treasure of his mercy, the one who guards them, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

“SERMON 11 THANKSGIVING FOR CHRIST'S SAVING WORK I said at the end of my last sermon, and I have no hesitation in repeating it, that I long to see you all sharing in that holy anointing, that religious attitude in which the benefits of God are recalled with gladness and thanksgiving. This involves a twofold grace: it lightens the burdens of the present life, makes them more supportable for those who can give themselves with joy to the work of praising God; and nothing more appropriately represents on earth the state of life in the heavenly fatherland than spontaneity in this outpouring of praise. Scripture implies as much when it says: "Happy those who live in your house and can praise you all day long." It was with a special reference to this anointing that the Prophet exclaimed: "How good, how delightful it is for all to live together like brothers; fine as oil on the head." These words do not seem applicable to the first anointing. Though that is good in itself, it is not by any means pleasant; because the recollection of one's sins begets bitterness rather than pleasure. Nor do those involved in it live together, since each one bewails and mourns over his own particular sins. Those, however, who are employed in the work of thanksgiving are contemplating and thinking about God alone, and so they cannot help but dwell in unity. That which they do is good because they offer to God the glory that is most rightly his; and it is also pleasant, since of its very nature it gives delight. 2. And for that reason my advice to you, my friends, is to turn aside occasionally from troubled and anxious pondering on the paths you may be treading, and to travel on smoother ways where the gifts of God are serenely savored, so that the thought of him may give breathing space to you whose consciences are perplexed. I should like you to experience for yourselves the truth of the holy Prophet's words: "Make the Lord your joy and he will give you what your heart desires." Sorrow for sin is indeed necessary, but it should not be an endless preoccupation. You must dwell also on the glad remembrance of God's loving-kindness, otherwise sadness will harden the heart and lead it more deeply into despair. Let us mix honey with our absinthe, it is more easily drunk when sweetened, and what bitterness it may still retain will be wholesome. You must fix your attention on the ways of God, see how he mitigates the bitterness of the heart that is crushed, how he wins back the pusillanimous soul from the abyss of despair, how he consoles the grief-stricken and strengthens the wavering with the sweet caress of his faithful promise. By the mouth of the Prophet he declares: "For my praise I will bridle you, lest you should perish." By this he seems to say: "Lest you should be cast down by excessive sadness at the sight of your sins, and rush despairingly to perdition like an unbridled horse over a precipice, I shall rein you in, I shall curb you with my mercy and set you on your feet with my praises. Then you will breathe freely again in the enjoyment of my benefits, overwhelmed though you be by evils of your own making, because you will find that my kindness is greater than your culpability." If Cain had been curbed by this kind of bridle he would never have uttered that despairing cry: "My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve pardon." God forbid! God forbid! His loving mercy is greater than all iniquity. Hence the just man is not always accusing himself, he does so only in the opening words of his intercourse with God; he will normally conclude that intercourse with the divine praises. You can see therefore that the order of the just man's progress is expressed in the words: "After reflecting on my behavior, I turn my feet to your decrees," that is, he who has endured grief and unhappiness in following his own ways can finally say: "In the way of your decrees lies my joy, a joy beyond all wealth." Therefore, if you are to follow the just man's example, if you are to form a humble opinion of yourselves, you must think of the Lord with goodness. So you are told in the Book of Wisdom: "Think of the Lord with goodness, seek him in simplicity of heart." You will all the more easily achieve this if you let your minds dwell frequently, even continually, on the memory of God's bountifulness. Otherwise, how will you fulfill St Paul's advice: "In all things give thanks to God," if your hearts will have lost sight of those things for which thanks are due? I would not have you bear the reproach flung at the Jews of old, who, according to Scripture, "had forgotten his achievements, the marvels he had shown them." 3. We must admit though that it is impossible for any man to remember and recount all the benefits that the Lord, so merciful and tender-hearted, ceaselessly bestows on mortal men, for who can recount the Lord's triumphs, who can praise him enough? Yet one at least of his benefits, the work by which he redeemed us, his chief and greatest achievement, should by no means be allowed to slip from the memory of the redeemed. Concerning this work I wish to suggest for your consideration two important points that now occur to me, which I shall state as briefly as possible in accord with the Wise Man's saying: "Give the wise man an opportunity, he grows wiser still." The two are these: manner and fruit. The manner involved the self-emptying of God, the fruit was that we should be filled with him. Meditation on the former is the seed-bed of holy hope, meditation on the latter an incentive to the highest love. Both of them are essential for our progress, because hope without love is the lot of the time-server, and love without reward grows cold. 4. I shall add, too, that the fruit we must expect as our love's fulfillment should be worthy of the promise of him whom we love. "A full measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap." And that measure, as I have heard, will be without measure. But what I should like to know, however, is the nature of that which is to be measured out, what that immense reward is which has been promised. "The eye has not seen, O God, besides you, what things you have prepared for them that love you." Tell us then, since you do the preparing, tell us what it is you prepare. We believe, we are confident, that in accordance with your promise, "we shall be filled with the good things of your house." But I persist in asking what are these good things, what are they like? Would it be with corn and wine and oil, with gold and silver or precious stones? But these are things that we have known and seen, that we have grown weary of seeing. We seek for the things that no eye has seen and no ear has heard, things beyond the mind of man. To search after these things, whatever they may be, is a source of pleasure and relish and delight. "They will all be taught by God," says Scripture, and he will be all in all. As I see it, the fullness that we hope for from God will be only something of God himself. 5. Who indeed can comprehend what an abundance of goodness is contained in that brief expression: "God will be all in all"? Not to speak of the body, I discern in the soul three faculties, the reason, the will, the memory, and these three may be said to be identified with the soul itself. Everyone who is guided by the Spirit realizes how greatly in the present life these three are lacking in integrity and perfection. And what reason can there be for this, except that God is not yet "all in all"? Hence it comes about that the reason very often falters in its judgments, the will is agitated by a fourfold perturbation and the memory confused by its endless forgetfulness. Man, noble though he be, was unwillingly been subjected to this triple form of futility, but hope nonetheless was left to him. For he who satisfies with good the desire of the soul will one day himself be for the reason, fullness of light, for the will, the fullness of peace, for the memory, eternity's uninterrupted flow. O truth! O love! O eternity! Oh blessed and beatifying Trinity! To you the wretched trinity that I bear within me sends up its doleful yearnings because of the unhappiness of its exile. Departing from you, in what errors, what pains, what fears it has involved itself! Unhappy me! What a trinity we have won in exchange for you! "My heart is throbbing," and hence my pain; "my strength is deserting me" and hence my fear; "the light of my eyes itself has left me," and hence my error. O trinity of my soul, how utterly different the Trinity you have offended in your exile. 6. And still, why so downcast, my soul, why do you sigh within me? Put your hope in God. I shall praise him yet, when error will have gone from the reason, pain from the will, and every trace of fear from the memory. Then will come that state for which we hope, with its admirable serenity, its fullness of delight, its endless security. The God who is truth is the source of the first of these gifts; the God who is love, of the second; the God who is all-powerful, of the third. And so it will come to pass that God will be all in all, for the reason will receive unquenchable light, the will imperturbable peace, the memory an unfailing fountain from which it will draw eternally. I wonder if it seems right to you that we should assign that first operation to the Son, the second to the Holy Spirit, the last to the Father. In doing so, however, we must beware of excluding either the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit from any one of these communications, lest the distinction of Persons should diminish the divine fullness proper to each of them, or their perfection be so understood as to annul the personal properties. Consider too that the children of this world experience a corresponding threefold temptation from the allurements of the flesh, the glitter of life in the world, the self-fulfillment patterned on Satan. These three include all the artifices by which the present life deceives its unhappy lovers, even as St John proclaimed: "All that is in the world is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life." So much for the fruit of the redemption. 7. Now with regard to the manner, which if you remember, we defined as God's self-emptying, I venture to offer three important points for your consideration. For that emptying was neither a simple gesture nor a limited one; but he emptied himself even to the assuming of human nature, even to accepting death, death on a cross. Who is there that can adequately gauge the greatness of the humility, gentleness, self-surrender, revealed by the Lord of majesty in assuming human nature, in accepting the punishment of death, the shame of the cross? But somebody will say: "Surely the Creator could have restored his original plan without all that hardship?" Yes, he could, but he chose the way of personal suffering so that man would never again have a reason to display that worst and most hateful of all vices, ingratitude. If his decision did involve painful weariness for himself, it was meant also to involve man in a debt that only great love can pay. Where the ease with which man was created sapped his spirit of devotion, the hardship with which he was redeemed should urge him on to gratitude. For how did man the ingrate regard his creation? "I was created freely indeed but with no trouble or labor on my Creator's part; for at his command I was made, just like every other thing. What is big about that gift if not the great facility of the word that made it?" Thus does human impiety belittle the boon of creation, and turn that which of its nature is a source of love into an occasion for ingratitude. Those who live by these sentiments share the godlessness of evil-doers. But these lying mouths are silenced. For, more obvious than the light of day is the immense sacrifice he has made for you, O man; he who was Lord became a slave, he who was rich became a pauper, the Word was made flesh, and the Son of God did not disdain to become the son of man. So may it please you to remember that, even if made out of nothing, you have not been redeemed out of nothing. In six days he created all things, and among them, you. On the other hand, for a period of thirty whole years he worked your salvation in the midst of the earth. What endurance was his in those labors! To his bodily needs and the molestations of his enemies did he not add the mightier burden of the ignominy of the cross, and crown it all with the horror of his death? And this was indeed necessary. Man and beast you save, O Lord. How you have multiplied your mercy, O God. 8. Meditate on these things, turn them over continually in your minds. Refresh those hearts of yours with perfumes such as these, hearts writhing so long under the repugnant odor of your sins. May you abound with these ointments, as sweet as they are salutary. But yet, you must beware of thinking that you now possess those superior ones that are commended to us in the breasts of the bride. The necessity of bringing this sermon to an end does not allow me to begin discussing them now. But all that has been said about the others you must retain in your memory and reveal in your way of life; and do please help me with your prayers that I may worthily portray with appropriate sentiments those superior delights of the bride, that I may fill your own souls with the love of the Bridegroom, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

“SERMON 22 ON THE FOUR OINTMENTS OF THE BRIDEGROOM AND THE FOUR CARDINAL VIRTUES If the ointments of the bride are as precious and exquisite as you have heard them portrayed, how matchless must those of the Bridegroom be! And though any exposition of mine will fail to do justice to them, we must accept that their power is great and their grace efficacious, since their odor alone is enough to make not only the maidens but even the bride run. As you notice, she has not dared to make any such promise about her own ointments. She does indeed rejoice that they are flawless; but she does not say that they have inspired her to run, or that they will do so. This she attributes solely to the Bridegroom's ointments. But if the merest fragrance of these so excites her that she must run, what would the consequences be if she should experience the ointment itself being poured out in her? What wonder if she should even fly! But some of you must want to say: "Desist now from praising these gifts. When you begin to explain them we shall see clearly enough what they are." But no. I make no such promise. For believe me, I have not as yet decided whether I ought to express all the thoughts that suggest themselves. My opinion is that the Bridegroom has a varied and plentiful stock of perfumes and ointments. Some are solely for the pleasure of the bride who enjoys more intimate and familiar relations with him: others are wafted out to the maidens; and others again reach out to strangers afar off, so that "nothing can escape his heat." For although "the Lord is good to all," he is especially kind to those who live in his house, and the more one is assimilated to him by a virtuous life and an upright will, the more sensitive I think he will be to the fragrance of the newer perfumes and the sweeter ointments. 2. In matters of this kind, understanding can follow only where experience leads, and I shall be the last to intrude rashly where the bride alone may enter. The Bridegroom knows the delights with which the Holy Spirit charms the one he loves, the inspirations with which he reanimates her affections, the perfumes that enhance her loveliness. Let her be as a fountain entirely his own, unshared by any stranger, untouched by unworthy lips: for she is "a garden enclosed, a sealed fountain," though rivulets flow from it into the streets. These I may use, though I want no trouble or ingratitude from anyone if I offer what I draw from a public source. I shall even pay myself a mild compliment in this matter, for no small effort and fatigue are involved in going out day by day to draw waters from the open streams of the Scriptures and provide for the needs of each of you, so that you may have at hand spiritual waters for every occasion, for washing, for drinking, for cooking of foods. God's word is a water of the wisdom that saves; when you drink it you are made clean, as the Lord himself points out: "You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you." The word of God, winged with the Holy Spirit's fire, can cook the raw reflections of the sensual man, giving them a spiritual meaning that feeds the mind, and inspiring him to say: "My heart became hot within me, and as I meditated a fire burst forth." 3. Far from disapproving of those whose purer mind enables them to grasp more sublime truths than I can present, I warmly congratulate them, but expect them to allow me to provide a simpler doctrine for simpler minds. How I wish that all had the gift of teaching: I should be rid of the need to preach these sermons! It is a burden I should like to transfer to another, or rather I should prefer that none of you would need to exercise it, that all would be taught by God, and I should have leisure to contemplate God's beauty. Now however I must confess, not without tears, that I have no time to seek after God, much less to contemplate him; no time to see the king in his beauty seated upon the Cherubim, on a throne raised aloft; to see him in that form in which, as the Father's equal, he was born before the dawning amid the sacred splendors. This is the form in which the angels long to contemplate him forever, God with God; and I, a man, describe him to men according to the human form that he adopted in order to reveal himself with the maximum of esteem and love; "made lower than the angels," he came out of his chambers like a Bridegroom and pitched a tent in the sun. I present him as attractive rather than sublime, as God's appointed servant and not a remote deity, as the one whom the Spirit of the Lord anointed and sent "to bring good news to the poor, to bind up hearts that are broken, to proclaim liberty to captives, freedom to those in prison; to proclaim a year favorable to the Lord." 4. Every person, therefore, is free to pursue the thoughts and experiences, however sublime and exquisite, that are his by special insight, on the meaning of the Bridegroom's ointments. For my part, I offer for the common good what I have received from a common source. He is the fountain of life, a sealed fountain, brimming over from within the enclosed garden through the pipe of St Paul's mouth. This is that true wisdom which Job says, "is drawn out of secret places," divides into four streams and flows into the streets, where it indicates to us him who has been made by God "wisdom and righteousness, and holiness, and redemption." From these four streams as from priceless perfumes -- there is nothing to prevent us seeing them either as water or as perfume, water because they cleanse, perfume because of their scent -- from these four as from priceless perfumes blended from heavenly ingredients "upon the spicy mount" so sweet an odor fills the nostrils of the Church, that she is roused even to the four corners of the earth by its sheer delightfulness. She hurries to meet her heavenly Bridegroom, like the Queen of the South who hastened from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, drawn by his fame as by a sweet scent. 5. The Church was devoid of the power to run in the odor of her Solomon until he who from all eternity was the Wisdom begotten of the Father, became Wisdom from the Father for her in time, and so enabled her to perceive his odor. Thus he has become for her righteousness and holiness and redemption, that she might run in the odor of these gifts too, since these also were equally in him before all things began. "In the beginning was the Word," but the shepherds hurried to see him only when his human birth was announced. Then it was that they said to each other: "Let us go to Bethlehem and see this word that was made, which the Lord has made known to us." Scripture adds that "they came in haste." Before that, while the Word remained solely with God, they did not stir. But when the Word, which was, was made, when the Lord accomplished this and revealed it, then they came with haste, they ran. And therefore, just as the Word was in the beginning, but with God, so, when he began to live among men he was made. Even in the beginning he was wisdom and righteousness and holiness and redemption, but only for the angels; in order that he might become so to men as well, the Father made him all these things because he is the Father. Therefore it says he became our Wisdom from God. It does not say merely that he became Wisdom, but that he became Wisdom for us, because all that he was to the angels he became in turn to us. 6. But you will say: "I cannot see how he could have brought redemption to the angels. The Scriptures give no grounds for thinking that they were ever the captives of sin or doomed to death," and therefore in need of liberation, excepting only those who incurred the incurable sin of pride, and afterwards could not merit to be redeemed. If therefore the angels were never set at liberty, some not needing it because they never fell, others not meriting it because fallen irrevocably, on what grounds do you say that Christ the Lord is their redemption? Listen for a moment. He who raised up fallen man and freed him from slavery, enabled the angels not to fall by guarding them from slavery. Thus he was equally the liberator of both, providing release for one, protection for the other. It is clear then that just as the Lord Christ was righteousness and wisdom and holiness for the angels, so too he was their redemption; it is also clear that he was made flesh with these four gifts for the sake of men, who can contemplate the invisible things of God only by studying the things he has made. All that he was for the angels, he became for us. What? Wisdom and righteousness, and holiness and redemption: wisdom in preaching, righteousness in forgiving of sins, holiness in social contacts with sinners and redemption in the passion he endured for sinners. When therefore he was made these by God, then the Church perceived the odor, then it ran. 7. Take note therefore of the fourfold anointing, recognize the superabundant and indescribable sweetness of him whom the Father has anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows. You lived, O man, in darkness and the shadow of death through ignorance of the truth; you were a prisoner and your sins were your shackles. He came down to you in your prison, not to torture you but to liberate you from the power of darkness. And first of all, as the Teacher of Truth, he banished the murk of your ignorance by the light of his wisdom. By "the righteousness that comes of faith," he loosed the bonds of sin, justifying the sinners by his free gift. By this twofold favor he fulfilled those words of David: "The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind." Furthermore, by living holily in the midst of sinners he laid down a pattern of life that is a pathway back to the fatherland. As a supreme gesture of love he surrendered himself to death and from his own side produced the price of satisfaction that would placate his Father, thus clearly making his own the verse: "It is with the Lord that mercy is to be found, and a generous redemption." Utterly generous, for not a mere drop but a wave of blood flowed unchecked from the five wounds of his body. Remember their names and enjoy their fragrance, but forbear to question the manner in which they are made or the number of ingredients they contain. For the knowledge of the nature of the ointments of the Bridegroom cannot be as easily ascertained by us as was that of the ointments of the bride, that we have previously discussed. For in Christ these are in their fullness, unnumbered and unmeasured. His wisdom is infinite, his righteousness is like the mountains of God, mountains that are eternal, his holiness is unique, his redeeming work inexplicable. 10. It must be remarked too that the wise of this world have multiplied arguments about these four virtues to no purpose; they had no chance of grasping their true meaning, because they knew nothing of him whom God made our wisdom in order to teach us prudence, our righteousness to forgive our sins, our holiness through his example of chaste and temperate living, and our redemption through patience in his resolute acceptance of death. Perhaps one of you will say: "They are all suitably applied except holiness, which seems to bear no proper relation to temperance." To this I answer, first, that temperance and continence imply the same thing. Secondly, scriptural usage identifies continence or cleanliness with holiness. And finally, what else were those frequent rites of sanctification decreed by Moses but purifications consisting of abstinence from food, from drink, from sexual intercourse and similar things? But take special note of the freedom with which the Apostle attributed this meaning to the word holiness: "What God wants is for you all to be holy so that each one of you might know how to possess his body in holiness, not giving way to selfish passion;" and again: "God did not call us into uncleanness, but into holiness." It is clear that he identifies holiness with temperance. 11. Now that I have thrown light on what seemed obscure, I return to the point from which I digressed. What have you to do with righteousness if you are ignorant of Christ, who is the righteousness of God? Where, I ask, is true prudence, except in the teaching of Christ? Or true justice, if not from Christ's mercy? Or true temperance, if not in Christ's life? Or true fortitude, if not in Christ's Passion? Only those can be called prudent who are imbued with his teaching; only those are just who have had their sins pardoned through his mercy; only those are temperate who take pains to follow his way of life; only those are courageous who hold fast to the example of his patience when buffeted by sufferings. Vainly therefore will anyone strive to acquire the virtues, if he thinks they may be obtained from any source other than the Lord of the virtues, whose teaching is the seed-bed of prudence, whose mercy is the well-spring of justice, whose life is a mirror of temperance, whose death is the badge of fortitude. To him be honor and glory for evermore. Amen.”

“SERMON 12 ON THE PRECIOUS OINTMENT OF PIETY; AND ON THE REVERENCE TO BE SHOWN BY SUBJECTS TOWARD THEIR PRELATES 1. I recall having set forth two ointments for you. One of contrition, embracing many sins; the other of devotion, containing many benefits: both salutary, but not both sweet. For the first is felt to be stinging, because the bitter remembrance of sins moves one to compunction and causes pain, while the second is soothing, the contemplation of divine goodness giving consolation and calming pain. But there is an ointment that far surpasses both of these: and this I would call the ointment of piety, because it is made from the needs of the poor, from the anxieties of the oppressed, from the troubles of the sorrowful, from the faults of those who transgress, and lastly from the miseries of all the wretched, even if they be enemies. These ingredients seem despicable; but the ointment that is compounded from them is above all aromatics. It is healing: for blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy (Mt 5:7). Therefore the many miseries collected and beheld with the eye of piety, these are the ingredients from which the best ointments are composed, worthy of the breasts of the bride, pleasing to the senses of the bridegroom. Happy the soul that has taken care to enrich and fatten itself with the collection of such aromatics, pouring upon them the oil of mercy and cooking them down with the fire of charity. Who, do you think, is the joyful man who shows mercy and lends (Ps 111:5), ready to feel compassion, prompt to help, judging it more blessed to give than to receive: easy to forgive, slow to grow angry, refusing utterly to take revenge, and in all things regarding the needs of his neighbors equally as his own? O whatever soul you are who is so disposed, so imbued with the dew of mercy, so overflowing with the bowels of piety, so making yourself all things to all, so becoming to yourself as a vessel that is destroyed, that you may be at hand everywhere and always to meet the needs of others and to aid them; so at last dead to yourself that you may live for all: you plainly and happily possess the third and best ointment, and your hands have dripped with the liquor of every sweetness. It shall not be dried up in the time of evil, nor shall the heat of persecution drink it up: but God shall always be mindful of all your sacrifice, and your holocaust shall be made fat. 2. There are men of wealth in the city of the Lord of hosts: I ask whether these ointments may be found among any of them. And the first to present himself to me, as he is wont to do everywhere, is Paul, the vessel of election, truly an aromatic vessel, a fragrant vessel, filled with every kind of spice-powder. For he was the good fragrance of Christ unto God in every place (2 Cor 2:15). Surely the breast that had been so moved by the care of all the churches was spreading far and wide the fragrance of great sweetness. See indeed what ingredients and what aromatics he had heaped up for himself. Every day, he says, I die, by your glory (1 Cor 15:31); and again: Who is made weak, and I am not weak? who is scandalized, and I am not on fire? (2 Cor 11:29). And with many such things, which are well known to you, that rich man abounded in compounding the best ointments. For it was fitting that the breasts which suckled the members of Christ should be fragrant with the finest and purest aromatics, those breasts of which Paul was assuredly the mother, giving birth again and again, until Christ should be formed in them (Gal 4:19), and the members be conformed to their head. 3. Hear also of another rich man, how he had at hand choice ingredients from which to compound the best ointments. The stranger, he says, did not remain outside. My door was open to the traveler (Job 31:32); likewise: I was an eye to the blind, and a foot to the lame. I was a father to the poor, and I broke the jaws of the wicked, and snatched the prey from his teeth (Job 29:15-17). If I denied what the poor desired, and made the eyes of the widow wait. If I ate my morsel alone, and the orphan did not eat of it. If I despised him that was passing by because he had no garment, and the poor man without covering. If his sides did not bless me, and he was warmed with the fleece of my sheep (Job 31:16-20). With how great a fragrance, do we think, had this man sprinkled the earth with these works? Each work was a separate aromatic. With these he had filled his own conscience, so that he might temper for himself the stench of putrid flesh with the exhalation of inward sweetness. 4. Joseph, after he had made all Egypt run after him in the fragrance of his ointments, at last bestowed the same fragrance even upon those who had sold him. And indeed he brought forth words of reproach with an angry face; but tears burst forth from the richness of his heart (Gen 43:30; 45:2), not as tokens of anger but as betrayers of grace. Samuel mourned for Saul (1 Sam 4:35), who was seeking to kill him, and as his breast grew warm at the fire of charity, the fat of piety melted within him and flowed out through his eyes. On account, finally, of the good fragrance of his reputation that he had diffused on every side, Scripture reports of him that all from Dan even to Beersheba knew that Samuel was a faithful prophet of the Lord (1 Sam 3:20). What shall I say of Moses? With how great a fatness and richness had he too filled his inmost being? Not even that provoking house, in which he dwelt for a time, was ever able, in all its murmuring and fury, to extinguish the anointing of the spirit with which he had once been imbued, so as to prevent him from persisting in his meekness amid constant quarrels and daily disputes. Rightly did the Holy Spirit testify of him that he was the meekest of all men who dwelt upon the earth (Num 12:3). For with those who hated peace, he was peaceable (Ps 119:7), to such a degree that not only did he not grow angry at the ungrateful and rebellious people, but he even softened God's anger by his intercession, as it is written: He said that he would destroy them, had not Moses his chosen one stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath lest he should destroy them (Ps 105:23). Finally: If you will forgive, he says, forgive; but if not, blot me out of your book which you have written (Ex 32:31-32). O man truly anointed with the anointing of mercy! He speaks plainly with the affection of a parent, whom no happiness can delight apart from the children she has brought forth. For example, if some rich man should say to a poor woman: Come to my banquet, but leave the infant you carry outside, because he cries and is a nuisance to us: would she do it? Would she not rather choose to fast than, having exposed her dear child, to dine alone with the rich man? So too it does not please Moses to be brought alone into the joy of his Lord, while the people remain outside; to whom, though restless and ungrateful, he clings with the role and affection alike of a mother. His bowels are in pain, but he judges the twisting more tolerable to himself than the tearing out. 5. What was more gentle than David, who mourned the death of the one who had always thirsted for his own? (2 Sam 1:11) What more kind, that he should be grieved at the departure of the one whom he himself was succeeding in the kingdom? But also at the death of his parricide son, how reluctantly did he admit consolation? (2 Sam 19:4) Such affection surely displayed a great abundance of the best ointment: and therefore he prayed with confidence, saying: Remember, O Lord, David and all his meekness (Ps 131:1). Therefore all these men possessed the best ointments, with which they give forth the sweetest fragrance to this day throughout all the churches. And not they alone, but all who in this life have shown themselves so benevolent and beneficent, who have striven so to live humanely among men, that whatever grace they were seen to possess they did not keep for themselves but brought into the common good, counting themselves debtors alike to friends and enemies, to the wise and to the foolish. And since they had been useful to all, humble among all, they stood out above all as beloved of God and of men; whose fragrance is in blessing. As many, I say, as have gone before of such a kind, they were fragrant in their own times, and they are fragrant also today with the best ointments. You also, if you willingly impart to us your fellows the gift you have received from above; if you show yourself everywhere among us dutiful, affectionate, gracious, tractable, humble, you will have testimony from all that you too are fragrant with the best ointments. Everyone among you who not only patiently bears the infirmities of the brethren, both of body and of soul, but moreover, if it is permitted and if he is able, helps them with services, strengthens them with words of comfort, instructs them with counsel, and if he cannot do this on account of the rule, does not cease at least to comfort the sick with earnest prayers: everyone, I say, who does such things among you, spreads a thoroughly good fragrance among the brethren, and a fragrance from the best ointments. As balsam in the mouth, so is such a brother in the community; he is pointed out with the finger, and all say of him: This is the lover of the brethren and of the people of Israel; this is he who prays much for the people and for the whole holy city (2 Macc 15:14). 6. But let us return to the Gospel, and seek something that may perhaps pertain also to these ointments. Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Salome, bought aromatics, that coming they might anoint Jesus (Mk 16:1). What are these ointments, so precious that they are prepared and purchased for the body of Christ, so copious that they suffice for the whole body? For neither of the two preceding ointments is read to have been either bought or made specially for the service of the Lord, or to have been poured over the whole body. But suddenly a woman is introduced, in one place kissing his feet and anointing them with ointment (Lk 7:38; Jn 12:3); in another place, either she herself or another, having an alabaster jar of ointment, and pouring it on his head (Mk 14:3). But now it says: they bought aromatics, that coming they might anoint Jesus. They buy not ointments but aromatics: and the anointing for the service of the Lord is not taken ready-made, but newly compounded; nor for anointing merely some part of the body, for example the feet or the head; but as it is written: That coming they might anoint Jesus; which is an embracing of the whole, not a designation of a part. 7. You also, if you put on the bowels of mercy, and show yourself generous and kind, not only to your parents or your relatives, or to those whom you hold as your benefactors, or whom you hope will benefit you: for even the pagans do this (Mt 5:47); but, following Paul's counsel, you strive to do good to all (Gal 6:10), so that for God's sake you consider that even to an enemy neither a bodily nor a spiritual service of humanity should be denied or withdrawn: it is established that you too abound in the best ointments, and that you have undertaken to anoint not only the head or the feet of the Lord, but as much as lies in you, the whole body, which is the Church. And perhaps for this reason the Lord Jesus did not wish the preparation made ready for him to be expended on his dead body, so that he might preserve it for the living one. For the Church lives, which eats the living bread that came down from heaven. She is the dearer body of Christ, for which, lest it should taste death, that other body was delivered unto death, as no Christian is unaware. He desires her to be anointed, her to be cherished; he wants her weak members to be relieved with more careful attentions. For her, therefore, he kept back the precious ointments, when, anticipating the hour and hastening the glory, he did not mock but rather instructed the devotion of the women. He refused to be anointed, but sparing, not spurning; not refusing the service, but reserving the profit. The profit, I say, not of this material and bodily ointment, but plainly of the spiritual one which was signified in it. In this, therefore, the Master of piety spared the best ointments of piety, which he altogether desired to be bestowed upon his needy members, both bodily and spiritually. After all, a little before, when ointment was poured upon his head, or even upon his feet, and that quite costly ointment, did he forbid it? On the contrary, he even opposed those who would forbid it. For to Simon who was indignant that he allowed himself to be touched by a sinful woman, he wove a long parable of reproof; and to others who complained of the waste of ointment he answered, saying: Why do you trouble this woman? 8. Sometimes I, to make a small digression, when I sat at the feet of Jesus in sorrow, and offered the sacrifice of a troubled spirit in remembrance of my sins; or perhaps at his head, if ever on rare occasion I stood and exulted in the remembrance of his benefits, I heard people saying: Why this waste? Complaining, that is, that I lived only for myself, who, as they supposed, could be of profit to many. And they said: For it could have been sold for much and given to the poor (Mt 26:8-10). But it is no good bargain for me, even if I should gain the whole world, to lose myself and bring about my own destruction. Whence, understanding that these words are those flies of which Scripture speaks, the dying flies which destroy the sweetness of the ointment (Eccl 10:1), I recalled that divine sentence: My people, those who call you blessed lead you into error (Isa 3:12). But let them hear the Lord excusing and answering on my behalf, they who accuse me as it were of idleness: Why, he says, are you troubling this woman? which is to say: You see the outward appearance, and therefore you judge according to appearances. This is not a man, as you suppose, who could put his hand to mighty deeds, but a woman. Why do you try to impose upon him a yoke for which I perceive him to be insufficient? He works a good work in me. Let him stand in the good, so long as he does not grow strong enough for the better. If at some time he shall have advanced from a woman into a man, and a perfect man, he will be able to be taken up also into a work of perfection. 9. Brothers, let us revere our bishops, but let us also dread their labors. If we weigh their labors, we shall not covet their honors. Let us recognize our unequal strength, and let it not please us to place soft and womanly shoulders beneath the burdens of men; and let us not scrutinize them, but honor them. For inhumanely do you criticize the works of those whose burdens you refuse to bear. Rashly does the woman spinning at home rebuke the man returning from battle. For I say, if one who is from the cloister should apprehend that one who works among the people sometimes conducts himself less strictly or less circumspectly, for example in speech, in food, in sleep, in laughter, in anger, in judgment; let him not leap at once to pass judgment, but let him remember that it is written: Better is the iniquity of a man than a woman who does good (Sir 42:14). For you indeed do well in being watchful over the keeping of yourself; but he who helps many does better, and more manfully. But if he cannot fulfill his duty without some iniquity, that is, without a certain unevenness in his life and conduct, remember that charity covers a multitude of sins (1 Pet 4:8). These things are said against the twofold temptation by which religious men are often incited by diabolical provocations either to covet the glory of bishops or to judge their failings rashly. 10. But let us return to the ointments of the bride. Do you see how this ointment of piety is to be preferred above the rest, about which alone it was not permitted that any waste be made? So far is there no waste of it, that not even the gift of a cup of cold water is left without reward (Mt 10:42). Good nonetheless is the ointment of contrition, which is made from the remembrance of sins, and is poured upon the feet of the Lord; because a contrite and humbled heart God will not despise (Ps 50:19). However, I judge far better that which is called the ointment of devotion, made from the remembrance of the benefits of God; seeing that it is reckoned worthy even of the head, so that God himself testifies of it: The sacrifice of praise shall glorify me (Ps 49:23). But the anointing of piety surpasses both, which is made from regard for the wretched, and is poured out over the entire body of Christ. The body, I say, not the one that was crucified, but the one that was acquired by his passion. It is truly the best ointment, in comparison with which he who says: I desire mercy, and not sacrifice (Mt 9:13), shows that he does not even look upon the others. I think, therefore, that the breasts of the bride are fragrant with this virtue above all the rest, she who desires to conform in all things to the will of the bridegroom. Did not Tabitha give forth the fragrance of mercy even in death? And therefore she quickly recovered from death (Acts 9:39-41), because the fragrance of life prevailed. 11. But hear a brief word on the present chapter. Whoever both inebriates with words and is fragrant with good deeds, let him consider it said to himself: Because your breasts are better than wine, fragrant with the best ointments (Song 1:1-2). And for these things who is sufficient? Who among us possesses even one of these fully and perfectly, so that he is not at times both more barren in speaking and more lukewarm in doing? But there is one who rightly and without doubt glories in this praise: the Church, assuredly, who from her universality never lacks both that with which she may inebriate and that with which she may be fragrant. For what is lacking to her in one, she has in another, according to the measure of the gift of Christ and the moderation of the Spirit, who distributes to each as he wills (Eph 4:7; 1 Cor 12:11). The Church is fragrant in those who make friends for themselves from the mammon of unrighteousness; she inebriates in the ministers of the word, who pour the wine of spiritual joy upon the earth and make it drunk and bring forth fruit in patience. She boldly and securely calls herself the bride, inasmuch as she truly has breasts better than wine and fragrant with the best ointments. And even if none of us may presume to claim this for himself, so that anyone should dare to call his soul the bride of the Lord; yet since we are of the Church, who rightly glories in this name and in the reality of the name, not without right do we claim a share in this glory. For what we all together possess fully and entirely, each one of us without contradiction shares in. Thanks be to you, Lord Jesus, who have deigned to unite us to your most dear Church, not only that we might be faithful, but that we might also be joined to you in the manner of a bride in joyful, chaste, and eternal embraces, we too with unveiled face beholding your glory, which is yours equally together with the Father and the Holy Spirit unto the ages of ages. Amen.”

“SERMON 13 OUR THANKSGIVING AND GOD'S GLORY Just as the sea is the ultimate source of wells and rivers, so Christ the Lord is the ultimate source of all virtue and knowledge. For who has power to endow us with virtues if not he who is the King of Glory? And what are we told in the canticle of Anna but that God himself is the Lord of all knowledge? Hence from him as from a well-head comes the power to be pure in body, diligent in affection and upright in will. Nor is this all. From him too come subtlety of intellect, splendor of eloquence, urbanity of bearing; from him, knowledge and words of wisdom. Indeed in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Shall I add still more? Chaste thoughts, just judgments, holy desires -- are they not all streams from that one spring? If the waters that surround us inevitably return to the sea by hidden underground channels, only to gush forth again without fail and without weariness for the refreshing of our sight and the relief of our needs, why should not those spiritual streams return unerringly and without ceasing to their native source, and flow back without interruption to irrigate our souls? Let the rivers of grace circle back to their Fountain-Head that they may run their course anew. Let the torrent that springs in heaven be channeled back to its starting point, and be poured on the earth again with fertilizing power. You ask how this will be done. It will be done in accord with Paul's advice: "In all things give thanks to God." If you can credit yourself with wisdom or with virtue, realize that the credit is due rather to Christ, who is the Power and the Wisdom of God. 2. "Who is so mad," you say, "as to presume otherwise?" Actually nobody. Even the Pharisee gives thanks, although his justice merits no praise from God. And if, as the Gospel points out, his act of thanksgiving does not increase his grace, why is this so? Because the pieties that our mouths proclaim will not justify the pride of our heart in the sight of him who is repelled by the arrogant. "God is not mocked, O Pharisee. What do you have that was not given to you?" "Nothing," he says, "and therefore I offer thanks to the giver." "But if there is really nothing, then you had no antecedent merit to warrant your reception of the things of which you boast. And if you admit this, then in the first place it is futile to give yourself airs at the expense of the publican who does not possess as much as you because he has not received as much. Secondly, make sure you realize that God's gifts are entirely his own; if you attribute to yourself some of the glory and honor that are his, you may deservedly be convicted of fraud, of attempting to defraud God. If you brazenly boast of gifts as though they were your own, I should prefer to believe you are deceived, not that you wish to defraud. It is an error I should hope to correct. But when you make thanksgiving, you manifest that you regard nothing as your own, you wisely acknowledge that your merits are really God's gifts. When you despise others, however, you betray the inner reality of your condition, you are speaking from a double heart, with one lending your tongue to a lie, with the other usurping the honor due to truth. Never would you judge the publican more despicable than yourself if you did not consider that you are more honorable than he. But how will you reply to the principle laid down by the Apostle: 'Honor and glory to the only God?' How reply to the angels who in their teaching distinguish between what God reserves for himself and what he is willing to share with men? Their song is: 'Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to men of good-will.' Do you not perceive that the Pharisee, in offering thanks, honors God with his lips but in his heart pays tribute to himself? And so, through force of habit more than by intention or inclination, you will hear people of all sorts pronouncing words of thanks, for even the wickedest persons will offer a perfunctory thanks to God in achieving a sexual conquest, for any kind of crime because things fell out well and prosperous, at least according to their estimation, when their perverse will was fulfilled. For instance, when the thief has bagged the loot for which he has planned, he celebrates in the privacy of his hide-out and says: "Thank God! I have not watched in vain, the night's work has not been wasted." The murderer will brag and express his thanks for the overthrow of a rival, for having had revenge on an enemy. And the adulterer will utter an irreverent "Thank you God," as he capers with delight on having gone to bed at last with the woman he has long pursued. 3. It is clear then that God will listen only to the thanks that spring from a pure and genuine simplicity of heart. I say "pure heart," because when those who boast of their evil conduct presume to thank God for it, they bring him down to the level of their own profligacy and make him share their wicked pleasures. God says to people of this kind: "Do you really think I am like you? I charge, I indict you to your face." I have added the word "genuine" because of the hypocrites who praise God for the goods they possess, but only with their lips; the heart denies what the tongue professes, and since they act deceitfully in God's very sight, their knavery can merit only hatred. The former impiously seek to involve God in their evil doings; the latter, by a fraudulent twist, would make God's gifts their own. The vice of the former is so stupid, so worldly, and even in a sense so brutish, that I do not feel impelled to put you on your guard against it; that of the latter, however, constitutes an habitual temptation in the lives of religious and spiritual persons. Great and rare is the virtue of those who do great things without becoming conscious of their greatness, whose holiness is manifest to all but to themselves. To me there is no virtue like that, when you are universally admired, and remain contemptible in your own eyes. You are indeed a faithful servant if you do not try to grasp for yourself the manifold glory of God, which while not coming from you, nevertheless passes through you. Then, in the words of the Prophet, you reject extortionate profit and wave away bribes from your hands. Then, in accord with the Lord's command, your light shines before men, not for your own glory but for that of your Father in heaven. An imitator of Paul and of all the loyal preachers who would not preach themselves, you seek not your own interests but those of Jesus Christ. Consequently you too will be privileged to hear: "Well done, good and faithful servant; you have shown you can be faithful in small things, I will trust you with greater." 4. Although Joseph knew that he was entrusted with the care of his Egyptian master's home and all its goods, he was also aware that its mistress was an exception, and he refused to have relations with her. "My master," he said, "has handed over all his possession to me. He has withheld nothing from me except yourself, because you are his wife." He knew that woman is the reflection of man's glory, and that it would be base ingratitude on his part to tarnish the honor of the man by whose will he had been raised to honor. Gifted with the wisdom of God, he perceived that a husband is extremely concerned about his wife's honor because identified with his own; so much his own that he will not entrust her to another. Hence he would not presume to tamper with what was outside his control. What then? Shall a man be jealous of his own glory and yet dare to wish to defraud God of his, as if God were indifferent? But God says otherwise: "I will not yield my glory to another." But what will you give to us, O Lord, what will you give to us?" "Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you." "It is enough for me; I accept gratefully what you give and I give up what you keep for yourself. This contents me, I do not doubt that it is for my advantage. I renounce all claim to glory lest by usurping what you do not permit, I may deservedly lose what you offer. I wish for peace, I yearn for it and for nothing more. The man who is not satisfied with peace is not satisfied with you. For you are our peace, you have made us both one. To be reconciled with you, to be reconciled with myself, this is necessary for me, and it suffices. For whenever you set me in opposition to you I become a burden to myself. I am on my guard, and will neither be ungrateful for the gift of peace nor intrude sacrilegiously on your glory. May your glory remain yours, O Lord, in undiminished splendor; all will be well with me if I shall have your peace." 5. After the overthrow of Goliath the people were happy to have peace restored; David alone basked in the glory of it. Joshua, Jephthah, Gideon, Samson, and even Judith who was but a woman, had glorious victories over their enemies in their day; and though their people enjoyed the hard-won peace, they did not share in the heroes' glory. Judas Maccabaeus too was renowned for the many triumphs by which his bravery in battle gained peace for a jubilant people, but were they privileged to participate in his glory? Scripture says there was very great joy, not glory, among the people. Now I ask: has the Creator of all things achieved less than these heroes, that he should not be allowed his unique glory? Alone he made all things, alone he conquered the enemy, alone he freed the captives, and then in his glory is he to be saddled with a colleague? "My own arm then was my mainstay." he said; and again: "I have trodden the wine-press alone. Of the men of my people not one was with me." What right have I to share in the triumph if I stood outside the battle? It would be sheer impertinence on my part to lay claim to glory without victory, or to victory without a fight. But let the mountains bring a message of peace for the people, a message of peace for us rather than glory. To him who alone both fought and conquered is glory reserved. This is how I desire it to be: "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to men of good-will." But an evil will rather than a good one characterizes the man who refuses to be content with peace, whose haughty looks and proud heart are bent on grasping at the glory that is God's. He is therefore ever devoid of peace, never within reach of glory. Who would believe the wall if it said it produced the ray of light that falls on it through the window? Or if the clouds should proclaim that they create the showers, what would they merit but ridicule? It is utterly clear to me that the channels do not beget the rivers that run between their banks, nor lips and teeth the words of wisdom that proceed from them, although my bodily senses may tell me that and no more. 6. If I discern in the saints something that is worthy of praise and admiration, and proceed to examine it in the clear light of truth, I become aware that what makes them appear praiseworthy and admirable really belongs to another, and I praise God in his saints. Both Elisha and the great Elijah raised the dead to life, but not by any power of their own. They were the ministers of a power that became manifest to us in these new and wonderful deeds, the power of God who lived in them. By his own nature invisible and inaccessible, he becomes somehow visible and a source of wonder in the lives of those who love him. But he alone is worthy of admiration, for he alone performs the marvels that merit it. We do not praise the pen or the brush when we judge a script or painting, nor do we attribute fame for eloquence to the lips and tongue of the orator. Listen for a moment to the Prophet: "Does the axe claim more credit than the man who wields it, or the saw more strength than the man who handles it? It would be like the cudgel controlling the man who raises it, or the club moving what is not made of wood!" Thus everybody who boasts is against the Lord unless his boasting is in the Lord. If I am to boast, then I learn from Paul why and in what: "Our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience." I may boast securely if my conscience tells me that I in no way detract from the glory of my Creator, because I shall be speaking in the Lord rather than against him. Not only are we not forbidden to boast in this fashion, we are even encouraged by the words: "You seek glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God." This ability to glory in God alone can come solely from God. Nor is this glory a small thing; it is as real as the truth which is its object, and is a truth so rare, that only an exceptional few even of the perfect can glory in perfectly possessing it. Off with them then, those men who are but a breath, men who are but a delusion; let them deceive each other in their vanity. For the man who makes a wise boast will put his work to the test, he will carefully scrutinize it in the light of the truth, and then his reason for boasting will be in himself and not in the patronage of his neighbor. I am but a fool if I entrust my reputation to the casket of your lips, and then begin to beg it of you when I feel the need for it. Am I not simply putting myself in your power, to be praised or blamed as you please? But I am determined to be responsible for myself, I shall be loyal in my own regard. And yet not entirely to myself; rather have I put my trust in him who can take care of all that I have committed to him until that Day. It is safe in his hands, it will be given back in full. Then all those who set no store by the praise of men will receive the sure praise of God. For those whose glory is in earthly loves will find confusion at the end, even as David said: "Those who please men are confounded, because God has rejected them." 7. Dear brothers, if you can grasp these truths none of you will hanker after praise in this life, because if you win any favor here below and fail to thank God for it, you are defrauding him. How is it possible for you to glory, you who are but stinking dust? Will you dare glory in holiness of life? But it is the Spirit who makes holy; that Spirit who is God's, not yours. Even if you are resplendent with prodigies and miracles it is still God's power working through your hands. Or have you made an elegant speech that wins the plaudits of the crowd? But it is Christ who has given you the eloquence and wisdom. For what is your tongue but the pen of a writer? And it is yours only on loan, a talent committed to you, to be demanded again with interest. If you work willingly and persevere in producing results, you will receive the reward of your labor. If you do otherwise your talent will be taken from you, but the interest will still be demanded, and you will suffer the fate of a dishonest and lazy workman. All praise, therefore, for the manifold gifts of grace with which you are endowed, must be given to him who is the author and giver of all that is praiseworthy. Make sure your thanks are not the pious cant of the hypocrite, nor the empty gesture of the worldling, nor yet the constraint imposed on beasts of burden; but, as one has a right to expect of dedicated men, let it be full of confident sincerity, of meaningful devotion and of becoming, well-regulated cheerfulness. Therefore, while offering up the sacrifice of praise and fulfilling our vows from day to day, let us make every endeavor to put meaning into our observance, to fill the meaning with love, our love with joy and our joy with realism; let that realism be tempered with humility and our humility be buoyant with liberty. Then we shall advance toward our goal with the untrammeled passions of a purified mind. We may even find ourselves at times living beyond our normal powers through the great intensity of our affections and our spiritual joy, in jubilant encounters, in the light of God, in sweetness, in the Holy Spirit, all showing that we are among those envisioned by the Prophet when he said: "Lord, they will walk in the light of your favor; they will rejoice in your name all day and exult in your righteousness." 8. But perchance one of you will say to me: "What you say is good, but your words ought to be relevant to your theme." Just wait a little while; I am not unmindful. Have I not undertaken to expound that text: "Your name is oil poured out"? This is my set task, at this I must toil. Whether what I have so far said is necessary you will see; my purpose now is to explain to you briefly that it is not irrelevant. Do you not remember that the last commendation of the breasts of the bride concerned the sweet-smell of the ointments? Is it not becoming then that the bride should acknowledge this fragrance to be the Bridegroom's gift rather than claim it as her own? It is along these lines that all I have hitherto said must be understood. "If my breasts exhale this sweet perfume," she says, "if they are so attractive, it is not because of any art or merit of mine, O my Bridegroom, but because of your generosity, because the oil of your name has been poured out." So much for the relevance of my text. 9. Finally, the explanation of the little verse that has been the occasion of this prolonged sermon on the abominable vice of ingratitude, must wait for another time and another sermon. Now it suffices to remind you that if the bride would not in the least dare to attribute to herself any virtue or any grace, how much less should we, who are mere youths? Let us therefore imitate this attitude of the bride and say: "Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory." Let us assert this not merely in word and in speech but in deed and in truth lest something that I fear very much may be said even of us: "But though they outwardly loved him and used their tongues to lie to him, in their hearts they were not true to him, they were unfaithful to his covenant." Let us cry out therefore with a voice that comes more from the heart than from the lips: "Save us, O Lord, our God, and gather us from among the pagans, that we may praise your holy name rather than our own, and find our happiness in praising you instead of ourselves, for ever and ever."”

“SERMON 14 ON THE CHURCH OF THE FAITHFUL CHRISTIANS, AND ON THE SYNAGOGUE OF THE FAITHLESS JEWS 1. God is known in Judah, in Israel his name is great (Ps 75:2). The people of the nations who walked in darkness saw a great light (Isa 9:2), which was in Judah and in Israel, and wished to draw near and be illuminated, so that those who were once not a people might now be a people (1 Pet 2:10); and that one cornerstone might receive both walls coming from different directions into itself, and henceforth the place of his peace might be established. Moreover, the voice of the one inviting gave confidence, which had already sounded forth: Rejoice, O nations, with his people (Deut 32:43 LXX; Rom 15:10). Therefore she wished to draw near; but the Synagogue forbade it, declaring the Church from the nations to be unclean and unworthy, reproaching her with the dregs of idolatry and the blindness of ignorance, and was saying: For you, by what merit? Do not touch me. Why? she replies. Is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the nations? (Rom 3:29). And if merit is certainly lacking to me, yet compassion is not lacking to him. Is he only just? He is also merciful. Lord, let your mercies come upon me, and I shall live; and again: Your mercies are many, O Lord; give me life according to your judgment (Ps 118:77, 156); which, tempered as it is, is mercy. What will the just and merciful Lord do, when one glories in the law and applauds herself for justice, neither needing mercy but despising the very one who does need it; while the other, on the contrary, acknowledges her own offenses, confesses her unworthiness, refuses judgment, and begs for mercy? What, I say, will the judge do, and that judge, for whom both to judge and to show mercy are each so familiar that neither is more familiar than the other? What indeed could be more fitting than that each should receive according to her own desire: judgment for the one, mercy for the other? The Jew seeks judgment, and let him have it; but let the nations honor God for his mercy. And this is the judgment: that those who despise God's merciful justice and wish to establish their own (which indeed does not justify but accuses), should be left to that justice of their own, to be crushed rather than justified. 2. For it is from the law, which never led anyone to perfection; it is a yoke which neither they themselves nor their fathers were ever able to bear. But the Synagogue is strong; she cares not for a light burden nor a sweet yoke. She is healthy; she has no need of a physician, nor of the anointing of the Spirit. She trusts in the law; let it deliver her if it can. But the law was not given that could give life; moreover, it even kills: For the letter kills (2 Cor 3:6). Therefore, he says, I say to you: You shall die in your sins (Jn 8:24). This, therefore, is the judgment, O Synagogue, which you demand for your error. Blind and contentious, you are abandoned until the fullness of the nations (whom you proudly spurn and enviously repel) enters in, and she too may come to know the God who is known in Judah, and that his name is great in Israel. For to this end Jesus came into this world for judgment: that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind (Jn 9:39). In part, however; for the Lord will not cast off his people (Ps 93:14), wholly preserving for himself as a seed the apostles and the multitude of believers, whose heart was one and soul was one. But neither will he cast them off in the end, being about to save the remnant. For again he will take up Israel his servant, and will remember his mercy (Lk 1:54), so that not even there may mercy as a companion desert the judgment, where she herself finds no place. Otherwise, if he had repaid according to merits, it would be judgment without mercy for him who shows no mercy (Jas 2:13). For Judah has much oil of divine knowledge, and she keeps it enclosed within herself as in a sealed vessel, greedy to retain it. I ask, and she does not take pity, nor does she lend. Alone she wishes to possess the worship of God, alone the knowledge, alone the great name of his; she is not zealous for herself, but envious of me. 3. Therefore you, O Lord, judge my cause, and let your great name be magnified still more, and let the oil which is much be multiplied the more. Let it increase, let it overflow, let it be poured out, let it flow forth even to the nations, and let all flesh feel the salvation of God. How should it be as the ungrateful Jew wishes, that the whole saving unction remain upon the beard of Aaron? It belongs not to the beard, but to the head. And the head belongs not to the beard alone, but also to the whole body. Let the beard receive it first, but not alone. Let it pour back upon the lower members what it has itself received from above. Let it descend, let the heavenly liquor descend even upon the breasts of the Church (for she, most eager, does not disdain to press it out for herself from the beard); and being drenched with the dew of grace, that she may prove herself not ungrateful, let her say: Your name is oil poured out (Song 1:2). But let it abound yet more, I pray, and reach even to the hem of the garment, to me indeed the very least and most unworthy of all, yet still of the garment. For I too claim that oil for myself from the maternal breasts, as a little one in Christ, by the right of piety. But if a man should murmur, whose eye is evil because of the goodness; Lord, answer for me, let my judgment proceed from your countenance and not from the brow of Israel. Rather, answer for yourself, and say to the accuser: For it is against you that he brings his charge, that you give freely; say therefore to him: I wish to give to this last one likewise (Mt 20:14). The Pharisee is displeased. Why do you grumble? My right is the will of the judge. What is more just as to merit, what richer as to reward? Is it not lawful for him to do what he wills? To me indeed mercy is done, but to you no injustice is done. Take what is yours, and go. If he has decided to save me too, what do you lose? 4. Exaggerate your merits as much as you please, and extol your labors: the mercy of the Lord is better than lives (Ps 62:4). I confess, I have not borne the burden of the day and the heat; but I carry a sweet yoke and a light burden according to the good pleasure of the master of the house. My work is scarcely of one hour; and if more, I do not feel it on account of love. Let the Jew exercise his own powers; I prefer to prove what is the good and pleasing and perfect will of the Lord. From that will, indeed, I make up for the losses of work and time. He relies on the terms of an agreement; I rely on the good pleasure of a will. I believe, and it is not unto folly for me: for life is in his will. That will reconciles the Father to me, that will restores my inheritance, even with more abundant grace; it stirs up for me the music, and singing, and feasting, and the most celebrated joys of the whole exulting household. If my elder brother is indignant, who prefers to eat a goat with his friends outside rather than with me a fatted calf in the father's house, it will be answered to him: It was fitting to make merry and rejoice, because this my son was dead and has come to life again, was lost and has been found (Lk 15:32). Still the Synagogue feasts outside with her friends the demons, whom it well pleases that she, foolish, devours the goat of sin, gulping it down and in a certain manner hiding it and storing it away for herself in the belly of her sluggishness and foolishness, while despising the justice of God and wishing to establish her own, she says she has no sin, nor does she need the death of the fatted calf, since she reckons herself clean and just from the works of the law. But the Church, once the veil of the killing letter was torn asunder in the death of the crucified Word, boldly bursts through into his inner chambers, with the spirit of liberty going before her; she is recognized, she pleases, she obtains the place of her rival, she becomes the bride, she enjoys the stolen embraces; and in the heat of the spirit, clinging to Christ the Lord, against whom she presses herself, as the oil of his exultation drips and pours forth on every side, she, receiving this above her companions, says: Your name is oil poured out. What wonder if she is anointed, who embraces the Anointed One? 5. The Church therefore reclines within, but the Church, for the present, of the perfect. Yet there is hope for us too. Let us keep watch at the doors, we who are less perfect, rejoicing in hope. Let the Bridegroom and bride be alone within for the present, let them enjoy mutual and secret embraces, with no clamor of carnal desires, no tumult of bodily phantasms disturbing them. But let the throng of young maidens, who cannot yet be free of such disturbances, wait outside; and let them wait securely, knowing that what they read pertains to them: Virgins shall be led to the king after her, her companions shall be brought to you (Ps 44:15). And that each may know of what spirit she is: I call virgins those who, having been joined to Christ before they were defiled by the embraces of the world, firmly persevere in him to whom they devoted themselves, all the more happily as they did so more promptly; but companions, those who at last blushing at and departing from their former deformity, in which, once conformed to this world, they had shamefully prostituted themselves to the princes of this world, that is, to foul spirits, in every carnal lust, hasten to reform themselves, all the more sincerely as they do so more belatedly, into the form of the new man. Let both these and those advance, not fall back, nor grow weary, even if they do not yet fully feel within themselves that from which they too might say: Your name is oil poured out. For the young maidens do not dare to speak words to the Bridegroom on their own. Yet if they strive to follow more closely in the footsteps of their mistress, they will be delighted at least by the fragrance of the poured-out oil, and they will be stirred even from the perception of the fragrance to desire and seek greater things. 6. I myself frequently -- and I am not ashamed to confess it -- especially in the beginnings of my conversion, being hard and cold of heart, and seeking him whom my soul wished to love (for it could not yet love him whom it had not yet found, or at least loved him less than it wished, and for this reason was seeking in order to love him more; though it would by no means have been seeking him unless it had already loved him in some measure): when therefore I was seeking him in whom my spirit might grow warm again and find rest, being altogether sluggish and languishing, and from no quarter did there appear anyone who might give aid, by whom namely the stiffening frost, which bound the senses between us, might be dissolved, and that springlike sweetness and spiritual pleasantness might return -- then more and more my soul was languishing and growing weary and drowsy; and, out of weariness, sad and almost despairing, murmuring within itself that word: Before this cold of his, who shall stand? (Ps 147:17). When suddenly, perhaps at the word, or even at the sight of some spiritual and perfect man, sometimes even at the mere memory of one dead or absent, the Spirit would blow and the waters would flow; and those tears were my bread day and night. What was this, if not the fragrance exhaled from the anointing with which that man was drenched? For it was not the anointing itself, which indeed did not reach me except through the mediation of a man. And therefore, even if I rejoiced at the gift, I was nevertheless confounded and humbled, because only a thin exhalation and not a rich sprinkling had reached me. Delighted by smell, not by touch, I recognized myself to be unworthy that God should become sweet to me through himself. And even now, if the same thing happens, I eagerly receive the gift bestowed, and I am grateful for it; but I grieve with deep sorrow that I have not merited it through myself, and, as the saying goes, have by no means received it from hand to hand, though I earnestly sought it. It shames me greatly to be moved more by the memory of a man than of God. And then with a groan I cry out: When shall I come and appear before the face of God? (Ps 41:3). I think some of you have experienced the same thing, and still experience it from time to time. In this matter, what should be thought, except that either our pride is convicted, or our humility is guarded, or brotherly charity is nourished, or desire is kindled? One and the same food is both medicine for the sick and a diet for the convalescent; moreover, it strengthens the weak and delights the strong. One and the same food both heals languor and preserves health, and nourishes the body and pleases the palate. 7. But let us return to the words of the bride, and let us take care to hear what she says in such a way that we also strive to savor what she savors. The bride, as I have said, is the Church. She is the one to whom more has been forgiven, and who loves more. What her rival reproaches her with as a disgrace, she herself turns to her own advantage. From this she becomes more gentle for correction, from this more patient in labor; from this more ardent in love, from this more shrewd in caution; from this more humble on account of her conscience, from this more acceptable on account of her modesty; from this more ready for obedience, from this more devoted and more careful in the giving of thanks. At length, while the other, as has been said, murmurs and recalls her own merits, and labors, and the burden of the day and the heat, the Church recollects the benefit, saying: Your name is oil poured out. 8. This is indeed the testimony of Israel for giving thanks to the name of the Lord; yet not Israel according to the flesh, but of him who is according to the spirit. For how could that one say this? Not that he does not have oil, but he does not have it poured out. He has it, but hidden away; he has it in books, but not in hearts. He clings to the outside, in the letter; he handles with his hands a vessel that is full, yet also closed, and he does not open it so as to be anointed. Within, within is the anointing of the spirit; open and be anointed, and you shall no longer be a house of provocation. What good does oil do in vessels, if you do not feel it also in your members? What does it profit you to read over and over the holy name of the Savior in books, and not to have piety in your conduct? It is oil; pour it out, and you will feel its power, which is threefold. But the Jew disdains these things; you, hear. I wish to say why the name of the Bridegroom is compared to oil, which I had not yet said. And three reasons for this matter present themselves. But since he is called by many names, for the reason that no single one by which he might be properly named is found (for he is ineffable), first we must invoke the Holy Spirit, so that of the many names he may deign to reveal to us through himself the one which he wishes to be understood in this place (since he did not choose to designate it in writing). But this too must wait for another time. For even if all things were now ready at hand, and neither you were burdened nor I wearied, the hour nevertheless imposes an end. Hold fast to that point to which I have made you attentive, so that it may not be necessary to repeat it tomorrow. This is the task at hand, this is the work in progress: to teach, namely, why the name of the Bridegroom is compared to oil, and what concerns the names. And since I can say nothing of myself, prayer is prescribed, that the Bridegroom himself may reveal it to us through his Spirit, Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom is honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”

“SERMON 15 THE NAME OF JESUS Wisdom is a kindly spirit, and easy of access to those who call upon him. Quite often he anticipates their request and says: "Here I am." Listen now to what, because of your prayers, he has revealed to me about the subject we postponed yesterday; be ready to gather the ripe fruit of your intercession. I put before you a name that is rightly compared to oil, how rightly I shall explain. You encounter many names for the Bridegroom scattered through the pages of Scripture, but all these I sum up for you in two. I think you will find none that does not express either the gift of his love or the power of his majesty. The Holy Spirit tells us this through the mouth of one of his friends: "Two things I have heard: it is for God to be strong, for you, Lord, to be merciful." With reference to his majesty we read: "Holy and terrible is his name;" with reference to his love: "Of all the names in the world given to men, this is the only one by which we can be saved." Further examples make it clearer still. Jeremiah says: "This is the name by which he will be called: 'the Lord our righteous one'" -- a name suggesting power; but when Isaiah says: "His name will be called Emmanuel," he indicates his love. He himself said: "You call me Master and Lord." The first title implies love, the second majesty. Love's business is to educate the mind as well as to provide the body's food. Isaiah also said: "His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, God, the Mighty One, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." The first, third and fourth signify majesty, the others love. Which of these therefore is poured out? In some mysterious way the name of majesty and power is transfused into that of love and mercy, an amalgam that is abundantly poured out in the person of our Savior Jesus Christ. The name "God" liquefies and dissolves into the title "God with us," that is, into "Emmanuel." He who is "Wonderful" becomes "Counselor"; "God" and "the Mighty One" become the "Everlasting Father" and the "Prince of Peace." "The Lord our righteous one" becomes the "gracious and merciful Lord." This process is not new: in ancient times "Abram" became Abraham and Sarai became "Sara"; and we are reminded that in these events the mystery of the communication of salvation was pre-figured and celebrated. 2. So I ask where now is that warning cry: "I am the Lord, I am the Lord," that resounded with recurring terror in the ears of the people of old. The prayer with which I am familiar, that begins with the sweet name of Father, gives me confidence of obtaining the petitions with which it continues. Servants are called friends in this new way, and the resurrection is proclaimed not to mere disciples but to brothers. Nor am I surprised if, when the time has fully come, there is an outpouring of Jesus' name as God fulfills what he had promised through Joel, an outpouring of his Spirit on all mankind, since I read that a similar event took place among the Hebrews in former times. But I feel that your thoughts fly ahead of my words, that you already guess what I intend to say. How is it, I ask, that God's first answer to Moses' question was: "I Am Who I Am," and "I Am has sent me to you"? I doubt if even Moses himself would have grasped its import if it had not been poured out. But it was poured and he understood it; and not only poured but poured out, for an inward pouring had already occurred: the citizens of heaven already possessed it, the angels knew it. Now it is sent abroad, and what was infused into the angels as an intimate secret was poured out upon men, so that henceforth they could justly proclaim from the earth: "Your name is oil poured out," if the obstinacy of a thankless people did not prevent it. For he had said: "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." 3. Run then, O pagans, salvation is at hand, that name is poured out which saves all who invoke it. The God of the angels calls himself the God of men. He poured out oil on Jacob and it fell on Israel. Say to your brothers: "Give us some of your oil." If they refuse, ask the Lord of the oil to give it to you. Say to him: "Take away our reproach." See that no envious tongue insults your beloved, whom it has pleased you to call from the ends of the earth with a compassion all the greater for her unworthiness. Is it fitting, I ask, that a wicked servant should shut out the invited guests of the master of the house? You have said: "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." Of no more than these? Pour out, continue to pour; open your hand still wider and satisfy the desire of everything that lives. Let them come from the east and the west and take their places with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. Let them come, let the tribes come up, the tribes of the Lord, to praise his name according to his command to Israel. Let them come and take their place, let them feast and be filled with gladness, let the banqueters sing as one man the resounding song of exultation and praise: "Your name is oil poured out." One thing I know: if we find that the porters are Andrew and Philip, we shall not be repulsed when we ask for oil, when we desire to see Jesus. Philip will at once tell Andrew, and Andrew and Philip will tell Jesus. And what will Jesus say? Precisely because he is Jesus he will tell them: "Unless a wheat-grain falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest." Let the grain die therefore, and let the harvest of the pagans spring to fruition. It is necessary for Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and that penance and forgiveness of sin should be preached in his name, not alone in Judea but even among all nations, because from the sole name of Christ thousands upon thousands of believers are called Christians, whose hearts all re-echo: "Your name is oil poured out." 4. I recognize now the name hinted at by Isaiah: "My servants are to be given a new name. Whoever is blessed on earth in that name will be blessed by the Lord, Amen." O blessed name, oil poured out without limit! From heaven it pours down on Judea and from there over all the earth, so that round the whole world the Church proclaims: "Your name is oil poured out." And what an outpouring! It not only bathes the heavens and the earth, it even bedews the underworld, so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld should bend the knee in the name of Jesus, and that every tongue should acclaim: "Your name is oil poured out." Take the name Christ, take the name Jesus; both were infused into the angels, both were poured out upon men, even upon men who rotted like animals in their own dung. Thus you became a savior both of men and beasts, so countless are your mercies, O God. How precious your name, and yet how cheap! Cheap, but the instrument of salvation. If it were not cheap it would not have been poured out for me; if it lacked saving power it would not have won me. Made a sharer in the name, I share too in its inheritance. For I am a Christian, Christ's own brother. If I am what I say, I am the heir of God, co-heir with Christ. And what wonder if the name of the Bridegroom is poured out, since he himself is poured out? For he emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave. Did he not even say: "I am poured out like water"? The fullness of the divine life was poured out and lived on earth in bodily form, that all of us who live in this body doomed to death may receive from that fullness, and being filled with its life-giving odor say: "Your name is oil poured out." Such is what is meant by the outpouring of the name, such its manner, such its extent. 5. But why the symbol of oil? I have yet to explain this. In the previous sermon I had begun to do so when another matter that seemed to demand mention suddenly presented itself, though I may have dallied with it longer than I intended. In this I resembled the valiant woman, Wisdom, who put her hand to the distaff, her fingers to the spindle. Skillfully she produced from her scanty stock of wool or flax a long spool of thread, out of which she wove the material that made warm clothes for the members of her household. The likeness between oil and the name of the Bridegroom is beyond doubt, the Holy Spirit's comparison of the two is no arbitrary gesture. Unless you can persuade me otherwise, I hold that the likeness is to be found in the threefold property of oil: it gives light, it nourishes, it anoints. It feeds the flame, it nourishes the body, it relieves pain: it is light, food, medicine. And is not this true too of the Bridegroom's name? When preached it gives light, when meditated it nourishes, when invoked it relieves and soothes. Let us consider each point. 6. How shall we explain the world-wide light of faith, swift and flaming in its progress, except by the preaching of Jesus' name? Is it not by the light of this name that God has called us into his wonderful light, that irradiates our darkness and empowers us to see the light? To such as we Paul says: "You were darkness once, but now you are light in the Lord." This is the name that Paul was commanded to present before kings and pagans and the people of Israel; a name that illumined his native land as he carried it with him like a torch, preaching on all his journeys that the night is almost over, it will be daylight soon -- let us give up all the things we prefer to do under cover of the dark; let us arm ourselves and appear in the light. Let us live decently as people do in the day-time. To every eye he was a lamp on its lamp-stand; to every place he brought the good news of Jesus, and him crucified. What a splendor radiated from that light, dazzling the eyes of the crowd, when Peter uttered the name that strengthened the feet and ankles of the cripple, and gave light to many eyes that were spiritually blind! Did not the words shoot like a flame when he said: "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, arise and walk"? But the name of Jesus is more than light, it is also food. Do you not feel increase of strength as often as you remember it? What other name can so enrich the man who meditates? What can equal its power to refresh the harassed senses, to buttress the virtues, to add vigor to good and upright habits, to foster chaste affections? Every food of the mind is dry if it is not dipped in that oil; it is tasteless if not seasoned by that salt. Write what you will, I shall not relish it unless it tells of Jesus. Talk or argue about what you will, I shall not relish it if you exclude the name of Jesus. Jesus to me is honey in the mouth, music in the ear, a song in the heart. Again, it is a medicine. Does one of us feel sad? Let the name of Jesus come into his heart, from there let it spring to his mouth, so that shining like the dawn it may dispel all darkness and make a cloudless sky. Does someone fall into sin? Does his despair even urge him to suicide? Let him but invoke this life-giving name and his will to live will be at once renewed. The hardness of heart that is our common experience, the apathy bred of indolence, bitterness of mind, repugnance for the things of the spirit -- have they ever failed to yield in presence of that saving name? The tears damned up by the barrier of our pride -- how have they not burst forth again with sweeter abundance at the thought of Jesus' name? And where is the man, who, terrified and trembling before impending peril, has not been suddenly filled with courage and rid of fear by calling on the strength of that name? Where is the man who, tossed on the rolling seas of doubt, did not quickly find certitude by recourse to the clarity of Jesus' name? Was ever a man so discouraged, so beaten down by afflictions, to whom the sound of this name did not bring new resolve? In short, for all the ills and disorders to which flesh is heir, this name is medicine. For proof we have no less than his own promise: "Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me." Nothing so curbs the onset of anger, so allays the upsurge of pride. It cures the wound of envy, controls unbridled extravagance and quenches the flame of lust; it cools the thirst of covetousness and banishes the itch of unclean desire. For when I name Jesus I set before me a man who is meek and humble of heart, kind, prudent, chaste, merciful, flawlessly upright and holy in the eyes of all; and this same man is the all-powerful God whose way of life heals me, whose support is my strength. All these re-echo for me at the hearing of Jesus' name. Because he is man I strive to imitate him; because of his divine power I lean upon him. The examples of his human life I gather like medicinal herbs; with the aid of his power I blend them, and the result is a compound like no pharmacist can produce. 7. Hidden as in a vase, in this name of Jesus, you, my soul, possess a salutary remedy against which no spiritual illness will be proof. Carry it always close to your heart, always in your hand, and so ensure that all your affections, all your actions, are directed to Jesus. You are even invited to do this: "Set me as a seal," he says, "upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm." Here is a theme we shall treat of again. For the moment you have this ready medicine for heart and hand. The name of Jesus furnishes the power to correct your evil actions; to supply what is wanting to imperfect ones; in this name your affections find a guard against corruption, or if corrupted, a power that will make them whole again. 8. Judea too has had her Jesus -- Messiahs in whose empty names she glories: For they give neither light nor food nor medicine. Hence the Synagogue is in the darkness still, enduring the pangs of hunger and disease, and she will neither be healed nor have her fill until she discovers that my Jesus rules over Jacob to the ends of the earth, until she comes back in the evening, hungering like a dog and prowling about the city. True, they were sent on in advance, like the staff preceding the Prophet to where the child lay dead, but they could not see a meaning in their own names because no meaning was there. The staff was laid upon the corpse but produced neither voice nor movement since it was a mere staff. Then he who sent the staff came down and quickly saved his people from their sins, proving that men spoke truly of him when they said: "Who is this man that he even forgives sins?" He is no other than the one who says: "I am the salvation of my people." Now the Word is heard, now it is experienced, and it is clear that, unlike the others, he bears no empty name. As men feel the infusion of spiritual health they refuse to conceal their good fortune. The inward experience finds outward expression. Stricken with remorse I speak out his praise, and praise is a sign of life: "For from the dead, as from one who does not exist, praise has ceased." But see! I am conscious, I am alive! I am perfectly restored, my resurrection is complete. What else is the death of the body than to be deprived of life and feeling? Sin; which is the death of the soul, took from me the feeling of compunction, hushed my prayers of praise; I was dead. Then he who forgives sin came down, restored my senses again and said: "I am your deliverer." Why wonder that death should yield when he who is life comes down? "For a man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved." The child who was dead is now yawning, he yawns seven times as if to say: "Seven times daily I praise you, Lord." Take note of this number seven. It is not a meaningless number, it bears a sacred significance. But because you are by now sated, we should do well to hold this theme over for another sermon, and come with whetted appetites to a table newly laden, to which we are invited by the Church's Spouse, our Lord, Jesus Christ, who is God over all, blessed for ever. Amen.”

“13. And now, thus compunct and thus confessed, and therefore assured of your own life, you are also assured, I think, that it is by no means with an empty name that Jesus is called, he who was able and willing to work such things in you, and that he did not follow in vain after the staff he had sent ahead. He did not come emptily, because he did not come empty. For how could he be empty, in whom the fullness dwelt? For the Spirit was not given to him by measure. And so he came in the fullness of time, thereby indicating that he came full. Rightly full, whom the Father anointed with the oil of gladness above his companions; he anointed him and sent him full of grace and truth. He anointed that he might anoint. All have been anointed by him who merited to receive from his fullness. Therefore he says: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to announce good tidings to the meek, to heal the contrite of heart, to proclaim release to the captives and opening to the imprisoned, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. He was coming, as you hear, to anoint our bruises and soothe our pains; and therefore he came anointed, he came meek and mild, and of great mercy to all who call upon him. He knew he was descending to the sick, and he presented himself as was fitting. And since the infirmities were many, the provident physician took care to bring many medicines also. He brought the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and piety, and the spirit of the fear of the Lord. 14. You see how many vials full of heavenly fragrances the physician has prepared for healing the wounds of that wretched man who fell among robbers? They are seven in number, perhaps suited to arousing those seven yawnings spoken of before. For the spirit of life was in the vials. From these indeed he poured oil into my wounds; he poured wine also, but less than oil. For so it was fitting for my infirmities, that he should exalt mercy above judgment, just as oil floats above wine when poured in. He brought therefore five measures of oil, but only two of wine. For wine was only fear and fortitude; the remaining five designate oil by their proper sweetness. In the spirit of fortitude indeed, like a mighty man flushed with wine, he descended to the underworld, shattered the gates of bronze, and broke the bars of iron; he bound the strong man and seized the vessels of captivity. He descended also in the spirit of fear, but as one to be feared, not as one afraid. 15. O Wisdom! With what great art of healing you restore the health of my soul with wine and oil, strongly sweet, and sweetly strong! Strong for me, and sweet to me. For you reach from end to end mightily, and you order all things sweetly, repelling the enemy and cherishing the weak. Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; I will sing psalms and confess your name, and I will say: Your name is oil poured out. Not wine poured out (for I do not wish you to enter into judgment with your servant), but oil, because you crown me with mercy and compassions. Oil indeed, which, since it floats above all liquids with which it is mixed, clearly designates that name which is above every name. O name most sweet and most delightful! O name most glorious, most chosen and most exalted, and superexalted forever! This is truly the oil that makes glad the face of man, that anoints the head of the one who fasts, so that he does not feel the oil of the sinner. This is the new name that the mouth of the Lord has named. Which was also spoken by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. By this name not only the Jew, but whoever shall call upon it shall be saved; so far and wide has it been poured out. This the Father gave to the Son, the Bridegroom of the Church, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.”

“SERMON 17 ON THE WAYS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE ENVY OF THE DEVIL Do you think we have advanced far enough into a sphere that is holy to God, in unraveling this wonderful mystery, or should we dare follow the Holy Spirit into still more secret places to search for meanings that may yet be attained? For the Holy Spirit searches not only the minds and hearts of men but even the depths of God; so whether it be into our own hearts or into the divine mysteries, I shall be secure in following him wherever he goes. He must keep watch over our hearts and our minds, lest we think him present when he is not, and follow the erratic light of our own feelings instead. He comes and goes as he wills, and no man can easily discover whence he comes and whither he goes. Ignorance of this will not lessen our hopes of salvation; but to be ignorant of when he comes and when he goes would certainly involve risk. Unless we use the utmost vigilance in attending to these gift-laden visits of the Holy Spirit, we shall neither desire him when he seems absent nor respond to him when present. If he withdraws from us to stimulate us to a more eager search for him, how shall we seek for him if we do not perceive his absence? Or when he comes to animate us, how shall we give him the welcome due his majesty if his visit passes unnoticed? The man who is indifferent to his absence will be led astray by other influences; the man who is blind to his coming cannot offer thanks for the visit. 2. When Elisha perceived that his master was about to be taken away from him, he asked for a favor. He obtained it, as you know, only on the condition that he would see him as he was being taken. This is an allegory recorded for our instruction. This story of the prophets carries both a lesson and a warning, to make us vigilant and careful about the work of salvation ceaselessly performed in our inmost being with all the skill and sweetness of the Holy Spirit's artistry. If we do not wish to be deprived of a twofold gift, let us make sure that this heaven-sent Director, who can teach us all things, is never taken away from us without our knowledge. Let him never find us unprepared when he comes, but always with faces uplifted and hearts expanded to receive the copious blessing of the Lord. Let him find us like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the marriage-feast, for he never comes empty-handed from heaven's richly-laden table. Therefore we must watch, even hour by hour, for we do not know at what hour he will come and depart again. The Holy Spirit comes and goes, and if a man can stand firmly only with his support, it follows that he must fall when abandoned by him; fall, yes, but never fatally, since the Lord supports him by the hand. Persons who are spiritual or whom the Holy Spirit purposes to make spiritual, never cease to experience these alternations; he visits them every morning and tests them at any moment. For a righteous man falls seven times and rises again, provided that he falls in the daytime and so is able to see his fall, to know that he has fallen, to make up his mind to rise and look for a helping hand, and say: "Your favor, Lord, stood me on a peak impregnable; but then you hid your face and I was terrified." 3. It is scarcely possible to avoid doubts about the truth when we lack the light of the Holy Spirit; but it is another thing to hanker after erroneous opinions which a man might easily guard against if he would acknowledge his ignorance, as Job did when he said: "And even if it be true that I have erred, my error remains with myself." Ignorance, an evil mother, has borne two evil daughters, falsehood and doubt, the first is the more reprobate, the other more an object of compassion; the first more pernicious, the other more troubled. When the Holy Spirit speaks, both of these yield, for he speaks not merely the truth but the certain truth. He is the Spirit of truth with whom falsehood cannot be reconciled; and the spirit of wisdom, who will not accept opinions that are equivocal or obscure, since he is a reflection of eternal life, so pure that he pervades and permeates all things. When this Spirit is silent we must be alert and hold falsehood in abhorrence, even if bound in the clutches of perplexing incertitude. Doubting the truth of an opinion is vastly different from rashly proposing something of which we know nothing. Either let the Holy Spirit always speak, a procedure that no influence of ours can procure; or let him at least warn us when he withdraws into silence, that his very silence may then be our guide; otherwise, mistakenly thinking he is still leading us on, we shall pursue with disastrous assurance an erroneous course of our own. Even if he does keep us in suspense, may he never abandon us to what is false. A man may tentatively express what is false without incurring the guilt of a lie, while another man may lie in asserting a truth of which he has no knowledge. Because the first man, far from maintaining non-facts to be facts, rather states he believes what he does believe, he speaks in truth, even though what he believes is not true; but the second man, who says he is certain when he is not, does not speak in truth, even though what he asserts is true. 4. I have said these things for the sake of those who are unaware of such pitfalls, and now I shall follow what I trust to be the guidance of the Spirit who lights my way, taking account as far as I can of the warnings I have issued. I will try to be faithful to my own teaching lest someone say in turn to me: "You who teach others, will you not teach yourself?" We must observe the distinction between what is clear and what is doubtful, not casting doubt on the one nor rashly upholding the other. This is where we must hope for direction from the Spirit, for even assiduous efforts on our part may be altogether insufficient. 5. What man knows whether the judgment of God over men, that we discussed in a previous sermon, was not preceded by a judgment pronounced in heaven? 6. Is it possible that Lucifer, son of the morning, yielding precipitately to the impulse of pride, began to envy the outpouring of oil on our human race before he was cast out into the darkness? In the rage that possessed him did he murmur and say to himself: "Why this waste?" I do not hold that the Holy Spirit has made this known, nor do I hold the contrary; I simply do not know. But even though some may think it incredible, it could have happened that because of his lofty endowments of wisdom and grace, he could have foreseen that members of the human race would one day be raised to be his equals in glory. And if he did foresee this it was because it was revealed to him in the Word of God. Then, stung by a wild impulse of envy, he plotted to maintain as subjects those whom he scorned as companions. To him they were by nature both lower and weaker, unworthy to be fellow-citizens, to share an equal glory. Was this impious scheming of his the consequence of his presumptuous self-exaltation, of his pretensions to a seat of power? For he said: I will climb up to the heavens; I will sit in the recesses of the north. He would assume the very likeness of the most high God; for just as God, from his throne above the cherubim governs the whole angelic host, so Lucifer, from his usurped position, would control the race of men. God forbid. He plotted mischief in his bed, let him be trapped in his own plot, for we refuse to acknowledge any overlord but our Creator. Not the devil but the Lord will be judge of the world; he who is our God forever and ever will be our ruler forever and ever. 7. In heaven then, the devil conceived a bitter resentment that in the garden of Paradise came forth as iniquity, the offspring of malice, the mother of death and of every other misery; all these evils have pride as their first parent. For although it was through the devil's envy that death entered into the world, every sin has its origin in pride. But what has he gained from it? For you, Lord, are still in our midst, we are called by your name; and the people you have chosen, the Church of the redeemed, cries out: "Your name is oil poured out." And when I in turn am cast forth, this oil comes pouring after me and upon me, because despite your anger you remember to be merciful. Satan however has gained a hold over all who yield themselves to pride. He has made his realm of this world's darkness, yet his proud assaults serve but to increase the realm of the humble. While that realm remains his, temporal as it is, he establishes multitudes of the humble on high and eternal thrones. What a happy outcome, that this tyrant who would hammer the humble into subjection, should unwittingly be fashioning their eternal crowns for them. Attacking along every front, he is everywhere forced to yield. For always and everywhere it is God who will judge his people, it is he who will save the children of the needy and crush their oppressors. Always and everywhere he will defend his own, he will drive off their persecutors, take away the scepter that the wicked wield over the virtuous, lest the virtuous in turn should take to evil. A time is coming when he will break the bow completely, shatter the spear and burn the shields with fire. As for you, unhappy one, you set up your seat in the north, a region of cloud and cold; and see! the poor are being raised up from the dust and the needy from the dunghill, that they may be placed among the princes and attain a seat of honor. To your utter frustration you will see that the poor and needy have cause to praise God's name. 8. We thank you, Father of orphans and Vindicator of abandoned children, because a mountain fat and fertile has shed its warmth upon us. The heavens have poured down rain at the presence of the God of Sinai. The oil is poured out. There is universal glorification of the Name which Satan envied because it was ours, and we live in its shadow. It is acclaimed, I repeat, in the hearts and words of children; even in the mouths of infants and babes at the breast praise is assured. The wicked one will see this and be filled with fury; an unrelenting fury that will feed the unquenchable fire prepared for him and his ministers. "The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this." 9. How wonderful your love for me, my God, my love! How wonderful your love for me, everywhere mindful of me, everywhere eager for the welfare of one who is needy and poor, protecting him both from the arrogance of men and from the might of evil spirits. Both in heaven and on earth, O Lord, you accuse my accusers, you attack my attackers; everywhere you bring help, always you are close to my right hand lest I be disturbed. "I will sing to the Lord as long as I live, I will sing praise to my God while I have being." How great are his powers, what wonders has he not done! The first and greatest of his achievements is that revealed to me by one initiated to his mysteries, the Virgin Mary: "He has pulled down princes from their thrones and exalted the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things, the rich sent away empty." The second you have heard of too, it is like the first: "That those without sight may see, and those with sight turn blind." These two judgments are the poor man's consolation, they enable him to say: "Remembering your rulings in the past, Lord, I take comfort." 10. Let us return now to ourselves, let us examine our paths; and in order to accomplish this in truth, let us invoke the Spirit of truth, let us call to him from the deep into which he has led us, because he leads us on the way by which we discover ourselves, and without him we can do nothing. Nor should we be afraid that he will disdain to come down to us, for the contrary is true: he is displeased if we attempt even the least thing without him. For he is not one "who passes and does not return," he leads us on from brightness to brightness because he is the Spirit of the Lord. Sometimes he fills us with rapture by communication of his light, sometimes he adapts himself to our weakness and sends beams of light into the dark about us. But whether we are raised above ourselves or left with ourselves, let us stay always in the light, always walk as children of the light. And now that we have passed through the shadow-land of allegories, it is time to explore the great plains of moral truths. Our faith has been strengthened, let our lives reveal its influence; our intellects have been enlightened, let them prescribe the right behavior. For they have sound sense who do this, if they direct their actions and understanding toward the praise and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed for ever.”

“SERMON 18 THE TWO OPERATIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT "Your name is oil poured out." Of what truth of our interior life does the Holy Spirit wish to assure us by means of this text? He refers to the experience of a twofold operation, one by which he inwardly strengthens the virtues that lead us to salvation, the other by which he outwardly endows us with serviceable gifts. The former is of benefit to ourselves, the latter to our neighbors. For example, faith, hope and charity are given to us for our own sake, without them we cannot be saved. But the gift of wise and learned speech, the power to heal, to prophesy, and endowments of this kind without which we can fully achieve our own salvation, are undoubtedly meant to be used for our neighbor's salvation. And these operations of the Holy Spirit, that we take note of either in ourselves or in others, are named from their method of functioning: we call them infusion and effusion. To which of them may we suitably apply the words: "Your name is oil poured out"? Is it not to effusion? If he had meant infusion he would have said "poured in." When the bride says: "Your name is oil poured out," she refers to the perfumes sprinkled on her breasts, attributing their scent to the Bridegroom's name, as if it were an unguent poured on her breasts. Any man who perceives that he is endowed with an exterior grace enabling him to influence others, can also say to the Lord: "Your name is oil poured out." 2. At this point we need to be warned not to give away what we have received for our own welfare, nor to retain for ourselves what must be expended for others. For example, you keep for yourself what belongs to your neighbor, if along with your full endowment of interior virtues you are also adorned with the external gifts of knowledge and eloquence, and, through fear or sloth or ill-judged humility, smother this gift of speech that could be of help to so many, in a useless and even pernicious silence; for "the people's curse is on the man who hoards the wheat." On the other hand, you squander and lose what is meant to be your own if, before you are totally permeated by the infusion of the Holy Spirit, you rashly proceed to pour out your unfulfilled self upon others; you contravene the law which says: "You must not put the first-born of your herd to work, nor shear the first-born of your flock." You deprive yourself of the life and salvation which you impart to another if, lacking right intention and inspired by self you become infected with the poison of worldly ambition that swells into a deadly ulcer and destroys you. 3. The man who is wise, therefore, will see his life as more like a reservoir than a canal. The canal simultaneously pours out what it receives; the reservoir retains the water till it is filled, then discharges the overflow without loss to itself. He knows that a curse is on the man who allows his own property to degenerate. And if you think my opinion worthless, then listen to one who is wiser than I: "The fool," said Solomon, "comes out with all his feelings at once, but the wise man subdues and restrains them." Today there are many in the Church who act like canals, the reservoirs are far too rare. So urgent is the charity of those through whom the streams of heavenly doctrine flow to us, that they want to pour it forth before they have been filled; they are more ready to speak than to listen, impatient to teach what they have not grasped, and full of presumption to govern others while they know not how to govern themselves. I am convinced that no degree of the charity that leads to salvation may be preferred to that suggested by the Wise Man: "Have pity on your own soul, pleasing God." If I have but a little oil, sufficient for my own anointing, do you suppose I should give it to you and be left with nothing? I am keeping it for myself, utterly unwilling to proffer it to anyone except at the Prophet's bidding. And should any of you, thinking me to be better than I seem or than my words suggest, insist on asking for it, here is my answer to him: "There may not be enough for us and for you; you had better go to those who sell it and buy some for yourselves." But charity, you reply, does not seek what is its own. And do you know why? It does not seek what is its own precisely because it has it. Who seeks for what he possesses? Charity never lacks what is her own, all that she needs for her own security. Not alone does she have it, she abounds with it. She wants this abundance for herself that she may share it with all; and she reserves enough for herself so that she disappoints nobody. For charity is perfect only when full. 4. But you, my brother, your salvation is not yet assured; your charity as yet is either non-existent or so meager and reed-like that it bends with every breeze, puts its trust in every spirit, and is carried along by every wind of doctrine; or it is so great that you transcend the limits of the commandment by loving your neighbor more than yourself, or yet again so unsound that, contrary to the commandment, it bows to flattery, flinches under fear, is upset by sadness, shriveled by avarice, entangled by ambition, disquieted by suspicions, tormented by insults, exhausted by anxieties, puffed up by honors, consumed by envy. If you discover this chaos in your own interior, what madness drives you to insinuate yourself into other people's business? But listen to what a prudent and vigilant charity advises: "This does not mean that to give relief to others you ought to make things difficult for yourselves: it is a question of balancing." "Do not be over-virtuous." It is enough that you love your neighbor as yourself; this is the balancing to which the Apostle refers. David says: "My soul will feast most richly, on my lips a song of joy and, in my mouth, praise." To preclude a mere empty yawning, he wishes that infusion should precede the effusion, an infusion to the fullest capacity that gushes out. In this he shows prudence, his relieving of others does not embarrass himself; and he has a right intention, since he imitates him of whose fullness we have all received. You too must learn to await this fullness before pouring out your gifts, do not try to be more generous than God. The reservoir resembles the fountain that runs to form a stream or spreads to form a pool only when its own waters are brimming over. The reservoir is not ashamed to be no more lavish than the spring that fills it. And so, he who is the primal Fountain of life, full in himself and filled with himself, gushed forth and danced into the secret places of the heavens about him, to fill them all with his favors. And having endowed these remotest heights and recesses, he burst upon our earth, saving men and beasts through his munificence, multiplying his mercies everywhere. When he had first filled up the secret places, his teeming mercies billowed over; they poured upon the earth and drenched it, to multiply its riches. You must imitate this process. First be filled, and then control the outpouring. The charity that is benign and prudent does not flow outwards until it abounds within. "My son," said Solomon, "do not let yourself drift away." And the Apostle says: "We ought then to turn our minds more attentively than before to what we have been taught, so that we do not drift away." See what is involved here. Are you holier than Paul, wiser than Solomon? Besides, I cannot see myself being enriched by your wasting of your powers. For if you are mean to yourself, to whom will you be good? Help me out of your abundance if you have it; if not, then spare yourself the trouble. 5. But I wish to remind you now of the principles necessary for our salvation and how to apply them, the truths that must be infused into us and their order of importance, before we can presume to pour ourselves out. Circumstances oblige me to be as brief as possible, for the time's quick passage demands that I bring this sermon to a close. Just as a doctor comes to a wounded man, so the Holy Spirit comes to the soul. Is it possible to find any person whom the devil's sword does not wound, even after the wound of original sin has been healed by the medicine of baptism? Therefore, when the Spirit draws near to a soul that says: "My wounds grow foul and fester because of my foolishness," what is the first thing he should do? Before all else he must amputate the ulcerous tumor that has grown upon the wound and prevents its healing. This ulcer, caused by inveterate bad habits, must be sliced away with the scalpel of piercing sorrow. The pain will be bitter, but it can be alleviated with the ointment of devotion which is nothing other than the joy born of the hope of pardon. This in turn springs from the power of self-control, from victory over sin. Soon the victor is pouring out words of thanks: "You have loosed my bonds, I will offer you the thanksgiving sacrifice." He then applies the medicine of penance, a poultice of fastings, vigils, prayers, and other tasks that penitents perform. And as he toils he must be fed with the food of good works that he may not falter. We are not left in doubt about what the necessary food is: "My food," said Christ, "is to do the will of my Father." Hence works motivated by love, that are a sure source of strength, should accompany the performance of penances. For instance it is said: "Alms is a most effective offering for all those who give it in the presence of the Most High." Food causes thirst, therefore one must drink, so let the food of good works be moistened with the beverage of prayer, that a work well done may rest quietly in the stomach of conscience and give pleasure to God. In prayer one drinks the wine that gladdens a man's heart, the intoxicating wine of the Spirit that downs all memory of the pleasures of the flesh. It drenches anew the arid recesses of the conscience, stimulates digestion of the meats of good works, fills the faculties of the soul with a robust faith, a solid hope, a love that is living and true; it enriches all the actions of our life. 6. The sick man has had his food and drink; what should he do now but take his ease and let the sweat of his labors dry while he enjoys the quiet of contemplation? Falling asleep in the midst of his prayer he dreams of God; what he sees is a dim reflection in a mirror, not a vision face to face. However, although it be but a vague apprehension and not an actual vision, a fleeting glimpse of the sparkling glory as it passes, utterly delicate in its impact, yet he burns with love and says: "At night my soul longs for you and my spirit in me seeks for you." A love like this is full of zeal; it is a love becoming the Bridegroom's friend, the love that must inspire the faithful and prudent servant whom the Lord appoints over his household. It fills the soul's capacity, grows heated and brims over, gushing with abandon into streamlets. This is the love that cries out: "Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is scandalized and I am not inflamed?" Let such a man preach, let him bear fruit, let him show new signs and do fresh wonders, for vanity can find no toehold in the man whom charity totally possesses. A total love is the law in all its fullness, it can effectively fill the heart's capacity. Finally God himself is love, and nothing created can satisfy the man who is made to the image of God, except the God who is love, who alone is above all created natures. The man who has not yet attained to this love is promoted to office at the gravest risk to himself, no matter how distinguished he be with other virtues. Even if he knows everything, if he gives all his goods to the poor and lets his body be taken for burning, without charity he is worthless. See how precious the graces that must first be infused, so that when we venture to pour them out we may dispense them from a spirit that is filled rather than impoverished. We need first of all compunction of heart, then fervor of spirit; thirdly, the labor of penance; fourthly, works of charity; fifthly, zeal for prayer; sixthly, leisure for contemplation; seventhly, love in all its fullness. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, accomplished by the process called infusion; and, in so far as it has taken place those services called effusion can be truly and hence safely performed to the praise and glory of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the same Holy Spirit lives and reigns, God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

“SERMON 19 ON THE NATURE, MANNER, AND PROPERTIES OF THE LOVE OF THE ANGELS TOWARD GOD, DISCUSSED ACCORDING TO EACH OF THE ANGELIC ORDERS Still the bride speaks words of love, still she goes on further pursuing the praises of the bridegroom; and she provokes grace while she shows that the grace she had already received had not been empty in her. For hear what she adds next: "Therefore," she says, "the young maidens have loved you exceedingly" (Song 1:3). As if she were to say: Not in vain nor to no purpose has your name been emptied out, O bridegroom, and poured forth upon my breasts; for therefore the young maidens have loved you exceedingly. On account of what? On account of the name poured forth, and on account of the breasts perfused from it. For from this indeed they were aroused to love of the bridegroom, from this they received the capacity to love. When the bride received the gift poured into her, they at once perceived the fragrance—they who could by no means be far from the mother; and filled with that sweetness they say: "The love of God has been poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us" (Rom 5:5). Therefore the bride, commending their devotion, says: "This, O bridegroom, is the fruit of your poured-forth name, that therefore the young maidens have loved you." For they perceive it as poured forth, since they could not grasp it whole; therefore they have loved you. For the pouring forth makes the name graspable, the grasping makes it lovable—but only for the young maidens. Those who are more capacious rejoice in it whole, and have no need of the pouring forth. 2. The angelic creature gazes with the unreflected keenness of mind upon the great abyss of the divine judgments, and, blessed with the ineffable delight of their supreme equity, glories moreover that these are committed to execution through its ministry and made manifest; and therefore it rightly loves the Lord Christ. "Are they not all," he says, "ministering spirits, sent for ministry on behalf of those who receive the inheritance of salvation?" (Heb 1:14). Furthermore, the archangels (that we may attribute to them something more distinctive than to those who are simply angels) are, I believe, wonderfully delighted that they too are admitted more intimately to the counsels of the eternal Wisdom, and that through them those same counsels are dispensed each to its proper place and time with supreme governance. And this is the reason that they too love the Lord Christ. Those blessednesses also which are called Virtues—perhaps so named because, divinely ordained to search out and marvel at with blessed curiosity the hidden and perpetual causes of mighty works and prodigies—powerfully produce from all the elements signs upon the earth, of what kind and when they will: and they therefore, not undeservedly, burn with ardor to love the Lord of hosts and Christ the power of God. For it is a thing full of sweetness and grace to behold in Wisdom herself the uncertain and hidden things of wisdom; it is no less full of honor and glory that the workings of causes hidden in the Word of God should be directed through their hands to be beheld and marveled at by the world. 3. But those spirits also who are named Powers, while they delight to behold and magnify the divine omnipotence of our Crucified One, reaching mightily everywhere, receive the power to cast out and defeat the opposing powers of demons and of men, on behalf of those who receive the inheritance of salvation. Do not these too have a most just cause to love the Lord Jesus? There are also above these the Principalities, who, contemplating him more deeply and clearly perceiving him to be the principle of the universe and the firstborn of all creation, are therefore endowed with such dignity of principality that they have power throughout the whole earth, as if from some supreme hinge of things, to change and order kingdoms and principalities and whatever dignities at their judgment; to make the first last and the last first according to the merits of each; to put down the mighty from their seat and to exalt the humble. And this is their reason for loving also. But the Dominations love too. Why? I know not what more subtle and sublime thing they are borne to investigate concerning the interminable and irrefragable dominion of Christ, with a praiseworthy boldness: namely, that throughout the whole universe, not only powerful but also present, above and below, he compels the courses of times, the motions of bodies, and the inclinations of minds to obey his most righteous will, in an order assuredly most beautiful; and this with a vigilance so watchful that not even a point or an iota may in any way withdraw from any one of all these things, as it is said, its due service; yet with an operation so effortless that the governor feels no disturbance or anxiety whatsoever. Beholding therefore the Lord of hosts judging all things with such tranquility, seized by the excessive yet conscious rapture of most intent and most sweet contemplation into that vast ocean of divine brightness, they withdraw into a certain more secret recess of wondrous tranquility, where they enjoy such peace and security that, while they themselves rest, the remaining multitude appears to minister and serve them as truly dominations, out of reverence for their prerogative. 4. God sits upon the Thrones. And I think that for these spirits, above all those who have been mentioned, there is both a more just cause and a more abundant matter for loving. For if you enter the palace of any human king, when it is full of seats, benches, and chairs, is not the royal seat, placed on high, at once perceived? And there is no need to ask where the king is accustomed to sit: the manifest seat of his, higher and more adorned than the other seats, meets the eye at once. So also understand these spirits to surpass all others in every adornment of beauty, in whom, by a certain special gift of astonishing condescension, the divine majesty has chosen to reside. But if the sitting signifies a teaching office, I think that the Wisdom of God, Christ, who is our one master in heaven and on earth, although he reaches everywhere else on account of his purity, yet illumines these more specially and principally, as his own proper seat, with his presence, and from there, as from a solemn audience chamber, teaches angel and teaches man knowledge. From there comes to the angels knowledge of the divine judgments; from there comes to the archangels knowledge of the counsels; there the Virtues hear when and where and what manner of signs they are to bring forth. There, finally, all of them, whether they be Powers, or Principalities, or Dominations, learn indeed what they owe by duty, what they may presume by their dignity, and—what is especially enjoined upon all of them—not to abuse the power they have received for their own will or glory. 5. Those heavenly hosts, however, which are called Cherubim, if the interpretation of their name be preserved for them, I judge to have nothing that they receive from them or through them, since they may draw to the full from the fountain itself, with the Lord Jesus himself graciously introducing them into all fullness of truth, and most liberally revealing the treasures of wisdom and knowledge which are all hidden in him. But neither do those who are called Seraphim—for God who is love itself has so drawn and absorbed them into himself, and has swept them up into the same ardor of holy affection, that they seem to be one spirit with God; just as fire, which, when it inflames the air, imprints upon it all its own heat and clothes it with its own color, is seen to have made the air not ignited but fire itself. Those spirits indeed love especially to contemplate in God the knowledge of which there is no number; these, however, to contemplate the love which never falls away. Whence also they have received their names from that in which each is seen to excel: for Cherubim indeed means "fullness of knowledge," while Seraphim means "those who set on fire" or "those who are aflame." 6. God is loved, therefore, by the Angels on account of the supreme equity of his judgments; by the Archangels, on account of the supreme governance of his counsels; by the Virtues, on account of the most benign display of miracles, by which he most graciously draws unbelievers to the faith; by the Powers, on account of that force of most just might, by which he is accustomed to drive back and ward off the cruelty of the malicious from the devout; by the Principalities, on account of that eternal and original power by which he gives being and the principle of being to every creature, higher and lower, spiritual and corporeal, reaching from end to end mightily; by the Dominations also, on account of his most placid will, by which, although he rules everywhere in the strength of his arm, yet with a might more powerful, on account of his innate gentleness and imperturbable tranquility, he disposes all things sweetly. He is loved also by the Thrones on account of the benevolence of his teaching wisdom, which communicates itself without envy, and the anointing which teaches freely concerning all things. Moreover, by the Cherubim he is loved because God is the Lord of knowledge, and knowing what each one needs for salvation, he distributes his gifts discreetly and providently to those who worthily ask, as he knows to be expedient. By the Seraphim also, because he is love, and he hates nothing that he has made, and wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 7. All these, therefore, love according to their capacity. But the young maidens, since they have less understanding, also have less capacity, and are by no means sufficient for such sublime things: for they are little ones in Christ, to be nourished with milk and oil. Therefore from the breasts of the bride they must draw the means by which to love. The bride has oil poured forth, at whose fragrance they are aroused to taste and perceive how sweet the Lord is. And when she has perceived them burning with love, turning to the bridegroom she says: "Your name is oil poured forth; therefore the young maidens have loved you exceedingly." What is "exceedingly"? Greatly, vehemently, ardently. Or rather, this spiritual discourse touches you more obliquely, you who have come recently, reproving that less discreet vehemence of yours—which we too have often tried to restrain—indeed an altogether too stubbornly intemperate excess. You do not wish to be content with the common life. The regular fast is not enough for you, nor the appointed vigils, nor the imposed discipline, nor the measure which we apportion to you in clothing and food; you prefer private practices to the common ones. You who once entrusted the care of yourselves to us—why do you again interfere with yourselves? For that own will of yours, with which, as your consciences bear witness, you have so many times offended God—behold, now again you have it as your teacher, not me. She teaches you not to spare nature, not to yield to reason, not to comply with the counsel or example of your elders, not to obey us. Or do you not know that "obedience is better than sacrifices" (1 Sam 15:22)? Have you not read in your Rule that whatever is done without the will or consent of the spiritual father will be reckoned to vainglory, not to merit? Have you not read in the Gospel what pattern of obedience the boy Jesus handed on to holy children? For when he had remained in Jerusalem and had said that he must be about the things that are his Father's, yet when his parents did not agree, he did not disdain to follow them to Nazareth—the Master following disciples, God following human beings, the Word and Wisdom following a carpenter and a woman. What? The sacred history even adds: "And he was," it says, "subject to them" (Lk 2:51). How long will you be wise in your own eyes? God entrusts and subjects himself to mortals; and you still walk in your own ways? You had received a good spirit; but you do not use it well. I fear that in place of this one you may receive another, who under the appearance of good may trip you up; and you who began by the spirit may be brought to completion by the flesh. Or do you not know that the angel of Satan often disguises himself as an angel of light? (2 Cor 11:14). God is Wisdom, and he wills to be loved not only sweetly but also wisely. Whence the Apostle says: "Let your worship be rational" (Rom 12:1). Otherwise the spirit of error will most easily deceive your zeal, if you neglect knowledge; nor does the cunning enemy have a more effective device for removing love from the heart than if he can bring it about that one walks in it carelessly and not with reason. For this reason I am thinking of handing on to you certain guidelines which it is worthwhile for those who love God to observe. But since this sermon requires an end, tomorrow I shall attempt to set them forth, if God preserves for me life and the leisure we now have for discoursing. For then, with senses refreshed by the night's rest, and—what is foremost—with prayer offered beforehand, we shall come, more eagerly, as is right, to the sermon on love, with the help of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

“SERMON 9 ON THE BREASTS OF THE BRIDEGROOM And not only are they better than wine, but also fragrant with the finest ointments; because not only do you nourish those present with the milk of inward sweetness, but you also sprinkle the absent with the pleasing fragrance of a good reputation, having a good testimony both from those within and from those without. You have, I say, milk within and ointments without; since indeed there would be none whom you might refresh with milk, if you did not first attract them by the fragrance. Then the praise of the breasts is heaped further with the fragrance of ointments: that they not only feed by the savor of their words, but are also sweet-smelling by the reputation of their deeds.”

“SERMON 21 HOW THE BRIDE, THAT IS THE CHURCH, DESIRES TO BE DRAWN AFTER THE BRIDEGROOM, THAT IS CHRIST 1. "Draw me after you, in the odor of your ointments we will run." What? Does the bride then have need to be drawn, and that after the bridegroom? As if she were unwilling to follow him, and did not follow willingly. But not everyone who is drawn is drawn unwillingly. For it does not displease a weak or feeble person, namely one who cannot go by himself, to be drawn to the bath or to dinner, even though it displeases the guilty one to be drawn to judgment or to punishment. Indeed she who also asks for this wishes to be drawn; but she would not ask if she were able to follow the beloved by herself as she would wish. But why is she not able? Shall we confess that the bride too is weak? If any one of the young maidens called herself weak and asked to be drawn, we would by no means be surprised. But as for the bride, who seemed to be able, as one strong and perfect, to draw even others: to whom does it not sound harsh that she too should have need to be drawn, as though she were weak or feeble? Of what soul, then, shall we be confident that it is strong and sound, if we have consented that she is weak who, on account of her singular perfection and more excellent virtue, is called the bride of the Lord? Or perhaps the Church said this when she beheld her beloved ascending, longing to follow him and to be taken up with him in glory? Although even a soul of however great perfection, so long indeed as she groans under this body of death and is held enclosed in the prison of this evil age, bound by necessities, twisted by sins, must of necessity rise more slowly and sluggishly to the contemplation of sublime things, nor has she entirely free liberty to follow the bridegroom wherever he goes. Hence that tearful voice of the one groaning: "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?" Hence that suppliant prayer: "Lead my soul out of prison." Let her say, therefore, let even the bride say with groaning: "Draw me after you"; because the body that is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly habitation presses down the mind that thinks upon many things. Or does she say this desiring to depart and be with Christ, especially when she sees those for whose sake it seemed necessary for her to remain in the flesh making good progress, already loving the bridegroom and standing secure in charity? For she had said beforehand: "Therefore the young maidens have loved you." Now, therefore, as if she were to say, "Behold, the young maidens love you, and loving you they cling firmly to you, and they have no further need of me, and there is no reason for me to tarry any longer in this life"; therefore she says, "Draw me after you." 2. This I would accept, if she had said, "Draw me to you." But now, because she says "after you," she seems to me rather to be asking that she might be able to follow the footsteps of his way of life, that she might be able to emulate his virtue and hold fast the rule of his life and grasp the discipline of his conduct. For in these things especially there is need of help, by which she might be able to deny herself and take up her cross and so follow Christ. Here the bride absolutely needs to be drawn, and certainly to be drawn by none other than by him who says: "Without me you can do nothing." I know, she says, that I can by no means reach you except by walking after you; but neither can I do even this unless helped by you: and therefore I pray that you draw me after you. Blessed indeed is the one whose help is from you; he has disposed ascents in his heart in the valley of tears, destined at some time to reach you in the mountains of joys. How few are willing to go after you, O Lord Jesus! And yet there is no one who does not wish to reach you, since all know that delights are at your right hand forevermore. And therefore all wish to enjoy you, but not likewise to imitate you; they desire to reign with you, but not to suffer with you. Of these was he who said: "Let my soul die the death of the just, and let my last end be like theirs." He wished for himself the last things of the just, but not likewise their first things. Even carnal men wish for themselves the death of spiritual men, whose life, however, they abhor, knowing that the death of the saints is precious: because "when he has given his beloved sleep, behold, the inheritance of the Lord"; and because "blessed are the dead who die in the Lord": whereas on the contrary, according to the sentence of the prophet, "the death of sinners is the worst." They do not care to seek him whom they nevertheless desire to find; they desire to attain, but not also to follow. Not so those to whom he said: "You are they who have continued with me in my trials." Blessed are they who were deemed worthy of your testimony, gracious Jesus! They truly went after you, both with their feet and with their affections. You made known to them the ways of life, calling them after you, because you are the way and the life, and you say, "Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men"; likewise: "He who serves me, let him follow me: and where I am, there also shall my servant be." Therefore they said, glorying: "Behold, we have left all things and have followed you." 3. So likewise your beloved, having left all things for your sake, longs always to go after you, always to cling to your footsteps and to follow you wherever you go: knowing that your ways are beautiful ways, and all your paths are peaceful; and that he who follows you does not walk in darkness. But she prays to be drawn, because your justice is like the mountains of God, and she does not suffice for it by her own strength. She prays to be drawn, as is fitting; because no one comes to you unless your Father draws him. Moreover, those whom the Father draws, you also draw. For the works that the Father does, the Son likewise does. But she asks more familiarly to be drawn by the Son, as by her own bridegroom, whom the Father sent to meet her as guide and teacher, who would go before her in the way of conduct and prepare the path of virtues and instruct her as he did himself and teach her the way of prudence and hand on to her the law of life and discipline; and so he himself would rightly desire her beauty. 4. "Draw me after you, in the odor of your ointments we will run." For this reason I have need to be drawn, because the fire of your love has grown somewhat cold in us; nor can we, before the face of this cold, run now as we did yesterday and the day before. But we will run afterward, when you have restored the joy of your salvation, when the better temperature of grace has returned, when the Sun of justice has again grown warm and the cloud of temptation, which is seen to cover him for a time, has passed away, and at the gentle breath of a breeze more pleasant than usual, the ointments begin to melt and the spices to flow and to give forth their odor. Then we will run, in that odor we will run. When the ointments breathe forth, I say, we will run, because the torpor that now is will depart, and devotion will return, and there will no longer be need for us to be drawn, since, aroused by the odor, we will run of our own accord. But for now, in the meantime, draw me after you. Do you see that the one who walks in the spirit by no means remains in one state, nor always advances with the same ease, and that a man's way is not in himself; but rather, as the Spirit who governs him dispenses as he wills, now more slowly, now more eagerly does he forget the things that are behind and stretch himself out toward what lies ahead? I think that, if you attend to this very thing, your own experience within responds to what I speak without. 5. Therefore when you feel yourself affected by torpor, weariness, or tedium, do not on that account lose confidence or cease from spiritual endeavor; but seek the hand of the one who helps, beseeching to be drawn, after the example of the bride, until, when grace has been roused again and you have been made more ready and eager, you run and say: "I ran the way of your commandments, when you enlarged my heart." Yet while grace is present, delight in it in such a way that you do not reckon you possess the gift of God by hereditary right, being so secure about it as though you could never lose it: lest suddenly, when perhaps he has withdrawn his hand and taken back the gift, you collapse in spirit and become sadder than is fitting. Finally, do not say in your abundance, "I shall never be moved"; lest you be compelled to say even that which follows, though with groaning: "You turned your face away from me, and I was troubled." You will rather take care, if you are wise, following the counsel of the Wise Man, in days of evil not to be unmindful of good things, and in days of good things not to be unmindful of evil things. 6. Therefore in the day of your strength do not be secure, but cry out to God with the Prophet and say: "When my strength fails, do not forsake me." Moreover, in the time of temptation console yourself and say with the bride: "Draw me after you, in the odor of your ointments we will run." So shall hope not desert you in time of evil, nor shall foresight be lacking in time of good, and amid the adverse and prosperous changes of mutable times you will hold a certain image of eternity, namely this inviolable and unshaken equanimity of a constant soul, blessing the Lord at all times, and thereby claiming for yourself even amid the uncertain events and certain failings of this wavering age, a state of perpetual immutability, as it were, when you begin to be renewed and reformed into that ancient distinction of the likeness of the eternal God, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration. For as he is, so also will you be in this world, neither timid in adversity nor dissolute in prosperity. In this, I say, the noble creature made in the image and likeness of the one who made her shows that she is already receiving and about to recover the dignity of her ancient honor, when she considers it unworthy of herself to be conformed to this passing age, striving rather to be reformed, according to the teaching of Paul, in the newness of her mind, into that likeness in which she knows she was created; and through this also compelling, as is fitting, this age, which was made for her sake, to be marvelously conformed to her in turn, as all things begin to work together for her good, as though in their proper and natural form, having cast off their degenerate appearance and recognizing their Lord, for whose service they were created. 7. Whence I consider that saying which the Only-begotten spoke of himself, namely that if he were lifted up from the earth, he would draw all things to himself, can be common also to all his brethren, those indeed whom the Father foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. And I therefore also, if I have been lifted up from the earth, boldly say, I will draw all things to myself. Nor do I rashly claim for myself, my brethren, the words of him whose likeness I put on. If this is so, let not the rich of this world think that the brethren of Christ possess only heavenly things, because they hear him saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Let them not, I say, reckon that they possess only heavenly things, who hear only those things in the promise. They possess earthly things also, and indeed as having nothing, yet possessing all things: not begging as wretches, but possessing as lords, by so much the more lords as they are the less covetous. Indeed, for the faithful man the whole world of riches is his. The whole, plainly: because adverse things as well as prosperous things alike all serve him and work together for good. 8. Therefore the greedy man hungers for earthly things as a beggar, but the faithful man despises them as a lord. The one begs while possessing, the other preserves by despising. Ask of any of those who with insatiable heart gape after temporal gains what he thinks of those who sell their goods and give to the poor and purchase the kingdom of heaven with their earthly substance: do they act wisely or not? Without doubt he will answer: wisely. Ask in turn why he does not do himself what he approves? "I cannot," he will say. Why? Surely because his mistress avarice does not permit it; because he is not free; because the things he seems to possess are not his own; but neither is he his own master. If they are truly yours, spend them for profit and exchange earthly things for heavenly. If you cannot, confess that you are not the master of your money, but its servant; its keeper, not its possessor. Indeed you are even conformed to your purse, as a servant to his mistress, since, just as the servant necessarily both rejoices with her who rejoices and grieves with her who grieves, so you too grow in spirit together with your growing purse and shrink together with its shrinking. For you are contracted with sorrow when it is emptied, and you are loosened with joy, or certainly puffed up with pride, when it is filled. So much for that man. But let us take care to emulate the freedom and constancy of the bride, who, as one well instructed in all things and learned of heart in wisdom, knows both how to abound and how to suffer want. When she asks to be drawn, she shows what she lacks, not of money, but of virtue. Again, when she no less consoles herself with the hope of returning grace, she proves that she may fail, but not lose confidence. 9. She says therefore: "Draw me after you, in the odor of your ointments we will run." And what wonder if she has need to be drawn, who runs after a giant, who strives to apprehend him who leaps upon the mountains, who bounds over the hills? "His word runs swiftly." She is not able to run on equal terms, she cannot contend with him in equal swiftness, who "rejoices as a giant to run his course"; she cannot do it by her own strength, and therefore she asks to be drawn. I am weary, she says, I faint; do not abandon me, but draw me after you, lest I begin to wander after other lovers, lest I run as though uncertainly. Draw me after you; because it is better for me that you draw me, that is, that you bring some kind of force upon me, whether by terrifying with threats or by disciplining with scourges, than that, sparing me, you abandon me in my torpor, wickedly secure. Draw me in a manner unwilling, that you may make me willing; draw me torpid, that you may render me running. There will come a time when I shall not need one who draws, because willingly and with all eagerness we will run. I shall not run alone, even though I have asked that I alone be drawn: the young maidens too will run with me. We will run together, we will run at once; I aroused by the odor of your ointments, they aroused by my example and exhortation: and through this all of us will run in the odor of your ointments. The bride has imitators of herself, just as she herself is of Christ. And therefore she does not say in the singular, "I will run," but "we will run." 10. But a question arises, why similarly, when she asked to be drawn, she did not also add the young maidens, so as to say, not "Draw me," but "Draw us." For what? Does the bride perhaps need to be drawn and the young maidens do not? O beautiful one, O happy one, O blessed one! Explain to us the reason for this distinction. "Draw me," you say. Why "me" and not "us"? Do you begrudge us this good? Far be it! For you would not forthwith have said that the young maidens would run with you, if you had wished to go after the bridegroom alone. Why then, when you were about to add in the plural "we will run," did you ask in the singular to be drawn? Charity, she says, so required. Learn through this word from me to hope for a twofold help from above in the spiritual exercise: correction and consolation. The one disciplines from without, the other visits within. The one checks insolence, the other raises up to confidence; the one works humility, the other consoles faintheartedness; the one makes us cautious, the other devout. The one teaches the fear of the Lord; the other tempers that very fear with the infused joy of salvation, as it is written: "Let my heart rejoice that it may fear your name"; likewise: "Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice in him with trembling." 11. We are drawn when we are exercised by temptations and tribulations; we run when, visited by inward consolations and inspirations, we breathe as though amid sweet-smelling ointments. Therefore what seems harsh and hard I keep for myself, as for one strong, as for one sound, as for one perfect, and I say in the singular, "Draw me." What is sweet and gentle I share with you as with one weak, and I say, "We will run." I know that the young maidens are delicate and tender and less fit to endure temptations: and therefore I wish them to run with me, but not to be drawn with me; I wish to have companions in consolation, but not also in labor. Why? Because they are weak, and I fear lest they fail, lest they succumb. Me, she says, O bridegroom, correct, me discipline, me try, me draw after you; because I am ready for scourges and strong to endure. But together we will run: I alone will be drawn, but together we will run. We will run, we will run, but in the odor of your ointments, not in confidence of our own merits: nor do we trust ourselves to run in the greatness of our own strength, but in the multitude of your mercies. For even if we ever ran and were willing, it was not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy. Let mercy return, and we will run. You indeed, in your power, as a giant and as one mighty, run: but we, unless your ointments breathe forth, will not run. You, whom the Father anointed with the oil of gladness above your fellows, run in that very anointing; we will run in its odor: you in fullness, we in odor. It would be time to pay what I remember having promised long above concerning the ointments of the bridegroom, if the length of this sermon did not prevent it. I defer it therefore: for the dignity of the subject does not allow itself to be compressed into a troublesome brevity. Ask the Lord of anointing that he may deign to make the voluntary offerings of my mouth pleasing, for the purpose of instilling into your desires the memory of the abundance of his sweetness, which is in the bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

“SERMON 22 ON THE FOUR OINTMENTS OF THE BRIDEGROOM AND THE FOUR CARDINAL VIRTUES 8. What should he have done for you and has not done? He gave sight to the blind, set captives free, led the wanderers back, reconciled sinners. Who would not run spontaneously and eagerly after him who sets men free from error, overlooks their blundering, bestows merits by his mode of life and acquires rewards for them by his death? What excuse can anyone have for not running in the fragrance of your perfumes, except that the fragrance has not reached him? But the fragrance of your life has gone into every land, because "the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord," and his compassion is over all that he has made. Therefore the man who fails to perceive this life-giving fragrance that permeates all places, and does not run on that account, must be dead or even corrupt. Fragrance signifies fame. When the fragrance of his fame arrives it excites men to run, it leads to the experience of inward grace, to the reward of vision. The joyous throng who attain to it shout all together: "As we have heard so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts." If we run after you, Lord Jesus, it is entirely because of the meekness associated with your name, because you do not spurn the poor nor recoil from the sinner. You did not reject the repentant thief, the weeping sinner, the importunate Canaanite woman, the woman caught in adultery, the man who sat at the customs house, the humble tax collector, the disciple who denied you, the man who persecuted your followers, even those who crucified you. We run in the fragrance that these diffuse. The fragrance of your wisdom comes to us in what we hear, for if anyone needs wisdom let him but ask of you and you will give it to him. It is well known that you give to all freely and ungrudgingly. As for your justice, so great is the fragrance it diffuses that you are called not only just but even justice itself, the justice that makes men just. Your power to make men just is measured by your generosity in forgiving. Therefore the man who through sorrow for sin hungers and thirsts for justice, let him trust in the One who changes the sinner into a just man, and, judged righteous in terms of faith alone, he will have peace with God. Your holiness, for its part, is sweetly and richly radiated not only by your mode of life, but even by your conception. You have neither committed sin nor been contaminated by it. Repentant sinners therefore who wish to attain to that holiness essential for the vision of God, should listen to your warning: "Be holy, for I am holy." Let them pay attention to your ways for you are just in all your ways and holy in all your doings. Finally, how many are inspired to run by the sweet odor of your redemption! When you are lifted up from the earth you draw all things to yourself. Your Passion is the ultimate refuge, a remedy that is unique. When our wisdom lets us down, when our righteousness falls short, when the merits of our holiness founder, your Passion becomes our support. Who would presume that his own wisdom, or righteousness or holiness suffices for salvation? "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our sufficiency is from God." Therefore when my strength is spent I shall not be troubled, I shall not lose heart. I know what I shall do: I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. Enlighten my eyes, O Lord, that I may learn what is pleasing to you at all times, and then I am wise. "Remember not the sins of my youth, or my transgressions," and then I am righteous. "Teach me your way," and then I am holy. And yet, unless your blood cries out on my behalf, I am not saved. To obtain all these gifts we run after you: forgive us, because we cry after you. 9. All of us do not run with equal ardor in the fragrance of all the perfumes; some are more eager for the study of wisdom, others concentrate on doing penance in the hope of pardon, others again are inspired to practice the virtues by the example of Christ's life and behavior, while yet others are roused to fervor more by the memory of his Passion. Is it possible for us to find examples of each kind? Those ran in the fragrance of wisdom who had been sent by the Pharisees and returned to them saying: "No man ever spoke like this man!" They admired his doctrine and praised his wisdom. Nicodemus also was lured into running by this fragrance when he came to Jesus by night, in the clear light of his wisdom, and went back reformed, instructed in many things. Mary Magdalene ran in the fragrance of justice: many sins were forgiven her because she loved much. She had ceased to be the sinner taunted by the Pharisee, and become a virtuous and holy woman. He did not realize that righteousness or holiness is a gift of God, not the fruit of man's effort, and that the man "to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity" is not only just but blessed. Had he forgotten how the Lord had cured his or some other man's bodily leprosy with a touch without contracting it? So, when the just One is touched by the sinner, he imparts rather than loses righteousness, nor is he tarnished with the stain of the sin from which he cleanses her. The tax collector ran in similar fashion; and justice himself bears witness that after he had humbly implored forgiveness for his sins, he "went home again at rights with God." Peter ran when, after his fall, he wept bitterly to wash away his sin and be restored to righteousness. David ran when he acknowledged and confessed his crime and was privileged to be told: "The Lord has put away your sin." Paul testifies that he ran in the fragrance of holiness, when he glories in being an imitator of Christ. He said to his followers: "Take me for a model as I take Christ." And all those were running, too, who said: "We have left everything and followed you." It was because of the desire to follow Christ that they had left all things. A general exhortation to everyone to follow in this fragrance is contained in the words: "He who says he abides in Christ ought to walk in the same way in which he walked." Finally, if you wish to hear of those who ran in the fragrance of the Passion, behold all the martyrs. Such, then, is my explanation of the four ointments: the first, wisdom; the second, righteousness; the third, holiness; and the fourth, redemption.”

“SERMON 23 ON THE THREE MODES OF CONTEMPLATION CONCERNING GOD, UNDER THE FIGURE OF THREE STOREROOMS 1. "The king has brought me into his storerooms." Behold whence the fragrance, behold whither one runs. She had said that one must run, and in what one must run; but whither one must run, she had not said. Therefore to the storerooms one runs, and one runs in the fragrance which proceeds from them, the bride with her accustomed sagacity perceiving it beforehand and desiring to be brought into the fullness thereof. But what ought we to think concerning these storerooms? Let us consider them meanwhile as certain fragrant places belonging to the bridegroom, full of aromatics, filled with delights. For in a storehouse of this kind, the choicer things from a garden or from a field are stored away to be preserved. Thither, therefore, they run together. Who? Souls fervent in spirit. The bride runs, the maidens run; but she who loves more ardently runs more swiftly, and arrives sooner. Arriving, she suffers not, I say, repulsion, but not even delay. Without delay it is opened to her, as to one of the household, as to a most beloved one, as to one specially cherished and singularly pleasing. But the maidens, what of them? They follow from afar; for since they are still weak, they cannot run with the same devotion as the bride, nor altogether imitate her desire and fervor; and therefore, arriving later, they remain outside. But the charity of the bride does not rest, nor does it grow insolent, as is customary, with her successes, so that she should forget them, but rather consoles and exhorts them to patience, that they might bear with equanimity both their own rebuff and her absence. And so she announces to them the joy she has received, for no other reason, truly, than that they might rejoice with her, while they trust that whatever grace has come to the mother will by no means be alien from them. For she does not so attend to her own advancement as to neglect the care of them; nor does she think her own progress should be furthered by their loss. To whatever heights, therefore, she is raised above them by the prerogative of merits, by charity without doubt and by devoted solicitude she must always be with them. Indeed she ought to imitate her bridegroom, who both seeks the heavens and nonetheless promises that he will be on earth with his own even to the consummation of the age. So also she, however much she advances, however far she is promoted, in care, in providence, and in affection is never removed from those whom she has begotten in the Gospel, never forgets her own offspring. 2. Let her therefore say to them: Rejoice, take confidence. The king has brought me into his storerooms: consider that you also have been brought in together. I seem to have been brought in alone; but it will not profit me alone. All my progress is the progress of you all: I advance for you, I will share with you whatever more I may have merited beyond you. Do you wish to know without doubt that she spoke in this sense and with this affection? Hear what they respond. "We will exult and rejoice in you." In you, they say, we will exult and rejoice: for in ourselves we do not yet deserve it. And they add, "Mindful of your breasts," that is, we bear it patiently until you come, knowing that you will return to us with breasts full. Then we trust we shall exult and rejoice, mindful meanwhile of your breasts. What they add, "more than wine" (Song 1:4), signifies that they are still indeed, on account of their imperfection, assailed by the memory of carnal desires, which are designated by wine; yet that these same desires are overcome by the memory of the abundance of sweetness which they have already experienced flowing from the breasts. I would speak about the breasts, if I did not remember having said enough above (Sermon 9). Now indeed you see how they presume upon the mother, how they reckon her gains and joys as their own, consoling the injury of their own repulsion by her introduction. They would by no means so confide, unless they recognized her as a mother. Let prelates hear this, who always wish to be a terror to those committed to them, rarely a benefit. "Be instructed, you who judge the earth." Learn that you ought to be mothers to your subjects, not masters; strive rather to be loved than feared: and if severity is sometimes needed, let it be paternal, not tyrannical. Show yourselves mothers by cherishing, fathers by correcting. Be gentle, put aside fierceness; suspend the rod, bring forth the breasts; let your hearts be rich with milk, not swollen with pride. Why do you make your yoke heavy upon those whose burdens you ought rather to bear? Why does the little one bitten by the serpent flee from the conscience of the priest, to whom he ought rather to run as to the bosom of a mother? If you are spiritual, instruct such a one in a spirit of gentleness; "each one considering himself, lest he also be tempted" (Gal 6:1). Otherwise that one will die in his sin: "but his blood," he says, "I will require from your hand" (Ezek 3:20). But these things belong elsewhere. 3. Now since the sequence of the letter is manifest from what we have set forth, let us see what we ought to understand spiritually concerning the storerooms. In what follows mention is made also of the garden and of the chamber, both of which I now join to these storerooms and take up in the present discussion: for treated together they will become better known from one another. And let us seek, if you please, these three things in the Holy Scriptures: the garden, the storeroom, the chamber. For in these the soul thirsting for God gladly dwells and lingers, knowing that there without doubt she will find him whom she thirsts for. Let the garden, therefore, be the plain and simple history; let the storeroom be the moral sense; let the chamber be the hidden place of contemplative vision. 4. And first indeed I think that history is not undeservedly assigned to the garden, because in it are found men of virtue, like fruit-bearing trees in the garden of the bridegroom and in the paradise of God, from whose good deeds and characters you pluck as many fruits as you take examples. Or perhaps someone doubts that a good man is a planting of God? Hear what holy David sings of the good man. "He shall be," he says, "like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither" (Ps 1:3). Hear Jeremiah singing in concert with the same spirit, and in almost the same words. "He shall be like a tree," he says, "planted by streams of water, which sends its roots toward the moisture, and does not fear when heat comes" (Jer 17:8). Likewise the Prophet: "The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree, he shall be multiplied like the cedar of Lebanon" (Ps 92:12). And of himself: "But I am like a fruitful olive tree in the house of God" (Ps 52:8). History is therefore a garden, and it is itself threefold. For contained in it are the creation of heaven and earth, the reconciliation, and the restoration. Creation indeed, as the sowing or planting of the garden. Reconciliation, as the sprouting of the seeds or plantings. For in its time, when the heavens dropped dew from above and the clouds rained down the righteous one, "the earth opened and brought forth the Savior" (Isa 45:8), through whom the reconciliation of heaven and earth was made. For "he himself is our peace, who made both one" (Eph 2:14), "making peace through his blood between the things that are on earth and the things that are in heaven" (Col 1:20). Furthermore, the restoration will be at the end of the age. For there will be "a new heaven and a new earth," and the good will be gathered from the midst of the evil, like fruit from a garden, to be stored in the storehouses of God. In that day, as it is written, "the branch of the Lord shall be in magnificence and glory, and the fruit of the earth shall be sublime" (Isa 4:2). You have, therefore, three times in the garden of the historical sense. 5. In moral discipline likewise three things are to be noticed, as it were three cells in one storeroom. And perhaps for this reason she said storerooms in the plural, and not storeroom, thinking of this number of cells. Further on, indeed, she glories in having been brought into the "wine cellar" (Song 2:4). We therefore, because we read, "Give occasion to a wise man, and he will become wiser" (Prov 9:9), having the occasion from the name which the Holy Spirit saw fit to impose on this cell, let us impose names also on the other two: "aromatic" on one, and "ointment" on the other. The reasons for these names we shall see afterward. Now however observe that all things with the bridegroom are found to be healthful, all things sweet: wine, ointments, spices. Wine, as Scripture attests, "gladdens the heart of man" (Ps 104:15). No less does one read that the face is made cheerful by oil (ibid.), in which indeed the powder of spices is infused to make ointments. Spices are not only pleasing by the sweet fragrance of their scent, but also useful by their healing power. Rightly does the bride exult that she has been brought in there, where so great an abundance of grace overflows. 6. But I have also other names bearing, I think, a more evident reason of themselves. And that they may be named in their proper order, I would call the first the cell of discipline; the second, of nature; the last, of grace. In the first you learn, according to the reasoning of the ethical part, to be inferior; in the next, equal; in the latter, superior: that is, under another, with another, over another; or thus: to be subject, to coexist, to preside. First, therefore, you learn to be a disciple; second, a companion; third, also a master. And indeed nature has brought forth all men as equals. But since the good of nature was corrupted in morals by pride, men became impatient of equality, striving against one another to be set above, and each desiring to surpass the other, and desirous of vainglory, "envying one another, provoking one another": first of all in the first cell, the insolence of character must be tamed by the yoke of discipline, until the self-willed and obstinate will is humbled and healed, worn down by the harsh and prolonged rules of the elders, and the good of nature which it had lost through pride it may recover through obedience; so that now by natural affection alone, not by fear of discipline, it has learned to keep itself peaceably and quietly, as far as lies within it, with all the companions of its nature, that is, with all men, then at last passing into the cell of nature and experiencing what is written: "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the ointment on the head" (Ps 133:1-2). To disciplined character, as to ground spices, the oil of gladness is added, the good of nature; and a good and pleasant ointment is made. By which, as if anointed, a man is rendered gentle and mild, a man without complaint, circumventing no one, harassing no one, harming no one, exalting or preferring himself above no one, and moreover gladly sharing in the matter of giving and receiving. 7. I think, if you have rightly understood the properties of each cell, you will attest that I have not unfittingly called this one the ointment cell, and that one the aromatic cell. In that one, indeed, just as the violent crushing of the pestle extracts and forces out the powers and fragrance of the spices, so the force of instruction and the strictness of discipline in a certain way elicits and expresses the natural power of right character. In this one, however, the pleasing gentleness of voluntary and, as it were, inborn affection runs forth spontaneously to serve, clearly in the manner of ointment which is on the head, descending and flowing through the whole at the light touch of warmth. And so in the cell of discipline, the dry and simple species of spices, as it were, are contained, and hence I thought it should be called the aromatic cell. In the one that is called of nature, since ointments, already as it were compounded, are stored and preserved, it likewise received its name from the thing itself, so as to be called the ointment cell. For as for the wine cellar too, I judge it to bear no other reason for its name than that in it is stored the wine of zeal fervent in charity. And no one at all who has not yet merited to be brought into it ought to preside over others. He who presides over others must absolutely burn with this wine, just as the Teacher of the Gentiles was burning when he said: "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I do not burn?" (2 Cor 11:29). Otherwise you quite improperly desire to preside over those whose good you do not seek; and you far too ambitiously claim for yourself the subjection of those for whose salvation you are not zealous. This cell I have also named of grace; not that anyone can obtain even the other two entirely without grace, but on account of the fullness which is singularly perceived in this one. For indeed "the fullness of the law is charity," and "he who loves his brother has fulfilled the law" (Rom 13:10, 8). 8. You have seen the reason for the names; see also the difference between the cells. For it is not of equal ease or of the same ability to restrain wanton and wandering senses and the intemperate appetite of the flesh by the fear of a master and to hold them in check by the rigid censure of discipline, and to agree well with companions by spontaneous affection; to live with corrected morals under the rod, and by the sole guidance of the will to maintain a pleasing manner with equals. For neither would anyone say that it is of one merit or of one virtue both to live in community and to preside usefully. How many, indeed, live quietly under an instructor, whom, if you release them from the yoke, you would see unable to be at rest, nor in any way to keep themselves harmless among equals? And likewise you will see countless people living simply and without complaint among brethren, who above brethren are not only useless but also foolish and harmful. Those who are of this sort are content with a certain good mediocrity, as God has apportioned to them the measure of grace; by no means needing a master, nor yet fit for mastery. The latter, therefore, though they surpass the former in character, are surpassed by those who know how to be superiors. And indeed those who preside well receive in promise that they will "be set over all the goods of their Lord" (Mt 24:47). But few indeed are those who preside usefully; fewer still, those who preside also humbly. Yet he easily fulfills both who has perfectly attained discretion, the mother of virtues, and is nevertheless inebriated with the wine of charity to the contempt of his own glory, to the forgetfulness of his very self, and not to seeking the things that are his own; which is obtained solely and wondrously by the instruction of the Holy Spirit within the wine cellar. For the virtue of discretion without the fervor of charity lies inert, and vehement fervor without the tempering of discretion falls headlong. And therefore laudable is the one who lacks neither, so that fervor may raise up discretion, and discretion may govern fervor. Therefore the one who presides ought to be of such a character. But I would say that the best in character, and the one who has perfectly grasped the summit of this discipline, is the one to whom it is given to traverse and go through all these cells without stumbling: who in nothing at all either resists his superiors, or envies his equals, or is lacking to his subjects in care, or rules over them in pride; obedient to those set above him, agreeable to his companions, usefully condescending to his subjects. This mark of perfection I would without hesitation assign to the bride. The very word she spoke implies this also, because "The king has brought me into his storerooms," since she shows herself brought not into some one cell, but into storerooms, in the plural. 9. Now let us come to the chamber. What is this too? And do I presume to know what it is? By no means do I claim for myself the experience of so great a thing, nor do I glory in a prerogative which is reserved for the blessed bride alone, cautious according to that saying of the Greeks, to know myself; that I may know also with the Prophet "what I lack" (Ps 39:4). Yet if I knew nothing at all, I would say nothing. What I know, I do not begrudge you, nor withhold: what I do not know, may he teach you "who teaches man knowledge" (Ps 94:10). I have said, and you remember, that the king's chamber is to be sought in the hidden place of contemplative vision. But just as I know I said about the ointments, namely that there are many and diverse ointments with the bridegroom, and not all are available to all, but particular ones are granted to particular people according to the diversity of their merits: so too I think there is not one chamber for the king, but several. For neither is there one queen indeed, but several: and concubines are many, and of maidens there is no number. And each one finds her own place of privacy with the bridegroom and says, "My secret is mine, my secret is mine" (Isa 24:16). Not to all is it given to enjoy in one place the beloved and secret presence of the bridegroom, but as is prepared for each by his Father. For we have not chosen him, but he has chosen us and placed us; and where each has been placed by him, there he is. And indeed one woman, pricked in heart, found her appointed place at the feet of the Lord Jesus (Lk 7:38), while another found the fruit of her devotion at his head (Mt 26:7), if indeed she was another. Furthermore, Thomas in the side, John on the breast, Peter in the bosom of the Father, Paul in the third heaven obtained the grace of this secret place. 10. Which of us could worthily distinguish these varieties of merits, or rather of rewards? Lest, however, we should seem to have entirely passed over what we ourselves know; the first woman made her bed in the safe place of humility; the latter, on the throne of hope; Thomas, on the solid ground of faith; John, in the breadth of charity; Paul, in the innermost place of wisdom; Peter, in the light of truth. Thus, therefore, with the bridegroom there are many mansions, and whether it is a queen, or a concubine, or even one from the number of the maidens, each receives a fitting place and limit according to her merits, as to how far it is permitted to her to advance in contemplation and to enter into the joy of her Lord, and to search the sweet secrets of the bridegroom. This I will attempt to demonstrate more distinctly in its proper place, insofar as he himself shall deign to suggest. But now let it suffice to know this: that to none of the maidens, to none of the concubines, to none even of the queens is the approach entirely open to that secret of the chamber which the bridegroom reserves for that dove of his, his beautiful one, his perfect one, his only one. Whence neither do I indeed take it amiss that I am not admitted to it, especially since it is certain to me that not even the bride herself has yet attained to every secret she desires. For indeed she entreats that it be shown to her "where he feeds, where he lies down at noon" (Song 1:7). 11. But hear how far I have attained, or think myself to have attained. For it ought not to be imputed to boasting, what I lay open for your advancement. There is a place with the bridegroom from which he decrees his judgments and arranges his counsels, he who is the governor of the universe, establishing laws for every creature, weight and measure and number. And this place is high and secret, but by no means quiet. For even though he, as far as he is concerned, disposes all things sweetly, he nevertheless disposes; and he does not permit the one contemplating, who may perhaps have reached that place, to be at rest; but wondrously, though delightfully, he wearies the one who searches and marvels, and renders him restless. Beautifully the bride expresses both these things in what follows, namely the delight of this kind of contemplation and the restlessness, where she confesses both that she sleeps and that her heart watches (Song 5:2). For in the sleep of most sweet amazement and placid wonder she signifies that she feels rest; but in the wakefulness of no less restless curiosity and laborious exercise she signifies that she suffers weariness. Hence blessed Job: "If I sleep," he says, "I say, When shall I rise? and again I await the evening" (Job 7:4). Do you perceive in these words a holy soul wishing at times to decline, in a certain way, a burdensome sweetness, and again to desire the same sweet burden? For he would not have said, "When shall I rise?" if the repose of his contemplation had altogether pleased him: but also if it had altogether displeased him, he would not again have awaited the hour of rest, that is, the evening. This place, therefore, is not the place of the chamber, where by no means is there rest in every way. 12. There is likewise a place from which, regarding the rational yet reprobate creature, the most secret and most severe judgment of the just Judge God watches immovably, "terrible in his counsels over the sons of men." He is discerned, I say, in this place by the God-fearing contemplator, God who, by his just but hidden judgment, neither washes away the evils of the reprobate nor accepts their goods; and moreover hardens their hearts, lest perhaps they grieve, and come to their senses, and be converted, and he should heal them. And this is not without a certain and eternal reason, which is so much the more fearful as it stands the more immovably fixed in eternity. Greatly to be dreaded is what we read in the prophet concerning such ones, where God speaking to his angels says thus: "Let us have mercy on the impious one." And when they trembled and asked, "Will he not then learn to do justice?" "No," he said; and adding the cause: "In the land of the saints he has done wicked things, and he shall not see the glory of the Lord" (Isa 26:10). Let clerics fear, let ministers of the Church fear, who in the lands of the saints which they possess, do such wicked things that, not content with the stipends which ought to suffice, they impiously and sacrilegiously retain for themselves the surplus with which the needy should be sustained; and they do not scruple to consume the sustenance of the poor for the uses of their own pride and luxury, sinning assuredly with a twofold iniquity, because they both plunder what belongs to others and abuse sacred things for their own vanities and shameful purposes. 13. When it is perceived, therefore, that he spares and has mercy on such ones at present so that he may not spare them for eternity, he whose "judgments are a great deep," who would seek rest in this place? This vision holds the trembling of judgment, not the security of the chamber. "Terrible is this place," and devoid of all rest. I have shuddered all over, if ever I was caught up into it, turning over within myself with trembling that sentence: "Who knows whether he is worthy of love or of hatred?" (Eccl 9:1). Nor is it surprising if I totter there (I who am surely "a leaf carried by the wind and dry stubble" (Job 13:25)), where even that greatest contemplator confesses that his own feet were almost moved, his steps almost poured out; and he was saying: "I was jealous of the wicked, seeing the peace of sinners. Why? They are not in the labor of men," he says, "and with men they shall not be scourged; therefore pride has held them" (Ps 73:3-6), lest they be humbled unto repentance, but rather be damned for their pride with the proud devil and his angels. For those who "are not in the labor of men" shall surely be in the labor of demons, as the judge says: "Depart, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels" (Mt 25:41). Yet this too is a place of God, clearly nothing other than the house of God and the gate of heaven. For here God is said to be feared; here his name is holy and terrible, and it is, as it were, an entrance to glory: "For the fear of the Lord is truly the beginning of wisdom" (Ps 111:9-10). 14. Let it not trouble you that I have assigned the beginning of wisdom to this last place and not to the former. For there, in a certain kind of auditorium of his, we hear Wisdom teaching about all things as mistress; here we also receive her. There we are instructed indeed, but here we are affected. Instruction makes the learned, affection makes the wise. The sun does not warm all those upon whom it shines; so Wisdom does not immediately kindle to action the many whom she teaches what ought to be done. It is one thing to know great riches, another also to possess them; nor does knowledge make one rich, but possession. Just so, just so, it is one thing to know God, and another to fear him; nor does knowledge make one wise, but fear, which also affects. Would you call him wise whom his own knowledge puffs up? Who but the most foolish would call those wise who, "when they had known God, did not glorify him as God, or give thanks"? I rather hold with the Apostle, who manifestly pronounces their heart "foolish" (Rom 1:21). And rightly is the fear of the Lord the beginning of wisdom; because God first becomes savory to the soul when he affects it to fear, not when he instructs it to know. You fear the justice of God, you fear his power; and God, just and powerful, becomes savory to you, because fear is a savor. Moreover, savor makes one sapient, as knowledge makes one knowing, as riches make one rich. What then of the former place? It only prepares for wisdom. There you are prepared, that here you may be initiated. Preparation is the knowledge of things. But this is very easily followed by the swelling of elation, if fear does not check it, so that it is rightly said: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," which first opposes itself to the plague of foolishness. There, therefore, is a certain approach to wisdom; here is also the entrance. Furthermore, neither here nor there is rest perfect for the one who contemplates; because there God appears as though anxious, here as though disturbed. Therefore do not seek the chamber in these places, of which the one appears rather as the auditorium of one teaching, the other as the tribunal of a judge. 15. But there is a place where God is truly seen resting and tranquil; a place entirely not of a judge, not of a teacher, but of a bridegroom: and which for me at least, for I do not speak of others, is plainly a chamber, if it should ever happen that I am brought into it. But alas, the hour is rare and the stay is brief! There it is clearly recognized that the mercy of the Lord is from eternity and unto eternity upon those who fear him. And happy is the one who can say: "I am a partaker with all those who fear you and who keep your commandments" (Ps 119:63). The purpose of God stands firm, the sentence of peace stands firm over those who fear him, both overlooking their evils and rewarding their goods: so that in a wonderful way not only good things, but even evil things work together for their good. O he alone is truly blessed to whom the Lord will not impute sin! (Ps 32:2). For no one will be without sin. For "all have sinned, and all fall short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23). Who then shall bring a charge against the elect of God? (Rom 8:33). It suffices me for all righteousness to have him alone propitious to whom alone I have sinned. Whatever he himself shall have decreed not to impute to me, it is as though it had not been. Not to sin is the justice of God; the justice of man is the indulgence of God. I have seen these things, and I have understood the truth of that sentence: "Everyone who is born of God does not sin, because the heavenly generation preserves him" (1 Jn 3:9). The heavenly generation is the eternal predestination, by which God loved his elect and made them accepted in his beloved Son before the constitution of the world, thus appearing to himself in holiness, so that they might see his power and his glory, that they might be sharers of his inheritance, to whose image they also might appear conformed. These, therefore, I perceived as though they had never sinned; because even if they seem to have committed some offenses in time, these do not appear in eternity; because the charity of their Father covers the multitude of sins. And he declared "blessed those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered" (Ps 32:1); when suddenly so great a confidence concerning myself also arose within me, and so great a joy was infused, as certainly the fear in the place of horror, that is in the place of the second vision, had not preceded, so that I seemed to myself to be as it were one of those blessed ones. O if it had lasted! "Again and again visit me, O Lord, in your salvation, that I may see the goodness of your elect, that I may rejoice in the gladness of your nation" (Ps 106:4-5). 16. O place of true rest, and which I would not undeservedly judge worthy of the name of chamber! in which God is not seen as though disturbed by anger, nor as though distracted by care; but his will is proved in it to be good and well-pleasing and perfect. This vision does not terrify but soothes; it does not excite restless curiosity but calms it; it does not weary the senses but makes them tranquil. Here one truly rests. A tranquil God makes all things tranquil; and to behold him at rest is to rest. It is to see the king after the daily disputes of legal causes, as it were, having dismissed the crowds from himself, declining the burdens of cares, seeking a lodging at night, entering his chamber with those of peace whom he deigns worthy of this secret and this familiarity, resting certainly the more securely the more secretly; holding himself the more serenely the more placidly he looks upon those alone whom he loves. Into this hidden place and into this sanctuary of God, if it should happen that any of you at any hour is so caught up and so hidden, that he is by no means called away or disturbed either by a pressing sense, or a piercing care, or a biting guilt, or certainly those phantasms of bodily images that rush in and are more difficult to remove; such a one, when he returns to us, will indeed be able to glory and to say: "The king has brought me into his chamber" (Song 1:4). Yet whether it is the very same one of which the bride exults, I would not rashly affirm. It is nevertheless a chamber, and a chamber of the king; because indeed of the three places which we have assigned to the threefold vision, this alone has been made a place of peace. For as has been plainly shown, in the first there is perceived little rest, and in the second none: since both there, appearing as wonderful, he exercises curiosity in the zeal of searching; and here, becoming known as terrible, he shakes one's weakness. But in this third place, he deigns to appear not at all terrible, nor so much wonderful as lovable, serene and placid, sweet and mild, and "of great mercy to all who look upon him." 17. Now, so that your memory may hold a summary of these things which have been discussed in a rather lengthy sermon concerning the storeroom, the garden, and the chamber, remember three times, three merits, three rewards, as it were. In the garden observe the times; the merits in the storeroom; the rewards in that threefold contemplation of the one seeking the chamber. And concerning the storeroom, let these things suffice. But if anything concerning the garden or the chamber needs to be added, or if other things than those which have been said should occur as needing attention, let us not pass them over in their proper place. But if not, let what has been said suffice, and let them by no means be repeated, lest ever those things which are brought forth for the praise and glory of the bridegroom of the Church, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever, should ever come into weariness, which God forbid. Amen.”

“SERMON 24 DETRACTION AND MAN'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 2. We ought to begin, if I be not mistaken, with the words: "The righteous love you." Before we begin to explain what this means, let us take a look at its origin, see who spoke it. For we are expected to understand what the author omits to say. Perhaps it is better to assign it to the maidens, as a continuation of their previous conversation. For when they said: "We will exult and rejoice in you as we remember your breasts, more delightful than wine," it is certain they were speaking to their mother; and they continued with the words: "The righteous love you." I think they may have said this because of members of their party who were not of the same mind although they traveled in their company, who insisted on their own way, their lives being neither simple nor sincere. These were filled with envy of their mother's unique glory and took occasion to murmur against her on the grounds that she alone had entered the storehouses. This is the situation described in the Apostle's words: "Danger from false brothers." It is against their reproaches that she is later compelled to justify herself with the answer: "I am black but lovely, daughters of Jerusalem." It is because of these murmurers, these blasphemers, that the good and the simple, the humble and the meek, try to console the bride by telling her: "The righteous love you." "Do not be disturbed," they say, "by the wicked words of these blasphemers, because the righteous do love you." When we are reviled for doing good by evil-minded men, it is a sweet consolation if the righteous love us. The esteem of the good and the testimony of our conscience make full amends for lying mouths. "My soul glories in the Lord, let the humble hear." Let the humble rejoice, he said; let me but please the humble and I shall bear with equanimity whatever the envy of wicked men may fling in my face. 3. I think this to be the meaning of the appendage: "The righteous love you." Nor is it mere fantasy, for in almost any group of young maidens I find some who curiously watch the bride's actions, not to imitate but to disparage them. They are embittered by their elders' good deeds, they feed on what is evil. You may see them walking apart, banding together, sitting in a huddle and immediately unleashing their wanton tongues in odious gossip. They are linked, one to the other, without an air space between them, so great is the desire to smear or listen to the smear. They combine in intimate groups whose end is slander, their unions promote disunion. Among themselves they develop most mischievous friendships, and equally impelled by unanimous malevolence, fete each other in a camaraderie of spite. Herod and Pilate once behaved just like this, for the Gospel says of them that "they became friends with each other that very day," that is, on the day of the Lord's passion. When they meet thus together it is not to eat the Lord's supper, but rather to offer to others "the cup of demons" and to drink of it themselves. They bear on their tongues the virus of death for their fellows, and gladly welcome the death that enters by their own ears. When with prattling mouths and itching ears we busy ourselves in administering the poisoned cup of slander to each other, we fulfill the Prophet's words: "Death has climbed in at our windows." I have no wish to be trapped in the plots of detractors, for the Apostle tells us they are hated by God: "Detractors, hateful to God." God himself through the Psalm confirms this judgment: "Him who slanders his neighbor secretly, I will destroy." 4. No wonder if he should, since this vice is known to assail and victimize more bitterly than the others the love which is God, as you can see for yourselves. For every slanderer first of all betrays that he himself is devoid of love. And secondly, his purpose in slandering can only be to inspire hatred and contempt in his audience for the victim of his slander. The venomous tongue strikes a blow at charity in the hearts of all within hearing, and if possible kills and quenches it utterly; worse still, even the absent are contaminated by the flying word that passes from those present to all within reach. See how easily and in how short a time this swift-moving word can infect a great multitude of men with its sickly malice. Hence the inspired Prophet said of such: "Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood." Swift with the speed of news that brooks no delay. One man speaks, one word is spoken; but that one word, in one moment, penetrates the ears of the multitude and destroys their souls. For a heart embittered by the poison of envy can use the tongue to broadcast only bitter words, just as the Lord said: "A man's words flow out of what fills his heart." This malady has varying forms. Some will spew out, with barefaced disrespect, any wicked slander that enters their heads; others try to hide an irrepressible evil purpose under the guise of simulated modesty. See the prelude of deep sighs, the mingled gravity and reluctance blazoned on his unhappy face, the downcast eyes and somber tones, as the slanderer tells his tale, all the more persuasive the more the audience believes that he speaks with regret and with sympathy rather than malice. "I am really sorry for him," he says, "because I like him so much, but I could never induce him to set himself right in this matter." "I knew well," says another, "that he was guilty of that fault, though I should never have been the one to reveal it. But now that it has been divulged by another I cannot deny that it is true; it pains me to say it, but facts are facts." And he goes on: "It's a great pity, he has so many good qualities; but if we are to be candid, he cannot be excused in this particular thing." 5. I have said my few words about this most deadly vice, so let me return to the theme I set out to explain, and show who are to be understood here as the "righteous." I am sure that nobody here with a right understanding would hold that those who love the bride are being spoken of in regard to physical perfection. It is spiritual righteousness, that of the soul, that must be explained. It is the Spirit who teaches, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit. Therefore God made man righteous in his soul, not in the body made of earthly slime. He created him according to his own image and likeness. He is the one of whom you sing: "The Lord our God is righteous, and there is no iniquity in him." God in his righteousness made man righteous like himself, without iniquity, since there is no iniquity in him. Iniquity is a fault in the heart, not in the flesh, and so you should realize that the likeness of God is to be preserved or restored in your spirit, not in the body of gross clay. For "God is a spirit," and those who wish to persevere in or attain to his likeness must enter into their hearts, and apply themselves spiritually to that work, until "with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord," they "become transfigured into the same likeness, borrowing glory from that glory, as the Spirit of the Lord enables them." 6. God indeed gave man an upright stance of body, perhaps in order that this corporeal uprightness, exterior and of little account, might prompt the inward man, made to the image of God, to cherish his spiritual uprightness; that the beauty of the body of clay might rebuke the deformity of the mind. What is more unbecoming than to bear a warped mind in an upright body? It is wrong and shameful that this body shaped from the dust of the earth should have its eyes raised on high, scanning the heavens at its pleasure and thrilled by the sight of sun and moon and stars, while, on the contrary, the heavenly and spiritual creature lives with its eyes, its inward vision and affections centered on the earth beneath; the mind that should be feasting on dainties is wallowing in the mire, rolling in the dung like a pig. The body says: "Look on me, my soul, and blush for shame. Blush, my soul, that you have exchanged the divine for a bestial likeness; blush that despite your heavenly origin you now wallow in filth. Created upright and in your Creator's likeness, you received me as a helper like to yourself, at least in bodily uprightness. Whatever way you turn, to God above or to me below -- 'for no man ever hates his own flesh' -- everywhere you encounter reminders of your own beauty, everywhere you find the friendly admonitions that wisdom imparts, intimating the dignity of your state. If I have retained and preserved the prerogative that I received for your sake, why are you not dismayed at losing yours? Why should the Creator continue to behold the loss of his likeness in you, at the same time that he ceaselessly preserves yours in me? All the help due to you from me you have turned to your own disgrace, you abuse my service to you; a brutish and bestial spirit, you dwell unworthily in this human body." 7. Those whose souls are warped in this fashion cannot love the Bridegroom, because they are not friends of the Bridegroom, they belong to this world. Scripture says: "Whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." Therefore to pursue and enjoy the worldly warps the soul, while, on the contrary, to meditate on or desire the things that are above constitutes its uprightness. But if this is to be perfect, it must be not only a conviction of the mind, but a habit of life. I shall judge you to be righteous if your opinions are correct and your deeds do not contradict them. For the state of the invisible soul is made known by one's belief and practice. You may consider a man righteous if you prove him just by his work and Catholic by faith. If otherwise, do not hesitate to appraise him as warped. For Scripture says: "If you offer rightly, but do not divide rightly, you have sinned." You offer rightly either of these, faith or good work, however you do not rightly separate one from the other. Be not one who is righteous in offering but unrighteous in dividing. Why should there be a division between your faith and your conduct? It is a wrong division, it destroys your faith, for "faith without good works is dead." The gift you offer to God is dead. For if devotion is the soul of faith, what is faith that does not work through love but a dead corpse? Can you pay due honor to God with a gift that stinks? Can you who murder your faith hope to please him? What becomes of the sacrifice of peace where this cruel discord reigns? What wonder if Cain attacked his brother when he had already slain his own faith? Why be surprised, O Cain, if your gift is refused by him who holds you in contempt? Divided as you are against yourself, it is no surprise that he pays you no heed. If you set your hand to the sacrifice, why yield your mind to envy? You cannot be reconciled with God while at odds with yourself; you do not please him, rather you sin, not yet because of the impious blow but because of the unrighteous division in your life. Though not yet your brother's murderer, you have murdered your own faith. How can you be right when, while raising up your hand to God, your heart is drawn to earth by envy and fraternal hate? How can you be right when your faith is dead, your purpose to kill, your heart empty of devotion and laden with bitterness? There was faith indeed in your act of worship, but faith devoid of love: the offering was right but the division cruel. 8. The death of faith is the departure of love. Do you believe in Christ? Do the works of Christ so that your faith will live; love will animate your faith, deeds will reveal it. Let no earthly preoccupation bend down the mind that is raised on high by faith. If you say you abide in Christ you ought to walk as he walked. But if you seek your own glory, envy the successful, slander the absent, take revenge on those who injure you, this Christ did not do. You profess to know God, yet reject him by your deeds. There is certainly nothing righteous, but plainly impious, in giving Christ your tongue while surrendering your soul to the devil. Listen then to what he says: "That man honors me with his lips, but his heart is far from me." You are obviously not righteous in maintaining this unrighteous division. You cannot lift a head upwards that is weighed down by the devil's yoke. You have no means at all of raising yourself, for you are held by an evil power. Your iniquities have gone over your head; they weigh like a burden too heavy for you. Iniquity sits upon a talent of lead. You see then that right faith will not make a man righteous unless it is enlivened by love? The man who has no love has no means of loving the bride. But on the other hand, deeds, however righteous, cannot make the heart righteous without faith. Who would call that man righteous who does not please God? But "without faith it is impossible to please God." And God cannot please the man who is not pleasing to him; for if God is pleasing to a man, that man cannot displease God. Furthermore, if God is not pleasing to a man, neither is his bride. How then can he be righteous who loves neither God nor God's Church, to whom is said: "The righteous love you"? If therefore neither faith without good works nor good works without faith suffice for a man's righteousness, we, my brothers, who believe in Christ, should strive to ensure that our behavior and desires are righteous. Let us raise up both our hearts and hands to God, that our whole being may be righteous, our righteous faith being revealed in our righteous actions. So we shall be lovers of the bride and loved by the Bridegroom Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God, blessed for ever. Amen.”

“SERMON 3 ON THE KISS OF THE LORD'S FOOT, HAND, AND MOUTH 2. Do not let that place seem vile or contemptible to you, O whatever sort of soul you may be, where the holy sinful woman laid aside her sins and put on holiness. There the Ethiopian woman changed her skin, and restored to a new whiteness, she then confidently and truthfully answered those who reproached her with the word: "I am black, but beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem" (Song 1:4). Do you wonder by what art she was able to do this, or by what merits she obtained it? Receive it in few words. She wept bitterly, and drawing long sighs from her inmost depths, she was shaken within herself by wholesome sobs, and vomited forth her bitter humors. The heavenly physician came to her aid most swiftly: for "swiftly runs his word" (Ps 147:15). Is the word of God not a potion? It is indeed, and a strong and powerful one, "searching hearts and reins" (Ps 7:10). For "the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints also and marrow, and is a discerner of thoughts" (Heb 4:12). By the example, therefore, of this blessed penitent, cast yourself down, you too, O wretched one, that you may cease to be wretched; cast yourself down, you too, upon the earth; embrace the feet, appease with kisses, water with tears, by which, however, you wash not him but yourself, and you may become one of the flock of the shorn ones ascending from the washing (Song 4:2); so indeed may you not dare to lift up your face, suffused as it is with shame and grief, until you hear, you also: "Your sins are forgiven you" (Lk 7:37-48); until you hear: "Arise, arise, O captive daughter of Zion; arise, shake yourself from the dust" (Isa 52:1-2).”

“I mentioned in the previous sermon that the bride was compelled to give an answer to her envious assailants, who seemed to be physically part of the group of maidens, but alienated from them in spirit. She said: "I am black but beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem." It would appear that her dark skin is the object of their slanderous taunting. But we cannot help noting her patience and kindness. She not only refrained from hurling back curse for curse, but gave them a friendly answer, calling them daughters of Jerusalem when for their wickedness she might properly have called them daughters of Babylon, or daughters of Baal, or any other disreputable name. She had learned from the Prophet, and from Christ himself, the teacher of gentleness, that the crushed reed must not be broken nor the wavering flame be quenched. Hence she decided not to provoke to further outbursts people who had already so upset themselves, nor to add fuel to the fires of envy that tormented them. Conscious of her obligation even to the foolish, she took pains to be peaceful with those who hated peace. She preferred therefore to soothe them with a kind word, because she felt it her duty to labor for the salvation of the weak rather than gratify personal spite. Perfection of this kind is commendable for all, but is the model for prelates who wish to be worthy. Good and faithful superiors know that they have been chosen, not for the vain prestige of holding office, but to take care of ailing souls. And when they detect the presence of inward discontent by the voicing of complaints, even to the point of insult and contumely, they must see themselves then as physicians, not masters, and rather than retaliate, prepare a medicine for the fevered mind. This is why the bride addressed the scornful and malevolent maidens as daughters of Jerusalem; her soothing words would captivate the malcontents, calm their anger and banish their envy. It is written: "A peaceful tongue appeases strife." Nor did she give them a false name, for in a certain sense these are truly daughters of Jerusalem. For whether because of the sacraments of the Church which they carelessly receive with the good, or because of a communal profession of faith, or the bodily unity of all the faithful, or even the hope of future salvation from which they are never wholly excluded as long as they live and of which they must not despair here below however recklessly they live, they are not unfittingly called daughters of Jerusalem. Let us next examine what was meant by saying: "I am black but beautiful." Is this a contradiction in terms? Certainly not. These remarks of mine are for simple persons who have not learned to distinguish between color and form; form refers to the shape of a thing, blackness is a color. Not everything therefore that is black is on that account ugly. For example blackness in the pupil of the eye is not unbecoming; black gems look glamorous in ornamental settings, and black locks above a pale face enhance its beauty and charm. You may easily verify this in any number of things, for instances abound in which you will find beautiful shapes with disagreeable colors. And so the bride, despite the gracefulness of her person, bears the stigma of a dark skin, but this is only in the place of her pilgrimage. It will be otherwise when the Bridegroom in his glory will take her to himself "in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing." But if she were to say now that her color is not black, she would be deceiving herself and the truth would not be in her. So there is no reason to be surprised that she said: "I am black," and yet nonetheless gloried that she is beautiful. How can she be other than beautiful since it is said to her: "Come my beautiful one"? Since she is invited to come, she has not yet arrived. So no one should think that the invitation was addressed to a blessed one who reigns without stain in heaven, it was addressed to the dark lady who was still toiling along the way. But let us try to see why she calls herself black, and why beautiful. Is she black because of the benighted life she formerly led under the power of the prince of this world, still modeled on the image of the earthly man, and lovely because of the heavenly likeness into which she was afterwards changed as she began to live a new life? If that were so would she not have spoken of the past and said: "I was black," and not "I am black"? But if anybody wishes to see it in this light, then in the case of the words that follow: "like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon," the tent of Kedar should be understood of her former life, the tent of Solomon of the new. That curtains may have the same meaning as tent is shown by the Prophet when he says: "My tents are suddenly destroyed, in one moment my curtains have gone." Formerly she was black like the wretched tents of Kedar, but later beautiful like the curtains of the renowned King. But let us see how both of these refer rather to her present state of life. If we consider the outward appearance of the saints, all that our eyes may discern, how lowly and abject it is, how slovenly through want of care; yet at the same time, inwardly, "with unveiled faces reflecting like mirrors the brightness of the Lord, they grow brighter and brighter as they are turned by the Spirit of the Lord into the image that they reflect." May not such a soul justly answer those who reproach her for being black: "I am black but beautiful"? Shall I point out to you a person at once both black and beautiful? "They say he writes powerful and strongly worded letters, but when he is with you, you see only half a man and no preacher at all." This was St. Paul. Daughters of Jerusalem, do you measure Paul in terms of his bodily presence, and despise him as blemished and ugly because you see only a runt of a man who has suffered hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness, the hardship of constant labor, countless beatings, often to the verge of death? These are the experiences that denigrate Paul; for this the Doctor of the Nations is reputed abject, dishonorable, black, beneath notice, a scrap of this world's refuse. But surely this is the man who is rapt into paradise, who, traversing the first and second heavens, penetrates by his purity to the third? O soul of surpassing beauty, even though dwelling in a sickly little body, heaven's own loveliness had not scorned your company, the angels on high did not cast you out, God's brightness did not repudiate you! Is this soul to be called black? It is black but beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem. Black in your estimation, but beautiful in the eyes of God and the angels. The blackness you observe is merely external. Not that it makes the slightest difference to Paul whether you find him worthy or not, you who judge according to appearances. "Man looks at appearances but God looks at the heart." Hence though black without, he is beautiful within, intent on pleasing him to whom he must prove himself; for if he still endeavored to be pleasing to you he would not be the servant of Christ. Happy the darkness that begets radiance in the mind, a light of knowledge and cleanness of conscience. And finally, listen to what God promises through his Prophet to those blemished with this kind of blackness, those who seem discolored as by the sun's heat through the lowliness of a penitential life, through zeal for charity. He says: "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be white as wool." The outward blemishes that we may discern in any people are not to be condemned, because they play a part in the begetting of interior light, and so depose the soul for wisdom. For wisdom is described by the wise man as a reflection of eternal life, and brightness befits the soul in which it decides to dwell. If the soul of the righteous man is the seat of wisdom, I may certainly refer to such a soul as bright. Righteousness itself can be called brightness. Paul was a righteous man for whom was laid up "a crown of righteousness." Therefore the soul of Paul was adorned with brightness, and wisdom dwelt there, to enable him to impart wisdom among the mature, a wisdom hidden in mystery, which none of the rulers of this world understood. This wisdom and righteousness of Paul were either produced or merited through the outward impairment of his little body, worn out by constant labors, by frequent fastings and vigils. Hence this ugliness of Paul is more beautiful than jeweled ornaments, than the raiment of kings. No physical loveliness can compare with it, no skin however bright and glowing; not the tinted cheek for which corruption waits, nor the costly dress that time wears out; not the luster of gold nor sparkle of gems, nor any other creature: all will crumble into corruption. It is with good reason then that the saints find no time for the glamour of jewelry and the elegance of dress, that lose their appeal with the passing hour; their whole attention is fixed on improving and adorning the inward self that is made to the image of God, and is renewed day by day. For they are certain that nothing can be more pleasing to God than his own image when restored to its original beauty. Hence all their glory is within, not without; not in the beauty of nature nor in the praises of the crowd, but in the Lord. With St. Paul they say: "Our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience;" because the sole judge of their conscience is God, whom alone they desire to please, and pleasing him is their sole, true and highest glory. There is nothing mean about that inward glory, for, as David points out, the Lord of glory takes his delight in it: "All his glory is with the daughter of the king." Each one's glory is all the more secure when in his own keeping, and not in another. And the saints glory not only in their inward light but even in the unsightliness of their outward appearance; nothing in them is without its use, "everything works for good." Sufferings are their joy equally with their hope. St Paul says: "I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." How desirable that weakness for which the power of Christ compensates. Let me be not merely weak, then, but entirely resourceless, utterly helpless, that I may enjoy the support of the power of the Lord of hosts! "For virtue is perfected in weakness." And Paul adds: "It is when I am weak that I am strong and powerful." This being so, how aptly the bride accepted as an enhancement of her glory the insult hurled by those who envied her, rejoicing not only in her loveliness but even in her blackness. She is not ashamed of this blackness, for her Bridegroom endured it before her, and what greater glory than to be made like to him. Therefore she believes that nothing contributes more to her glory than to bear the ignominy of Christ. And hence that note of gladness and triumph as she says: "Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." The ignominy of the cross is welcome to the man who will not be an ingrate to his crucified Lord. Though it involves the stigma of blackness, it is also in the pattern and the likeness of the Lord. Listen to St Isaiah, and he will describe him for you as he saw him in spirit: "A man of sorrows and afflicted with suffering, without beauty, without majesty." And he adds: "We thought of him as a leper, struck by God and brought low. Yet he was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins, and through his wounds we are healed." This is the reason for his blackness. But think at the same time of those words of St David: "You are the fairest of the sons of men," and you will find in the Bridegroom all the traits that the bride, in the words of our text, ascribes to herself. Does it not seem to you, in accord with what has been said, that he could have replied to the envious Jews: "I am black but beautiful, sons of Jerusalem"? Obviously black, since he had neither beauty nor majesty; black because he was "a worm and no man, scorned by men and despised by the people." If he even made himself into sin shall I shirk saying he was black? Look steadily at him in his filth-covered cloak, livid from blows, smeared with spittle, pale as death: surely then you must pronounce him black. But enquire also of the apostles in what guise they found this same man on the mount, and ask the angels to describe him on whom they long to gaze, and the beauty you discover will compel your admiration. Beautiful in his own right, his blackness is because of you. Even clad in my form, how beautiful you are, Lord Jesus! And not merely because of the miracles of divine power that render you glorious, but because of your truth and meekness and righteousness. Happy the man who, by attentive study of your life as a man among men, strives according to his strength to live like you. The Church in her loveliness has already received from you this blessed gift, the first fruits of her dowry; she is not slow to pattern herself on what is beautiful in you, nor ashamed to endure your ignominies. All this we must recall when she says: "I am black but beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem;" to which she adds the comparison: "like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon." This dictum is obscure however, and beyond the reach of those already wearied. But it is a door on which you are given time to knock. Those who are sincere will there encounter him whose light illumines mysteries; and he will open at once, because he invites you to knock. He it is who opens and no man shuts, the Church's Bridegroom, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is blessed for ever. Amen.”

“1. Like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon (Song 1:4). We must begin from here, because this is where the preceding sermon left off. You are waiting to hear what this means, and how it is fitted to the chapter treated most recently, since it is a comparison. For this could have been subjoined in such a way that both parts of the comparison answer only to what had preceded there: I am black. But it could also be so that those two things answer to these two, that is, each to each. The former sense is simpler, the latter more obscure. But let us attempt both: and first indeed this one, which appears more difficult. The difficulty, however, is not in the first two, but only in the last two. For Kedar indeed, which is interpreted as "darkness," seems openly enough to agree with blackness; but the curtains of Solomon do not so readily agree with beauty. Furthermore, who does not see that tents likewise converge into the same agreement? For what are tents, if not our bodies, in which we are pilgrims? For we have not here a lasting city, but seek one that is to come (Heb. 13:14). But we also wage war in them, as in tents; altogether violent toward the kingdom. Finally, the life of man upon earth is a warfare (Job 7:1); and as long as we wage war in this body, we are pilgrims from the Lord, that is, from light. For the Lord is light; and insofar as anyone is not with him, to that extent he is in darkness, that is, in Kedar. Let him therefore recognize as his own that mournful cry: Woe is me that my sojourning is prolonged! I have dwelt with the dwellers of Kedar, my soul has been long a sojourner (Ps. 119:5-6). Therefore this habitation of our body is not the dwelling of a citizen, nor the house of a native; but either the tent of a soldier, or the stable of a traveler. This body, I say, is a tent, and a tent of Kedar, which indeed defrauds the soul in the meantime of the sight of the uncircumscribed light, as though by interposing itself; nor does it allow it to be seen at all, except through a mirror indeed and in an enigma, but not face to face (1 Cor. 13:12). 2. Do you see whence the blackness of the Church, whence some rust has clung even to the most beautiful souls? From the tent of Kedar, surely; from the exercise of laborious warfare, from the long duration of a wretched sojourn, from the straits of a sorrowful exile, from the fragile and heavy body, in short; because the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks upon many things (Wis. 9:15). For this reason they also desire to be dissolved, so that, freed from the body, they may fly away into the embraces of Christ. Whence also one of the wretched, groaning, used to say: Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? (Rom. 7:24). She who is of this sort knows indeed that she cannot in the tent of Kedar be entirely free from spot or wrinkle, not even from the smallest blackness; and she desires to depart, that she may be able to strip herself bare. And this is the reason why the bride called herself black like the tents of Kedar. But how then beautiful, like the curtains of Solomon? But I sense something lofty and sacred wrapped up in these curtains, which I by no means dare to touch at all, except indeed at the nod of him who has stored it away and sealed it. For I have read: He who is a searcher of majesty shall be overwhelmed by glory (Prov. 25:27). I refrain therefore and defer. In the meantime it will be your concern to obtain the usual favor by your prayers; that we may return all the more eager, the more confident, to that which requires more attentive minds. And perhaps the devout one who knocks will find what the rash searcher could not. Although indeed both grief commands an end, and the calamity which I suffer.”

“My brothers, our friend has gone back to his homeland, we have paid the full tribute of human affection to his memory, so I take up again the instruction which I then discontinued. As he is now in the state of happiness it is improper to prolong our mourning for him, it is out of place to appear in tears before a man enjoying a banquet. Even though we do shed tears in our troubles, our grief should not be excessive, or it will seem to express our regret for the service we have lost rather than our love for him. To think that the one we love is in a state of bliss must ease the pain of our bereavement; to realize that he is with God must make his absence from us more bearable. And so, trusting in the aid of your prayers, I shall attempt to throw light on the secret hidden by those curtains that portray the beauty of the bride. We touched on this, as you recall, but did not delve into it, though we had discussed and discovered how she is black like the tents of Kedar. But in what way can she be beautiful like the curtains of Solomon, as if Solomon in all his glory could even remotely resemble the beauty of the bride, or possessed anything to match the splendor of her adornment? Even if I were to say that these mysterious curtains refer to the quality of blackness as well as to the tents of Kedar, I should perhaps be correct; there are arguments to support this, as I shall show later. But if we suppose that the beauty of any sort of curtains is to be compared to the glory of the bride, then we need the help for which you have been praying, if we are to be worthy to unveil this mystery. For must not outward loveliness, no matter how radiant, seem to an enlightened mind to be cheap and ugly, when compared with the inward beauty of a holy soul? What qualities can we find within the framework of this passing world that can equal the radiance of a soul that has shed its decrepit, earthly body, and been clothed in heaven's loveliness, graced with the jewels of consummate virtue, clearer than mountain air because of its transcendence, more brilliant than the sun? So do not look back to the earthly Solomon when you wish to investigate the ownership of those curtains whose beauty delights the bride because so like her own. 2. What does she mean then by saying: "I am beautiful like the curtains of Solomon"? I feel that here we have a great and wonderful mystery, provided that we apply the words, not to the Solomon of this Song, but to him who said of himself: "What is here is greater than Solomon." This Solomon to whom I refer is so great a Solomon that he is called not only Peaceful—which is the meaning of the word Solomon—but Peace itself; for Paul proclaims that "He is our Peace." I am certain that in this Solomon we can discover something that we may unhesitatingly compare with the beauty of the bride. Note especially what the Psalm says of his curtains: "You have spread out the heavens like a curtain." The first Solomon, though sufficiently wise and powerful, did not spread out the heavens like a curtain; it was he, rather who is not merely wise but Wisdom itself, who both created them and spread them out. It was he, and not the former Solomon, who spoke these words of God his Father: "When he set the heavens in their place, I was there." His power and his wisdom were undoubtedly present at the establishing of the heavens. And do not imagine that he stood by idle, as merely a spectator, because he said "I was there," and not "I was cooperating." Search further on in this text and you will find that he clearly states he was with him arranging all things. Therefore he said: "Whatever the Father does, the Son does too." He it was who spread out the heavens like a curtain, a curtain of superlative beauty that covers the whole face of the earth like a huge tent, and charms our human eyes with the variegated spectacle of sun and moon and stars. Is there anything more lovely than this curtain? Anything more bejeweled than the heavens? Yet even this can in no way be compared to the splendor and comeliness of the bride. It fails because it is a physical thing, the object of our physical senses; its form will pass away. "For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." II. 3. The bride's form must be understood in a spiritual sense, her beauty as something that is grasped by the intellect; it is eternal because it is an image of eternity. Her gracefulness consists of love, and you have read that "love never ends." It consists of justice, for "her justice endures forever." It consists of patience, and Scripture tells you "the patience of the poor shall not perish forever." What shall I say of voluntary poverty? Of humility? To the former an eternal kingdom is promised, to the latter an eternal exaltation. To these must be added the holy fear of the Lord that endures for ever and ever; prudence too, and temperance and fortitude and all other virtues; what are they but pearls in the jeweled raiment of the bride, shining with unceasing radiance? I say unceasing, because they are the basis, the very foundation of immortality. For there is no place for immortal and blissful life in the soul except by means and mediation of the virtues. Hence the Prophet, speaking to God who is eternal happiness, says: "Justice and judgment are the foundation of your throne." And the Apostle says that Christ dwells in our hearts, not in any and every way, but particularly by faith. When Christ, too, was about to ride on the ass, the disciples spread their cloaks underneath him, to signify that our Savior, or his salvation, will not rest in the naked soul until it is clothed with the teaching and discipline of the apostles. Therefore the Church, possessing the promise of happiness to come, now prepares for it by adorning herself in cloth of gold, girding herself with a variety of graces and virtues, in order to be found worthy and capable of the fulness of grace. 4. Though this visible, material heaven, with its great variety of stars is unsurpassingly beautiful within the bounds of the material creation, I should not dare to compare its beauty with the spiritual and varied loveliness she received with her first robe when being arrayed in the garments of holiness. But there is a heaven of heavens to which the Prophet refers. "Sing to the Lord who mounts above the heaven of heavens, to the east." This heaven is in the world of the intellect and the spirit; and he who made the heavens by his wisdom, created it to be his eternal dwelling-place. You must not suppose that the bride's affections can find rest outside of this heaven, where she knows her Beloved dwells: for where her treasure is, there her heart is too. She so yearns for him that she is jealous of those who live in his presence; and since she may not yet participate in the vision that is theirs, she strives to resemble them in the way she lives. By deeds rather than words she proclaims: "Lord, I love the beauty of your house, the place where your glory dwells." III. 5. She has no objection whatever to being compared to this heaven, made glorious by the marvelous and manifold works of the Creator, that reaches out like a curtain, not over mighty spaces but over the hearts of men. Any distinctions that exist there do not consist of colors but of degrees of bliss. Among its inhabitants we find Angels, Archangels, Virtues, Dominations, Principalities, Powers, Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. These are that heaven's sparkling stars, these are that curtain's shining glories. We are dealing with only one of the curtains of my Solomon, but the one that surpasses all in the radiance of its multiform glory. This immense curtain contains within itself many other curtains of Solomon, for every blessed and saint who dwells there is indeed a curtain of Solomon. They overflow with kindness, their love reaches out till it comes down even to us. Far from begrudging us the glory they enjoy, they want us to share it, and hence find it no burden to accompany us for that purpose, sedulously watching over us and our concerns. They are all spirits whose work is service, sent to help those who will be the heirs of salvation. Therefore, since the multitude of the blessed, taken as a unit, is called the heaven of heavens, so, when taken individually, they are called the heavens of heavens, because each is a heaven, and we may apply to each the words: "You have spread out heaven like a curtain." You now see, I hope, what these curtains are to which the bride so assuredly compares herself, and to which Solomon they belong. IV. 6. Contemplate what a glory is hers who compares herself to heaven, even to that heaven who is so much more glorious as he is divine. This is no rashness, taking her comparison from whence her origin comes. For if she compares herself to the tents of Kedar because of her body drawn from the earth, why should she not glory in her likeness to heaven because of the heavenly origin of her soul, especially since her life bears witness to her origin and to the dignity of her nature and her homeland? She adores and worships one God, just like the angels; she loves Christ above all things, just like the angels; she is chaste, just like the angels, and that in the flesh of a fallen race, in a frail body that the angels do not have. But she seeks and savors the things that they enjoy, not the things that are on the earth. What can be a clearer sign of her heavenly origin than that she retains a natural likeness to it in the land of unlikeness, than that as an exile on earth she enjoys the glory of the celibate life, than that she lives like an angel in an animal body? These gifts reveal a power that is more of heaven than of earth. They clearly indicate that a soul thus endowed is truly from heaven. But Scripture is clearer still: "I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice from the throne saying: 'Behold the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell among them.'" But why? In order to win a bride for himself from among men. How wonderful this? He came to seek a bride, but did not come without one. He sought a bride, but she was with him. Had he then two brides? Certainly not. "My dove is only one," he says. Just as he wished to form one flock of the scattered flocks of sheep, that there might be one flock and one shepherd, so, although from the beginning he had for bride the multitude of angels, it pleased him to summon the Church from among men and unite it with the one from heaven, that there might be but the one bride and one Bridegroom. The one from heaven perfects the earthly one; it does not make two. Hence he says: "My perfect one is only one." Their likeness makes them one, one now in their similar purpose, one hereafter in the same glory. 7. These two then have their origin in heaven—Jesus the Bridegroom and Jerusalem the bride. He, in order to be seen by men, "emptied himself taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." But the bride—in what form or exterior loveliness, in what guise did St John see her coming down? Was it perhaps in the company of the angels whom he saw ascending and descending upon the Son of Man? It is more accurate to say that he saw the bride when he looked on the Word made flesh, and acknowledged two natures in the one flesh. For when that holy Emmanuel introduced to earth the curriculum of heavenly teaching, when we came to know the visible image and radiant comeliness of that supernal Jerusalem, our mother, revealed to us in Christ and by his means, what did we behold if not the bride in the Bridegroom? What did we admire but that same person who is the Lord of glory, the Bridegroom decked with a garland, the bride adorned with her jewels? So "He who descended is he also who ascended," since "no one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven," the one and same Lord who as head of the Church is the Bridegroom, as body is the bride. This heaven-formed man did not appear on earth in vain, since he endowed a multitude of earthly followers with his own heavenly image. As Scripture says: "the heavenly Man is the pattern of all the heavenly." From that time the lives of many on earth have been like the lives of heaven's citizens, as when, after the example of that exalted and blessed bride, she who came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, embraced the heavenly Bridegroom with a chaste love. Though, unlike the blessed bride, not yet united to him by vision, she is still espoused to him by faith, as God promised through the Prophet's words: "I will betroth you to me in steadfast love and mercy, I will betroth you to me in faithfulness." Hence she strives more and more to resemble her who came from heaven, learning from her to be modest and prudent, learning to be chaste and holy, to be patient and compassionate, and ultimately to be meek and humble of heart. By these virtues she endeavors, even while absent, to be pleasing to him on whom the angels long to look. With a love angelic in its fervor she shows herself to be a fellow-citizen with the saints and a domestic of God, she shows that she is beloved, that she is a bride. V. 8. I believe that all persons such as I have described are not only heavenly because of their origin but that each so resembles heaven as to merit being so named. Their heavenly origin is most evident since their life is centered in heaven. The holy person whose gift of faith is like a moon and whose virtues are like stars, is truly a heaven. We could mean by the sun zeal for justice and fervent love and by the moon continence. Without the sun there is no brightness in the moon, and without justice and love there is no merit in continence. Hence that saying of Wisdom: "How beautiful is the chaste generation with its love." And to call the stars virtues gives me no qualms, the aptness of the metaphor is so obvious. For just as the stars that shine by night are hidden by day, so true virtue that passes unnoticed in prosperity, becomes conspicuous in adversity. What prudence conceals, necessity forces into the open. So, if virtue be a star, the virtuous man is a heaven. But we are not to suppose that when God, speaking through his Prophet, said "heaven is my throne," he was referring to the wheeling heavens we see above us; no, in another text of Scripture we find what he meant more clearly expressed: "The soul of the just is the seat of wisdom." If you recall the Savior's teaching that God is a spirit, to be adored in spirit, you must realize that God's throne is a spiritual entity. This truth I confidently affirm, in the case of a just man no less than of an angel. My belief in its truth is further strengthened by the faithful promise of the Son: "I and the Father will come to him," that is, to the holy man, "and make our dwelling with him." I feel too that the Prophet meant this heaven when he said: "You dwell in the holy place, the praise of Israel." Finally, the Apostle says explicitly that "Christ dwells by faith in our hearts." 9. No need to be surprised that the Lord Jesus should be pleased to dwell in this heaven, which he not only called into being by his word like the other creatures, but fought to acquire and died to redeem. And when his passion was over the longing of his heart found echo in the words: "This is my resting-place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it." Happy therefore is the one to whom he says: "Come my chosen one, and I shall set up my throne within you." Why are you sad now, my soul, why do you trouble me? Do you not think you will find within you a place for the Lord? Which of us indeed is suited for so much glory, qualified to welcome so majestic a being? Would that I were worthy to worship at his footstool! Who will grant me at least to walk in the footsteps of some holy soul whom he has chosen as his heritage? Would that he anointed my soul with the oil of his mercy, to extend it like a curtain of skin that expands when anointed, and I should be able to say: "I have run the way of your commandments, when you enlarged my heart." Then perhaps I should find within me not so much a great dining-hall where he might recline with his discipline, as a place where he might lay his head. From afar off I gaze toward the truly blessed ones, of whom is said: "I will live in them and move among them." VI. 10. What a capacity this soul has, how privileged its merits, that it is found worthy not only to receive the divine presence, but to be able to make sufficient room! What can I say of her who can provide avenues spacious enough for the God of majesty to walk in! She certainly cannot afford to be entangled in law-suits nor by worldly cares; she cannot be enslaved by gluttony and sensual pleasures, by the lust of the eyes, the ambition to rule, or by pride in the possession of power. If she is to become heaven, the dwelling-place of God, it is first of all essential that she be empty of all these defects. Otherwise how could she be still enough to know that he is God? Nor may she yield in the least to hatred or envy or bitterness, "because wisdom will not enter a deceitful soul." The soul must grow and expand, that it may be roomy enough for God. Its width is its love, if we accept what the Apostle says: "Widen your hearts in love." The soul, being a spirit, does not admit of material expansion, but grace confers gifts on it that nature is not equipped to bestow. Its growth and expansion must be understood in a spiritual sense; it is its virtue that increases, not its substance. Even its glory is increased. And finally it grows and advances toward "mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." Eventually it becomes "a holy temple in the Lord." The capacity of any man's soul is judged by the amount of love he possesses; hence he who loves much is great, he who loves a little is small, he who has no love is nothing, as Paul said: "If I have not love, I am nothing." But if he begins to acquire some love however, if he tries at least to love those who love him, and salutes the brethren and others who salute him, I may no longer describe him as nothing because some love must be present in the give and take of social life. In the words of the Lord, however, what more is he doing than others. When I discover a love as mediocre as this, I cannot call such a man noble or great: he is obviously narrow-minded and mean. 11. But if his love expands and continues to advance till it outgrows these narrow, servile confines, and finds itself in the open ranges where love is freely given in full liberty of spirit; when from the generous bounty of his goodwill he strives to reach out to all his neighbors, loving each of them as himself, surely one may no longer query, "What more are you doing than others?" Indeed he has made himself vast. His heart is filled with a love that embraces everybody, even those to whom it is not tied by the inseparable bonds of family relationship; a love that is not allured by any hope of personal gain, that possesses nothing it is obliged to restore, that bears no burden of debt whatever, apart from that one of which it is said: "Owe no one anything, except to love one another." Progressing further still, you may endeavor to take the kingdom of love by force, until by this holy warfare you succeed in possessing it even to its farthest bounds. Instead of shutting off your affections from your enemies, you will do good to those who hate you, you will pray for those who persecute and slander you, you will strive to be peaceful even with those who hate peace. Then the width, height and beauty of your soul will be the width, height and beauty of heaven itself, and you will realize how true it is that he has "stretched out the heavens like a curtain." In this heaven whose width, height and beauty compel our admiration, he who is supreme and immense and glorious is not only pleased to dwell, but to wander far and wide on its pathways. VII. 12. Do you not now see what heavens the Church possesses within her, and that she herself, in her universality, is an immense heaven, stretching out "from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth." Consider therefore, to what you may compare her in this respect, provided you do not forget what I mentioned a short while ago concerning the heaven of heaven and heavens of heavens. Just like our mother above, this one, though still a pilgrim, has her own heaven: spiritual men outstanding in their lives and reputations, men of genuine faith, unshaken hope, generous love, men raised to the heights of contemplation. These men rain down God's saving work like showers, reprove with a voice of thunder, shine with a splendor of miracles. They proclaim the glory of God, and stretched out like curtains over all the earth, make known the law of life and knowledge written by God's finger into their own lives, "to give knowledge of salvation to his people." They show forth the gospel of peace, because they are the curtain of Solomon. 13. In these curtains then we must discern the likeness of those heavenly figures whom we have just described as part of the Bridegroom's adornment. We must recognize too the queen standing at his right hand, decked with ornaments similar, though not equal, to his. For although she is endowed with no small share of glory and beauty even where she sojourns as a pilgrim, as well as in the day of her strength amid the splendors of the saints, yet the fullness and perfection of the glory of the blessed crowns her Bridegroom in a way that is different. If I do refer to the bride as perfect and blessed, she is not wholly so. In part she resembles the tents of Kedar; but she is also beautiful, both in that part of her which already reigns in heaven, and in those illustrious men whose wisdom and virtues grace her journey through the night, like a heaven spangled with stars. Hence the Prophet's words: "The wise leaders shall shine like the bright vault of heaven, and those who have guided the people in the true path shall be like stars for ever and ever." 14. How lowly! Yet how sublime! At the same time tent of Kedar and sanctuary of God; an earthly tent and a heavenly palace; a mud hut and a royal apartment; a body doomed to death and a temple bright with light; an object of contempt to the proud, yet the bride of Christ. She is black but beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem: for though the hardship and sorrow of prolonged exile darkens her complexion, a heavenly loveliness shines through it, the curtains of Solomon enhance it. If the swarthy skin repels you, you must still admire the beauty; if you scorn what seems lowly, you must look up with esteem to what is sublime. Indeed you must note the prudence, the great wisdom, the amount of discretion and sense of fittingness generated in the bride by that controlled interplay of lowliness and exaltation according as occasion demands, so that amid the ups and downs of this world her sublime gifts sustain her lowliness lest she succumb to adversity; while her lowliness curbs her exaltation or good fortune will bring it toppling down. These poles of her life act so harmoniously. Though of their nature opposites they will work with equal effectiveness for the good of the bride. They subserve her spiritual welfare. 15. So much for the likeness which the bride seems to postulate between her beauty and the curtains of Solomon. With regard to this same text however, we still have to explain that meaning to which I referred at the beginning of this discourse and for which I have given my promise: the extent to which the whole similitude may be applied to her blackness only. You shall not be cheated out of that promise. But it must be postponed till the next sermon, both because the length of this one demands that we do so, and in order that the customary prayers may precede all that we hope to say for the praise and glory of the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed for ever. Amen.”

“1. You remember, I believe, to which and to whose curtains of Solomon I judged the beauty of the bride to be compared, if indeed the likeness given from these is to be referred to the commendation and display of beauty. But if it should be thought rather to refer to blackness, as also that concerning the tents of Kedar: nothing indeed occurs to me concerning curtains of Solomon of this kind, except those which the king was perhaps accustomed to use for the purpose of a tent, whenever it pleased him to dwell in tents; which certainly, if any such there were, must without doubt have been dark and foul, inasmuch as they were exposed to the daily sun and to the injuries of frequent rains. Nor was this without purpose, but so that the ornament which was stored within might be kept more bright. By this example the bride does not deny her blackness, but excuses it; nor does she count as a reproach whatever appearance charity may form and the judgment of truth may not disapprove. For who is weak, and he is not weak with him? Who is scandalized, and he does not burn? (2 Cor 11:29.) She puts on the blemish of compassion, so that in another she may lighten or heal the disease of suffering; she grows black out of zeal for radiance, for the gain of beauty. 2. The darkening of one makes many bright — not when one is stained by guilt, but when one is affected by care. It is expedient, he says, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish (Jn 11:50): it is expedient that one should be darkened for all in the likeness of sinful flesh, and that the whole nation should not be condemned by the blackness of sin: that the splendor and figure of the substance of God should be veiled in the form of a servant for the life of a servant: that the radiance of eternal life should grow black in the flesh, for the purging of the flesh: that he who is beautiful in form beyond the sons of men, for the illumination of the sons of men should be darkened in his passion, disfigured on the cross, made pale in death: that altogether there should be in him no form nor comeliness, so that he might acquire for himself a beautiful and comely bride, the Church, without spot and without wrinkle. I recognize the skin of Solomon — nay rather, I embrace Solomon himself in his black skin. Solomon too has blackness, but in his skin; outwardly black, in his skin black, not within: otherwise all the glory of the king's daughter is from within (Ps 44:3, 14). Within is the radiance of divinity, the beauty of virtues, the splendor of glory, the purity of innocence: but the more despicable color of weakness covers these things; and his countenance is as it were hidden and despised, while he is tempted in all things according to the likeness without sin. I recognize the form of a darkened nature; I recognize those tunics of skin, the garb of the first parents when they sinned (Gen 3:21). For he darkened himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in habit as a man (Phil 2:7). I recognize under the skin of the kid, which signifies sin, both the hand which did no sin, and the neck through which no evil thought passed; and therefore no guile was found in his mouth (Isa 53:9). I know that you are gentle by nature, meek and humble of heart, pleasant in appearance, sweet in spirit, and indeed anointed with the oil of gladness above your companions (Ps 44:8). Whence then are you now hairy and rough like Esau? Whose wrinkled and foul image is this, and whence come these hairs? They are mine: for the hairy hands express the likeness of a sinner. I recognize these hairs as my own; and in my skin I see God my Savior. 3. Yet it was not Rebecca who thus clothed him, but Mary; one so much worthier to receive the blessing, as she who bore him was holier. And rightly in my garb; because the blessing is claimed for me, the inheritance is sought for me. For he had heard: Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession (Ps 2:8). Your inheritance, he says, and your possession I will give to you. How will you give it to him, if it is his? And how do you urge him to ask for what is his? Or how is it his, if he needs to ask? Therefore he asks for me, who for this purpose put on my form, that he might take up my cause. For the chastisement of our peace was upon him, as the prophet says, and the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isa 53:5, 6): whence he had to be made like his brethren in all things, as the Apostle says, that he might become merciful (Heb 2:17). Therefore the voice indeed is the voice of Jacob; but the hands are the hands of Esau (Gen 27:22). What is heard from him is his own: what is seen in him is ours. What he speaks is spirit and life: what appears is mortal and death. One thing is discerned, and another is believed. The sense reports him black; faith proves him radiant and beautiful. He is black, but to the eyes of the foolish: for to the minds of the faithful he is exceedingly beautiful. He is black, but beautiful: black in the estimation of Herod, beautiful in the confession of the thief, in the faith of the centurion. 4. How beautiful he had perceived him to be, who exclaimed: Truly this man was the Son of God! But in what way he perceived this must be noted. For if he were attending to what appeared, how could he be beautiful, how could he be the Son of God? What but deformity and blackness met the eyes of the spectators, when with hands outstretched on the cross, in the midst of two criminals, he gave laughter to the malicious, weeping to the faithful? And he alone was for a laughingstock, who alone could have been a terror, who alone ought to have been an honor. Whence then did he perceive the beauty of the Crucified, and that he is the Son of God, who was reckoned among the wicked? (Isa 53:12.) It is neither fitting nor necessary for us to say anything to this; for neither did the diligence of the evangelist pass this over. For thus you have it: And when the centurion who stood facing him saw that he thus cried out and expired, he said: Truly this man was the Son of God (Mk 15:39). Therefore he believed at the voice, from the voice he recognized the Son of God, and not from the face. For he was perhaps of his sheep, of whom he says: My sheep hear my voice (Jn 10:27). 5. Hearing found what sight did not; the outward appearance deceived the eye, truth poured itself into the ear. The eye pronounced him weak, the eye foul, the eye wretched, the eye condemned by a most shameful death; to the ear the Son of God, to the ear he was made known as beautiful; but not to the ears of the Jews, because they were uncircumcised in their ears. Rightly did Peter cut off the ear of the servant, to make a way for truth, and that the truth might set him free, that is, make him a free man. That centurion was uncircumcised, but not in his ear, who at the single voice of the one expiring, amid so many signs of weakness, recognized the Lord of majesty. And therefore he did not despise what he saw, because he believed what he did not see. But he did not believe from what he saw; but without doubt from what he heard, because faith comes from hearing (Rom 10:17). It would indeed have been worthy for truth to enter the soul through the upper windows of the eyes; but this, O soul, is reserved for us in the future, when we shall see face to face. But now, let the remedy enter by the same way whence the disease crept in, and let life follow death along the same tracks, and light follow darkness, and the antidote of truth follow the venom of the serpent; and let it heal the eye which was troubled, so that being serene it may see him whom, when troubled, it cannot. Let the ear, the first gateway of death, be first opened also for life; let hearing, which took it away, restore sight; since unless we believe, we shall not understand. Therefore hearing is for merit, sight is for reward. Whence the Prophet says: To my hearing you shall give joy and gladness (Ps 50:10): because the faithful recompense of hearing is the blessed vision, and the merit of the blessed vision is faithful hearing. But blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Mt 5:8). Furthermore, it is needful that by faith the eye be cleansed which is to see God, as you have it: Cleansing their hearts by faith (Acts 15:9). 6. In the meantime, therefore, since sight is not yet prepared, let hearing be aroused, let hearing be exercised, let hearing receive the truth. Happy is he to whom Truth bears witness, saying: At the hearing of the ear he obeyed me (Ps 17:45). I am worthy to see, if before I see, I am found to have obeyed; I shall see securely, to whom the gift of my obedience shall have gone before. How blessed is he who says: The Lord God has opened my ear, and I do not contradict, I have not gone back (Isa 50:5). Where you have both the form of voluntary obedience, and the example of perseverance. For he who does not contradict is willing; and he who has not gone back perseveres. Both are necessary; because God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor 9:7), and he who perseveres to the end, he shall be saved (Mt 10:22). Would that the Lord would open my ear also, that the word of truth might enter into my heart, might cleanse my eye, and prepare it for the joyful vision, so that I too might say to God: The preparation of my heart your ear has heard (Ps 9:17); that I might hear from God, even I myself with the other obedient ones: And you are clean because of the word which I have spoken to you (Jn 15:3). Nor are all cleansed who hear, but those who obey: Blessed are those who hear and keep it (Lk 11:28). Such a hearing does he require who commands, saying: Hear, O Israel (Deut 6:3); such does he offer who says: Speak, Lord, for your servant hears (1 Sam 3:9); such does he pledge who says: I will hear what the Lord God speaks in me (Ps 84:9). 7. And that you may know that the Holy Spirit also observes this order in the spiritual progress of the soul, namely that he first forms the hearing before he gladdens the sight: Hear, he says, O daughter, and see (Ps 44:11). Why do you strain the eye? Prepare the ear. Do you desire to see Christ? You must first hear him, hear about him, so that when you have seen you may say: As we have heard, so we have seen (Ps 47:9). The brightness is immense, the sight is august, and you cannot attain to it. You can by hearing, but not by looking. For when God cried out: Adam, where are you? (Gen 3:9), I, a sinner, could no longer see, yet I still heard. But hearing will restore sight, if a devout, if a watchful, if a faithful hearing shall have gone before. Faith will purify what impiety troubled; and what disobedience shut, obedience will open. For: From your commandments, he says, I have gained understanding (Ps 118:104): because the observance of the commandments restores the understanding which transgression took away. Observe further in holy Isaac how above the other senses hearing flourished in the aged man. The eyes of the patriarch grow dim, the palate is deceived, the hand is fooled, the ear is not fooled. What wonder, if the ear perceives truth, since faith comes from hearing, hearing through the word of God (Rom 10:17), and the word of God is truth? The voice, he says, is the voice of Jacob. Nothing is truer. But the hands are the hands of Esau (Gen 27:22). Nothing is more false. You are deceived: the likeness of the hands has misled you. Nor is there truth in taste, even if there is sweetness. For how does he have truth who thinks he eats game, when he feeds on the flesh of domestic kids? Much less the eye, which sees nothing. There is no truth in the eye, no wisdom. Woe to you who are wise, he says, in your own eyes! (Isa 5:21.) Not good is the wisdom which is cursed. It is of the world, and therefore foolishness before God (1 Cor 3:19). 8. Good and true wisdom is drawn from hidden things, as blessed Job understands (Job 28:18). Why do you seek it outwardly in the bodily sense? Taste is in the palate, wisdom is in the heart. Do not seek wisdom in the eye of flesh, because flesh and blood do not reveal it, but the spirit (Mt 16:17). Not in the taste of the mouth: for neither is it found in the land of those who live in pleasures (Job 28:13). Not in the touch of the hand, since the holy man says: If I have kissed my hand with my mouth, which is a very great iniquity, and a denial of God (Job 31:27, 28). Which I think happens when the gift of God, which is wisdom, is ascribed not to God but to the merits of actions. Isaac was wise, yet he erred in his senses. Hearing alone possesses truth, because it perceives the word. Rightly is the woman who thinks in a carnal way forbidden to touch the risen flesh of the Word; for she gave more credit to the eye than to the oracle, that is, to the sense of the flesh rather than to the word of God. For him whom she had seen dead, she did not believe risen, though he himself had promised this. And so the eye did not rest, until the sight was satisfied; because there was no consolation of faith, nor was the promise of God held firm. Do not heaven and earth, and whatever the eye of the flesh can reach, have to pass away and perish, before one iota or one tittle of all the things which God has spoken? And yet she ceased from weeping at the sight of her eye, she who would not be consoled by the word of the Lord; esteeming experience more than faith. But experience is deceitful. 9. She is therefore sent to the more certain knowledge of faith; which indeed apprehends what sense does not know, what experience does not find. Do not touch me, he says (Jn 20:17): that is: Unaccustom yourself from this seducible sense; lean upon the word, accustom yourself to faith. Faith knows not how to be deceived; faith comprehending invisible things does not feel the poverty of sense. Indeed it passes beyond the limits even of human reason, the use of nature, the boundaries of experience. Why do you ask the eye for what it cannot reach? And why does the hand try to explore what is above itself? Whatever the one or the other reports is too little. Let faith pronounce concerning me, which diminishes nothing from majesty. Learn to hold that more certain, to follow that more safely, which faith shall have persuaded. Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father (Jn 20:17). As if indeed when he shall have ascended, he would then wish or be able to be touched by her. And indeed she will be able, but by affection, not by hand; by desire, not by eye; by faith, not by the senses. Why do you, he says, now seek to touch me, you who estimate the glory of the resurrection by bodily sense? Do you not know that in the time of my mortality the eyes of the disciples were unable to bear the glory of the body transfigured for a time, destined to die? (Mt 17:6.) Indeed I still comply with your senses, presenting the servile form, which you may recognize by custom. But my glory has been made wonderful beyond you, it has been strengthened, and you cannot reach it. Defer therefore your judgment, suspend your verdict, and do not entrust the determination of so great a matter to sense; reserve it for faith. She will determine more worthily, she will determine more certainly, because she will comprehend more fully. Indeed she comprehends in that mystical and profound embrace of hers, what is the length, the breadth, the height, and the depth. What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, she carries within herself as though enclosed in a certain wrapping, and keeps it sealed. 10. She therefore will worthily touch me, who will receive me seated with the Father, no longer in humble garb, but in heavenly: in the flesh itself, but in another appearance. Why do you wish to touch the deformed? Wait, that you may touch the beautiful. For he who is deformed now, will then be beautiful; deformed to touch, deformed to sight; deformed indeed to you who are deformed, because you cling more to the senses and less to faith. Be beautiful, and touch me; be faithful, and you are beautiful. Beautiful, you will touch the beautiful one both more worthily and more happily. You will touch with the hand of faith, with the finger of desire, with the embrace of devotion; you will touch with the eye of the mind. But is he still black? Far from it! Your beloved is radiant and ruddy. Beautiful indeed is he whom the flowers of roses and the lilies of the valleys surround; that is, the choirs of martyrs and of virgins: and I who sit in the midst am in harmony with both choirs, a virgin and a martyr. For how am I not in accord with the bright choirs of virgins, I a virgin, the son of a Virgin, and the bridegroom of a virgin? How am I not in accord with the rosy choirs of martyrs, I who am the cause, the power, the fruit, and the pattern of martyrdom? Touch me, such a one, in such a way, and say: My beloved is radiant and ruddy, chosen out of thousands (Song 5:10). Thousands upon thousands are with the beloved, and ten hundred thousands around the beloved, and none is equal to the beloved. Will you need to fear lest perhaps by some mistake you fall upon one of the multitude, when seeking him whom you love? You will not at all be in doubt whom to choose. Easily will the one chosen out of thousands meet you, more distinguished than all, and you will say: This one is beautiful in his robe, striding in the multitude of his strength (Isa 63:1). Not therefore in the black skin, which until now indeed had to be presented to the eyes of persecutors, that they might despise the one to be killed; or even to the eyes of friends, that they might recognize the one risen. Not, I say, will he now appear in the black skin, but in a white garment, beautiful in form, not only beyond the sons of men, but even beyond the faces of the angels. Why do you wish to touch me in humble garb, in servile form, in contemptible appearance? Touch me, beautiful in heavenly appearance, crowned with glory and honor; awesome indeed in divine majesty, but pleasing and gentle in inborn serenity. 11. Amid these things the prudence of the bride must be noted, and the depth of her words, who under the figure of the curtains of Solomon, that is, in the flesh, searched out God; in death, life; the summit of glory and honor amid reproaches; and under the black garb of the crucified, the radiance of innocence and the splendor of virtues, just as those curtains, though they were black and despised, preserved within themselves the precious and most bright ornaments of the exceedingly rich king. Rightly she does not despise the blackness in the curtains, perceiving the beauty which is beneath the curtains. And therefore some despised her, because they did not at all recognize this beauty: for if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor 2:8). Herod did not recognize it, and therefore he despised him; the Synagogue did not recognize it, which, reproaching him with the blackness of his passion and weakness, said: He saved others, himself he cannot save. Let Christ the king of Israel descend now from the cross, and we will believe him (Mt 27:42). But the thief recognized it from the cross, though on the cross, who both confessed the purity of his innocence, saying: But this man, what evil has he done? and at the same time declared the glory of royal majesty: Remember me, he said, when you come into your kingdom (Lk 23:41, 42). The centurion recognized it, who proclaimed him the Son of God (Mt 27:54); the Church recognizes it, which both emulates his blackness, that she may share in his beauty. She is not ashamed to be seen as black, to be called black, so that she may say to her beloved: The reproaches of those who reproached you have fallen upon me (Ps 68:10). But she is black after the manner of the curtains of Solomon, outwardly that is, and not within: for my Solomon does not have blackness within. For she does not say: I am black like Solomon; but, like the curtains of Solomon: because the blackness of the true Peacemaker is on the surface only. The blackness of sin is within; and guilt first stains the interior before it comes forth to the eyes. For from the heart come evil thoughts, thefts, murders, adulteries, blasphemies: and these are the things which defile a man (Mt 15:19, 20); but far be it from Solomon! You will by no means find defilements of this kind in the true Peacemaker. For it is necessary that he who takes away the sins of the world be without sin, so that being found suitable for reconciling sinners, he may rightly claim for himself the name of Solomon. 12. But there is a blackness of afflicting penance, when lamentation is taken up for transgressions. This perhaps Solomon would not abhor in me, if nevertheless I willingly put it on for my sins; because a contrite and humbled heart God will not despise (Ps 50:19). There is also a blackness of compassion that affects, if you share in the suffering of the afflicted; and a brother's misfortune discolors you. Nor does our Peacemaker think that this is to be rejected, since he himself graciously put it on for our sake, he who bore our sins in his body upon the tree (1 Pet 2:24). There is also one of persecution: which is even held as the highest adornment, if indeed it is undertaken for justice and truth. Whence is that saying: The disciples went away rejoicing from the presence of the council, because they were deemed worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus (Acts 5:41); and again: Blessed are those who suffer persecution for the sake of justice (Mt 5:10). In this especially I judge the Church to glory, this she more gladly imitates from the curtains of the bridegroom. Indeed she also has it in the promise: If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you (Jn 15:20).”

“SERMON 30: HOW THE FAITHFUL PEOPLE OR THE ELECT SOULS ARE SIGNIFIED BY VINEYARDS, OF WHICH THE CHURCH IS CALLED THE KEEPER; AND ON THE PRUDENCE OF THE FLESH, WHICH IS DEATH. 1. "They set me as keeper in the vineyards" (Song 1:6). Who? Those very assailants of yours whom you just mentioned? Listen and understand, whether she does not confess herself to have been promoted by those very ones from whom she also suffered. Nor is it a wonder, however, if indeed the intention of correcting was the cause of the fighting. For who does not know that many have been many times assailed in a friendly and useful manner? How many do we daily experience advancing to better things, being promoted to higher things, by the pious assaults of their superiors? Therefore let us rather demonstrate, if we can, in what manner war was waged against the Church by the sons of her mother, both with hostile intent and with useful harm. For this is more delightful, when those who intend to harm are beneficial even against their will. Both senses, indeed, the foregoing interpretation holds: since there were not lacking those who emulated her both well and badly, fighting with different intention; but both were profitable to her. In the end she glories to have profited so much from those things which she suffered from her rivals, that in place of one vineyard, which they seemed to have taken from her, she rejoices that she has been set over many. This, she says, they accomplished for me by fighting against me and against my vineyard, who say: "Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation thereof" (Ps 137:7), so that I exchanged one for many. For this is what she adds, "My own vineyard I have not kept": as though appending the reason whence it befell her, that she was set as keeper no longer in one, but in many. And the letter indeed stands thus. 2. But if we follow it simply, content with that alone which it seems to sound on the surface, we shall think ourselves to be reading in Holy Scripture about those bodily and earthly vineyards which we daily see receiving from the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth, whence they pour forth wine, in which is wantonness: and so we shall seem to have brought forth nothing, I do not say worthy of the Lord's bride, but not even anything fitting for any of the rest, from so holy and divine a Scripture. For what agreement is there between brides and the keeping of vineyards? But even if it be thought fitting, whence shall we show that the Church was ever assigned to such an office? "Does God care about vineyards?" But if in a spiritual sense we interpret vineyards as Churches, that is, faithful peoples, according to the meaning of the prophet who says, "The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel" (Isa 5:7), it will begin perhaps to become clear to us how it is by no means unworthy of the bride to be made keeper in the vineyards. 3. I think that no small prerogative moreover will appear even in this very thing, if anyone more diligently takes care to observe how much she has everywhere throughout the world extended her borders into vineyards of this kind from that day when she was assaulted and driven out from Jerusalem by the sons of her mother, together with that first new plantation of hers; I mean the multitude of believers, of whom it is read that they were "of one heart and one soul" (Acts 4:32). And this is the one which she now confesses she has by no means kept, but not unto foolishness to herself. For she was not so uprooted from there in the persecution that she was not planted elsewhere, and let out to other farmers who would render its fruits in their seasons. Not at all, it did not perish, but migrated; it even grew and was enlarged, as one whom the Lord blessed. Finally, lift up your eyes, and see if "the mountains are not covered with its shadow, and its branches the cedars of God; if it has not stretched forth its branches unto the sea, and its shoots unto the river" (Ps 80:10-11). Nor is it a wonder, for "it is God's building, it is God's field" (1 Cor 3:9). He himself makes it fruitful, he himself propagates it, he himself prunes and cleanses it, that it may bring forth more fruit. For when would he forsake with his care or his labor that which his right hand has planted? Surely it is not to be considered neglected, in which the apostles are the branches, the Lord is the vine, and his Father is the farmer (Jn 15:2, 5, 1). Planted in faith, it sends forth roots in love, dug about with the hoe of discipline, fertilized with the tears of penitents, watered with the words of preachers: and so indeed abounding with wine in which is gladness, but not wantonness; wine of all sweetness, of no lust. This wine certainly gladdens the heart of man; this even the angels are known to drink with gladness. For they rejoice at the conversion and repentance of sinners, thirsting for the salvation of men. The tears of penitents are their wine, because in them is the odor of life, the savor of grace, the taste of pardon, the joy of reconciliation, the soundness of returning innocence, the sweetness of a serene conscience. 4. Therefore from that one vineyard, which the tempest of savage persecution seemed to have destroyed, how many have been propagated throughout all the earth and have flourished again? And in all these the bride has been set as keeper, so that she should not be saddened that she did not keep the first vineyard. Be consoled, daughter of Zion: if blindness in part has befallen Israel, what do you lose? Marvel at the mystery, and do not lament the loss: enlarge your bosom, and gather in the fullness of the Gentiles. Say to the cities of Judah: "It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first; but since you have rejected it and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold we turn to the Gentiles" (Acts 13:46). To Moses indeed it was offered by God, if he wished to dismiss the transgressing people and expose them to divine vengeance, that he himself could be made into a great nation: but he refused (Ex 32:9-13). Why? On account, surely, of the exceeding love by which he was strongly bound to that people; and because he was not seeking the things that were his own, but the honor of God, and not what would be useful to himself, but to many. And he indeed thus. 5. But I think by a more secret counsel this gift was divinely reserved, on account of its greatness, for the bride, so that she herself rather, and not Moses, should be sent unto a great nation. For it was not fitting that the friend of the bridegroom should snatch beforehand the bride's blessing; and therefore not indeed Moses, but the new bride, to whom it is said: "Go into all the world, preach the Gospel to every creature" (Mk 16:15); she, I say, was utterly sent unto a great nation. Could she have been sent to a greater one than to the whole world? And the whole world easily yielded to one bearing peace, offering grace. But the grace is not as the law. With how dissimilar a countenance do the sweetness of the one and the severity of the other present themselves to every conscience! Who indeed looks equally upon one who condemns and one who consoles, one who demands and one who pardons, one who strikes and one who embraces? Not with equal desire surely will shadow and light, wrath and peace, judgment and mercy, figure and truth, rod and inheritance, bridle and kiss be received. Heavy indeed were the hands of Moses, as Aaron and Hur witness (Ex 17:12); heavy was the yoke of the Law, as the apostles themselves witness, who cry out that it was unbearable both for themselves and for their fathers (Acts 15:10); a heavy yoke, and a cheap reward: for the promise is of land. For such things Moses was not sent unto a great nation. But you, Mother Church, having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come, easily in a twofold grace obtain from all that you be received, both on account of the sweet yoke and on account of the sublime kingdom. Driven from the city, you are received by the whole world, since what you promise so entices that what you impose does not terrify. Why do you still lament the loss of one vineyard, when it has been compensated to you with such great interest? "Because you were forsaken, and hated, and there was none who passed through you: I will make you," he says, "an everlasting pride, a joy from generation to generation; and you shall suck the milk of the Gentiles, and you shall be nursed at the breast of kings; and you shall know that I am the Lord who saves you, and your redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob" (Isa 60:15-16). In such a manner, therefore, the bride says she was set as keeper in the vineyards, and that she did not keep her own vineyard. 6. I, on the occasion of this passage, am accustomed to reproach myself, because I have undertaken the care of souls who was not sufficient to keep my own; interpreting vineyards as souls. And if you too approve this interpretation of ours, see also consequently whether we rightly say as well: faith is the vine; the virtues, the branches; the cluster, the work; the devotion, the wine. Since indeed neither is a branch anything without the vine, nor a virtue anything without faith. For "without faith it is impossible to please God" (Heb 11:6); and perhaps it will even be necessary to displease him. In the end, "everything that is not from faith is sin" (Rom 14:23). This therefore those who set me as keeper in the vineyards ought to have considered, namely whether I had kept my own. But for how long a time it lay uncultivated and desolate, reduced to a wilderness! Wine had utterly failed from it, the branches of the virtues having withered because of the barrenness of faith. There was faith, but it was dead. For how was it not dead without works? And this indeed in secular life. But having been converted to the Lord, I began, I confess, to keep it somewhat better; yet not as was fitting. And who indeed is sufficient for this? Not even the holy Prophet, who says: "Unless the Lord guard the city, he watches in vain who guards it" (Ps 127:1). How many ambushes I remember being exposed to even then from him who "shoots in secret at the blameless"! How much was stolen from us, O my vineyard, by furtive machinations in that very time when we began more vigilantly to attend to the care and custody of ourselves! How many and what quality of clusters of pious works did either anger choke, or boasting carry off, or empty glory defile! How much did we endure from the enticement of gluttony, how much from the spirit of sloth, how much from "faintheartedness of spirit and tempest"! So I was: and nevertheless they set me as keeper in the vineyards, not considering what I was doing or had done with my own, nor heeding the master who reproves and says: "If anyone does not know how to govern his own house, how shall he take care of the Church of God?" (1 Tim 3:5). 7. I marvel at the audacity of many, whom we see gathering nothing from their own vineyards but thorns and thistles, yet not fearing to thrust themselves even upon the Lord's vineyards. They are thieves and robbers, not keepers, nor cultivators. This to them. But woe to me even now from the peril of my vineyard! Nay, rather more now, when being occupied with many things, I am compelled to become less diligent and less solicitous about the one. It is not permitted to surround it with a hedge, nor to dig a winepress in it. Alas! "Its wall is broken down, and all who pass by the way plunder it" (Ps 80:12). It lies open, exposed to sadness, a pathway for anger and impatience. Certain busy little foxes of pressing necessities tear it down; from every side anxieties, suspicions, and cares break in; crowds of quarrelers, troublesome cases are rarely absent for an hour. There is no ability to prohibit, no possibility of escaping, not even space for praying. With what shower of tears shall I suffice to drench the barrenness of my soul? (Ps 35:12.) I meant to say "of my vineyard," but it fell out so from the psalm because of habit, and the meaning is the same; nor does the error displease me which reminds me of the likeness, because the sermon is not about a vineyard but about a soul. Therefore let the soul be understood when a vineyard is read; since under its appearance and name the barrenness of the soul is bewailed. With what tears, then, shall I water the barrenness of my vineyard? All its branches have withered for want; they lie without fruit, because they have no moisture. O good Jesus! What bundles of vine-branches from them does the burning of my contrite heart, with you as witness, daily consume in your sacrifice! Let it be, I beseech you, a sacrifice to you, "a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart, O God, do not despise" (Ps 51:17). 8. And I indeed thus, on account of my imperfection, draw the present passage to myself. But everyone who is perfect will be able to say otherwise: "My own vineyard I have not kept"; in that sense, indeed, in which the Savior speaks in the Gospel, "Whoever loses his soul for my sake will find it" (Mt 10:39). Fit indeed and worthy to be set as keeper in the vineyards is he whom the care of his own vineyard does not impede or delay from the diligence and solicitude of those committed to him; while he does not seek the things that are his own, nor what is useful to himself, but what is useful to many. For this reason indeed that care was entrusted to Peter in so many vineyards which were of the circumcision, because the man was prepared to go both "to prison and to death" (Lk 22:33), to such a degree was he not held back by love of his own vineyard, that is, of his own soul, from attending to the care of those entrusted to him. Deservedly also to Paul among the Gentiles was entrusted so vast a forest of vineyards, because he too was found to be by no means anxious in the custody of his own vineyard; so that he was prepared not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem "for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 21:13). Finally: "I fear none of these things," he says, "nor do I make my soul more precious than myself" (Acts 20:24). An excellent appraiser of things, who judges that nothing of his own should be preferred to himself. 9. How many have preferred a small and worthless sum of money to their own salvation! Paul did not even prefer his soul. "I do not," he says, "make it more precious than myself." Therefore you make a distinction between yourself and your soul? Prudently indeed you are of more worth to yourself than anything that is yours. But how is your soul not you? I judge that because Paul already at that time walked in the spirit, and in his mind consented to the law of God because it is good (Rom 7:16); for this reason he deemed this very mind of his, as a certain principal and supreme part of himself, worthy to be designated rather by the name of himself than of any possession of his; but the remainder, which is established to be of an inferior nature and therefore to cling to the inferior and cheaper essence, which is the body; not only by the office of vivifying and giving sensation, but also by the desire of nourishing and cherishing: this, I say, being sensual and carnal, the spiritual man, judging it unworthy of the appellation of himself, reckoned it should rather be counted among his possessions than that he should be personally expressed through it. "When I say 'me,'" he says, "understand that which is more excellent in me, in which I also stand by the grace of God, that is, the mind and reason. When I speak of 'my soul,' take it in the lower sense, that which you see accommodated to animating the flesh, and even joined to it in concupiscence. That I was this, but now am no longer, I acknowledge, because I no longer walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit" (Rom 8:4). "I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20). According to the mind, I; according to the flesh, not I. For what if the soul even now desires carnally? "It is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me" (Rom 7:17). And therefore I would call what in me savors carnally not indeed myself, but nevertheless mine, and that nothing other than the soul itself. For truly the carnal affection of the soul is a portion of it, and the life which it administers to the body. This soul, therefore, Paul despised in comparison with himself, prepared for the Lord's sake not only to be bound but also to die in Jerusalem, and so to lose his soul according to the Lord's counsel. 10. You also, if you forsake your own will, if you perfectly renounce the pleasures of the body, if you crucify your flesh with its vices and concupiscences, and also mortify your members which are upon the earth: you will prove yourself an imitator of Paul, in that you do not make your soul more precious than yourself; you will prove yourself also a disciple of Christ, even by losing it in a salutary way. And indeed more prudently do you lose it in order to keep it, than keep it in order to lose it. "For whoever would save his soul, shall lose it" (Mt 16:25). What do you say here, you observers of foods, neglecters of character? Hippocrates and his followers teach to save souls in this world; Christ and his disciples, to lose them. Which of the two do you choose to follow as master? But he makes himself obvious who argues thus: this harms the eyes, this harms the head, and that harms the chest or the stomach. Certainly each one brings forth into the open what he has learned from his own master. Have you read these distinctions in the Gospel, or in the prophets, or in the letters of the apostles? "Flesh and blood have surely revealed this wisdom to you, not the Spirit of the Father"; for this is "the wisdom of the flesh." But hear what our physicians think of it. "The wisdom of the flesh," they say, "is death"; likewise: "The wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God" (Rom 8:6-7). Ought I to have set before you the opinion of Hippocrates or Galen, or surely from the school of Epicurus? I am a disciple of Christ; I speak to disciples of Christ: if I introduce a foreign doctrine, I myself have sinned. Epicurus and Hippocrates, the one puts forward the pleasure of the body, the other good physical condition; my Master preaches contempt for both. The life of the soul in the body, which the one with utmost zeal inquires whence to sustain, the other whence even to delight, and teaches others to inquire, the Savior counsels even to lose. 11. For what else sounded to you from the lecture hall of Christ, when just a little while ago it was proclaimed: "He who loves his soul shall lose it"? (Jn 12:25.) "He shall lose it," he said, whether by laying it down as a martyr, or by afflicting it as a penitent. Although it is a kind of martyrdom to mortify the deeds of the flesh by the spirit; milder indeed in horror than that in which the limbs are cut by the sword, but more troublesome by reason of its duration. Do you see that by this judgment of my Master the wisdom of the flesh is condemned, through which either one flows away into the excess of pleasure, or even a good state of bodily health is desired beyond what is fitting? Indeed, that true wisdom does not flow out into pleasures, you have heard from the Wise Man, that it is "not even to be found in the land of those who live pleasantly" (Job 28:13). But he who found it says: "Beyond health and all beauty I loved wisdom" (Wis 7:10). If beyond health and beauty, how much more beyond pleasure and baseness? But what does it profit to abstain from pleasures and to spend daily care investigating the diversities of bodily constitutions and inquiring into varieties of foods? "Legumes," he says, "are gaseous, cheese burdens the stomach, milk harms the head, the chest cannot endure a drink of water, cabbages nourish melancholy, leeks inflame choler, fish from a pond or from muddy water are entirely unsuited to my constitution." What is this, that in all the rivers, fields, gardens, and cellars there can hardly be found something for you to eat? 12. Consider yourself, I beg, to be a monk, not a physician; and judgment is to be made not from your bodily constitution but from your profession. Spare, I beseech you, first indeed your own tranquility, spare then the labor of those who serve, spare the burden on the house, spare conscience. Conscience, I say, not yours, but another's; namely of him who sits near you, and eating what is set before him, murmurs about your singular fasting. For it is a scandal to him either your hateful superstition, or the harshness which he perhaps attributes to the one who is supposed to provide for you. He is scandalized, I say, in your singularity, the brother judging you superstitious, as one seeking superfluous things; or surely blaming me as harsh, who do not seek out the necessities for your diet. In vain do certain ones flatter themselves with the example of Paul, who urged his disciple not to drink water but to use a little wine on account of his stomach and his frequent infirmities (1 Tim 5:23). They ought to attend first indeed that the Apostle by no means urged a thing of this kind upon himself, nor did the disciple equally demand it for himself. Then that this was intimated not to a monk, but to a bishop, whose life was absolutely necessary to the still tender and newborn Church. This was Timothy. Give me another Timothy; and I will feed him, if you wish, even with gold, and give him balsam to drink. But you dispense to yourself, having pity on yourself. Your own dispensation toward yourself is suspect to me, I confess; and I fear that you are being deceived under the cover and name of discretion by the prudence of the flesh. I want you at least to be advised of this, that if the authority of the Apostle so pleases you regarding drinking wine, do not omit the "little" which he added. And enough about this. But let us return to the bride, and let us learn from her to beneficially not keep our own vineyards, especially we who seem to be appointed keepers in the vineyards of the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“13. Whence the bride also adds: Do not consider me because I am dark, for the sun has discolored me (Song 1:5), that is: Do not mark me as deformed, because you see me less flourishing, less adorned according to the glory of the world, on account of the pressing persecution. Why do you reproach the blackness which the heat of persecution, not the shame of conduct, has brought? Or does she call the sun the zeal for justice, with which she is kindled and girded against the wicked, saying to God: The zeal for your house has consumed me (Ps 68:10)? And that saying: My zeal has made me waste away, because my enemies have forgotten your words; and also: Fainting has seized me because of sinners who abandon your law (Ps 118:139, 53); likewise: Have I not hated those who hate you, O Lord, and wasted away over your enemies? (Ps 138:21.) She also carefully observes that saying of the Wise Man: You have daughters, he says? Do not show a cheerful face to them (Sir 7:26): so that to the lax and soft and those who flee discipline, she might display not the brightness of serenity, but the darkness of severity. Or to be discolored by the sun is to burn with fraternal charity, to weep with those who weep, to be weak with the weak, to burn at the scandals of individuals. Or thus: The Sun of justice has discolored me, Christ, with whose love I languish. That languor is a certain destruction of color, and a failing in the desire of the soul: whence she also says: I remembered God, and was delighted, and I was exercised and my spirit failed (Ps 76:3). Therefore, like a burning sun, the ardor of desire discolors her who sojourns in the body, while it makes her impatient with the repulse as she yearns for the face of glory, and the delay torments the lover. Who among us so burns with holy love that, out of desire to see Christ, he disdains and puts aside every color of present glory and joy, proclaiming to him with that prophetic voice: And I have not desired the day of man, you know (Jer 17:16); likewise with holy David: My soul refused to be comforted (Ps 76:7); that is, she disdains to be colored with the empty joy of present goods? Or certainly, the sun has discolored me, by the comparison, that is, of its own splendor, since drawing near to it, I from that very nearness discover myself dark, find myself black, despise myself as foul. Otherwise indeed I am beautiful; why do you call me dark, when I yield only to the beauty of the sun itself? But the things which follow seem rather to agree with the former sense. For when she adds: The sons of my mother fought against me, she openly signifies that she has suffered persecution. But from this we shall begin another discourse, because the things which we have received on this occasion concerning the glory of the Bridegroom of the Church, our Lord Jesus Christ, can suffice, by the gift of him who is God blessed for ever. Amen.”

“SERMON 29: ON DISCORD IN THE CHURCH AND IN COMMUNITIES 1. "My mother's sons turned their anger to me." Annas and Caiaphas, and Judas Iscariot, were sons of the Synagogue; and from the Church's very origin these fought with great bitterness against her, daughter of the Synagogue though she was, and hanged Jesus, her Founder, on a tree. In that moment God fulfilled through their agency what he had formerly foretold through the Prophet: "I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered." And perhaps it is the voice of that Church we hear in the song of Hezekiah: "My life is cut off, as by a weaver; while I was yet but beginning he cut me off." It is about these and others of that same race who are known to have opposed the Christian name, that the bride complains when she says: "My mother's sons turned their anger on me." Well did she call them sons of her mother and not of her father, for they did not have God for their father but the devil; they were murderers, just as he was a murderer from the beginning. Hence she does not say: "my brother," or "the sons of my father," but: "My mother's sons turned their anger on me." If she had failed to make this distinction, even the Apostle Paul would seem to be included among those of whom she complains, for he once persecuted the Church of God. But because while living as an unbeliever he had acted in ignorance, he received the grace of mercy; and so he exemplified that he had God for father, that he was a brother of the Church both on his Father's side and on his mother's side. 2. Take note how she accuses by name only her mother's sons as if they alone were at fault. But has she not also suffered very much from strangers? For the Prophet says: "Often since I was young have men attacked me," and "they scored my back with scourges." Why then do you complain so particularly about your mother's sons, when you are so well aware that men of various races have so often assailed you? "If you take your seat at a great man's table, take careful note of what you have before you." Brothers, we are seated at the table of Solomon. Who is more wealthy than Solomon? I do not refer to earthy riches, although Solomon has plenty even of these; but I want you to contemplate the table now before you that is spread with heaven's own delicacies. Refreshments both spiritual and divine are set before us here. "Take careful note, therefore," he said, "of what you have before you, knowing that you must in turn prepare a similar table." And so, with all possible care, I study what is set before me in these words of the bride, and for my own instruction and security take note that persecution by members of the household is alone mentioned by name, whereas she passes over in silence numerous and grave trials which she is known to endure all over the world from every nation under heaven, from pagans, from heretics and schismatics. Aware as I am of the discernment of the bride, I know it was neither by chance nor through forgetfulness that she omitted these. The truth is that she expresses her grief so openly about what hurts her so acutely, and what she thinks we must use all vigilance to avoid. And what is it that hurts her? It is domestic quarreling, dissension within. In the Gospel you are clearly informed of this from our Savior's own mouth when he says: "A man's enemies will be those of his own household." The Prophet speaks in like manner: "Even my intimate friend, who shared my table, rebels against me." And again: "Were it an enemy who insulted me, I could put up with that; had a rival got the better of me, I could hide from him. But you, a man one with me, my leader and my friend, who enjoyed my meals with me," that is to say: I feel more keenly, I bear more painfully, what I have to suffer from you, my guest and companion. You know who makes this complaint, and about whom. 3. You can see that the bride complains about her mother's sons with a similar sorrow and in a similar spirit when she says: "My mother's sons turned their anger on me." She repeats the sentiment on another occasion: "My friends and my neighbors drew near and stood against me." II. I ask you earnestly to keep ever far from you this abominable and detestable vice, you who have experienced and do daily experience "how good and how delightful it is for all to live together like brothers," provided that the end is union and not mutual offence. Otherwise it will be neither delightful nor good, but a great misfortune, a cause of great injury. Alas for that man who disturbs the sweet bond of unity! Whoever he may be he will certainly "bear his judgment." Rather let me die than hear any of you justly complaining: "My mother's sons turned their anger on me." Are you not all sons of this community, like sons of the same mother, all brothers to each other? What outside influence can upset you or make you sad, if you are well disposed to each other within and live in peace like brothers? "Who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is right?" Therefore, "be ambitious for the higher gifts," that you may prove yourselves to be men of good zeal. The gift that excels all others, that is clearly incomparable, is love, a truth which the heavenly Bridegroom is so often at pains to impress on his new bride. At one time he says: "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." At another time: "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another;" and again: "This is my commandment that you love one another," while at the same time he prays that they may be one, as he and the Father are one. Does not Paul himself, who invites you to the better gifts, introduce love among them as being with faith and hope surpassingly greater than knowledge? And when he enumerates the many wonderful gifts of heavenly grace, does he not finally direct us to that more excellent way, which he defines as no other than love? In short, what may we consider comparable to this gift, which is preferred even to martyrdom and to the faith that moves mountains? This therefore is what I say: May peace be yours as the fruit of your zeal, and anything that may threaten from without will not intimidate you because it will not injure you. And on the other hand, though the world outside may smile on you, the solace it offers will be in vain if, God forbid, the seed of discord sprouts in your midst. 4. Therefore my very dear brothers, preserve peace among you, and beware of offending each other, whether by deed or word or any gesture whatever, lest someone, provoked and surprised by passion in a moment of weakness, should be constrained to invoke God against those who injured or saddened him, and impetuously cry out this grave accusation: "My mother's sons turned their anger on me." For those who sin against a brother sin against Christ who said: "In so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me." Nor is it enough to avoid only the more serious offences, for example, public insult and abuse or the venomous slander in secret. It is not enough, I say, to guard one's tongue from these and similar kinds of nastiness; even slight offences must be avoided, if anything may be termed slight that is directed against a brother for the purpose of hurting him, since merely to be angry with one's brother makes one liable to the judgment of God. And justly so. Because what you regard as slight, and therefore commit with all the more ease, will be seen in a different light by another, just as a man looking at the outward appearance and judging according to the outward appearance, is prepared to think a splinter to be a plank, and a spark a blazing fire. The love which believes all things is not the gift of all men. A man's heart and thoughts are more prone to suspect evil than to believe good, especially when the obligation of silence does not permit you, whose conduct is in question, to defend yourself, nor him who suspects you to lay bare the wound from which he suffers, that it might be healed. And so he endures the agony, grieving in his heart, till he succumbs from the secret and deadly wound, totally immersed in anger and bitterness, his mind a whirl of unvoiced thoughts on the injury he has received. He cannot pray, he cannot read, nor meditate on anything holy or spiritual. And while this soul for whom Christ died is cut off from the vital influence of the Spirit, and goes to its death through lack of the nourishment it needs, what, I ask, are the thoughts of your own mind in the meantime? What can you find in prayer, or in any work you do, when Christ is sorrowfully crying out against you from the heart of your brother whom you have embittered, saying: "My mother's son is fighting against me, he who enjoyed my meals with me has filled me with bitterness." 5. And if you say that he should not be so gravely perturbed for so slight a cause, I answer: the more slight it is, the more easy for you not to have done it. Furthermore, as I have said already, I do not understand how you call slight something that is more than the feeling of anger, since you have heard from the judge's own mouth that even this is liable to be judged. Just think! And then will you call slight a gesture that offends Christ, that will bring you before the judgement seat of God, since "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God"? So when an offence is committed against you, a thing hard to avoid at times in communities like ours, do not immediately rush, as a worldly person may do, to retaliate dishonorably against your brother; nor, under the guise of administering correction, should you dare to pierce with sharp and searing words one for whom Christ was pleased to be crucified; nor make grunting, resentful noises at him, nor mutter and murmur complaints, nor adopt a sneering air, nor indulge the loud laugh of contempt, nor knit the brow in menacing anger. Let your passion die within, where it was born; a carrier of death, it must be allowed no exit or it will cause destruction, and then you can say with the Prophet: "I was troubled and I spoke not." III. 6. I understand that there are some who give a more mysterious meaning to the words of our text by applying them to the devil and his angels, who were once sons of that Jerusalem above which is our mother and who, since their fall, do not cease to fight against their sister, the Church. Nor will I argue with anyone who finds it more acceptable to see here a reference to those spiritual men in the Church who make war with the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, against their impious brothers, wounding them for their salvation and leading them on to spiritual things by this kind of assault. "Let a good man strike or rebuke me in kindness," wounding and healing, killing and bringing to life, so that even I may dare to say: "I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me." "Come to terms with your opponent," says Christ, "while you are still on the way to court with him, or he may hand you over to the judge and the judge to the torturer." I shall have found a good opponent if after I have come to terms with him, there will be neither judge to speak against me nor torturer. And indeed if some of you have been saddened by me in the past for this reason, I do not regret it; the sadness was for their salvation. I certainly cannot recall ever having done it without experiencing great sadness myself, such as Christ referred to when he said: "A woman in childbirth suffers." But let me no longer remember my anguish, now that I enjoy the fruit of my pain, seeing Christ formed in my offspring. And these, who have convalesced from their weakness after and by means of many corrections, are, I know not how, bound to me by a more tender love than those who have remained strong from the beginning, without need of this kind of remedy. 7. It is in this sense that the Church, or the soul who loves God, can say that the sun has changed her color by commissioning and equipping some of her mother's sons to make salutary warfare against her, and lead her captive to his faith and love, pierced with those arrows of which Scripture says: "The warrior's arrows are sharp," and again: "Your arrows have pierced deep into me." Hence she goes on to say: "There is no soundness in my flesh;" but because, as a consequence, she has grown more sound and courageous in spirit, she is able to affirm: "The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak." Her sentiments are those of Paul: "It is when I am weak that I am strong." Do you see how physical infirmity can be an occasion for increasing spiritual strength, a source of new spiritual powers. On the other hand you know that physical strength can beget weakness of the spirit. What wonder if the enemy's weakness makes you stronger, unless in your madness you make friends with a nature that ever lusts against the spirit? See then, if the Saint who, for his own good, demands to be attacked and pierced with arrows, is not acting prudently when he says: "Pierce my flesh with your fear." How excellent that arrow of fear that pierces and kills the desires of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved. Is it not obvious to you that he who chastises his body and subdues it, is aiding the hand that fights against his lower nature? IV. 8. There is another arrow: the living and active word of God that cuts more keenly than any two-edged sword, of which our Savior said: "I have not come to send peace but the sword." "A polished arrow" too is that special love of Christ, which not only pierced Mary's soul but penetrated through and through, so that even the tiniest space in her virginal breast was permeated by love. Thenceforth she would love with her whole heart, her whole soul and her whole strength, and be full of grace. It transpierced her thus that it might come down even to us, and of that fullness we might all receive. She would become the mother of that love whose father is the God who is love; and when that love was brought to birth he would place his tent in the sun, that the Scripture might be fulfilled: "I will make you the Light of the Nations, so that you may be my salvation to the ends of the earth." This was fulfilled through Mary, who brought forth in visible flesh him whom she conceived invisibly, neither from the flesh nor by means of the flesh. In the process she experienced through her whole being a wound of love that was mighty and sweet; and I would reckon myself happy if at rare moments I felt at least the prick of the point of that sword. Even if only bearing love's slightest wound, I could still say: "I am wounded with love." How I long not only to be wounded in this manner but to be assailed again and again till the color and heat of that flesh that wars against the spirit is overcome. 9. If worldly-minded maidens should taunt a person undergoing this trial, and say how unsightly she is and devoid of good color, does it not seem to you that she can reply very aptly: "Take no notice of my swarthiness, it is the sun that has burnt me." And if such a person bears in mind that she has arrived at this state through the exhortations and remonstrations of God's servants who "feel a divine jealousy" for her, may she not as a consequence say in truth: "My mother's sons turned their anger on me." The Church or any person inspired by true zeal will speak in this way, using this meaning, not in a mood of grief or complaint, but in joy and thanksgiving and a spirit of triumph that she has been found worthy both to become and to be called dark and unsightly for the name and love of Christ. And this she attributes not to her own merits but to the grace and mercy of the God who anticipated her needs and sent her his preachers. For how could she believe without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent? Not with resentment but with gratitude does she recall that her mother's sons turned their anger on her. Hence what follows: "They made me look after the vineyards." If this statement is examined from the spiritual viewpoint I cannot see that it bears any trace of discontent or rancor, but rather of pleasure. In order to carry out this examination however, and before presuming to attempt it -- "for the place is holy" -- we must offer the usual prayers to consult and win the favor of that Spirit who "searches the depths of God," and of the only-begotten Son who is in the father's bosom, Jesus Christ our Lord, the Church's Bridegroom who is blessed for ever. Amen.”

“"Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon?" The Word, who is the Bridegroom, often makes himself known under more than one form to those who are fervent. Why so? Doubtless because he cannot be seen yet as he is. That vision is unchanging, because the form in which he will then be seen is unchanging; for he is, and can suffer no change determined by present, past or future. Eliminate past and future, and where then is alteration or any shadow of a change? For whatever evolves out of the past and does not cease to move toward future development, passes through the instant that is the present, but one cannot say: it is. How can one say: it is, when it never remains in the same state? That alone truly is, which is neither altered from its past mode of being nor blotted out by a future mode, but "is" alone is predicated of it impregnably and unchangeably, and it remains what it is. No reference to the past can deny that it is from all eternity, nor any reference to the future that it is for all eternity. In this way it proves that it truly is, that is, it is uncreated, interminable, immutable. When he therefore who exists in this manner - who, furthermore, cannot be one moment in this form, another in that - is seen just as he is, that vision endures, as I have said, since no alteration interrupts it. This is the moment when that one denarius mentioned in the Gospel is given in the one vision that is offered to everyone who sees. For as he who is seen is immutable in himself, he is present immutably to all who contemplate him; to these there is nothing more desirable that they wish to see, nothing more enticing that they could see. Can their eager appetite, then, ever grow weary, or that sweetness ebb away, or that truth prove deceptive, or that eternity come to a close? And if both the ability and will to contemplate are prolonged eternally, what is lacking to total happiness? Those who contemplate him without ceasing are short of nothing, those whose wills are fixed on him have nothing more to desire. 2. But this vision is not for the present life; it is reserved for the next, at least for those who can say: "We know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." Even now he appears to whom he pleases, but as he pleases, not as he is. Neither sage nor saint nor prophet can or could ever see him as he is, while still in this mortal body; but whoever is found worthy will be able to do so when the body becomes immortal. Hence, though he is seen here below, it is in the form that seems good to him, not as he is. For example, take that mighty source of light, I speak of that sun which you see day after day; yet you do not see it as it is, but according as it lights up the air, or a mountain, or a wall. Nor could you see even to this extent if the light of your body, the eye, because of its natural steadiness and clearness, did not bear some degree of likeness to that light in the heavens. Since all the other members of the body lack this likeness, they are incapable of seeing the light. Even the eye itself, when troubled, cannot approach the light, because it has lost that likeness. Just as the troubled eye, then, cannot gaze on the peaceful sun because of its unlikeness, so the peaceful eye can behold it with some efficacy because of a certain likeness. If indeed it were wholly equal to it in purity, with a completely clear vision it would see it as it is, because of the complete likeness. And so when you are enlightened you can see even now the Sun of Justice that "enlightens every man who comes into this world," according to the degree of the light he gives, by which you are made somehow like him; but see him as he is you cannot, because not yet perfectly like him. That is why the Psalmist says: "Come to him and be enlightened, and your faces shall never be ashamed." That is very true, provided we are enlightened as much as we need, so that "with our unveiled faces contemplating the glory of God, all grow brighter and brighter as we are turned into the same image, as by the spirit of the Lord." 3. Note that we must approach gently, not intrude ourselves upon him, lest the irreverent searcher of majesty be overwhelmed by glory. This approach is not a movement from place to place but from brightness to brightness, not in the body but in the spirit, as by the Spirit of the Lord; evidently by the spirit of the Lord, not by ours, although in ours. The brighter one becomes, the nearer is the end; and to be absolutely bright is to have arrived. For those thus arrived in his presence, to see him as he is means to be as he is, and not to be put to shame by any form of unlikeness. But, as I have said, this is for the next life. In the meantime this immense variety of forms, these countless species of creatures, what are they but rays emanating from the Godhead, showing that he from whom they come truly is, but not fully explaining what he is. Hence what you see is what emanates from him, not himself. Nevertheless, though not seeing himself but what comes from him, you are made aware beyond all doubt that he exists, and that you must seek him. Grace will not be wanting to the seeker, nor ignorance excuse the negligent. All have access to this kind of vision. According to the Apostle Paul, it is common to everyone who has the use of reason: "The invisible attributes of God have been clearly perceived in the things that have been made." 4. Another kind of vision is that by which in former times the Fathers were often graciously admitted to sweet communion with God, who became present to them, though they did not see him as he is but only in the form he thought fitting to assume. Nor does he appear to all in a similar manner, but as the Apostle says: "in many and various ways," still remaining one in himself, in accord with his word to Israel: "The Lord your God is one God." This manifestation, though not apparent to everybody, took place exteriorly, and consisted of images or the spoken word. But there is another form of divine contemplation, very different from the former because it takes place in the interior, when God himself is pleased to visit the soul that seeks him, provided it is committed to seeking him with all its desire and love. We are told what the sign of such a visit is, by one who experienced it. "Fire goes before him and burns up his adversaries round about." The fire of holy desire ought to precede his advent to every soul whom he will visit, to burn up the rust of bad habits and so prepare a place for the Lord. The soul will know that the Lord is near when it perceives itself to be aflame with that fire, and can say as the Prophet did: "He has sent a fire from on high down into my bones, and enlightened me;" and again: "My heart became hot within me and in my meditation fire burst forth." 5. When the Beloved who is thus sought for pays a visit in his merciful love to the soul that is filled with longing, that prays often, even without intermission, that humiliates itself in the ardor of its desire, that soul may fittingly say with St Jeremiah: "You are good, O Lord, to those who hope in you, to the soul that seeks you." And that soul's angel, one of the friends of the Bridegroom, and by him commissioned to be the minister and witness of that secret and mutual exchange - that angel, I say, must be dancing with joy! Does he not participate in their gladness and bliss, and turning to the Lord, say: "I thank you, Lord of majesty, because 'you have granted him his heart's desire, not denied him what his lips entreated'"? He is everywhere the soul's tireless attendant, never ceasing to lure it on and guide it with constant inspirations, as he whispers: "Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desire of your heart;" and again: "Wait for the Lord and keep his way." Or: "If he seems slow, wait for him; he will surely come, he will not delay." Turning to the Lord, he says: "'As a hart longs for flowing streams, so that soul longs for you, O God.' It has yearned for you in the night, and your Spirit within it watched for you from morning onwards." And again: "All the day this soul reaches out to you; grant what it wants because it is shouting after you; relent a little and show your mercy. Look down from heaven and see, and visit this desolate spirit." This loyal groomsman, watching without envy over this interchange of love, seeks the Lord's glory rather than his own; he is the go-between for the lover and his beloved, making known the desires of one, bearing the gifts of the other. He quickens the soul's affections, he conciliates the Bridegroom. Sometimes too, though rarely, he brings them into each other's presence, either snatching her up to him, or leading him down to her: for he is a member of the household, a familiar figure in the palace, one who has no fear of being rebuffed, who daily sees the face of the Father. 6. Be careful, however, not to conclude that I see something corporeal or perceptible to the senses in this union between the Word and the soul. My opinion is that of the Apostle, who said that "he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him." I try to express with the most suitable words I can muster the ecstatic ascent of the purified mind to God, and the loving descent of God into the soul, submitting spiritual truths to spiritual men. Therefore let this union be in the spirit, because "God is a spirit," who is lovingly drawn by the beauty of that soul whom he perceives to be guided by the Spirit, and devoid of any desire to submit to the ways of the flesh, especially if he sees that it burns with love for himself. One who is so disposed and so beloved will by no means be content either with that manifestation of the Bridegroom given to the many in the world of creatures, or to the few in visions and dreams. By a special privilege she wants to welcome him down from heaven into her inmost heart, into her deepest love; she wants to have the one she desires present to her not in bodily form but by inward infusion, not by appearing externally but by laying hold of her within. It is beyond question that the vision is all the more delightful the more inward it is, and not external. It is the Word, who penetrates without sound; who is effective though not pronounced, who wins the affections without striking on the ears. His face, though without form, is the source of form, it does not dazzle the eyes of the body but gladdens the watchful heart; its pleasure is in the gift of love and not in the color of the lover. 7. Not yet have I come round to saying that he has appeared as he is, although in this inward vision he does not reveal himself as altogether different from what he is. Neither does he make his presence continuously felt, not even to his most ardent lovers, nor in the same way to all. For the various desires of the soul it is essential that the taste of God's presence be varied too, and that the infused flavor of divine delight should titillate in manifold ways the palate of the soul that seeks him. You must already have noticed how often he changes his countenance in the course of this love-song, how he delights in transforming himself from one charming guise to another in the beloved's presence: at one moment like a bashful bridegroom maneuvering for the hidden embraces of his holy lover, for the bliss of her kisses; at another coming along like a physician with oil and ointments, because weak and tender souls still need remedies and medicines of this kind, which is why they are rather daintily described as maidens. Should anybody find fault with this, let him be told that "it is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick." Sometimes, too, he joins up as a traveler with the bride and the maidens who accompany her on the road, and lightens the hardships of the journey for the whole company by his fascinating conversation, so that when he has parted from them they ask: "Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us on the road?" A silver-tongued companion who, by the spell of his words and manners, persuades everyone, as if in a sweet-smelling cloud arising from the ointments, to follow him. Hence they say: "We will run after you in the odor of your ointments." At another time he comes to meet them as a wealthy father of a family "with bread enough and to spare" in his house; or again like a magnificent and powerful king, giving courage to his timid and poverty-stricken bride, stirring up her desire by showing her the ornaments of his glory, the riches of his wine-presses and storehouse, the produce of his gardens and fields, and finally introducing her into his private apartments. For "her husband's heart has confidence in her," and among all his possessions there is nothing that he thinks should be hidden from her whom he redeemed from indigence, whose fidelity he has proved, whose attractiveness wins his embraces. And so he never ceases, in one way or another, to reveal himself to the inward eye of those who seek him, thus fulfilling the promise that he made: "Be assured I am with you always, to the end of time." 8. On all these occasions he is kind and gentle, full of merciful love. In his kisses he shows that he is both loving and charming; with the oil and the ointments that he is boundlessly considerate and compassionate and forgiving; on the journey he is gay, courteous, ever gracious and ready to help; in the display of his riches and possessions he reveals a kingly liberality, a munificent generosity in the bestowal of rewards. Through the whole context of this song you will find images of this nature to delineate the Word. Hence I feel that the Prophet was thinking on these lines when he said: "Christ the Lord is a spirit before our face; under his shadow we shall live among the nations," because now we see in a mirror dimly and not yet face to face. So it will be while we live among the nations; among the angels it will be otherwise. For then we shall enjoy the very same happiness as they; even we shall see him as he is, in the form of God, no longer in shadow. Just as we say that our ancestors possessed only shadows and images, whereas the truth itself shines on us by the grace of Christ present in the flesh, so also no one will deny that in relation to the world to come, we still live in the shadow of the truth, unless he wishes to deny what the apostle asserts: "our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect;" or when he says: "I do not reckon myself to have got hold of it yet." Why should there not be a distinction between him who walks by faith and him who walks by sight? Hence the just man lives by faith, the blessed rejoices in the vision; the holy person here below lives in the shadow of Christ, the holy angel above is glorified in the splendor of his shining countenance. 9. That the faith is shadowy is a blessing, it tempers the light to the eye's weakness and prepares the eye for the light; for it is written: "He cleansed their hearts by faith." Faith therefore does not quench the light but protects it. Whatever it may be that the angel sees, is preserved for me by the shadow of faith, stored up in its trusty breast, until it be revealed in due time. If you cannot yet grasp the naked truth is it not worthwhile to possess it wrapped in a veil? Our Lord's Mother herself lived in the shadow of faith, for she was told: "Blessed are you who believed." Even the body of Christ was a shadow for her, as implied in the words: "The power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow." That is no mean shadow which is formed by the power of the Most High. Assuredly there was power in the flesh of Christ that overshadowed the Virgin, since by means of the envelope of his vivifying body she was able to bear his majestic presence, and endure the unapproachable light, a thing impossible to mortal woman. That was power indeed by which every opposing might was overcome. Both the power and the shadow put the demons to flight and became a shelter for men: an invigorating power surely, a shadow radiating coolness. 10. We therefore who walk by faith live in the shadow of Christ; we are fed with his flesh as the source of our life. For Christ's flesh is real food. And perhaps for that reason he is now described here as appearing in the guise of a shepherd, when the bride addresses him as though one of the shepherds: "Tell me where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon." The Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep! He gives them his life, he gives them his flesh; his life their ransom, his flesh their food. How wonderful! He is their shepherd, their food, their redemption.”

“HOW CHRIST IS RECEIVED BY THE HOLY SOUL AS A BRIDEGROOM, AND BY THE WEAK SOUL AS A PHYSICIAN. LIKEWISE ON THE DIFFERENCE OF THOUGHTS, WHENCE THEY ARISE. 1. "Show me where you pasture, where you lie down at midday" (Song 1:7). Here we are, from here we proceed. But before this vision and address begins to be treated, I think the other visions that preceded it should be briefly recapitulated, how they may be spiritually fitted to us according to the desires and merits of each, so that, having grasped those -- if indeed this be granted -- a readier understanding may shine forth in the discussion of this one also. But this is most difficult. For even if those words by which the visions or likenesses themselves are described seem to sound of bodies and bodily things, nevertheless the things ministered to us in them are spiritual, and on that account their causes and reasons must also be sought in the spirit. And who is fit to investigate and comprehend so many affections and advances of the soul, to which this so manifold grace from the presence of the Bridegroom is dispensed? Yet if we enter into ourselves, and the Holy Spirit deigns to show us in his light what he does not disdain to work continually in us by his operation, I think we shall not remain altogether without understanding in these things. For I am confident that we have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may know the things that have been given to us by God (1 Cor 2:12). 2. Therefore if for any of us it is good to cling to God, as with the holy Prophet (Ps 73:28), and -- to speak more plainly -- if anyone among us is so a man of desire that he longs to be dissolved and to be with Christ, and longs vehemently, and thirsts ardently, and meditates unceasingly: he will assuredly receive the Word in no other way than in the form of a bridegroom at the time of visitation, at that hour, namely, when he feels himself clasped inwardly by certain arms of wisdom, and thence infused with the sweetness of holy love. For the desire of his heart will be granted to him, even while he is still a pilgrim in the body, yet in part, and that for a time, and a brief time. For when, after vigils and prayers and much labor and a shower of tears, the sought-for one is present, suddenly, while he is thought to be held, he slips away; and again, to the one weeping and pursuing, he comes to meet, and allows himself to be grasped, but by no means to be retained, while suddenly once more he flies away, as it were, from the hands. And if the devoted soul persists with prayers and weeping, he will return again, and will not defraud her of the will of her lips; but again he will presently disappear, and will not be seen, unless he is sought again with the whole desire. Thus therefore, even in this body, there can be frequent joy from the presence of the Bridegroom, but not fullness; because although the visitation gladdens, the alternation troubles. And the beloved must needs endure this so long, until once the burden of the bodily mass has been laid down, she herself too flies away, lifted on the wings of her desires, freely making her way through the fields of contemplation, and with unencumbered mind following the Beloved wherever he goes. 3. Nor yet even in his passing will he be thus present to every soul, but only to that one whom great devotion, and vehement desire, and the sweetest affection prove to be a bride, and worthy, one to whom the Word, coming with the grace of visitation, will put on beauty, taking the form of a bridegroom. For he who is not yet found so disposed, but rather struck with compunction at the remembrance of his deeds, speaking in the bitterness of his soul says to God: "Do not condemn me" (Job 10:2); or perhaps is even still perilously tempted, drawn away and enticed by his own concupiscence: such a one does not seek a bridegroom, but a physician; and therefore he will receive not kisses indeed or embraces, but only remedies for his wounds, in oil certainly and ointments. Do we not often feel thus, and experience this when praying, we who are daily still tempted by our present transgressions, bitten by past ones? From how great a bitterness you have frequently delivered me by your coming, O good Jesus! How often, after anxious weeping, unspeakable groans and sobs, have you anointed my wounded conscience with the ointment of your mercy, and poured over it the oil of gladness! How often has prayer, which received me nearly despairing, restored me exulting and confident of pardon! Those who are similarly affected, behold, these know that the Lord Jesus is truly a physician, who heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds (Ps 147:3). Those who have not experienced this, let them believe the very same one who says: "The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me, he has sent me to bring good tidings to the meek, to heal the broken-hearted" (Isa 61:2; Lk 4:17, 21). If they still doubt, let them come and prove it, and so learn in themselves what this means: "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice" (Mt 9:13). But let us see the rest also. 4. There are those who, wearied in spiritual pursuits and turned to lukewarmness, and placed in a certain failing of spirit, walk the ways of the Lord in sadness; with dry and weary heart they approach whatever tasks are enjoined, they frequently murmur; they complain of long days, long nights, speaking with holy Job: "If I lie down, I say: When shall I rise? and again I shall wait for evening" (Job 7:4). Therefore when it happens that one suffers something of this sort, if the Lord in mercy draws near to us on the way in which we walk, and he who is from heaven begins to speak of heaven, and indeed to sing for us something pleasing from the songs of Zion, to narrate also of the city of God, of the peace of that city, of the eternity of that peace, of the state of that eternity: I tell you, the glad narration will be as a vehicle for the drowsy and sluggish soul, so as to drive away all weariness from the mind of the hearer, and fatigue from the body. Or does he seem to you to suffer or to ask for something other, who says: "My soul has drowsed from weariness, strengthen me in your words"? And when he has obtained this, will he not cry out: "How I have loved your law, O Lord! It is my meditation all the day"? (Ps 119:97, 28.) For there are certain words of the Word-Bridegroom to us: our meditations on him and his glory, his elegance, his power, his majesty. And not only this, but also when with eager mind we turn over his testimonies and the judgments of his mouth, and meditate on his law day and night; let us know for certain that the Bridegroom is present and is addressing us, so that we may not be wearied by labors, being delighted by his discourses. 5. You therefore, when you feel such things being turned over in your mind, do not think it is your own thought, but recognize him speaking, who says through the prophet: "It is I who speak righteousness" (Isa 63:1). For the thoughts of our mind are most similar to the words of Truth speaking within us; nor does anyone easily discern what the heart gives birth to within, and what it hears, unless he prudently attends to the Lord speaking in the Gospel: "from the heart proceed evil thoughts" (Mt 15:19); and that: "Why do you think evil in your hearts?" (Mt 9:4). And: "He who speaks a lie, speaks from his own" (Jn 8:44). But the Apostle says: "Not that we are sufficient to think anything from ourselves as from ourselves" (that is to say, anything good); "but our sufficiency is from God" (2 Cor 3:5). When therefore we turn over evil things in our heart, it is our own thought; if good things, it is the word of God. The former our heart speaks, the latter it hears. "I will hear," he says, "what the Lord God may speak in me, for he will speak peace upon his people" (Ps 85:8). And so peace, piety, righteousness -- God speaks these in us; nor do we think such things from ourselves, but we hear them within us. But murders, adulteries, thefts, blasphemies, and things like these, proceed from the heart (Mt 15:19): nor do we hear them, but we speak them. For "the fool has said in his heart: There is no God" (Ps 14:1). And "therefore the wicked man has provoked God, because he said in his heart: He will not require it" (Ps 10:13). But there is besides something that is indeed perceived in the heart, yet is not a word of the heart. For it does not go out from the heart, as does our own thought, nor is it that which we have said comes to the heart, namely the word of the Word, since it is evil. But it is sent in by opposing powers, just as there are "sendings through evil angels"; such as, for example, was that which we read the devil put into the heart, that Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, should betray the Lord (Jn 13:2). 6. But who is so watchful and diligent an observer of his own inward motions, whether occurring in himself or from himself, as to clearly distinguish, amid all the illicit feelings of his heart, between a disease of the mind and a bite of the serpent? I think this possible to no mortal, unless one who, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, has received that special gift which the Apostle, among the other charisms he enumerates, names the discernment of spirits (1 Cor 12:10). For however much anyone, according to Solomon, may guard his heart with all custody (Prov 4:23), and observe with the most vigilant attention everything that moves within him; even if he has had perhaps long-continued practice and frequent experience in these matters, he will nevertheless not be able to discern or distinguish purely within himself the one from the other: the evil that is inborn, and the evil that is sown. For "who can understand his offenses?" Nor does it much matter for us to know whence evil is in us, provided we know that it is in us: we must rather watch and pray, wherever it may come from, lest we consent. For the prophet prays against both evils, saying: "From my hidden faults cleanse me, O Lord, and from those of others spare your servant" (Ps 19:12-13). And I cannot hand on to you what I have not received. But I have not received, I confess, a means to assign a sure distinguishing mark between the offspring of the heart and the seed of the enemy. For both are evil, both from evil; both are in the heart, but not both from the heart. This whole matter is certain to me within myself, even if it is uncertain what I attribute to the heart and what to the enemy. And this indeed, as I have said, is without peril. 7. But indeed there is a case where one errs perilously, nay damnably, and there a sure rule is rightly set down for us, lest what belongs to God in us we give to ourselves, thinking a visitation of the Word to be our own thought. Therefore as far as good is distant from evil, so far are these two from each other: since neither does evil come from the Word, nor will good proceed from the heart, unless what it has perhaps first conceived from the Word; because "a good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor a bad tree good fruit" (Mt 7:18). But I believe enough has been said about what belongs to God and what belongs to us in our heart; nor superfluously, as I judge, but so that the enemies of grace may know that without grace the human heart does not suffice even for thinking the good, but its sufficiency is from God; that it is the voice of God, the good that is thought, not an offspring of the heart. You therefore, if you hear his voice, no longer be ignorant whence it comes or where it goes; knowing that it goes out from God and goes to the heart. See to it, moreover, that the word which goes forth from the mouth of God does not return to him empty, but prospers and accomplishes all the things for which he sent it, so that you too may say: "The grace of God in me has not been in vain" (1 Cor 15:10). Happy the mind to which the Word is an inseparable companion, everywhere making himself affable, by whose unceasing sweetness of eloquence she is delighted and vindicates herself from the troubles and vices of the flesh at every hour, redeeming the time from the evil days (Eph 5:16). She will not be wearied, she will not be troubled; because, as Scripture says: "No sadness will befall the just man, whatever may happen to him" (Prov 12:21). 8. Now indeed I think the form of the great Paterfamilias, or of regal majesty, appears to those who, approaching the deep heart, made more magnanimous by the greater liberty of spirit and purity of conscience, are accustomed to dare greater things, restless indeed and curious to penetrate more secret places, and to grasp more sublime things, and to attempt more perfect things, not only of the senses but also of the virtues. For these, by the greatness of their faith, are found worthy to be led into all fullness; nor is there anything at all in all the storerooms of wisdom from which the Lord God of knowledge should judge that the eager seekers of truth, who are not conscious of vanity, ought to be barred. Such was Moses, who dared to say to God: "If I have found grace in your eyes, show me yourself" (Exod 33:13, 18). Such was Philip, who begged that the Father be shown to himself and his fellow disciples (Jn 14:8): such also Thomas, who, unless he touched the wound and the pierced side with his own hand, refused to believe (Jn 20:25). A small faith, but descending in a marvelous way from greatness of soul. Such also was David, who himself too said to God: "My heart has said to you: My face has sought you; your face, O Lord, I will seek" (Ps 27:8). Such therefore dare great things, because they are great: and what they dare, they obtain, according to the word of promise addressed to them, which is of this kind: "Every place upon which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours" (Deut 11:24). For great faith deserves great things; and to the extent you have stretched forth the foot of confidence in the good things of the Lord, to that extent you shall possess. 9. And so to Moses God speaks mouth to mouth; and openly, not through riddles and figures, does he merit to see the Lord, whereas to other prophets he says he appears only in a vision and speaks through a dream (Num 12:6-8). To Philip also, according to the petition of his heart, the Father was shown in the Son, in this undoubtedly: that he immediately heard: "Philip, he who sees me sees the Father also; and, Because I am in the Father, and the Father is in me" (Jn 14:9-10). But Thomas too, according to the desire of his heart, offered himself to be touched (Jn 20:27), and did not defraud him of the will of his lips. What of David? Does he not also indicate that he is not altogether defrauded of his wish, when he says he will not give sleep to his eyes, nor slumber to his eyelids, until he finds a place for the Lord? (Ps 132:4-5.) Therefore to such great spirits the great Bridegroom will come to meet them, and he will magnify his doing with them, sending forth his light and his truth, and leading them and bringing them to his holy mountain and to his tabernacles, so that one who is of this sort may say: "He who is mighty has done great things for me" (Lk 1:49). His eyes will see the King in his beauty (Isa 33:17); going before him to the lovely places of the desert, to the flowers of roses and the lilies of the valleys, to the pleasant places of gardens, the waters of fountains, to the delights of cellars and the fragrances of spices, and finally to the very secrets of the bedchamber. 10. These are the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden with the Bridegroom, these are the pastures of life prepared for the refreshment of holy souls. Blessed is the man who has filled his desire from them. Let him be admonished of this one thing only, that he should not wish to have alone what can suffice for many. For perhaps on account of this, after all these things, the Bridegroom is described as appearing like a shepherd, so that the attainer of so many gifts may thereby be admonished of pasturing the flock of the simpler ones, who of course are as unable to grasp these things by themselves as sheep dare not go out to pasture without a shepherd. And so the bride, wisely perceiving this very thing, asks that it be shown to her where he himself pastures and lies down under the noonday heat, prepared (as indeed is given to be understood from this) to be pastured and to pasture with him and under him. For she does not think it safe to drive the flock far from the chief Shepherd, especially on account of the attacks of wolves, most of all those who come to us in sheep's clothing: and therefore she is anxious to pasture in the same pastures equally with him, and to lie down in the same shady places. And she sets forth the reason: "Lest I begin," she says, "to wander after the flocks of your companions." These are they who wish to be seen as friends of the Bridegroom, and are not: and since it is their care to pasture their own flocks, not his, they nevertheless lie in wait on every side and say: "Behold, here is Christ, behold, there he is" (Mk 13:21), in order to lead many astray and draw them away from Christ's flocks and join them to their own. This for the text of the letter. Now as for the spiritual sense which lies hidden therein, await it under another beginning of a sermon, whatever it may be that the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God over all things, blessed forever, may deign in his mercy to impart to me for you as you pray. Amen.”

“SERMON 3 ON THE KISS OF THE LORD'S FOOT, HAND, AND MOUTH 6. To you, Lord Jesus, to you rightly has my heart said: "My face has sought you; your face, O Lord, I will seek." For you made me hear your mercy in the morning, when, as I lay first in the dust and kissed your reverend footsteps, you forgave what I had lived badly. Moreover, in the progress of the day you gladdened the soul of your servant, when next in the kiss of the hand you also granted the grace of living well. And now what remains, O good Lord, except that now in the fullness of light, in the fervor of the spirit, graciously admitting me also to the kiss of the mouth, you would fill me with joy with your countenance? Show me, O sweetest one, O most serene one, show me where you pasture, where you rest at midday.”

“In Which Humility and Patience Are Treated 1. "If you do not know yourself, O beautiful one among women, go forth, and go after the flocks of your companions, and pasture your kids beside the tents of the shepherds" (Song 1:7). Once holy Moses, because he presumed much upon the grace and familiarity which he had found with God, aspired to a certain great vision, so that he said to God: "If I have found grace in your eyes, show me yourself." But he received in place of it a vision far inferior, from which nevertheless he might at some time arrive at the very one he desired (Ex 33:13-23). The sons of Zebedee also, walking in the simplicity of their heart, dared something great themselves, but were likewise brought back to the step by which one must ascend (Mt 20:21-23). So too now the bride, since she seems to ask for a great thing, is indeed checked by a rather severe response, but one plainly useful and faithful. For it is necessary that one striving toward higher things think humbly of himself, lest, while he is raised above himself, he fall from himself, unless he has been firmly established in himself through true humility. And because the greatest things are by no means obtained except by the merit of humility, therefore he who is to be advanced is humbled by correction, and by humility he merits. You therefore, when you see yourself humbled, take this as a sign entirely for the good, as an indication that grace is drawing near. For as the heart is exalted before a fall (Prov 16:18), so it is humbled before exaltation. Indeed you read both in Scripture, namely that God both resists the proud and gives grace to the humble (Jas 4:6). Did he not, after all, when he judged that his servant Job, after his remarkable triumph and so great and so proven a patience, should be rewarded with a generous blessing, first take care to humble him in many and searching interrogations, and so prepare the way for the blessing? (Job 38ff.) 2. But it is a small thing if, when God humbles us through himself, we then accept it willingly, unless when he does this also through another, we are similarly wise. Wherefore receive a wonderful lesson of this matter from holy David. Once he was cursed even by a servant; but he did not feel the heaped-up injury, because he foresaw the grace. "What have I to do with you, sons of Sarvia?" he said (2 Sam 16:10). O truly a man after God's own heart, who thought he should be angry with the one avenging him rather than with the one reproaching him! Whence also with a clear conscience he spoke: "If I have repaid those who rendered evil to me, let me rightly fall empty before my enemies" (Ps 7:4). He therefore forbade the restraining of the cursing reviler, reckoning the curses as gain. And he adds: "The Lord sent him to curse David" (2 Sam 16:10). Utterly after God's heart, he who drew his judgment from the heart of God. The cursing tongue raged, and he was attending to what God was doing in secret. The voice of the one cursing was in his ears, and his mind inclined itself to blessing. Was God in the mouth of the blasphemer? By no means! But he used him for humbling David. Nor was this hidden from the Prophet; for God had manifested to him the uncertain and hidden things of his wisdom (Ps 50:8), and therefore he says: "It is good for me that you have humbled me, that I may learn your statutes" (Ps 118:71). 3. You see that humility justifies us? I said humility, and not humiliation. How many are humiliated who are not humble? Some are humiliated with resentment, others patiently, others even gladly. The first are guilty, the next are innocent, the last are just. Although innocence too is a portion of justice, yet the consummation of it is found in the humble person; and he who can say, "It is good for me that you have humbled me," he is truly humble. He who tolerates it unwillingly cannot say this; still less, he who murmurs. To neither of these do we promise grace because he is humiliated: although indeed these two differ greatly from one another, and the one possesses his soul in his patience, while the other perishes in his murmuring. But truly even if one avoids wrath, neither merits grace; because God gives grace not to the humiliated, but to the humble. Now he is humble who converts humiliation into humility, and he it is who says to God: "It is good for me that you have humbled me." For no one at all is it a good thing that he bears patiently; it is plainly burdensome. But we know that God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor 9:7). Whence also when we fast, we are commanded to anoint our head with oil and to wash our face (Mt 6:17), so that our good work may be seasoned with a certain spiritual joy, and our holocaust may become rich. For only joyful and unconstrained humility merits the grace which it displays. For that which is forced or extorted, such as is indeed found in that patient man who possesses his soul: this humility, I say, although it obtains life on account of patience, will nevertheless not have grace on account of its sadness. For that word of Scripture does not suit him who is of this sort: "Let the humble man glory in his exaltation" (Jas 1:9); since he is not humbled willingly, nor gladly. 4. But do you wish to see a humble man rightly glorying, and truly worthy of glory? "Gladly," he says, "will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me" (2 Cor 12:9). He does not say that he patiently bears his infirmities, but that he even glories, and gladly glories in them, proving also that it is good for him that he is humbled; nor is it at all sufficient that he possess his soul as one patiently humbled, unless he also receives grace as one voluntarily humbled. But hear hence the general rule: "Everyone who humbles himself," he says, "will be exalted" (Lk 14:11). He signifies indeed that not every humility will be exalted, but only that which comes from the will, not from sadness, nor from necessity. Nor indeed, conversely, will everyone who is exalted be humbled; but only he who exalts himself will be humbled, namely on account of voluntary vanity. So therefore not he who is humbled, but he who voluntarily humbles himself, will be exalted; namely on account of the merit of the will. For suppose that the matter of humility is furnished through another, for example, reproaches, losses, punishments; not on that account will that man rightly be said to have been humbled by another rather than by himself, who has determined that all those things are to be undergone with a quiet and joyful conscience, for the sake of God. 5. But where are we going? Patiently, as I perceive, you endure this digression in a discourse on humility and patience; but let us return to the place from which we departed. For this occurred to us from the occasion of the response by which the bridegroom judged that the bride, who was presuming great things, should be checked, and not to her foolishness; but so that from it an occasion of more praiseworthy and greater humility might be given, through which she would become more worthy of greater things and more capable of those very things she was seeking. Nevertheless, because we are still at the threshold of the present chapter, let us begin the discussion of it, if you please, at the start of another sermon, especially lest the words of the bridegroom be either recounted or heard with tedium. May he himself avert this from his servants, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God over all things, blessed forever. Amen.”

“The Bridegroom Reproves the Bride — Two Kinds of Ignorance 1. "If you do not know yourself, go forth." What a hard and bitter reproof: "Go forth." This is the kind of language that slaves hear from masters smarting with anger, or slave-girls from mistresses they have gravely offended: "Get out of here, get away from me, clear out of my sight, away from this house." And this kind of harsh and bitter expression, extremely reproachful, is now used by the Bridegroom against his beloved, but with this condition: if she does not know herself. Nothing he could say was more warranted to frighten her than the threat that she should go forth. And you can see this if you think well on the place she is to go forth from and where she is told to go. From where and to where, if not from the spirit to the flesh, from things that are the soul's delight to desire of earthy pleasures, from the inward repose of the mind to the world's clattering bustle where worry allows no peace; in all of which there is nothing but toil and sorrow and spiritual suffering. The soul has been taught by the Lord and received the power to enter into itself, to long for the presence of God in its inmost depths, to seek his face continually -- for God is a spirit, and those who seek him ought to walk by the promptings of the Spirit rather than of the flesh, lest they live according to the flesh. Would that soul regard a temporary experience of hell as more horrible, more punitive, than having once tasted the sweetness of this spiritual desire, to have to go out again to the allurements or rather the irksome demands of the flesh, and be involved as before in the insatiable prurience of the body's senses? Ecclesiastes says: "The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing." Listen to a man who has experienced the things I speak of: "The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him." To attempt to turn this holy man away from that good, would cause him to feel as if driven out of Paradise, from the very gateway to glory. Listen to another man with a similar experience: "My heart says to you: 'My face has sought you;' your face, O Lord, I shall seek." Whence he said: "It is good for me to adhere to God;" and he addresses his soul with the words: "Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you." Therefore I say to you: There is nothing so feared by a man who has once received this favor, than, abandoned by grace, to have to go out again to the fleshly consolations, which are really desolations, and to endure once more the tumult of physical desire. 2. "Go forth and pasture your kids:" it is a terrible, an awe-inspiring threat. As much as to say: know yourself unworthy of that familiar and sweet contemplation of things heavenly, things of the spirit, divine things. Therefore go forth from that heart of yours which has been my sanctuary, where it was your custom to drink sweet draughts from the secret, holy teachings of truth and wisdom; be like a woman of the world, become entangled in pandering to the nourishment and delights of your flesh. Since through them sin enters the soul like death through the windows, he calls the restless, wanton senses of the body kids, which signifies sin -- at the judgment they are to be placed on the left. The words that follow in the text, "beside the shepherds' tents," agree suitably with this interpretation. For unlike lambs, kids are fed not above but beside the shepherds' tents. Even though during the days of their service here below they dwell in tents set upon the earth and made of earth, namely, their own bodies, shepherds who are worthy of the name are accustomed to feed the flocks of the Lord with food from the heavenly pastures, not from the earth; it is the Lord's will that they preach, not their own. The kids however, the bodily senses, do not need heavenly things, but staying beside the shepherds' tents, they choose their foods from all the material goods of this world, which is the body's sphere; but desire, far from being satisfied, is but stimulated by these foods. 3. What a shameful change of occupation! Her previous occupation was to nourish her exiled pilgrim soul with holy meditations, feeding on heavenly truths, to seek after God's good-pleasure and the mysteries of his will, to penetrate the heavens by the power of her love and wander in thought through the abodes of the blessed, to pay homage to the patriarchs and apostles and throngs of prophets, to admire the triumphs of the martyrs and be lost in wonder at the superb beauty of the angel choirs. Now she has to abandon all these, and subject herself to the shameful task of serving the body, of obeying the flesh; she must satisfy stomach and palate, and beg throughout the world, this world whose form is passing away, for the means to gratify in some degree her perpetually ravenous curiosity. My tears flow like streams for a soul in this plight: she who once fed so delicately now lies grovelling on the dunghill. One may say with the blessed Job that she fed the barren, childless woman and did no good to the widow. It is worth noting that he did not simply tell her to go forth, but to go after the flocks of her companions and to feed her kids. It seems to me that here he is warning us of something very important. What is that? Alas! that one who was so excellent, at one time a member of the flock and now, in wretched decline from bad to worse, is not permitted to remain with the flocks but commanded to go behind them. You ask what I mean. You yourselves can read: "When man was being honored, he did not understand; and now he is compared to senseless beasts and becomes like them." That is how one so excellent is made one of the flock. And the brutes, if they could speak, would surely say: "See, Adam has become like one of us." He who was being honored! "How honored?" you ask. His dwelling was in Paradise, he spent his days in the midst of delights. His food the sweet-smelling apples, his bed the flowered banks, he was crowned with glory and honor, made keeper of the things his Creator had made, and knew neither trouble nor want. A gift still more sublime was the divine likeness he bore, that destined him for companionship with the angel hosts, with the multitudes of heaven's armies. 4. But he "exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass." That is why the bread of angels became like grass in the manger, set before us for the beasts that we are. For the Word was made flesh, and according to the Prophet, all flesh is grass. But the grass of the Word has not been withered nor has its bloom turned pale, because the Spirit of the Lord has rested upon him. And even though the grass may wither and the flower fade, the Word of the Lord remains forever. Therefore if the grass is the Word, and the Word remains forever, the grass too of necessity remains forever. How could it bestow eternal life if it did not itself remain forever? 5. Let us ponder together on the voice of the Son addressing the Father in the words of the Psalm. "You will not allow your Holy One to see corruption." He is obviously speaking of the body that lay lifeless in the tomb. This is that same Holy One of whom the angel spoke when he announced to the Virgin Mary: "The Holy One to be born of you will be called the Son of God." How could it be possible for that holy grass to see corruption, sprouting as it was in the spring-like meadows, perpetually green, of an incorruptible womb? It can even hold fast the eager eyes of the angels in a joy that will never grow weary. The grass will lose its freshness only if Mary will lose her virginity. And so he who is food for man has changed himself into fodder for beasts, because man has been changed into a beast. Alas! a sad and pitiable change, that man, a native of Paradise, lord of the earth, citizen of heaven, member of the household of the Lord of hosts, a brother of the blessed spirits and co-heir of the heavenly powers, finds himself lying in a stable by a sudden transformation due to his own weakness, in need of grass because of his animal likeness, and tied to the manger because of his untamed roughness. As it is written: "Curbed by bit and bridle, the jaws of those who will not stay close to you." Acknowledge, O ox, your owner and you, ass, your Lord's crib, that God's Prophets may be found trustworthy in their foretelling of these wonderful works of God. Acknowledge, Beast, him whom in your human condition you did not acknowledge; adore in the stable him from whom you fled in Paradise; pay honor now to the crib of one whose rule you scorned; eat now as grass him for whom as bread, the Bread of angels, you lost all taste. 6. You ask: "What is the cause of this debasement?" Simply that when man was in honor he lacked understanding. What did he not understand? The Psalmist does not explain, but let me explain. Placed in a position of honor, he was so intrigued by the dignity of his rank that he did not understand that he was but clay, and soon experienced in himself what a member of the captive race both wisely noted and truly expressed at a much later date: "If anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself." Woe to that first unhappy man that no one was then present who could say to him: "Dust and ashes, why are you proud?" From then on this fairest of creatures was reduced to the level of the herd; from then on the likeness of God was changed to the likeness of a beast; from then on association with the animals took the place of fellowship with the angels. You see how careful we must be to shun this ignorance that has brought evils by the thousands on the whole human race! For the Psalmist compares man to the senseless beasts, for the reason that he lacked understanding. We must avoid ignorance at any cost, or if we are found to be still without understanding even after chastisement, more serious evils than the former will multiply upon us and it will be said of us: "We tried to cure Babylon; she has gotten no better." And rightly so, if the chastisement has failed to make us understand what we have heard. 7. And see if perhaps it was not for this reason that the Bridegroom, in order to fill his beloved with a fear of this ignorance by the thunder of his threatening, did not say "Go forth with the flocks," or "go forth to the flocks," but "Go forth after the flocks of your companions." Why does he speak in this manner? Surely for the purpose of showing that the second ignorance was more to be feared, to be ashamed of, than the first, for the first brought man to a level with the beasts, the latter made him lower. Because men, unaccepted or reprobated on account of their ignorance, have to stand before the dreaded judgment seat and be committed to the unquenchable fire, but not so the beasts. Men of this type will fare worse in relation to the beasts than if they did not exist at all. "It would have been better for that man," he said, "if he had not been born." He does not mean if he had not been born at all, but if he had not been born a man; better to have been a beast or any other irrational creature, which, since it lacks the faculty of judging, will not be brought to judgment, nor through this to punishment. The rational soul then, that is ashamed of its first ignorance, should remember that though it has beasts for companions in the enjoyment of earthly goods, it will not have their company in its endurance of hell's torments; that it will ultimately be banished with shame even from the flocks of its bestial companions; that it will not travel with them but plainly after them; for when they shall have ceased to feel any evil, it will be exposed to evils of all kinds from which it will never be set free, if indeed it has added the second ignorance to the first. Accordingly man goes forth and walks alone after the flocks of his companions, since he alone is thrust into the pit of hell. Does he not seem to you to hold the last place who is bound hands and feet and thrown out into the dark? The last state of that man will obviously be worse than the former, for then he was on terms of equality with the beasts, now he is reduced to a lower condition. 8. If you pay close attention, I think you will decide that even in this life man has a lower position than the beasts. Do you not think that man endowed with reason but failing to live reasonably is more of a beast than the beasts themselves? For if the beast does not control himself by reason he has an excuse based on his very nature, for that gift was totally denied to him; but man has no excuse, because reason is a special prerogative of his nature. A man then in this condition is rightly judged to go forth from the company of other living creatures and drop to a lower level, since he is the only creature who violates the laws of his nature by a degenerate way of life. Gifted with reason, he imitates those who lack it in what he does and in what he loves. It is demonstrably clear therefore, that man is inferior to the herds, in this life by the depravity of his nature, in the next by the severity of the punishment. 9. That is how a man becomes accursed when he is found to be ignorant of God. Or should I say ignorant of self? I must include both: the two kinds of ignorance are damnable, either is enough to incur damnation. And do you want to know why? It should be perfectly obvious about ignorance of God if you can see that there is only one eternal life: to acknowledge the Father as true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. Therefore hear the Bridegroom plainly and openly condemning the soul's ignorance of itself. For what does he say? Not "if you do not know God," but "if you do not know yourself." It is clear therefore that he who does not know will not be known, whether the ignorance refers to himself or to God.”

“The Acquiring of Knowledge 1. Here I am as I promised; here I am, both in compliance with your request and to give to God the service I owe him. Three reasons therefore compel me to speak to you: fidelity to my promise, brotherly love, and the fear of the Lord. If I refuse to speak, my own mouth condemns me. But what if I do speak? Then I dread a similar judgment, that my mouth will condemn me as one who speaks but fails to accomplish. Help me therefore with your prayers that I may always speak as I ought, and act in accord with my words. You are aware that I propose to speak today of ignorance, or rather of different kinds of ignorance. You remember I mentioned two kinds, one with regard to ourselves, the other with regard to God. And I warned that we must beware of these two, because both are reprehensible. It remains for me now to expound this more clearly and at greater length. But first I think we must try to discover if all ignorance is reprehensible. It seems to me that this is not true - nor does all ignorance occasion loss - since there are various and countless things of which one may know nothing without detriment to salvation. If you are ignorant of the craftsman's art, for example that of the carpenter or mason, or any other craft practiced by men for the purposes of the present life, does this prevent your being saved? But while unacquainted with any of the liberal arts though not denying that they may be learned and practiced for honorable and useful ends - how many people are saved by living well and doing good, those whom the Apostle mentions in the Epistle to the Hebrews, men who were dear to God not because of knowledge of literature but because of a good conscience and a sincere faith? They all pleased God in their lives by the merits of their lives, not by their knowledge. Peter and Andrew and the sons of Zebedee, and all the other disciples, were not chosen from a school of rhetoric or philosophy; and yet through them the Savior made his salvation effective throughout the world. Unlike a certain holy man who made this claim for himself, it was not because their wisdom surpassed that of all other living men, but because of their faith and meekness, that he made them his friends, sanctified them, and appointed them teachers. And when they revealed to the world the paths of life, it was not with sublime language or the polished words of human wisdom. Rather it pleased God, since the world in its wisdom did not recognize him, that through the foolishness of their preaching believers should be saved. 2. Perhaps you think that I have sullied too much the good name of knowledge, that I have cast aspersions on the learned and proscribed the study of letters. God forbid! I am not unmindful of the benefits its scholars conferred, and still confer, on the Church, both by refuting her opponents and instructing the simple. And I have read the text: "As you have rejected knowledge, so do I reject you from my priesthood;" read that the learned will shine as brightly as the vault of heaven, and those who have instructed many in virtue as bright as stars for all eternity. But I recall reading too that knowledge puffs up, and "the more the knowledge, the more the sorrow." There are then different kinds of knowledge, one contributing to self-importance, the other to sadness. Which of the two do you think is more useful or necessary to salvation, the one that makes you vain or the one that makes you weep? I feel sure you would prefer the latter to the former, for vanity but pretends to health whereas pain expresses a need. Anyone who thus demands is on the way to being saved, because the one who asks receives. Furthermore, Paul tells us that he who heals the brokenhearted abhors the proud: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." Paul also said, "By the grace given to me I bid every one among you not to think more than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment." He does not forbid thinking, but inordinate thinking. And what is meant by thinking with sober judgment? It means taking the utmost care to discover what are the essential and primary truths, for the time is short. All knowledge is good in itself, provided it be founded on the truth; but since because of the brevity of time you are in a hurry to work out your salvation in fear and trembling, take care to learn, principally and primarily, the doctrines on which your salvation is more intimately dependent. Do not doctors of medicine hold that part of the work of healing depends on a right choice in the taking of food, what to take first, what next, and the amount of each kind to be eaten? For although it is clear that all the foods God made are good, if you fail to take the right amount in due order, you obviously take them to the detriment of your health. And what I say about foods I want you to apply to the various kinds of knowledge. 3. I prefer though to let you consult the Master. The doctrine I have preached is not really mine but his; though mine as well insofar as it is the word of him who is Truth. For Paul said: "If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know." He does not approve of the well-read man who observes no scale of values in the knowledge he possesses. See how the fruit and usefulness of knowledge is determined by the manner in which one knows. And what does that manner imply? It implies the order, the application, and the sense of purpose with which one approaches the object of study. The order implies that we give precedence to all that aids spiritual progress; the application, that we pursue more eagerly all that strengthens love more; and the purpose, that we pursue it not through vain-glory or inquisitiveness or any base motive, but for the welfare of oneself or one's neighbor. For there are some who long to know for the sole purpose of knowing, and that is shameful curiosity; others who long to know in order to become known, and that is shameful vanity. To such as these we may apply the words of the Satirist: "Your knowledge counts for nothing unless your friends know you have it." There are others still who long for knowledge in order to sell its fruits for money or honors, and this is shameful profiteering; others again who long to know in order to be of service, and this is charity. Finally there are those who long to know in order to benefit themselves, and this is prudence. 4. Of all these categories, only the last two avoid the abuse of knowledge, because they desire to know for the purpose of doing good. People with sound judgment act in this way. Let all others heed the warning: he who knows what he ought to do and fails to do it, commits sin; just as food eaten but not digested is injurious to one's health. Food that is badly cooked and indigestible induces physical disorders and damages the body instead of nourishing it. In the same way if a glut of knowledge stuffed in the memory, that stomach of the mind, has not been cooked on the fire of love, and transfused and digested by certain skills of the soul, its habits and actions - since, as life and conduct bear witness, the mind is rendered good through its knowledge of good - will not that knowledge be reckoned sinful, like the food that produces irregular and harmful humors? Is not sin a humor of evil? Are not bad habits humors of evil? Will not a man in this condition suffer in his conscience inflammations and torments, since he does not act as he knows he should? And will he not find within himself the threat of death and damnation as often as he calls to mind the saying of God, that the man who knows what his Lord wants, but fails to respond as he should, will receive many strokes of the lash? Perhaps the Prophet was lamenting in the guise of such a man when he said: "There is an anguish within me, anguish within!" Or perhaps the repetition of the woes hint at a different meaning that I ought to follow up. It is possible that the Prophet spoke these words in his own person when, filled with a knowledge and overflowing with a love that he longed with all his soul to communicate, he found no one who wanted to listen; the knowledge that he could not impart became a burden on his mind. This holy teacher of the Church therefore, bewails both those who scorn to learn how to live, and those who, knowing the truth, yet live evil lives. This could explain the prophet's repetition of those words. 5. Do you not see then, how truly the Apostle perceived that knowledge puffs up? I wish therefore that before everything else a man should know himself, because not only usefulness but right order demand this. Right order, since what we are is our first concern; and usefulness, because this knowledge gives humility rather than self-importance, it provides a basis on which to build. For unless there is a durable foundation of humility, the spiritual edifice has no hope of standing. And there is nothing more effective, more adapted to the acquiring of humility, than to find out the truth about oneself. There must be no dissimulation, no attempt at self-deception, but a facing up to one's real self without flinching and turning aside. When a man thus takes stock of himself in the clear light of truth, he will discover that he lives in a region where likeness to God has been forfeited, and groaning from the depths of a misery to which he can no longer remain blind, will he not cry out to the Lord as the Prophet did: "In your truth you have humbled me"? How can he escape being genuinely humbled on acquiring this true self-knowledge, on seeing the burden of sin that he carries, the oppressive weight of his mortal body, the complexities of earthly cares, the corrupting influence of sensual desires; on seeing his blindness, his worldliness, his weakness, his embroilment in repeated errors; on seeing himself exposed to a thousand dangers, trembling amid a thousand fears, confused by a thousand difficulties, defenseless before a thousand suspicions, worried by a thousand needs; one to whom vice is welcome, virtue repugnant? Can this man afford the haughty eyes, the proud lift of the head? With the thorns of his misery pricking him, will he not rather be changed for the better? Let him be changed and weep, changed to mourning and sighing, changed to acceptance of the Lord, to whom in his lowliness he will say: "Heal me because I have sinned against you." He will certainly find consolation in this turning to the Lord, because he is "the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort." 6. As for me, as long as I look at myself, my eye is filled with bitterness. But if I look up and fix my eyes on the aid of the divine mercy, this happy vision of God soon tempers the bitter vision of myself, and I say to him: "I am disturbed within so I will call you to mind from the land of the Jordan." This vision of God is not a little thing. It reveals him to us as listening compassionately to our prayers, as truly kind and merciful, as one who will not indulge his resentment. His very nature is to be good, to show mercy always and to spare. By this kind of experience, and in this way, God makes himself known to us for our good. When a man first discovers that he is in difficulties, he will cry out to the Lord who will hear him and say: "I will deliver you and you shall glorify me." In this way your self-knowledge will be a step to the knowledge of God; he will become visible to you according as his image is being renewed within you. And you, gazing confidently on the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, will be transformed into that same image with ever increasing brightness, by the work of the Spirit of the Lord. 7. You can see now how each of these kinds of knowledge is so necessary for your salvation, that you cannot be saved if you lack either of them. If you lack self-knowledge you will possess neither the fear of God nor humility. And whether you may presume to be saved without the fear of God and humility, is for you to judge.”

“On the Twofold Knowledge and the Twofold Ignorance, and on the Evils or Losses Which They Beget 1. I think we have no need now to exhort you to be watchful, since without doubt that reproving sermon is keeping you awake, being still recent, which yesterday was charitably delivered by us and well awakened some of you. You hold then in memory that I hold your assent: that no one is saved without knowledge of himself, from which indeed the mother of salvation, humility, arises, and the fear of the Lord, which itself, just as it is the beginning of wisdom, so also is the beginning of salvation. No one, I say, is saved without that knowledge, who yet has the age and faculty of knowing. This I say on account of little children and the mentally deficient, whose case is different. What if you are ignorant of God? Can there be hope of salvation with ignorance of God? Not even this. For you can neither love one whom you do not know, nor possess one whom you have not loved. Know yourself therefore, that you may fear God; know him, that you may likewise appease him. In the one you are initiated into wisdom, in the other you are also brought to perfection, because the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and the fullness of the law is love. Both ignorances therefore must be guarded against by you, just as without the fear and love of God salvation cannot exist. The rest are indifferent, having neither salvation if they are known, nor damnation if they are not known. 2. I do not say, however, that knowledge of letters is to be despised or neglected, which adorns the soul and instructs it, and makes it able to instruct others also. But those two things ought and are expedient to come first, in which the preceding argument declared the sum of salvation to consist. And see whether he was not contemplating and teaching this order who said: Sow for yourselves unto justice, reap the hope of life; and then at last, he says, illuminate for yourselves the light of knowledge. He placed knowledge last, as a painting, which cannot stand upon an empty surface; and therefore he set those two things before it and placed them beneath it, as if he were laying something solid beneath a painting. I shall now attend to knowledge in safety, if first through the benefit of hope I shall have received security of life. You therefore have sown for yourself unto justice, if from true knowledge of yourself you have been awakened to fear God, have humbled yourself, have poured forth tears, have lavished alms, and have given yourself over to other works of piety, if you have afflicted your body with fasts and vigils, if you have wearied your breast with beatings and heaven with cries. For this indeed is to sow unto justice. Good works are the seeds, good pursuits are the seeds; tears are the seeds. They went, he says, and wept, casting their seeds. But what? Shall they weep forever? Far from it! But they shall come with exultation, carrying their sheaves. Rightly with exultation, when they carry back the sheaves of glory. This, you say, will be at the resurrection on the last day, and the waiting is too long. Do not be broken in spirit, do not fail from faintheartedness of spirit; you have in the meantime from the first fruits of the Spirit what you may reap in exultation for the present. Sow, he says, for yourselves unto justice, reap the hope of life. He does not send you now to the last day, when the thing will already be in reality and not in hope; but he speaks of the present. Truly great is the joy and much and exceedingly great the exultation, when life shall have come. 3. But shall the hope of so great a joy be without joy? Rejoicing in hope, says the Apostle. And David said not that he would rejoice but that he had rejoiced, because he hoped he would go into the house of the Lord. He did not yet hold life, but he had assuredly reaped the hope of life; and he was experiencing in himself the truth of the Scripture that testifies that not only the reward but the very expectation of the just is joy. This is brought forth in the soul of the one who has sown for himself unto justice: the presumed pardon of sins, if indeed the pardon itself is attested by the efficacy of grace received for living more holily henceforth. Everyone among you who feels these things being worked within himself knows what the Spirit speaks, whose voice and working never disagree with one another. Therefore he understands the things that are said, because what he hears outwardly he feels inwardly. For he who speaks in us and works in you is one and the same Spirit, dividing to each as he wills: to some indeed to speak, to others to work what is good. 4. Whoever among you therefore, after those bitter and tearful beginnings of his conversion, rejoices that he has breathed again into hope and, lifted up on the wings of grace, has flown forth into a certain serenity of heavenly consolation; he indeed already reaps, receiving the temporal fruit of his tears; and he himself has seen God and has heard the voice of him who says: Give to her from the fruits of her hands. For how has he not seen God, who has tasted and seen that the Lord is sweet? How sweet and gentle you were felt to be, Lord Jesus, by him to whom not only were his sins forgiven by you, but also the gift of holiness was granted; and not that alone, but moreover the promise of eternal life was added to the heap of good things! Happy is he who has already reaped so much, having in the meantime indeed his fruit in sanctification, but the end eternal life! Rightly he who wept upon finding himself rejoiced upon seeing the Lord; at whose merciful regard he has already lifted up such great sheaves: remission, sanctification, hope of life. O how true is the word that is read in the Prophet: They that sow in tears shall reap in exultation. Where both kinds of knowledge are briefly comprehended: the knowledge of ourselves indeed sowing in tears; but the knowledge of God reaping in joy. 5. When therefore this twofold knowledge has gone before in us, knowledge that may perhaps have grown up afterward does not at all puff up, since it can bring nothing of earthly advantage or honor that is not indeed inferior to the hope conceived, and to the joy of hope already more deeply rooted in the soul. But hope does not put to shame, because the love of God has been poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Therefore that hope does not put to shame, because this love pours in certainty. For through this love the Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit that we are children of God. What then could come to us from our knowledge, however great, that would not be less than this glory, by which we are numbered among the children of God? I have said too little: not even the world itself and its fullness can be regarded in comparison with it, even if the whole of it should fall to any one of us as a possession. Moreover, if ignorance of God holds us, how shall we hope in him whom we do not know? If ignorance of ourselves, how shall we be humble, thinking ourselves to be something when we are nothing? But we know that neither the proud nor those in despair have part or fellowship in the lot of the saints. 6. Consider therefore now with me how great the care and solicitude with which we ought to repel from ourselves both these ignorances, of which the one begets the beginning of every sin, the other the consummation; just as of the two kinds of knowledge on the other side, the one begets the beginning of wisdom, the other the perfection: the one the fear of the Lord, the other love. But this concerning the two kinds of knowledge was shown above. Now see concerning the ignorances. For just as the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, so the beginning of all sin is pride; and just as the love of God claims for itself the perfection of wisdom, so despair claims for itself the full consummation of all wickedness. And just as from knowledge of yourself the fear of God comes into you, and from knowledge of God the love of God likewise; so on the contrary, from ignorance of yourself comes pride, and from ignorance of God comes despair. But ignorance of yourself begets pride in you in this way: when your deceived and deceiving thought falsely tells you that you are better than you are. This indeed is pride, this is the beginning of all sin, when you are greater in your own eyes than before God, than in truth. And therefore he who first sinned this great sin (I speak of the devil), of him it was said that he stood not in the truth, but is a liar from the beginning; because what he was in his own thought, he was not in truth. What if he had disagreed with truth in this, that he thought himself lesser and lower than the truth held him to be? His ignorance would without doubt excuse him, and he would not at all be reckoned proud, nor would his iniquity be found so much to be for hatred, as his humility perhaps for grace. For if we could clearly know in what state God holds each one of us, we should neither depart above nor below, acquiescing in the truth in all things. But now, because this counsel has placed darkness as its hiding place, and the word is hidden from us, so that no one knows whether he is worthy of love or of hatred, more justly and more safely surely, according to the counsel of Truth itself, we choose for ourselves the last place, from which afterward we may be led up higher with honor, than we presume a higher place, from which we must soon withdraw with shame. 7. There is therefore no danger, however much you humble yourself, however much you think yourself less than you are, that is, less than the truth holds you to be. But it is a great evil and a dreadful danger if you exalt yourself even slightly beyond the truth, if in your thought you set yourself before even one person whom the truth perhaps judges to be your equal, or even your superior. For just as if you were passing through a doorway whose lintel, to speak so as to be understood, were too low, it would not harm you however much you stooped; but it would harm you if you raised yourself even a finger's breadth more than the measure of the door allows, so that you would strike and be bruised with your head battered; so in the soul there is plainly no humiliation however great to be feared, but rather the slightest self-exaltation rashly presumed is to be dreaded and exceedingly feared. Wherefore do not compare yourself, O man, to those greater, nor to those lesser, nor to any, nor to one. For what do you know, O man, whether that one person whom you perhaps consider the most vile and most miserable of all, whose most wicked and singularly foul life you shudder at, and on that account you think him to be despised not only in comparison with yourself, who perhaps already trust that you live soberly, and justly, and piously, but also in comparison with all other sinners as the most sinful of all -- what do you know, I say, whether by the change of the right hand of the Most High he is to be better than both you and them in himself, and indeed in God already is? And for this reason he willed us to choose not a middling place, not even the second to last, not even a place among the last, but: sit down, he says, in the last place; so that you alone sit as the last of all, and do not, I will not say place yourself before anyone, but do not presume even to compare yourself to anyone. Behold how great an evil comes from ignorance of ourselves: namely, the sin of the devil and the beginning of all sin, pride. What ignorance of God also brings forth, we shall see another time. For now the shortness of the hour does not permit, since today we assembled late. Let it therefore suffice for now that each one has been admonished not to be ignorant of himself, not only by our sermon but also by the condescension of the Bridegroom of the Church himself, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“Ignorance of God Leads to Despair; the Beauty of the Bride 1. To what then does ignorance of God lead? We must begin here, for this is where, as you will recall, we finished yesterday. What does it lead to? I have already told you: despair. Now I shall explain how. Imagine a man who decides to take stock of his way of life, who, unhappy in his sinful conduct, wants to reform and abandon his evil and carnal ways. If he does not know how good God is, how kind and gentle, how willing to pardon, will not his sensually-inspired reason argue with him and say: "What are you doing? Do you want to lose this life and the next? Your sins are too grave and too many; nothing that you do, even to stripping the skin from your flesh, can make satisfaction for them. Your constitution is delicate, you have lived softly, a lifetime's habits are not easily conquered." Dismayed by these and similar arguments, the unhappy man quits the struggle, not knowing how easily God's omnipotent goodness could overthrow all these obstacles, since he wills that no man should perish. Instead there is final impenitence, the greatest crime of all, an unforgivable blasphemy. In his agitation he is either swallowed up by excessive sadness and lost in a deep depression from which he will never have the consolation of emerging, in accord with scripture's saying that the wicked man shows only contempt when caught in the midst of evils; or he will dissimulate, flatter himself with false reasonings and, as far as in him lies, surrender irrevocably to the world, to find his pleasure and delight in what advantages it offers. But just when he believes that he has peace and security, misfortunes of all kinds will overwhelm him and he will not escape. Thus despair, the greatest evil of all, follows on ignorance of God. 2. The Apostle says that there are some who have no knowledge of God. My opinion is that all those who lack knowledge of God are those who refuse to turn to him. I am certain that they refuse because they imagine this kindly disposed God to be harsh and severe, this merciful God to be callous and inflexible, this lovable God to be cruel and oppressive. So it is that wickedness plays false to itself, setting up for itself an image that does not represent him. What are you afraid of, you men of little faith? That he will not pardon your sins? But with his own hands he has nailed them to the cross. That you are used to soft living and your tastes are fastidious? But he is aware of our weakness. That a prolonged habit of sinning binds you like a chain? But the Lord loosens the shackles of prisoners. Or perhaps angered by the enormity and frequency of your sins he is slow to extend a helping hand? But where sin abounded, grace became superabundant. Are you worried about clothing and food and other bodily necessities so that you hesitate to give up your possessions? But he knows that you need all these things. What more can you wish? What else is there to hold you back from the way of salvation? This is what I say: you do not know God, yet you will not believe what we have heard. I should like you to believe those whom experience has taught, for "if you do not believe you will not understand." Not everyone however, has faith. 3. God forbid that we should think the bride has been admonished on the grounds of ignorance of God, for she has been gifted not merely with great knowledge of him who is both her Bridegroom and God, but with his friendship and familiar intercourse. She has enjoyed his frequent colloquys and kisses, and with a daring born of this intimacy can say to him: "Tell me where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon." It is not he that she demands to be shown, but the place where his glory dwells, although his domicile and his glory are no other than himself. But he thinks fit to reprove her on account of her presumption, and hints that she lacks self-knowledge by judging herself ready for a vision so great: in her excitement she may have overlooked that she was still living on this earth, or hoped against hope that even while still in this earthly body she could draw near to his inaccessible brightness. Hence he at once recalls her to her senses, proves her ignorance to her, and reprimands her boldness: "If you do not know yourself," he told her, "go forth." Here the Bridegroom speaks to his beloved not as a bridegroom, but with the awesome tones of a master. He is not venting his anger; his intention is to inspire the fear that purifies, that by this purification she may be made ready for the vision she longs for. It is a vision reserved for the pure of heart. 4. How aptly he describes her as beautiful, not in every sense, but beautiful among women; a qualification meant to restrain her, to enable her to know her limitations. I believe that by women he means people who are sensual and worldly, people devoid of manliness, whose conduct lacks both fortitude and constancy, people who are entirely superficial, soft and effeminate in their lives and behavior. But the person who is spiritual, although enjoying a beauty that comes from following the ways of the Spirit rather than the ways of the flesh, will still fall short of perfect beauty by the fact of living in the body. Hence the bride is not beautiful from every aspect, but beautiful among women, among people whose ideals are worldly, people who, unlike herself, are not spiritual; but not among the angels in their bliss, not among the Virtues, the Powers, the Dominations. And just as one of the Fathers was said to be a man of integrity among his contemporaries, surpassing all of his time and generation, and Tamar is shown to be righteous when compared with Judah, that is, more righteous than he, and the tax collector in the Gospel is said to have gone down from the temple at rights with God rather than the Pharisee, and even as the great John was once magnificently acclaimed as having no rival for greatness, but only among those born of women, not among the blessed choirs of heavenly spirits, so the bride is declared beautiful now, but, for the time being, among women, and not among the blessed spirits of heaven. 5. Therefore as long as she is on earth she must cease from searching too curiously into the nature of the things of heaven, lest by intruding on God's majesty she be overwhelmed by glory. As long as she lives among women she must refrain from prying into the truths that are proper to the citizens of heaven, truths that are visible to them alone, lawful for them alone; heaven's realities are for its citizens. "The vision that you ask for, Bride of mine, is above your capacity, you are as yet unable to gaze upon that sublime noontide brightness that is my dwelling place. You have asked where I pasture my flocks, the place where I rest at noon. But to be drawn up through the clouds, to penetrate to where light is total, to plunge through seas of splendor and make your home where light is unapproachable, that is beyond the scope of an earthly life or an earthly body. That is reserved for you at the end of all things, when I shall take you, all glorious, to myself, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. Do you not know that as long as you live in the body you are exiled from the light? With your beauty still incomplete how can you consider yourself fit to gaze on beauty in its totality? And why should you want to see me in my splendor, while you still do not know yourself? Because if you had a better knowledge of yourself you would know that, burdened with a perishable body, you cannot possibly lift up your eyes and fix them on this radiant light that the angels long to contemplate. The time will come when I shall reveal myself, and your beauty will be complete, just as my beauty is complete; you will be so like me that you will see me as I am. Then you will be told: "You are all fair my love, there is no flaw in you." But for now, though there is some resemblance, there is also some want of resemblance, and you must be content with an imperfect knowledge. Be aware of what you are, do not hanker after truths that are too high for you, nor for experiences beyond your power to bear. Otherwise, you do not know yourself, O beautiful among women — for ever I give you the title beautiful, but beautiful among women, with a beauty that is imperfect. When the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. Therefore, "If you do not know yourself...." But the words that follow have been dealt with, and there is no need to deal with them again. I promised to put some helpful thoughts before you about the two kinds of ignorance; if I have failed to satisfy you fully, give me credit for my good-will. For I certainly have the will to do it, but the means to accomplish it I do not have, except in so far as the Church's Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, enables me by his kindness to work for your well-being. May he be blessed for ever. Amen.”

“"To my company of horsemen amid Pharaoh's chariots have I likened you, O my love." For a start we are free to infer from these words that the Fathers prefigured the Church, and that the mysteries of our salvation were foreshown to them. The grace of baptism that both saves men and washes sins away, is clearly expressed in the exodus of Israel from Egypt, when the sea performed that twofold marvel of service in providing a passage for the people and taking vengeance on their enemies. "Our fathers were all under the cloud," said St Paul, "and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea." But as usual I must show the sequence of the words, the connection between the present text and those we have already dealt with, and draw from them as well as I can some consoling doctrine to improve our lives. So when the bride is harshly rebuked for her presumption, lest she succumb to sadness, she is reminded of the favors she has already received and promised that others are to come. He even acknowledges again her beauty and calls her his love. "My love," he says, "if I have spoken to you harshly, do not suspect me of hating you or of being spiteful, for the very gifts with which I have honored and adorned you are clear signs of my love for you. Far from intending to withdraw them I shall add still more." Or he could say it this way: "My love, do not be disappointed that your request is not being answered now; you have already received quite a lot from me, and even greater favors will be yours if you follow my directions and persevere in my love." The text may thus be linked up with the previous ones. 2. Now let us see what those gifts are that he says he has bestowed on her. The first is that he has compared her to his horsemen amid Pharaoh's chariots: by putting to death all the flesh's sinful tendencies he has freed her from the bondage of sin, just as his people were freed from the slavery of Egypt when the chariots of Pharaoh were overturned and swallowed up in the sea. That is surely a very great mercy, and I shall not be foolish if I wish to glory in having received it. I speak only the truth. I declare and will go on declaring: "If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would soon have found its dwelling in hell." I am neither ungrateful nor forgetful, I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. But this is as far as I compare myself with the bride. As for the rest, by a unique privilege after her deliverance she has been accepted as his beloved and adorned with a splendor befitting the Lord's own bride, but for the present time only on the cheeks and neck. She has been promised necklaces for ornamentation, made of costly gold, inlaid with beautiful silver. Can anyone not be entirely pleased with such an endowment? Firstly his mercy sets her free, secondly he favors her with his love, thirdly he makes her clean and pure, and finally he promises to enrich her with gems of rarest quality. 3. I have no doubt that some of you understand what I am saying from your own experience, which enables you even to anticipate my words. But running through my mind is the verse: "The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple," and because of these I feel that a little more extensive treatment is justified. For wisdom is a kindly spirit that is pleased with a teacher who is kind and diligent, who, despite his anxiety to gratify his intelligent students, does not hesitate to adapt himself to the backward ones. Wisdom herself says that they who explain her shall have life everlasting, a reward I would by no means be deprived of. For even those matters whose meaning seems obvious have certain aspects that can be obscure, and time is not wasted in discussing them in more detail with capacious and quick-witted minds. 4. But now let us take a look at the comparison drawn from Pharaoh and his army and the horsemen of the Lord. The comparison is not between the two armies, they are merely the basis of it. For light and darkness have nothing in common, the faithful no partnership with the unfaithful. But there is a clear comparison between the person who is holy and spiritual and the horsemen of the Lord, and between Pharaoh and the devil and both their armies. And do not be surprised that one person is compared to a company of horsemen, for if that one person is holy an army of virtues is at hand: well-ordered affections, disciplined habits, prayers like burnished weapons, actions charged with energy, awesome zeal, and finally unrelenting conflicts with the enemy and repeated victories. Hence in later texts we read: "Terrible as an army set in array," and "What shall you see in the Shulamite but the companies of the camps?" If this explanation fails to satisfy you, then recall that the spiritual person is never without a company of angels who display a divine jealousy in guarding her for her husband, to present her to Christ as a pure bride. And do not say to yourself: "Where are they? Who has seen them?" The prophet Elisha saw them and obtained by his prayers that Gehazi should see them, too. You do not see them because you are neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. The patriarch Jacob saw them and exclaimed: "This is God's camp." The Teacher of the Nations saw them and said: "Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to serve for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation?" 5. The bride therefore, progressing on her course with the support of ministering angels, with the aid of the heavenly host, does resemble the horsemen of the Lord that by a stupendous miracle of divine power once triumphed over the chariots of Pharaoh. If you pay careful attention, the wonder aroused in you by the magnificent achievements in the Red Sea can still be aroused by the achievements of today. Rather her victories today are even more magnificent, for the physical exploits of that occasion find spiritual fulfillment now. Surely you see that greater courage is shown and greater glory achieved in overthrowing the devil rather than Pharaoh, in conquering spiritual powers rather than Pharaoh's chariots? There the battle was waged against flesh and blood; here it is waged against sovereignties and powers, against the forces that control this world's darkness, the spiritual army of evil in the heavens. Let us examine together the details of this comparison. There you have a people rescued from Egypt, here man is rescued from the world; there Pharaoh is vanquished, here the devil; there Pharaoh's chariots are overturned, here the passions of the flesh that attack the soul are being undermined; there it was the waves that triumphed, here our tears; the former with the sea's might, the latter in bitterness. If the demons encounter a soul of this quality I can hear them now crying out: "Let us flee from before Israel, for the Lord is fighting for him." Would you wish me to designate some of Pharaoh's captains by their proper names, and describe his chariots for you, so that you may discover for yourselves if there be any others like them: One mighty captain of the spiritual and invisible king of Egypt is Malice, another is Sensuality, another Avarice. Each of them possesses, under his king, the territory assigned to him. Malice therefore is in command wherever the wicked commit their crimes, Sensuality presides over shameful rites of lust, while thievery and fraud are within the domain of Avarice. 6. And now let us look at the chariots prepared by Pharaoh for his princes to persecute the people of God. Malice has a chariot with four wheels named Cruelty, Impatience, Recklessness and Impudence. This chariot's swift sorties mean the shedding of blood, nor can it be stopped by innocence, nor delayed by patience, nor checked by fear nor inhibited by shame. It is drawn by two vicious horses ready to destroy as they go, earthly Power and worldly Pomp. They are the source of its dazzling speed, for Power gallops where evil beckons, and Pomp courts popular favor in pursuit of dishonest ends. Hence the Psalmist says that the sinner is praised for his evil desires and the dishonest man gets a blessing; hence, too, the other words: "This is your hour and the power of darkness." And these two horses are driven by two coachmen called Arrogance and Envy; Arrogance drives Pomp, Envy urges on Power. The former is borne rapidly along by a diabolical love of vain display that fills his heart. But the man with genuine self-possession, who is prudently circumspect, seriously concerned about modesty, firmly established in humility, wholesomely chaste, will never be lightly carried away by this empty wind. In like manner the beast of earthly Power is driven by Envy, urged on by jealousy's spurs, by worry about possible failure and the fear of being surpassed. One spur is the haunting fear of being supplanted, the other the fear of a rival. These are the goads by which earthly Power is ever disquieted. This is what one finds in the chariot of Malice. 7. The chariot of Sensuality also rolls along with four vices for wheels: Gluttony, Lust, Seductive Dress and Enervation, that is, the offspring of sloth and inertia. And it is drawn by two horses, Prosperous Life and Abundance of Goods. The two coachmen are Lazy Languor and False Security, for wealth is the ruin of the slothful and Scripture says that the prosperity of fools destroys them, not because they are successful but because it gives them false security. "When people say, 'there is peace and security,' then sudden destruction will come upon them." These coachmen have neither spurs nor whips nor any instrument of this kind; instead they carry a canopy for shade and a fan to freshen the air. The canopy's name is Dissimulation, and its purpose to provide a shade to ward off the heat of human cares. A person used to soft, effeminate ways will dissemble even when faced with necessary cares, and rather than experience life's perplexing troubles he will conceal himself in the thickets of dissimulation. The fan is Permissiveness, that stirs up flattery like a breeze. For voluptuaries have liberal hands and buy with their gold the flattery of the sycophant. I shall say no more on this subject. 8. Avarice, too, has vices for its four wheels: Pusillanimity, Inhumanity, Contempt of God, Forgetfulness of Death. The beasts to which it is yoked are Obstinacy and Rapacity, and one coachman drives them whose name is Greed for Gain. Avarice is a solitary vice that cannot endure many retainers; one servant suffices. But he is a prompt and tireless executor of the task in hand, lashing his horses onward with cruel whips called Craving to Acquire and Fear of Loss. 9. The ruler of Egypt has still other captains whose chariots are used in their lord's service, for example Pride, who is one of the more important captains, along with that enemy of the faith, Impiety, whose position is so influential in Pharaoh's palace and kingdom. Besides these, Pharaoh's army contains many officers and nobles of inferior rank whose number is almost countless. What their names are and their duties, their armor and equipment, I leave to you yourselves to pursue as a project of study. But trusting in the prowess of these captains and their chariots, the invisible Pharaoh rushes to and fro, inspired by a tyrannical rage, as he directs his attacks with all the power he can muster against the entire family of God. Even in these very days he is persecuting the people of Israel as they escape from Egypt. And these, neither supported by chariots nor clad in armor, but strengthened solely by the hand of God, sing out with confidence: "I will sing to the Lord for he has gloriously triumphed; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea." "Some boast of chariots and some of horses, but we boast of the name of the Lord our God." Now you have heard what I wished to say on the suggested comparison between the horsemen of the Lord and the chariots of Pharaoh. 10. In this text he calls her his love. He was her lover even before she was freed from sin, for if he had not loved her he would not have set her free; it was through this gift of freedom that she was won over to become his love. St John's words explain it: "It was not that we loved him, but first he loved us." Recall the story of Moses and the Ethiopian woman and see that even then there was a foreshadowing of the union between the Word and the sinner. Try to identify too if you can, what you savor most in pondering on this sweetest of mysteries: the most benign gesture of the Word, or the unfathomable glory of the soul, or the unpredictable confidence of the sinner. Moses could not change the color of his Ethiopian wife, but Christ could. For the text continues: "Your cheeks are beautiful as the turtle dove's." But this must wait for another sermon, so that always eagerly partaking of the food provided for us on the Bridegroom's table, we may continue to praise and glorify him, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed for ever. Amen.”

“"Your cheeks are beautiful as the turtle dove's." The bride's modesty is a delicate thing; and I feel that at the Bridegroom's reproof a warm flush suffused her face, so heightening her beauty that she immediately was greeted with: "Your cheeks are beautiful as the turtle dove's." You must not give an earthbound meaning to this coloring of the corruptible flesh, to this gathering of blood-red liquid that spreads evenly beneath the surface of her pearly skin, quietly mingling with it to enhance her physical beauty by the pink and white loveliness of her cheeks. For the substance of the soul is incorporeal and invisible, possessing neither bodily limbs not any visible coloring. Try then as best you can to grasp the nature of this spiritual entity by means of a spiritual insight; and to conserve the fittingness of the proposed comparison take note that the mind's intention is the soul's face. The quality of work is evaluated from the intention, just as the body's beauty from the face. We may see in this flush on the cheek an unassuming disposition in which virtue and beauty thrive and grace increases. "Your cheeks then are beautiful as the turtle dove's" When describing her beauty he referred as is customary to her face, for when a person's beauty is praised the normal thing to say is that she has a beautiful or comely face; though I cannot see what was the purpose of speaking of cheeks in the plural except that it cannot have been without a purpose. For the one who speaks is the Spirit of Wisdom, who performs no action, not even the smallest, in vain, nor speaks except according to his nature. Whatever it be, there is a reason why he prefers to speak of cheeks in the plural than of face in the singular. And unless you can offer something better, I shall give you my view of the reason. 2. The intention which we have referred to as the face of the soul must have two elements: matter and purpose, what you intend and why. It is from these two that we judge the beauty or deformity of the soul, and hence the person in whom they are found correct and pure may justly and truly be told: "Your cheeks are beautiful as the turtle dove's." But she who lacks one of these cannot be complimented that her cheeks are beautiful as the turtle dove's, because of her partial deformity. Much less can it be suitably said to one who possesses neither of these qualities. But all this will become more clear by giving examples. If, for instance, a person makes up his mind to pursue the truth, and that solely from a love of truth, is it not obvious that for him both matter and motive are equally correct and that he had achieved the right to be told that his cheeks are beautiful as the turtle dove's, since on neither cheek does an unbecoming blemish appear? But if his reason for pursuing the truth is self-glorification or the attainment of some worldly advantage, then even though one of his cheeks should seem perfectly formed, I feel you would not hesitate to consider him partially deformed because of the baseness of the motive that disfigures the other cheek. But if you discover a man who has no good motives, who is entangled in the net of sensual desire, a glutton and voluptuary like those whose god is the belly, who glory in their shame, whose minds are set on earthly things: what of him? If his intention is vitiated both in matter and motive will you not judge him to be totally repellent? 3. Therefore to direct one's mind completely to worldly pursuits rather than toward God is the sign of a worldly person whose cheeks are totally devoid of beauty. To direct one's mind as it were toward God but not for the sake of God, betrays the attitude of the hypocrite, one of whose cheeks may seem attractive because of a vaunted concern for God, but whose presence nullifies every form of attractiveness and contaminates the whole with its ugliness. Again, if one directs one's mind to God solely or chiefly because of the necessities of the present life, I cannot say that it stinks with the dregs of hypocrisy, but it is so befogged by pettiness of spirit that it cannot merit acceptance. On the contrary, to give one's attention to something other than God, although for God's sake, means to embark on Martha's busy life rather than Mary's way of contemplation. I do not say that this soul is deformed, but it has not attained to perfect beauty, for it worries and frets about so many things, and is bound to be stained to some degree with the grime of worldly affairs. This however is quickly and easily cleansed at the hour of a death made holy by the grace of a pure intention and a good conscience. And therefore, to seek God for his own sake alone, this is to possess two cheeks made most beautiful by the two elements of intention. This is the bride's own special gift, the source of that unique prerogative by which she may be told with all propriety: "Your cheeks are beautiful as the turtle dove's." 4. But why as the turtle dove's? This is a chaste little bird that leads a retired life, content to live with one mate; if it loses this mate it does not seek another but lives alone thence forward. In order that you who hear me may not hear in vain the doctrines that were written for your sake, that now for your sake are being examined and discussed: you I say who are moved by the urgings of the Holy Spirit and long to perform all that is required of one who would be the bride of God, strive to ensure that both elements of your intention are like two beautiful cheeks; then, in imitation of that most chaste of birds, and following the advice of the Prophet, abide in solitude because you have raised yourself above yourself. You are well above yourself when espoused to the Lord of angels; surely you are above yourself when joined to the Lord and become one spirit with him? Live alone therefore like the turtle dove. Avoid the crowds, avoid the places where men assemble; forget even your people and your father's house and the king will desire your beauty. O holy soul, remain alone, so that you might keep yourself for him alone whom you have chosen for yourself out of all that exist. Avoid going abroad, avoid even the members of your household; withdraw from friends and those you love, not excepting the man who provides for your needs. Can you not see how shy your Love is, that he will never come to you when others are present? Therefore you must withdraw, mentally rather than physically, in your intention, in your devotion, in your spirit. For Christ the Lord is a spirit before your face, and he demands solitude of the spirit more than of the body, although physical withdrawal can be of benefit when the opportunity offers, especially in time of prayer. To do this is to follow the advice and example of the Bridegroom, that when you want to pray you should go into your room, shut the door and then pray. And what he said he did. He spent nights alone in prayer, not merely hiding from the crowds but even from his disciples and familiar friends. He did indeed take three of his friends with him when the hour of his death was approaching; but the urge to pray drew him apart even from them. You too must act like this when you wish to pray. 5. Apart from that the only solitude prescribed for you is that of the mind and spirit. You enjoy this solitude if you refuse to share in the common gossip, if you shun involvement in the problems of the hour and set no store by the fancies that attract the masses; if you reject what everybody covets, avoid disputes, make light of losses, and pay no heed to injuries. Otherwise you are not alone even when alone. Do you not see that you can be alone when in company and in company when alone? However great the crowds that surround you, you can enjoy the benefits of solitude if you refrain from curiosity about other people's conduct and shun rash judgment. Even if you should see your neighbor doing what is wrong, refuse to pass judgment on him, excuse him instead. Excuse his intention even if you cannot excuse the act, which may be the fruit of ignorance or surprise or chance. Even if you are so certain that to dissemble is impossible, you must still endeavor to convince yourself by saying: "It was an overwhelming temptation; what should become of me if it attacked me with the same force?" Remember too that all this time I have been speaking to the bride, not to the friend of the Bridegroom, who has another reason for keeping careful watch to prevent his charge from sinning, to examine if sin has been committed, and to administer correction when it has. The bride is free from this kind of obligation, she lives alone for the love of him who is her Bridegroom and Lord, who is God blessed for ever. Amen.”

“1. "Your neck is like jewels" (Song 1:9). The neck is accustomed to be adorned with jewels, not to be compared to them. But let those do this for whom, because beauty does not inhere of their own, it is necessary to beg from elsewhere that by which they may feign themselves beautiful. For the neck of the bride is so beautiful in itself, and so becomingly formed as if by nature, that it does not require adornment from without. For what need is there to apply the cosmetics of foreign colors, when its own and, as it were, innate beauty suffices, to such a degree that it can even equal the splendor of those very jewels which are sought for adorning? This indeed is what he who said it wished to be understood, who said that the jewels by no means hang from the neck, as is customary, but rather that the neck itself is like jewels. Now the Holy Spirit need not be invoked by us, that just as by his condescension he granted us to find the spiritual cheeks of the bride, so also he may deign to reveal her spiritual neck. And to my understanding indeed (because it falls to me to speak what I perceive) nothing in the meantime shines forth more plausible or probable than that the intellect itself of the soul is designated by the name of the neck. You too, I think, will approve of the same, if you attend to the rationale of the likeness. For does it not seem to you that the intellect performs, in a certain manner, the function of the neck, through which your soul conveys into itself the vital nourishment of the spirit, and pours it forth into certain inward parts of its character and affections? This neck of the bride, therefore, that is, her pure and simple intellect, since it shines sufficiently of itself with the naked and open truth, has no need of adornment; but rather it becomingly adorns the soul, like a precious jewel, and for this reason is described as like jewels themselves. A good jewel is truth, a good jewel is purity or simplicity, plainly a good jewel is to be wise unto sobriety. The intellect of the philosophers or of the heretics does not have in itself this splendor of purity and truth: and therefore they take great care to color and paint it with the trappings of words and the cunning of syllogisms, lest, if it appear naked, the shamefulness of its falsity also appear.”

“2. There follows: "We will make you chains of gold, studded with silver." If he had said, "I will make," in the singular, and not in the plural, "we will make," I would have pronounced absolutely and without doubt that the Bridegroom also spoke this. But now consider whether we might not more fittingly and suitably assign it to his companions, as if consoling the bride with such a promise, that until she arrives at the vision of him, for whom she so burns with desire, they will make for her beautiful and precious chains, which are ornaments of the ears. And this, I believe, for the reason that faith comes from hearing; and as long as one walks by faith and not by sight, effort must be given rather to instructing the hearing than to exercising the sight. For in vain is the eye strained which has not been purified by faith, since the abundance of seeing is promised only to those who are pure of heart (Mt 5:8). But it is written: "Purifying their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:9). Since therefore faith comes from hearing, and from faith comes the purification of sight, rightly they were intent on adorning the ears, since hearing, as reason has taught, is the preparation for sight. "You, O bride," they say, "are gaping for the brightness of the beloved to be beheld; but that belongs to another time. We give for the present ornaments to your ears, which will be for you in the meantime a consolation, and also a preparation for this very thing you ask for," as if they say to her that word of the prophet: "Hear, O daughter, and see" (Ps 44:11). "You desire to see, but hear first. Hearing is a step toward seeing. Therefore hear, and incline your ear to the ornaments which we make for you, so that through the obedience of hearing you may arrive at the glory of vision. We give to your hearing joy and gladness. For it is not ours to give to the sight (in which is the fullness of joy and the fulfillment of your desire), but it belongs to him whom your soul loves. He himself, that your joy may be full, will show himself to you; he himself will fill you with gladness with his countenance. You in the meantime accept these chains for consolation from our hand; but for the rest, delights are in his right hand forevermore." 3. One must consider what kind of chains they offer her. "Golden," he says, "and studded with silver." Gold is the splendor of divinity, gold is the wisdom that is from above. They promise that with this gold they will fashion certain shining tokens, as it were, of truth, those to whom this ministry belongs, heavenly goldsmiths, and insert them into the inner ears of the soul. Which I do not think to be anything other than to weave certain spiritual likenesses, and in these to bring the most pure senses of divine wisdom before the sight of the contemplating soul, so that she may see, at least through a mirror and in a riddle, what she is not yet able in any way to behold face to face. Divine are the things we speak of, and utterly unknown except to those who have experienced them; how, namely, in this mortal body, while faith still holds its place, and the substance of the clear light is not yet revealed, nevertheless the contemplation of pure truth already at times presumes to perform its part within us, even if only in part; so that it is permitted for even one of us, to whom this has been given from above, to borrow that word of the Apostle: "Now I know in part"; likewise, "We know in part, and we prophesy in part" (1 Cor 13:12, 9). But when something more divine has flashed upon the mind that exceeds in spirit, swiftly and as if with the speed of a flashing light, whether for the tempering of the excessive splendor or for the purpose of instruction, immediately, I know not whence, there appear certain image-like likenesses of lower things, suitably fitted to the divinely infused senses, by which that most pure and most brilliant ray of truth, being in a certain way overshadowed, both becomes more tolerable to the soul itself, and more capable of being received by those to whom it wishes to communicate it. I think, however, that these forms are shaped in us by the suggestions of the holy angels, just as conversely there is no doubt that contrary and evil impulses are thrust upon us through evil angels. 4. And perhaps from this comes that mirror and riddle, as I said, through which the Apostle was seeing (1 Cor 13:12), fabricated as if by the hands of angels out of pure and beautiful images of this kind: so that we may perceive that what is pure and without any phantasm of corporeal images is of God; and that we may attribute to angelic ministry whatever elegant likeness it has appeared worthily clothed in. Another translation seems to have signified this more expressly, saying: "We will make you likenesses of gold, with distinctions of silver" (Song 1:10, according to the Septuagint). It is one and the same thing, "with distinctions of silver" and "studded with silver." In this it seems to me to signify that not only are likenesses suggested inwardly through the angels, but also the splendor of eloquence is ministered outwardly through them, so that, suitably and becomingly adorned by it, the likenesses may both be more easily grasped by hearers and more delightfully received. But if you say: "What have eloquence and silver to do with each other?" the prophet says to you: "The words of the Lord are pure words, silver tried by fire" (Ps 11:7). So therefore those heavenly ministering spirits make for the bride, who is a pilgrim on earth, chains of gold, studded with silver. 5. But see how she desires one thing and receives another: and on one who is striving toward the quiet of contemplation, the labor of preaching is imposed; and on one who thirsts for the presence of the Bridegroom, the care of bearing and nourishing the children of the Bridegroom is enjoined. Nor does this happen to her now only; but also on another occasion, as I recall, when she was sighing for the embraces and kisses of the Bridegroom, it was answered to her: "For your breasts are better than wine" (Song 1:1); so that from this she might understand herself to be a mother, and that she was being called back to give milk to the little ones and to nourish her children. Perhaps also in other places of this canticle you yourself will be able to notice this very thing, if you are not too lazy to inquire. Was not this matter prefigured of old in the holy patriarch Jacob, when, frustrated of his longed-for and long-awaited embraces of Rachel, in place of the barren and beautiful one he received, unwilling and unknowing, the fruitful and blear-eyed one? (Gen 29:23-25). So therefore now the bride, desiring and inquiring to know where the beloved pastures and rests at the noon hours, brings back in his place chains of gold, studded with silver; that is, wisdom with eloquence; without doubt for the work of preaching. 6. From this we are taught that the sweet kisses must often be interrupted for the sake of the nursing breasts; and that no one is to live for himself, but for all. Woe to those who have received the gift both of thinking well about God and of speaking well, if they reckon godliness as a source of gain; if they turn to vain glory what they had received to be dispensed for the profits of God; if, being wise in high things, they do not condescend to the lowly. Let them tremble at what is read in the prophet, the Lord saying: "I gave them my gold and my silver; but they wrought for Baal with my silver and gold" (Hos 2:8). Therefore hear what the bride, having received on the one hand a reproof, on the other hand a promise, answered. For she is neither puffed up by the promises nor angered by the rebuff; but, as it is written: "Reprove a wise man, and he will love you" (Prov 9:8); and again, as pertains to gifts and promises: "The greater you are, humble yourself in all things" (Sir 3:20); both of which will become more clear from her response. But the discussion of this, if you please, let it be deferred to the beginning of another sermon, and for the things that have been said, let us glorify the Bridegroom of the Church, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“SERMON 42 — FRATERNAL CORRECTION: TWO KINDS OF HUMILITY "While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance." These are the bride's words that we have left until today. This is the answer she gave when rebuked by the Bridegroom, not to the Bridegroom however but to his companions, as can easily be gathered from the words themselves. For since she does not address him directly and say: "When you were on your couch, O King," but: "when he was on his couch," it is clear that she does not speak to him but of him. Try to imagine therefore how the Bridegroom, seemingly after he had reproved or repulsed her, sees the blush of shame that covers her cheeks and departs from the room to give her the opportunity to express her feelings freely. If, as often happened, she yielded more than was becoming to dismay and depression, his companions would console and re-assure her. Not that he omits to do this himself, but he waits for the opportune moment. And to show clearly how pleasing to him she was even while correcting her, for she bore that correction becomingly and in the proper spirit, he could not depart till he had praised the beauty of her cheeks and neck in words that came from his heart. Hence those who remain with her, knowing what the Lord has in mind, try to charm her out of her sadness and present her with gifts. Her words then are addressed to them. This is how they fit within the context. 2. But before attempting to extract the kernel of spiritual truth from this shell, I make one brief remark. Happy the Superior who finds a reaction to his reprimand similar to the example given here. Far more desirable that there should never be a need to reprimand! That would be the better thing. But because "we all make many mistakes," and duty obliges me to correct those who err, I may not remain silent; and indeed love impels me to act. And if, in the fulfilling of my duty, I do correct someone only to see that my reprimand fails entirely to achieve its purpose, echoing its futility back to me like a javelin that strikes and recoils, what do you think, brothers, are my feelings then? Am I not frustrated! Am I not angered! Because of my own lack of wisdom let me quote the words of a Master: "I am caught in a dilemma and know not what to choose." Should I be complacent about what I have said because I have done my duty, or perform a penance for what I have said because I have failed in my purpose? For I wished by overthrowing an enemy to rescue a friend, and did not do so; rather the contrary happened, I have offended him and set him deeper in the wrong. He now despises me. "They will not listen to you," said the Prophet, "because they will not listen to me." Note the greatness of him who is involved in this contempt. Do not imagine that you have despised only me. The Lord has spoken, and what he said to the Prophet he also said to the Apostles: "He who despises you, despises me." I am neither prophet nor apostle, but I dare to say that I fulfill the role both of prophet and apostle; and though far beneath them in merits I am caught up in similar cares. Even though it be to my great embarrassment, though it put me at serious risk, I am seated on the chair of Moses, to whose quality of life I do not lay claim and whose grace I do not experience. What then? That one must withhold respect for the chair because the man sitting there is unworthy? But even though the Scribes and Pharisees be seated on it, Christ has said: "Do what they tell you." 3. Quite often impatience is joined to the contempt, so that the man rebuked not only neglects to amend but is even angry with his corrector, like a madman who spurns his doctor's hand. What extraordinary perversity! While refusing to be angry with the archer who shot him, he is angry with his physician! That one who shoots in the dark at the upright of heart has now shot the death-blow into your own self; and you fail to react against him? Yet you are annoyed with me when all I want is to put you right! "Be angry but do not sin," Scripture says. If your anger is directed against your sin, not only do you not sin but you destroy the sin you had committed. Now however you add sin to sin by spurning the remedy in this senseless fit of anger; this is a sin of special malice. 4. Sometimes the anger is spiced with impudence, as when the correction is not only met with impatience but the error impudently defended. This is obvious recklessness. God can say to such a man: "You have a harlot's brow, you refuse to be ashamed;" and again: "My jealousy will depart from you, I shall be angry with you no more." Merely to hear these words makes me shudder. Do you not feel how perilous it is, how horrible and frightening, to defend one's sin? For God also says: "All whom I love I reprove and discipline." If God's jealous anger has turned away from you, so also has his love; if you think yourself unfit for his chastisement, you will not be fit for his love. It is when God does not show his anger that he is most angry: "We have shown favor to the wicked," he says, "and he does not learn righteousness." This kind of favor is not for me. To be spared on these terms is worse than any anger, it leaves me shut off from the paths of righteousness. Better for me to follow the Prophet's advice and learn discipline, lest the Lord be angry and I fall away from the true path. I prefer that you be angry with me, O Father of Mercies, but with that anger by which you put the sinner right rather than drive him off the path. A correction benignly administered begets the former, an ominous concealment of your anger leads to the latter. It is not when I am ignorant of your anger but when I feel it, that I trust most in your goodwill for me, because when you are angry you will remember to be merciful. "You were a forgiving God to your people," according to the Psalmist, "but an avenger of their wrong-doings." He is speaking of Moses and Aaron and Samuel whom he had previously mentioned, and considers it a mercy that God did not spare their waywardness. But you? Go on defending your error and condemning the correction, and cut yourself off from this mercy forever! But that is surely to call evil good and good evil. And out of this odious impudence shall we not soon see emerging the buds of impenitence, the mother of despair? For who will repent of what he thinks good? Woe to them the Prophet says. And that woe is for eternity. It is one thing for a person to be tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire, but quite another to freely pursue evil as good, to speed toward death with a false security as if on the way to life. For this reason I should sometimes prefer to remain silent and pretend I had not seen some wrong being done, rather than to bring about so great a calamity by a reprimand. 5. Perhaps you will tell me that my good deed will redound to my welfare; that I have freed my own soul and am innocent of the blood of that man in speaking and warning him to turn away from his evil path that he might live. But though you give me countless reasons they will not comfort me because my eyes rest on a son who is dying. It is as if by that reprimand I sought to achieve my own salvation rather than his. Where is the mother who will be able to restrain her tears when she sees her ailing son at the point of death, even if she knows she has devoted all possible care and attention to him, but in vain, since all her efforts now come to nothing? She weeps because death takes him from her for a time. How much more should I weep and lament for the eternal death of a son of mine even if I am conscious of no failure on my part, even though I have warned him? You see then how great the evils from which a man delivers both himself and me when he responds with meekness on being corrected, submits respectfully, obeys modestly, and humbly admits his fault. To a man like this I shall in all things be a debtor, I shall minister to and serve him as a genuine lover of my Lord, for he is one who can truly say: "while the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance." 6. How good the fragrance of humility that ascends from the valley of tears, that permeates all places within reach, and perfumes even the royal couch with its sweet delight. The nard is an insignificant herb, said by those who specialize in the study of plants to be of a warm nature. Hence it seems to be fittingly taken in this place for the virtue of humility, but aglow with the warmth of holy love. I say this because there is a humility inspired and inflamed by charity, and a humility begotten in us by truth but devoid of warmth. This latter depends on our knowledge, the former on our affections. For if you sincerely examine your inward dispositions in the light of truth, and judge them unflatteringly for what they are, you will certainly be humiliated by the baseness that this true knowledge reveals to you, though you perhaps as yet cannot endure that others, too, should see this image. So far it is truth that compels your humility, it is as yet untouched by the inpouring of love. But if you were so moved by a love of that truth which, like a radiant light, so wholesomely discovered to you the reality of your condition, you would certainly desire, as far as in you lies, that the opinions of others about you should correspond with what you know of yourself. I say, as far as in you lies, because it is often inexpedient to make known to others all that we know about ourselves, and we are forbidden by the very love of truth and the truth of love to attempt to reveal what would injure another. But if under the impulse of self-love you inwardly conceal the true judgment you have formed of yourself, who can doubt that you lack a love for truth, since you show preference for your own interest and reputation? 7. Convicted by the light of truth then, a man may judge himself of little worth, but you know this is far from the equivalent of a spontaneous association with the lowly that springs from the gift of love. Necessity compels the former, the latter is of free choice. "He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant," and so gave us the pattern of humility. He emptied himself, he humbled himself, not under constraint of an assessment of himself but inspired by love for us. Though he could appear abject and despicable in men's eyes, he could not judge himself to be so in reality, because he knew who he was. It was his will, not his judgment, that moved him to adopt a humble guise that he knew did not represent him; though not unaware that he was the highest he chose to be looked on as the least. And so we find him saying: "Learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart." He said "in heart;" in the affection of the heart, which signifies the will, and a decision arising from the will excludes compulsion. You and I truly know that we deserve disgrace and contempt, that we deserve the worst treatment and the lowest rank, that we deserve punishment, even the whip; but not he. Yet he experienced all these things because he willed it; he was humble in heart, humble with that humility that springs from the heart's love, not that which is exacted by truthful reasoning. 8. So then, I have said that we attain to this voluntary humility not by truthful reasoning but by an inward infusion of love, since it springs from the heart, from the affections, from the will; you must judge whether I am right. But I also submit to the scrutiny of your judgment the rectitude by which I attribute this to the Lord, who under love's inspiration emptied himself, under love's inspiration was made lower than the angels, under love's inspiration was obedient to his parents, under love's inspiration bowed down under the Baptist's hands, endured the weakness of the flesh, and became liable to death, even the ignominious death of the cross. And one more thing I ask you to consider: whether I have been correct in assuming that this humility, aglow with love, is symbolized by that lowly plant, the nard. And if you do assent to all these opinions - and you must give assent to evidence that is so manifest - then if you feel humiliated by that inescapable sense of unworthiness implanted by the Truth that examines both heart and mind in the very being of one who is attentive, try to use your will and make a virtue of necessity, because there is no virtue without the will's co-operation. You will achieve this if you do not wish to appear externally in any way different from what you discover in your heart. Otherwise you must fear that you will read your fate in words like the following: "He flatters himself in his own eyes that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated." For "diverse weights and diverse measures are both alike an abomination to the Lord." What am I getting at? Will you despise yourself in your own heart when you weigh yourself in the balance of God's truth, and yet deceive the public with a different estimate by selling yourself to us at a greater weight than Truth has indicated? Let the fear of God prevent you from attempting anything so despicable as to commend the man whose unworthiness is revealed by God's truth: for this is to resist the truth, to fight against God. You must rather submit to God and let your will be docile to the Truth; and more than docile, even dedicated. "Was not my soul subject to God," said the Psalmist. 9. It counts for little, however, that you are submissive to God, unless you be submissive to every human creature for God's sake, whether it be the abbot as first superior or to the other officers appointed by him. I go still further and say: be subject to your equals and inferiors. "It is fitting," said Christ, "that we should in this way do all that righteousness demands." If you seek an unblemished righteousness, take an interest in the man of little account, defer to those of lesser rank, be of service to the young. Doing this you may dare to say with the bride: "My nard gave forth its fragrance." That fragrance is the fervor of your life, the good repute in which all men hold you, so that you might be the good odor of Christ in every place, seen by all, loved by all. Such influence is beyond the man whose humility is compelled by the truth; he is so caught up in self-interest that it cannot flow out so that it will spread abroad. His life bears no fragrance because he lacks fervor, his humility is neither free nor spontaneous. But the bride's humility, like the nard, spreads abroad its fragrance, the warmth of its love, the vigor of its fervor, the inspiring power of its good name. The bride's humility is freely embraced, it is fruitful and it is forever. Its fragrance is destroyed neither by reprimand nor praise. She has heard: "Your cheeks are beautiful as the turtle dove's, your neck like strings of jewels." When promised pendants of gold she acquiesced with humility; the more she is honored the more she humbles herself in all things. She does not boast of her merits nor forget her humility when she hears her praises multiplied. Under this name of nard she humbly vows her lowliness in the spirit of the Virgin Mary's words: "I am unaware of any merit that would warrant all this honor, except that God has been pleased with the lowliness of his handmaid." What else can she mean by saying: "My nard gave forth its fragrance," than that my lowliness was pleasing to him? It was not any wisdom of mine, not any nobility, not any beauty, for these meant nothing to me; it was my humility alone that gave forth fragrance, in its accustomed way. God is habitually pleased with humility; the way of the Lord is to look down lovingly on the humble from the heights of heaven; and therefore while the king was on his couch, in his dwelling-place in the heavens, the fragrance of my humility mounted even to the presence of him of whom the Psalmist says: "He dwells on high and takes account of the lowly things in heaven and on earth." 10. Therefore: "while the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance." The king's couch is the heart of the Father, because the Son is always in the Father. Never doubt of the mercy of this king, whose eternal resting place is the abode of the Father's love. What wonder that the cry of the humble should reach to him whose dwelling-place is at that source of all kindliness, where his happiness is most intimate and his goodness consubstantial with that of the Father; for he receives all that he is from the Father, and the timorous glance of the lowly will see in his royal power nothing that is not fatherly. Therefore the Lord says: "Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, I will now arise." The bride knows this because she is a well-loved member of his household; she knows that her Bridegroom's favors will not be limited by the poverty of her merits, for she puts her trust solely in her lowliness. Yet she gives him the title of king, for while smarting from the reprimand she does not dare to call him Bridegroom. He is said to dwell on high, but this does not weaken the trust that permeates her humility. 11. You may very suitably apply the text of this sermon to the early church, if you recall those days when, after the Lord had ascended to where he was before and seated himself at the Father's right hand, on that ancient, magnificent and glorious couch, the disciples came together in one place, persevering with one mind in prayer along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers. Do you not feel that was a time when the nard of the tiny and timorous bride gave forth its fragrance? And when suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind and filled all the house where they were sitting, could she not say in her littleness and indigence: "While the king was on his couch my nard gave forth its fragrance"? All who lived in that place clearly perceived the ascent of that fragrance of humility, so agreeable and so welcome, and the immediate response of a rich and glorious reward.”

“Nor was the bride ungrateful for that favor. For hear: no sooner is she possessed by the ardor then she professes herself ready to endure any evil for the sake of his name, for the following text runs: "My beloved is to me a bunch of myrrh that lies between my breasts." But I feel too weak to speak any further. I shall say that under the name of myrrh she includes all the bitter trials she is willing to undergo through love of her beloved. Some other time we shall continue with the remainder of the text, provided that the Holy Spirit will be attentive to your prayers and enable me to understand the words of the bride, since he himself has inspired and composed them in a way befitting the praises of him whose Spirit he is, the Church's Bridegroom, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God blessed for ever. Amen.”

“1. "A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me; he shall abide between my breasts" (Song 1:12). Before he was king, now he is beloved; before on the royal couch, now between the breasts of the bride. Great is the power of humility, to which even the majesty of the Godhead so easily inclines itself. Quickly the name of reverence was changed into the word of friendship: and he who was far off was in a short time made near. "A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me." Myrrh, a bitter thing, signifies hard and harsh tribulations. Foreseeing that these threaten her on account of her beloved, she speaks this rejoicingly, confident that she will endure all things manfully. "The disciples went away rejoicing from the presence of the council, because they were counted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus" (Acts 5:41). Therefore, indeed, she calls her beloved not a bundle but a little bundle, because she considers light for the sake of his love whatever labor and sorrow may threaten. Rightly a little bundle, because "a child is born to us" (Isa 9:6). Rightly a little bundle, because "the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory which shall be revealed in us" (Rom 8:18). For "that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation," he says, "works for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor 4:17). There shall be therefore for us at some time an immense heap of glory, which is now a little bundle of myrrh. Is it not a little bundle, whose "yoke is sweet and whose burden is light"? (Mt 11:30.) Not because it is light in itself (for neither is the harshness of suffering light, nor the bitterness of death), but light nevertheless to one who loves. And therefore she does not say only: "A bundle of myrrh is my beloved"; but: "To me," she says, who love him, he is a little bundle. Whence she also names him beloved, showing that the force of love overcomes the trouble of all bitternesses, and because "love is strong as death" (Song 8:6). And so that you may know that she glories not in herself but in the Lord, and that she presumes strength not from her own power but from the help of the Lord; she says that he will abide between her breasts, to whom she may securely sing: "Even if I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will not fear evils, because you are with me" (Ps 22:4). 2. I remember that in one of the earlier sermons (Sermon 10, no. 1) I defined the two breasts of the bride as congratulation and compassion, according to the teaching of Paul, who says: "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep" (Rom 12:15). But since, moving amid adversity and prosperity, she knows that dangers are not absent from either side; she wishes to have her beloved in the midst of these breasts of hers, so that, fortified by his continuous protection against both, neither happy things may exalt her nor sad things cast her down. You also, if you are wise, will imitate the prudence of the bride, and will not suffer this little bundle of myrrh, so dear, to be torn away from the center of your breast even for an hour; always retaining in memory and revolving in constant meditation all those bitter things which he endured for you, so that you too may be able to say: "A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me; he shall abide between my breasts." 3. And I, brothers, from the beginning of my conversion, in place of the heap of merits which I knew I lacked, took care to gather this little bundle for myself and to place it between my breasts, collected from all the anxieties and bitternesses of my Lord: first, indeed, from those necessities of his infancy; then from the labors which he endured in preaching, the fatigues in traveling about, the vigils in praying, the temptations in fasting, the tears in showing compassion, the snares in conversing; and lastly, the perils among false brothers, the reproaches, the spittings, the blows, the mockeries, the insults, the nails, and things similar to these, which the forest of the Gospels is known to have brought forth most abundantly for the salvation of our race. Where surely, among so many branches of this fragrant myrrh, I thought that by no means should that myrrh be passed over with which he was given drink upon the cross; but neither that with which he was anointed at his burial. In the first of these he applied to himself the bitterness of my sins; in the second he consecrated the future incorruption of my body. I will pour forth the memory of the abundance of the sweetness of these things as long as I live; I will never forget these mercies for all eternity, because in them I have been given life. 4. These things the holy David of old sought with tears: "Let your mercies come to me," he said, "and I shall live" (Ps 118:77). These also a certain other one of the saints recalled with groaning, saying: "The mercies of the Lord are many. How many kings and prophets wished to see, and did not see. They labored, and I have entered into their labors; I have reaped the myrrh that they planted; for me this saving little bundle has been preserved; no one shall take it from me; it shall abide between my breasts." To meditate on these things I have called wisdom; in these I have established for myself the perfection of righteousness; in these the fullness of knowledge; in these the riches of salvation; in these the abundance of merits. From these comes to me at times a saving drink of bitterness; from these in turn a sweet anointing of consolation. These raise me up in adversity, restrain me in prosperity, and as I walk the royal road amid the joys and sorrows of the present life, they provide safe guidance on both sides, driving away on this side and that the evils that threaten. These reconcile to me the Judge of the world, since they portray as gentle and humble him who is terrible to the powers; since they present as not only appeasable but also imitable him who is inaccessible to principalities, terrible among the kings of the earth. Therefore these things are frequently on my lips, as you know; these always in my heart, as God knows; these are very familiar to my pen, as is plain to see; this is my higher philosophy for the present: to know Jesus, and him crucified. I do not seek, as the bride does, where he lies down at midday (Song 1:6), whom I joyfully embrace as he abides between my breasts. I do not seek where he feeds at midday, whom I gaze upon as Savior on the cross. That is more sublime, this is sweeter; that is bread, this is milk; this nourishes the bowels of little ones, this fills the breasts of mothers: and therefore he shall abide between my breasts. 5. Gather also for yourselves, most beloved, this little bundle so dear; insert it into the depths of the heart; fortify with it the entrance of the breast, so that for you also he may abide between your breasts. Have him always not behind on your shoulders, but before your eyes, lest carrying and not smelling, the burden should press you down while the fragrance does not lift you up. Remember that Simeon received him in his arms (Lk 2:28); Mary bore him in her womb, cherished him in her lap; the bride placed him for herself between her breasts. And, lest I pass over anything, the word came into the hand of Zechariah the prophet, and also of certain others. I think that Joseph too, the husband of Mary, often smiled at him upon his knees. All these had him before them, and none behind. Therefore let them be an example to you, that you also may do likewise. For if you have before your eyes him whom you carry, then certainly, seeing the sufferings of the Lord, you will bear your own more lightly, with the help of him who is the Bridegroom of the Church, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“1. "My beloved is to me a cluster of Cyprus in the vineyards of Engaddi" (Song 1:13). If the beloved is in myrrh, how much more in the sweetness of the cluster. Therefore my Lord Jesus, as myrrh to me in death, as a cluster in the resurrection, has tempered himself for me as a most wholesome drink, in tears in due measure. He died for our sins and rose again for our justification (Rom 4:25), that being dead to sins we might live to righteousness (1 Pet 2:24). And so you, if you have wept for your sins, you have drunk bitterness; but if you have already breathed again in hope of life by a holier way of living, the bitterness of myrrh has been changed for you into wine, which gladdens the heart of man. And perhaps this is what was signified by the fact that wine mixed with myrrh was offered to the Savior on the cross, and therefore he would not drink it, because he thirsted for this. You therefore, after the bitternesses of myrrh, as I said, experiencing the wine of joyfulness, not rashly may you also say: "My beloved is to me a cluster of Cyprus in the vineyards of Engaddi." Engaddi has a twofold interpretation, and both serve a single meaning. For it is called "fountain of the kid," and "baptism of the Gentiles"; and it openly designates the tears of sinners. It is also called "eye of temptation," which equally sheds tears; and watches over the temptations that are never at all absent from the life of man upon earth. But the people of the Gentiles also, who walked in darkness, could never by themselves recognize the snares of temptations, and therefore could not escape them, until through the grace of him who enlightens the blind, they received the eyes of faith; until they came to the Church, which has the eye of temptation; until they delivered themselves to spiritual men for instruction, who, enlightened by the spirit of wisdom and taught also by their own experience, can truly say that we are not ignorant of the wiles of the devil, and his designs (2 Cor 2:11). 2. They report that in Engaddi small balsam trees grow, which are cultivated by the inhabitants in the manner of vineyards: and from this perhaps he called them vineyards. Otherwise what would a cluster of Cyprus be doing in the vineyards of Engaddi? Who has ever transported clusters from vineyards into vineyards? For wine is customarily carried from elsewhere to where it is lacking, not to where it is already present. Therefore he calls the vineyards of Engaddi the congregations of the Church, which has the liquor of balsam, the spirit of gentleness, in which it tenderly fosters the tenderness of those who are still little ones in Christ, and consoles the sorrows of penitents. But also if any brother has been overtaken in some fault, the churchman who has already received this spirit will take care to instruct such a one presently in the same spirit of gentleness, considering himself, lest he also be tempted (Gal 6:1). In this type the Church has been accustomed even bodily to anoint with material oil all who are to be baptized. 3. But since the wounds of him who fell among thieves, and was carried upon the beast of the body of the compassionate Samaritan to the inn of the Church, receive healing not in oil alone but in wine and oil together (Lk 10:30-34): the spiritual physician needs also the wine of fervent zeal together with the oil of gentleness, to whom it assuredly belongs not only to console the fainthearted but also to correct the unruly. For if he shall see that the one who was wounded, that is, who sinned, is by no means amended by the gentle and mild exhortations that have been bestowed upon him, but rather is perhaps even abusing his gentleness and becoming more negligent through his patience, and falling asleep in his sin even more securely: when the oil of such sweet admonitions has been frustrated, it will be necessary indeed to use more biting remedies and to pour in the wine of compunction; that is, to deal with him by harsh rebukes and invectives, and, if the case requires it and the hardness is so great, even to strike the contemner with the rod of ecclesiastical censure. But whence comes this wine to him? For in the vineyards of Engaddi wine is not found, but oil. Let him seek it then in Cyprus: for that island is fertile in wine, and the finest wine; and taking from there for himself a great cluster, which the scouts of Israel once carried on a pole (Num 13:24), beautifully prefiguring the prophetic chorus going before and the apostolic following after, with Jesus in the middle: taking then this cluster let him say to himself: "My beloved is to me a cluster of Cyprus." 4. We have seen the cluster; let us see how the wine of zeal is pressed from it. For if a sinful man is by no means indignant at a sinning man, but rather, as it were sweating out upon him a certain dew of sweetest balsam, shows forth a pious affection of compassion; we know whence this comes, and you have already heard, but perhaps you have not noticed. For it was said that from the consideration of his own self there comes to each one the quality of being gentle toward all, since a man, by the counsel of the most wise Paul, in order to know how to condescend piously to those overtaken in sin, considers himself, lest he also be tempted (Gal 6:1). Does not the love of neighbor draw its root from this very source, concerning which it is commanded in the law: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Lk 10:27)? From the inmost depths of human affections, fraternal love draws the beginnings of its origin, and from a certain natural sweetness implanted in man toward himself, as from earthly moisture, it draws without doubt its growth and force, by which, when grace indeed breathes from above, it brings forth fruits of piety: so that what the soul naturally desires for itself, it judges should not be denied by a certain right of humanity to a partner of its nature, that is, to another human being, where it can and where it ought, but should freely and willingly share it. There is present therefore in nature, if it has not become stale through sin, a liquor of this kind of pleasing and excellent sweetness, as it were, so that it feels and shows itself softer toward compassion for sinners rather than harsher toward indignation against them. 5. But because, according to the judgment of the Wise Man, dying flies destroy this ointment of sweetness (Eccl 10:1), and nature has nothing in itself by which to restore what has once been lost, it feels itself by a lamentable change collapsing into what Scripture truly says: "The senses and thoughts of man are prone to evil from his youth" (Gen 8:21). Not a good youth, in which the younger son demands that a portion of the father's substance be separated for himself, and begins to wish to divide a good that is more sweetly possessed in common; and to have alone what is not diminished by sharing but is lost by division. At length: "He squandered," it says, "all his goods living riotously with harlots" (Lk 15:11, 13). Who are these harlots? See whether they are not the very ones that destroy the ointment of sweetness, namely carnal concupiscences, about which Scripture most wholesomely warns you: "Go not after your concupiscences," it says (Sir 18:30). And the Wise Man rightly describes them as dying; since both the world passes away and the concupiscence of it (1 Jn 2:17). Therefore while we wish to satisfy these individually, we deprive ourselves of the singular sweetness of the common and shared good. These are truly filthy and stinging flies, which defile in us the beauty of nature, lacerate the mind with cares and anxieties, and destroy the sweetness of shared grace. Hence man is called "the younger son," because nature, corrupted by a certain slippery slide of senseless youth, has lost all the sap of manly maturity and wisdom; and, turned harsh, with a dry soul he despises everyone except himself, having become without affection. 6. Therefore from the onset of this most wicked and most wretched youth, "the senses and thoughts of man are prone to evil," and nature is readier for indignation than for compassion. Hence man, as though entirely stripped of his humanity, in the matter where he wishes to be helped by other men when he is in need, does not himself wish to help other men who are in need. Rather a sinful man judges, scorns, and mocks men who are sinning, not considering himself, lest he also be tempted. From this evil nature will by no means rise again by itself, as I said, nor will it recover the oil of inborn gentleness that has once been destroyed in it. Nevertheless what nature cannot do, grace can. Therefore when the unction of the Spirit has had mercy on a man and deigns to pour over him anew with its kindness, he will at once return to his humanity, and moreover will receive from grace something better than from nature. In faith and gentleness he will make him holy, and will give him not oil but balsam in the vineyards of Engaddi. 7. Nor indeed is it doubtful that the better gifts flow from the fountain of the kid, whose anointing assuredly turns kids into lambs and transfers sinners from the left hand to the right, who have been more abundantly drenched beforehand with the anointing of mercy, so that where sins abounded, grace may abound all the more (Rom 5:20). Does it not truly seem to you that this man has returned in a certain way to his humanity, who, having laid aside the ferocity of a worldly spirit, and having recovered the anointing of human gentleness, even with the interest of grace, which the flies of carnal desires had utterly destroyed in him; from his own humanity which he bears, or rather which he himself is, draws both the matter and the pattern of having mercy on other men, so that he shudders at it as at a certain savage grimace, not only to do to any man what he would not wish to suffer himself, but also not to do for all men all things whatsoever he would wish to be done for himself? 8. Behold whence the oil comes. The wine, whence? Assuredly from the cluster of Cyprus. For if you love the Lord Jesus with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole strength: will you, if you see his injuries and contempt, be able in any way to bear it with equanimity? By no means: but immediately, seized by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning, and as though a mighty man heated with wine (Ps 77:65), filled with the zeal of Phinehas, you will say with David: "My zeal has consumed me, because my enemies have forgotten your words" (Ps 118:139); and with the Lord: "Zeal for your house has consumed me" (Ps 68:10; Jn 2:17). This most fervent zeal, then, is wine pressed from the cluster of Cyprus, and the love of Christ is an inebriating cup. For our God is a consuming fire (Deut 4:24), and the prophet said that fire was sent from on high into his bones (Lam 1:13), because he was aflame with divine love. Having therefore the oil of gentleness from fraternal love, and the wine of emulation from divine love, approach confidently to heal the wounds of him who fell among thieves, an excellent imitator of the most compassionate Samaritan. Confidently also may you say with the bride: "My beloved is to me a cluster of Cyprus in the vineyards of Engaddi": that is, the zeal of justice, the love of my beloved, is to me in the affections of piety. And about this, enough. For my infirmity also commands a rest, as it often does; so that most of the time I am compelled, as you yourselves know, to leave discussions unfinished and to reserve the remaining chapters for another day. But what of it? I am ready for the scourges (Ps 33:18), knowing that I still receive things far unequal to my merits. Let me indeed be beaten, let me be beaten as one who does evil, if perhaps the blows may be reckoned as merits: perhaps he will have mercy on the one who has been scourged, who finds no good in me to reward, the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“"Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold you are beautiful; your eyes are as doves" (Song 1:15). Beautifully, most excellently, from love, the presumption of the bride; from love, the indignation of the bridegroom. The outcome of the matter proves this. For presumption was followed by correction, correction by amendment, amendment by reward. The beloved is present, the master is removed, the king disappears, dignity is laid aside, reverence is set down. For haughtiness yields where affection grows strong. And just as once Moses spoke as a friend to a friend (Ex 33:11), and the Lord responded: so also now between the Word and the soul, as if between two neighbors, a most familiar conversation is carried on. Nor is this surprising. From one fountain of love there flows to both the loving of one another, the cherishing of each other equally. Therefore words sweeter than honey fly back and forth, mutual glances full of all sweetness are exchanged between them, holy signs of love. And so he calls her his love, pronounces her beautiful, repeats that she is beautiful, receiving the same in return from her. Nor is the repetition idle, for it is a confirmation of love, and perhaps it hints at something to be inquired into. Let us seek the twofold beauty of the soul: for this is what it seems to me to hint at. The beauty of the soul is humility. I do not say this of myself, since the prophet said before me: "You will sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed" (Ps 50:9); by a humble herb that purges the breast signifying humility. With this the king and prophet trusts to be washed after his grievous fall, and so to recover a certain snow-white brightness of innocence. But in one who has gravely sinned, humility, even if it is to be loved, is nevertheless not to be admired. But if someone retains innocence, and nonetheless joins humility to it, does he not seem to you to possess a twofold beauty of soul? Holy Mary did not lose her holiness, and she did not lack humility: and therefore the King desired her beauty, because she joined humility to innocence; and so: "He has regarded," she says, "the humility of his handmaid" (Lk 1:48). Therefore blessed are they who keep their garments clean, namely those of simplicity and innocence, if yet they also add the putting on of the beauty of humility. Assuredly she who is found to be of this kind will hear: "Behold you are beautiful, my love, behold you are beautiful." Would that you would say even once to my soul, Lord Jesus: "Behold you are beautiful." Would that you would keep humility for me! for I have kept the first garment badly. I am your servant. For I do not dare to profess myself a friend, I who do not hear the testimony of my beauty with a repetition. It suffices me if I hear it once. But what if even this is in question? I know what I will do: as a servant I will venerate his love, I, a deformed little man, will admire the abundant beauty in her; I will rejoice at the voice of the bridegroom, who is himself admiring so great a beauty. Who knows if at least from this I may find grace in the eyes of his love, so that by her grace I too may be found among the friends? And so the friend of the bridegroom stands, and rejoices with joy because of the voice of the bridegroom. Behold his voice is in the ears of the beloved: let us hear and let us rejoice. They are present to one another, they speak together; let us stand likewise: let no care of this world, no enticement of the body, withdraw us from this conversation. "Behold," he says, "you are beautiful, my love, behold you are beautiful." "Behold" is a word of admiration, the rest is of praise. Rightly to be admired, she for whom lost holiness did not bring humility, but rather preserved holiness admitted it. Rightly she is found beautiful, from whom neither beauty was absent. A rare bird upon the earth, either not to lose holiness, or for holiness not to exclude humility: and therefore blessed is she who retained both. And so it has been proved: she is conscious of nothing against herself, and she does not refuse correction. We, even when we sin greatly, scarcely bear to be reproved; but she with an equal mind hears bitter things spoken against her, having sinned in nothing. For, if she desires to see the brightness of the bridegroom, what evil is there? Rather it is even praiseworthy. And yet when rebuked she does penance, and says: "A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me, between my breasts he shall abide" (Song 1:13): that is: It suffices me, I wish to know nothing now except Jesus, and him crucified. Great humility! Innocent in deed she takes up the disposition of a penitent; and she who has nothing to repent of, has nevertheless the spirit to repent. Why then, you say, was she rebuked, if she did nothing wrong? But hear now the dispensation and prudence of the bridegroom. Just as Abraham's obedience was once soundly tested, so also now the humility of the bride. And just as he, when his obedience was fulfilled, then heard: "Now I know that you fear God" (Gen 22:12): so also to her now it is said as it were in other words: "Now I know that you are humble"; for this is what he means when he says: "Behold you are beautiful." And therefore he repeats the praise, to mark that the beauty of humility has been added to the glory of holiness. "Behold you are beautiful, my love, behold you are beautiful." "Now I know that you are beautiful, not only from my love, but also from your humility." I do not now call you beautiful among women, nor beautiful in your cheeks, nor in your neck, as I was saying before: but I confess you beautiful simply, not indeed beautiful by comparison, not with distinction, not in part. And he adds: "Your eyes are as doves." Still openly humility is commended. For this refers to the fact that she, when reproved for her lofty inquiry, immediately did not hesitate to descend to simpler things, so as to say: "A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me." Much indeed is the distance between the face of glory and a bundle of myrrh: and therefore it is a great mark of humility, to consent to be called back from there to here. Therefore "your eyes are as doves." Now, he says, you do not walk in great things, nor in wonders above you: but in the manner of the most simple bird you are content with simpler things, nesting in the clefts of the rock, dwelling upon my wounds, and willingly beholding with a dove-like eye those things which pertain to me as incarnate and having suffered. Or certainly, because in the form of this bird the Holy Spirit appeared (Mt 3:16), a spiritual rather than a simple gaze is commended in her by the name of the dove. And if this interpretation pleases, you must refer the present passage to what a little earlier the companions promised to make for her, golden earrings (Song 1:11), intending, as I then taught, not to adorn the ears of the body, but to form the hearing of the heart. It could therefore have happened that, by faith which comes from hearing, with the heart more thoroughly cleansed, she was rendered more instructed to see what she could not before. And since from the earrings she received she seemed to have advanced in keener vision toward spiritual understanding, it pleased the bridegroom, to whom it is always more pleasing, as far as lies in him, to be seen in spirit; and counting this too among her praises, he says: "Your eyes are as doves." Now, he says, behold me in spirit, because "Christ the Lord is a spirit before your face" (Lam 4:20). And you have the means by which you can do this, because your eyes are as doves. Before you did not have this, and therefore you had to be restrained: but now have the abundance of seeing, because your eyes are as doves, that is, spiritual. Not indeed the abundance that you were seeking: for not even now are you yet able to attain to that, but an abundance that can meanwhile suffice. Indeed you are to be led from brightness to brightness: and therefore see, as you can, now; and when you can do more, you will see more.”

“I do not think, brothers, I do not think this vision is a mediocre one, nor common to all, even though it be inferior to that by which he is to be seen in the future. For notice from what follows. For it continues: "Behold you are beautiful, my beloved, behold you are beautiful." You see how high she stands, and to what sublime peak of mind she has raised herself, who claims the Lord of all things as her own beloved by a certain special right. For notice how she does not simply say, "Beloved"; but, "my beloved," she says, so as to designate him as her own. A great vision indeed, from which she has grown to such confidence and authority, that she knows the Lord of all not as lord, but as beloved. For I judge that on this occasion there were by no means brought to her senses the images of the flesh, or of the cross, or any other likenesses of bodily infirmities. For in these, according to the prophet, "there was in him no form nor beauty" (Isa 53:2). But she, having beheld him, now pronounces him beautiful and comely, signifying that he appeared to her in a better vision. For mouth to mouth, as once with holy Moses (Ex 33:11), he speaks with the bride; and openly, not through riddles and figures, she sees God. And so she pronounces with her mouth such as she beholds with her mind, in a vision plainly sublime and sweet. Her eyes saw the king in his beauty, yet not as king, but as beloved. Let someone indeed have seen him upon a throne high and elevated; and let another testify that he appeared to him face to face: yet it seems to me that the preeminence in this matter lies with the bride, because there the one seen is read to be the Lord, here, the beloved. For thus you have it: "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and elevated" (Isa 6:1); and likewise: "I saw the Lord face to face, and my soul was saved" (Gen 32:30). "But if I am Lord," he says, "where is my fear?" (Mal 1:6). But if to them the revelation was made with fear; because where there is the Lord, there is fear: I for my part, if the choice were given, would so much more willingly, so much more dearly embrace the vision of the bride, inasmuch as I perceive it was made in the better affection, which is love. For fear has punishment, but perfect love casts out fear (1 Jn 4:18). Much indeed it matters whether one appears terrible in his counsels over the sons of men (Ps 65:15), or appears beautiful in form beyond the sons of men (Ps 44:5). "Behold you are beautiful, my beloved, and comely." These words plainly resound with love, not with fear. But perhaps thoughts ascend in your heart, and you ask doubtfully within yourself, saying: By what reasoning are words of the Word spoken to the soul referred to, and again of the soul to the Word, so that she heard the voice of him speaking to her, and testifying that she is beautiful, and in turn immediately returned the same praise to her praiser? How can these things be? For we speak by a word, the word does not speak. Likewise the soul has no means by which to speak, unless the mouth of the body forms words for her to speak. You ask well: but consider that a spirit speaks, and what is said must be understood spiritually. Whenever therefore you hear or read that the Word and the soul converse together, and behold one another; do not imagine that bodily voices pass between them, just as neither do bodily images of the speakers appear. Hear rather what you are to think in matters of this kind. The Word is a spirit, and the soul is a spirit, and they have their tongues, by which they address one another and indicate their presence. And the tongue of the Word indeed is the favor of his condescension: but that of the soul, the fervor of devotion. The soul that does not have this is tongueless and speechless, and there can be no conversation at all between her and the Word. Therefore when the Word moves his tongue of this kind, wishing to speak to the soul, the soul cannot fail to perceive it. For the word of God is living and efficacious, and more penetrating than any two-edged sword, reaching to the division of soul and spirit (Heb 4:12). And again when the soul moves her own tongue, the Word will be far less able to be hidden from it; not only because he is present everywhere, but rather because of this, that unless he himself prompts it, the tongue of devotion is by no means moved to speak. Therefore, for the Word to say to the soul, "you are beautiful," and to call her his love, is to infuse that by which she both loves and presumes herself to be loved. And for her in turn to name the Word beloved, and to confess him beautiful; is to ascribe to him without pretense and without deceit that he loves and that he is loved, and to marvel at his condescension, and to be astonished at his grace. For his beauty is his love of her; and therefore it is the greater, because it is prevenient. From the marrow of the heart therefore, and with the voices of the inmost affections, she cries out all the more greatly and ardently that he is to be loved by her, inasmuch as she perceived him loving before he was loved. And so the speech of the Word is an infusion of a gift, the response of the soul is admiration with the giving of thanks. And therefore she loves the more, because she perceives herself surpassed in loving: and therefore she marvels the more, because she recognizes herself anticipated. Whence she is not content to say "beautiful" once, but repeats "and comely," designating the eminence of his beauty by that repetition. Or certainly in both substances of Christ she has expressed a beauty worthy of all admiration, in the one of nature, in the other of grace. How beautiful you are to your angels, Lord Jesus, in the form of God, in the day of your eternity, in the splendors of the saints, begotten before the morning star, the brightness and the figure of the substance of the Father, and indeed the perpetual and in no way counterfeit radiance of eternal life! How comely you are to me, my Lord, in this very setting aside of your beauty! For indeed where you emptied yourself, where you stripped the unfailing light of its natural rays; there your mercy shone forth the more, there your love shone forth the more, there grace radiated the more. How brightly you rise for me, O Star out of Jacob (Num 24:17), how luminous you come forth, O Flower from the root of Jesse (Isa 11:1), how pleasant a light in darkness you have visited me, O Dayspring from on high! (Lk 1:78). How glorious and wondrous even to the heavenly Powers in your conception from the Spirit, in your birth from the Virgin, in the innocence of your life, in the streams of your teaching, in the flashing of your miracles, in the revelations of your mysteries! How at last, gleaming after your setting, O Sun of justice, you rise again from the heart of the earth! How beautiful in your robe at last (Isa 63:1), O King of glory, you ascend into the heights of heaven! How shall not for all these things all my bones say: Lord, who is like unto you? (Ps 34:10). These things therefore, and things like them, consider that the bride perceived as she beheld her beloved, when she said: "Behold you are beautiful, my beloved, and comely." And not these alone, but in addition something beyond doubt of the beauty of his higher nature, which altogether flies past our gaze and escapes our experience. Therefore the repetition designated the beauty of both substances.”

“"Our little bed is flowering, the beams of our houses are of cedar, our paneled ceilings are of cypress" (Song 1:16-17). She sings a wedding hymn, describing the couch and the chambers in beautiful speech. She invites the Bridegroom to rest. For this is better: to rest and to be with Christ. Yet it is necessary to go out to gain profits for the sake of those who are to be saved. But now, having found the opportunity, as she thinks, she announces that the chamber is adorned, and pointing to the little bed as if with her finger, she invites the beloved, as I have said, to rest, and not enduring the burning of her heart with those going to Emmaus, she draws him to the lodging of her mind, compels him to stay the night with her (Lk 24:29, 32), and speaks with Peter: "Lord, it is good for us to be here" (Mt 17:4). Now let us inquire what these things contain spiritually. And in the Church indeed I consider the bed in which one rests to be the cloisters and monasteries, in which one lives quietly, free from the cares of the world and the anxieties of life. And this bed is shown to be flowering when the conduct and life of the brethren shines forth, sprinkled as it were with certain sweet-smelling flowers, by the examples and institutions of the fathers. But note how beautifully the entire state of the Church is comprehended in one brief little verse: namely the authority of prelates, the beauty of the clergy, the discipline of the people, the quiet of monks. In the contemplation of all these things, when all is rightly ordered, holy mother Church rejoices, and then she also offers them for the beloved to behold, when she refers all things to his goodness, as the author of all, attributing nothing of all these things to herself. For when she says "our" and "of our," it is not a sign of usurpation but of love: because, namely, by the confidence of exceeding charity, she considers nothing of him whom she greatly loves to be alien to her. For she does not think herself to be excluded from the companionship of the Bridegroom or from the sharing of his rest, she who has always been accustomed to seek not what is her own but what is his: and this is the reason why she has dared to declare as common to herself and the Bridegroom alike whether the little bed or the houses. For she said: "Our little bed," and "the beams of our houses," and "our paneled ceilings": boldly associating herself in possession with him to whom she does not doubt she is joined in love. Not so she who has not yet renounced her own will, but lies by herself, dwells by herself: or rather not by herself, but lives luxuriously in company with harlots -- I mean the lusts of the flesh -- with whom she squanders her goods, and the portion of substance that she demanded be divided for her (Lk 15:12-13). Moreover, you who hear or read these words of the Holy Spirit, do you think you are able to apply any of these things that are said to yourself, and to recognize in yourself something of the happiness of the bride, which is sung in this love-song by the Spirit himself, lest it be said to you also that you hear his voice and do not know whence it comes or where it goes? Behold, perhaps you yourself also desire the quiet of contemplation, and you do well: only do not forget the flowers with which you read that the bed of the bride is sprinkled. Therefore take care that you too likewise surround yours with flowers of good works, that you anticipate the holy leisure as fruit with the exercise of virtues as flower. Otherwise you will want to drowse in quite delicate leisure, if you do not seek rest as one who has been exercised, and, neglecting the fruitfulness of Leah, desire to delight yourself in the embraces of Rachel alone. But also the order is reversed if one demands the reward before the merit, and takes food before the labor, since the Apostle says: "He who does not work, let him not eat" (2 Thess 3:10). "From your commandments I have gained understanding," he says (Ps 119:104): so that you may know that apart from the obedience of the commandments the taste of contemplation is not at all owed. Therefore do not think that any prejudice at all should be done to the acts of holy obedience, or the traditions of the elders, out of love for your own quiet. Otherwise the Bridegroom will not sleep with you in one bed, especially that one which you have sprinkled for yourself with the hemlock and nettles of disobedience, instead of the flowers of obedience. For which reason he will not hear your prayers, and when called he will not come: for he will not grant to the disobedient access to himself, he who is so great a lover of obedience that he preferred to die rather than not to obey. Nor does he approve the idle leisure of your contemplation, he who says through the prophet: "I have labored, sustaining" (Jer 6:11); signifying the time when, an exile from heaven and the homeland of supreme quiet, he worked salvation in the midst of the earth. Moreover I fear lest that dreadful sentence may also envelop you, thundering thus against the faithlessness of the Jews: "Your new moons and sabbaths and other festivals I will not endure"; likewise: "Your new moons and your solemnities my soul hates; they have become burdensome to me" (Is 1:13-14). And the prophet will mourn over you and say: "Her enemies saw her and mocked at her sabbaths" (Lam 1:7). For why should the enemy not mock at what the beloved repudiates? I greatly wonder at the shamelessness of certain ones who are among us, who, when they have disturbed us all by their singularity, irritated us by their impatience, and shown contempt for us by their stubbornness and rebellion, nevertheless dare to invite the Lord of all purity, with every insistence of prayers, to so foul a bed of their conscience. "But when you stretch out your hands," he says, "I will turn away my eyes, and when you multiply prayer, I will not hear" (Is 1:15). For what? The little bed is not flowering, but rather is even putrid; and you drag the King of glory thither? Do you do this for resting or for causing a lawsuit? The centurion forbids him to enter under his roof because of his own unworthiness, whose faith nevertheless is fragrant throughout all Israel (Mt 8:8, 10): and you compel him to enter to you, filthy as you are with the squalor of so many vices? The prince of the apostles cries out: "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man" (Lk 5:8); and you say: "Enter to me, Lord, for I am holy"? "Be all of one mind in prayer," he says, "love the brotherhood" (1 Pet 2:17). And the vessel of election: "Lifting up pure hands," he says, "without anger and disputation" (1 Tim 2:8). Do you see how the prince of the apostles and the teacher of the nations agree with each other, and speak by the same Spirit concerning the peace and tranquility of mind that he who prays ought to have? Go on then, you, stretch out your hands to God all day long, you who trouble the brethren all day long, who attack unanimity, who separate yourself from unity. "And what do you want me to do?" you say. Assuredly that first you cleanse your conscience from all defilement of anger and disputation, and murmuring, and envy; and that whatever is recognized as contrary either to the peace of the brethren or to obedience to the elders, you hasten to eliminate from the dwelling place of your heart. Then also that you surround yourself with flowers of whatever good deeds and praiseworthy pursuits, and the sweet perfumes of virtues; that is, "whatever things are true, whatever things are modest, whatever things are just, whatever things are holy, whatever things are lovable, whatever things are of good repute, if there is any virtue, if there is any praise of discipline; think on these things" (Phil 4:8), take care to be exercised in them. To such a bed you will safely call the Bridegroom: because when you have brought him in, you too will be able to say truthfully that our little bed is flowering, with your conscience giving forth the fragrance of piety, indeed of peace, of meekness, of justice, of obedience, of cheerfulness, of humility. And concerning the little bed let it be thus.”

“"Our little bed is flowering, the beams of our houses are of cedar, our paneled ceilings are of cypress" (Song 1:16-17). She sings a wedding hymn, describing the couch and the chambers in beautiful speech. She invites the Bridegroom to rest. For this is better: to rest and to be with Christ. Yet it is necessary to go out to gain profits for the sake of those who are to be saved. But now, having found the opportunity, as she thinks, she announces that the chamber is adorned, and pointing to the little bed as if with her finger, she invites the beloved, as I have said, to rest, and not enduring the burning of her heart with those going to Emmaus, she draws him to the lodging of her mind, compels him to stay the night with her (Lk 24:29, 32), and speaks with Peter: "Lord, it is good for us to be here" (Mt 17:4). Furthermore, understand the houses as the assemblies of Christian people, whom those who are placed in high position, that is, Christian leaders of both orders, like beams strongly bind together the walls by imposing just laws, lest each one living by his own law or will, like leaning walls and fences pushed down, should fall apart from one another, and so the entire structure of the building should collapse and be scattered. But the paneled ceilings, which hang firmly from the beams and adorn the houses remarkably, I think designate the gentle and disciplined manners of a well-ordered clergy, and their duly administered offices. For how shall the orders of clergy and their ministrations stand, if they are not sustained by the beneficence and munificence, and protected by the power of rulers, as by beams? But as for the fact that the beams are described as of cedar and the paneled ceilings as of cypress, the nature of these species of wood without doubt contains something that corresponds to the aforesaid orders. And cedar indeed, since it is an incorruptible and also a fragrant wood, and of tall stature, sufficiently indicates what sort of men ought to be chosen for the role of beams. Therefore it is necessary that those who are set over others be strong and steadfast, and also long-suffering in hope, lifting the summit of their mind toward things above, who also, spreading everywhere the good odor of their faith and conduct, can say with the Apostle: "For we are the good fragrance of Christ to God in every place" (2 Cor 2:15). Cypress likewise, a wood equally of good fragrance and similarly incorruptible, shows that anyone of the clergy ought to be of incorrupt life and faith, so that he may deservedly be assigned to the beauty of the house and the adornment of the paneling. For it is written: "Holiness befits your house, O Lord, for length of days" (Ps 93:5). Where indeed both the beauty of holiness and the perseverance of unfailing grace are expressed. Therefore it is necessary that the man who is taken up for the ornament and beauty of the house be adorned with good character; and although he himself is always within, he should nevertheless have a good testimony also from those who are without. There are also other things in the nature of these woods that correspond to what is being discussed spiritually, but for the sake of brevity I pass over them. But note how beautifully the entire state of the Church is comprehended in one brief little verse: namely the authority of prelates, the beauty of the clergy, the discipline of the people, the quiet of monks. In the contemplation of all these things, when all is rightly ordered, holy mother Church rejoices, and then she also offers them for the beloved to behold, when she refers all things to his goodness, as the author of all, attributing nothing of all these things to herself. For when she says "our" and "of our," it is not a sign of usurpation but of love: because, namely, by the confidence of exceeding charity, she considers nothing of him whom she greatly loves to be alien to her. For she does not think herself to be excluded from the companionship of the Bridegroom or from the sharing of his rest, she who has always been accustomed to seek not what is her own but what is his: and this is the reason why she has dared to declare as common to herself and the Bridegroom alike whether the little bed or the houses. For she said: "Our little bed," and "the beams of our houses," and "our paneled ceilings": boldly associating herself in possession with him to whom she does not doubt she is joined in love. Not so she who has not yet renounced her own will, but lies by herself, dwells by herself: or rather not by herself, but lives luxuriously in company with harlots -- I mean the lusts of the flesh -- with whom she squanders her goods, and the portion of substance that she demanded be divided for her (Lk 15:12-13). But let each one recognize himself to be a spiritual house of God, provided that he no longer walks in the flesh but in the spirit: "For the temple of God is holy," he says, "which you are" (1 Cor 3:17). Take care therefore, brethren, for this spiritual building which you are, lest when it begins to advance to higher things, it should totter and collapse if it has not been supported and bound together with strong timbers. Take care, I say, to give it beams that are incorruptible and immovable: namely the chaste fear of the Lord, that which "endures forever and ever" (Ps 19:9); patience, of which it is written that "the patience of the poor shall not perish forever" (Ps 9:18); also long-suffering, which, persevering unbent under whatever weight of the structure, extends into the infinite ages of blessed life, as the Savior says in the Gospel: "He who perseveres to the end, he shall be saved" (Mt 10:22); but above all charity, "which never fails," because "love is strong as death, jealousy is hard as hell" (Song 8:6). Then strive to lay beneath these beams and bind to them other woods equally precious and beautiful, should those others be at hand for the work of paneling for the beauty of the house: namely the word of wisdom or of knowledge, prophecy, the grace of healings, the interpretation of words, and other such things, which are known to be more suited for ornament than necessary for salvation. Concerning these I have no commandment, but I give counsel: since indeed such woods are found to be laboriously sought and found with difficulty and dangerously worked (for our land, especially in these times, is found to produce them rarely), I counsel indeed and warn that they not be greatly sought after; rather let paneling be prepared from other woods, which, even if they appear less splendid, are nevertheless proved no less strong, and moreover are more easily possessed and more safely. Would that I too had an abundance of those woods with which the garden of the Bridegroom, the Church, is thickly planted: peace, goodness, kindness, joy in the Holy Spirit, to show mercy with cheerfulness, to give with simplicity, to rejoice with those who rejoice, to weep with those who weep (Rom 12:8, 15). Would you not consider that house (as far as concerns the paneling) sufficiently and abundantly adorned, which you see paneled suitably and in good order with such woods? "Lord, I have loved the beauty of your house" (Ps 26:8). Always give me these woods, I pray, with which I may always present to you an adorned chamber of conscience: of my conscience, I say, and of another's. With these I shall be content. There will be those too who will be willing to acquiesce in my counsel in this matter, because I think you also will be content: the rest I leave to the holy apostles and to apostolic men. But you also, most beloved, even if you do not have those other woods, nevertheless if you have these, be confident; nevertheless with all boldness approach the chief cornerstone, elect, precious; nevertheless upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets you yourselves also as living stones are built up, spiritual houses, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (Eph 2:19-22 and 1 Pet 2:4-9), the Bridegroom of the Church, our Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“The Bridegroom, then, is a lily, but not a lily among thorns, since he has no thorns who committed no sin. Indeed he declared the bride to be a lily among thorns; since even she, if she should say that she has no thorns, deceives herself, and the truth is not in her. But he professed himself indeed a flower and a lily, yet not among thorns. Rather he says: "I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys" (Song 2:1-2). And there is no mention of thorns, because he alone among men has no need to say: "I was turned in my affliction, while the thorn was fastened in me" (Ps 31:4). Therefore he is never without lilies, who is always without vices; because he is wholly and always radiant, beautiful in form beyond the sons of men (Ps 44:3). You therefore who hear or read these things, take care to have lilies in your possession, if you wish to have this dweller among lilies dwelling in you.”

“"I am the flower of the field, and the lily of the valleys" (Song 2:1). I think this looks back to what the bride had commended concerning the little bed sprinkled with flowers. For lest she should ascribe to herself those flowers, by which the little bed appeared adorned and the bridal chamber beautified, the Bridegroom declares that he is the flower of the field; and that the flowers do not come forth from the bridal chamber, but from the field; and that by his gift and by participation in him is produced what shines and what gives fragrance. Lest therefore anyone should be able to reproach her and say: "What do you have that you have not received? And if you have received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?" (1 Cor 4:7), he himself, as much an eager lover as a kind instructor of his beloved, piously and graciously shows her to whom she ought to attribute the splendor, about which she was glorying, and the sweet fragrance of the little bed. "I am the flower of the field," he says: from me is that in which you glory. Most wholesomely are we admonished also from this passage, that we ought by no means to glory: "and if anyone glories, let him glory in the Lord" (2 Cor 10:17). And this according to the letter: now let us examine, with the help of him of whom it speaks, the spiritual understanding that lies hidden therein.”

“And first observe for me now a certain threefold state of the flower: in the field, in the garden, in the bridal chamber; so that after this it may also more easily become clear why he chose above all to call himself the flower of the field. And in the field indeed and in the garden the flower springs up, but in the bridal chamber by no means. It gives fragrance and shines there, yet not standing erect, as in the garden or field; but plainly lying down, as one that has been brought in, not born there. And therefore it is indeed necessary to renew them frequently, and always to set out fresher flowers, because they do not long retain their fragrance or their beauty. But if, as I said in another sermon, the little bed sprinkled with flowers is the conscience filled with good works; you see certainly, that the likeness may be preserved, that it by no means suffices to do what is good once or twice, unless you ceaselessly add new things to the former, so that sowing in blessings, you may also reap from blessings. Otherwise the flower of the good work lies down and withers, and in a short time all splendor and vigor is destroyed from it, if it is not continually renewed by other and yet other acts of piety cast upon it. This is so in the bridal chamber. In the garden however it is not so: but neither in the field similarly. For from themselves, having once produced flowers, they continually supply that whereby the inborn beauty may long persevere in them. Yet they also differ among themselves, in that the garden indeed, in order to flower, is cultivated by the hand and art of men: but the field naturally produces flowers of itself, and without any aid of human diligence. Do you think you now seem to yourself to perceive who that field is, neither furrowed by the ploughshare, nor dug up by the hoe, nor fattened with dung, nor sown by the hand of man; yet nevertheless adorned with that noble flower, upon whom the Spirit of the Lord is known to have rested? "Behold," he says, "the smell of my son is as the smell of a field full, which the Lord has blessed" (Gen 27:27). That flower of the field had not yet put on his beauty, and already he was giving forth his fragrance, when the holy and aged Patriarch, feeble in body, dim of sight, but keen of smell, perceived him in spirit, so as to cry out this for joy. He ought not therefore to have declared himself a flower of the bridal chamber, he who is a flower perpetually vigorous: but neither likewise of the garden, lest he should seem to have been produced by human work. But beautifully and most fittingly, "I am the flower of the field," he says, who both came forth without human effort, and once having come forth, no corruption thereafter had dominion over him, that the word which he spoke might be fulfilled: "You will not give your Holy One to see corruption" (Ps 16:10).”

“But, if it please you, receive also another reason for this matter, not to be despised, as I judge. For not without cause is the manifold spirit described by the Wise Man, except that beneath one rind of the letter it is accustomed to conceal frequently diverse understandings of wisdom. And so according to the aforesaid division concerning the state of the flower, virginity is a flower, martyrdom is a flower, a good work is a flower. Virginity in the garden, martyrdom in the field, good work in the bridal chamber. And well is virginity in the garden, to which modesty is familiar, shunning the public, rejoicing in hiding places, enduring discipline. For the flower is enclosed in a garden, which in the field is exposed and in the bridal chamber is scattered. And you have: "A garden enclosed, a fountain sealed" (Song 4:12). Which indeed signifies the enclosure of modesty in the virgin, and the guarding of inviolate sanctity: if nevertheless she be such a one as is holy both in body and in spirit. Well likewise is martyrdom in the field, since martyrs are exposed to the mockery of all, made a spectacle both to angels and to men. Is not their pitiable voice in the psalm: "We have been made a reproach to our neighbors, a derision and a mockery to those who are round about us" (Ps 79:4)? Well also is the good work in the bridal chamber, which makes the conscience both tranquil and secure. For after a good work one sleeps more securely in contemplation, and with that much more confidence does one undertake to gaze upon and investigate sublime things, the more one is conscious that one has by no means failed in works of charity out of love for one's own rest. And all these things in a certain respect is the Lord Jesus. He is the flower of the garden, a virgin, the rod generated from a virgin. He is likewise the flower of the field, a martyr, the crown of martyrs, the pattern of martyrdom. For he was led forth outside the city, he suffered outside the camp, he was raised up on the wood, to be gazed upon by men, to be mocked by all. He is likewise the flower of the bridal chamber, the mirror and exemplar of all beneficence, as he himself declared to the Jews, saying: "Many good works have I shown you from my Father" (Jn 10:32); and likewise Scripture concerning him: "Who went about," it says, "doing good and healing all" (Acts 10:38). If therefore the Lord is these three things, what was the reason that out of the three he preferred to call himself the flower of the field? Assuredly in order that he might animate to endurance her whom he knew would have to suffer persecution, if indeed she wished to live piously in Christ. He therefore more willingly professes himself to be that to which he above all wishes to have a follower; and this is what I said on another occasion, that she always desires rest, and he urges her to labor, announcing to her that "through many tribulations it is necessary to enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Acts 14:22). Whence, when the new Church on earth, newly espoused to him, he was arranging to return to the Father, he said to her: "The hour comes when everyone who kills you will think he is offering service to God" (Jn 16:2); likewise: "If they have persecuted me," he says, "they will also persecute you" (Jn 15:20). You can also gather many similar announcements of evils to be endured in the Gospel.”

“"I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys." While she therefore points to the little bed, he calls to the field, he provokes to exercise. He does not think anything will be more persuasive to her for entering the contest than if he should set forth himself as either the example or the reward of the one contending. "I am the flower of the field." Indeed either meaning is given to be understood in this speech: either that he is the pattern of the one fighting, or the glory of the one triumphing. You are both to me, Lord Jesus, both the mirror of suffering and the reward of the one who suffers. Both strongly provoke and vehemently kindle. You teach my hands to fight by the example of your valor; you crown my head after victory by the presence of your majesty; whether because I behold you fighting, or because I await you not only crowning but also as the crown: in both you wonderfully draw me to yourself; each is a most violent cord for drawing. "Draw me after you": gladly I follow you, more gladly I enjoy you. If you are so good, Lord, to those following you, what will you be to those who attain you? "I am the flower of the field." He who loves me, let him come into the field, let him not refuse to enter the contest with me and for me, that he may be able to say: "I have fought the good fight" (2 Tim 4:7).”

“And since it is not the proud or arrogant, but rather the humble, who do not know how to presume of themselves, that are fit for martyrdom, he adds that he is also the lily of the valleys, that is, the crown of the humble, designating by the eminence of this flower the special glory of their future exaltation. For there will come a time when "every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low" (Isa 40:4): and then that whiteness of eternal life, plainly a lily not of the hills but of the valleys, shall appear. "The just shall spring up as a lily," it says (Hos 14:5). Who is just, if not the humble? For when the Lord bowed himself to the hands of the Baptist, his servant, and he was terrified at the majesty, "Permit it," he said; "for thus it befits us to fulfill all justice" (Mt 3:15), establishing the consummation of justice in the perfection of humility. The just man therefore is the humble, the just man is the valley. And if we shall be found humble, we too shall spring up as the lily, and we shall flourish forever before the Lord. Or does he not truly and then especially prove himself the lily of the valleys, when "he shall reform the body of our humility, made conformable to the body of his glory" (Phil 3:21)? He does not say "our body," but "the body of our humility": so that by the wondrous and everlasting whiteness of this lily he signifies that the humble alone shall be illumined. And let these things be said on account of what the Bridegroom declared himself to be the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys.”

“The Bridegroom, then, is a lily, but not a lily among thorns, since he has no thorns who committed no sin. Indeed he declared the bride to be a lily among thorns; since even she, if she should say that she has no thorns, deceives herself, and the truth is not in her. But he professed himself indeed a flower and a lily, yet not among thorns. Rather he says: "I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys" (Song 2:1-2). And there is no mention of thorns, because he alone among men has no need to say: "I was turned in my affliction, while the thorn was fastened in me" (Ps 31:4). Therefore he is never without lilies, who is always without vices; because he is wholly and always radiant, beautiful in form beyond the sons of men (Ps 44:3). You therefore who hear or read these things, take care to have lilies in your possession, if you wish to have this dweller among lilies dwelling in you.”

“"As the lily among thorns, so is my beloved among the daughters" (Song 2:2). Not good daughters who prick. Observe the most wretched offspring of that land of ours which was cursed. "When," he says, "you shall have cultivated it, it will bring forth thorns and thistles for you" (Gen 3:18). Therefore, as long as the soul is in the flesh, it dwells indeed among thorns; and it is necessary that it suffer the restlessness of temptations and the stings of tribulations. But if it is itself a lily according to the word of the Bridegroom, let it see how watchful and solicitous it ought to be over the guarding of itself, surrounded on all sides by thorns, extending their stings from every direction. For the tenderness of the flower in no way endures even the slightest prick of a thorn, but as soon as it is pressed even slightly, it is pierced. You perceive how rightly and necessarily the prophet exhorts us to serve the Lord in fear (Ps 2:11); and likewise the Apostle, to work out our own salvation with fear and no less trembling (Phil 2:12). They held assuredly by their own experience the truth of this judgment, inasmuch as they were friends of the Bridegroom, who in no way at all doubted that the words pertained to their own souls: "As the lily among thorns, so is my beloved among the daughters." Finally one of them says: "I was turned in my affliction, while the thorn was fastened in me" (Ps 31:4). Well fastened, he who was thereby turned. Well are you pricked, if you are pricked with compunction. Many, when they feel the punishment, correct the fault; and such a one can say: "I was turned in my affliction, while the thorn was fastened in me." A thorn is fault, a thorn is punishment, a thorn is a false brother, a thorn is an evil neighbor. "As the lily among thorns, so is my beloved among the daughters." O gleaming lily! O tender and delicate flower! Unbelievers and subverters are with you: see how cautiously you walk among thorns. The world is full of thorns: they are in the earth, they are in the air, they are in your flesh. To dwell among these and not be harmed in the least belongs to divine power, not to your own virtue. "But be confident," he says, "because I have overcome the world" (Jn 16:33). Even if, therefore, you perceive the stings of tribulations, as of thistles, directed at you from every side, let not your heart be troubled nor let it fear, knowing that tribulation works patience, patience works proving, proving works hope, and hope does not confound (Rom 5:3-5). Consider the lilies of the field, how they flourish and shine among thorns. If God so guards the grass which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven (Mt 6:28-30), how much more his beloved and most dear bride? Finally, "the Lord guards all who love him" (Ps 144:20). "As the lily among thorns, so is my beloved among the daughters." It is no small title of virtue indeed, to live as a good person among the depraved, and to retain the brightness of innocence and the gentleness of conduct among the malicious: and all the more if you show yourself peaceful to those who hate peace, and a friend to enemies themselves. This indeed will rightly claim for you the likeness given of the lily, by a certain right of special property, because it does not cease to illuminate and adorn with its own brightness the very thorns that prick it. Does not the lily seem to you thereby to fulfill in a certain way the perfection of the Gospel, by which we are commanded to pray for those who calumniate and persecute us, and to do good to those who hate us? (Lk 6:27-28.) Therefore do you likewise, and your soul will be a beloved of the Lord, and he will praise you concerning yourself, saying that "as the lily among thorns, so is my beloved among the daughters."”

“There follows: "As the apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the sons." The bride returns the exchange of praise to the Bridegroom who commends her, from whom to be praised is to be made praiseworthy, and to praise whom is to understand and admire the praiseworthy one. And just as her praise was figured by the Bridegroom from an eminent flower, so in return she too demonstrates his singular glory and eminence from an excellent tree. Yet it moves me concerning this tree, that it does not seem to be of so great an excellence as some of the others: and therefore less worthily taken up for the purpose of the similitude, inasmuch as it would not suffice to fulfill the exchange of praise. "As the apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the sons." Indeed the bride herself does not seem to have esteemed it highly, she who took care to exalt it only among the trees of forests, that is, among sterile trees bearing no fruits suitable for human food. Why therefore, with better and nobler trees passed over, was the mediocrity of this tree brought forward to form the Bridegroom's praise? Was he who did not receive the Spirit by measure to receive praise by measure? For this similitude given from that tree makes it seem that he who has no equal has a superior. What shall we say to these things? I confess, it is a small praise, because it is the praise of the small one. For it is not in this place that the "great Lord and exceedingly to be praised" (Ps 144:3) is proclaimed, but the small Lord and exceedingly to be loved, the little one indeed "who has been born for us" (Isa 9:6). Therefore it is not majesty that is extolled here, but humility that is commended; and worthily and reasonably that which is weak and foolish of God is preferred to the strength and wisdom of men. For they themselves are the wild and fruitless trees of the forest, because, according to the Prophet, "all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one" (Ps 13:3). "As the apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the sons." Alone among the trees of the forest the Lord Jesus is a tree bearing fruit, according to his humanity assuredly, even if set above men, yet "made lower than the angels" (Ps 8:6). For in a wondrous manner, having been made flesh, he both subjected himself to the angels, and remaining God, he retained the angels subject to himself. Finally: "You shall see," he says, "the angels ascending and descending upon the Son of man" (Jn 1:51): because in one and the same man Christ Jesus they both tend his weakness and stand in awe of his majesty. Because therefore to the bride that which he diminished of himself tastes sweeter, she more willingly extols his grace, sets forth his mercy, stands amazed at his condescension. It therefore pleased her to admire the man among men, not God among angels, as the apple tree excels among the trees of the forest, and not indeed among the plantings of gardens. Nor does she think that his praises are diminished, where the goodness of piety is exalted from the consideration of weakness. For in the measure that she tempers her praises in one respect, in that same measure she praises the more in another respect, pursuing less the glory of his dignity, so that the grace of his condescension may stand out. As therefore the Apostle says that what is foolish and weak of God is wiser and stronger than men (1 Cor 1:25), but not than angels; and as the Prophet proclaims him beautiful in form "above the sons of men" (Ps 44:3), and not above the angels; so she certainly, speaking in the same spirit, wished in this place under the type of a fruit-bearing tree and the trees of the forest to exalt the God-Man above all the grace of men, but not above the excellence of the angels. "As the apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the sons." And rightly "among the sons"; because, though he was the only-begotten of his Father, he was zealous to acquire for him many sons without envy, whom "he is not ashamed to call brothers," that he might be himself "the firstborn among many brothers." Rightly, however, is he who is Son by nature set before all those adopted through grace. "As the apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the sons." Deservedly as the apple tree, who, after the manner of a fruit-bearing tree, both has the shade of refreshment and bears the best fruit. Is it not truly a fruit-bearing tree, "whose flowers are the fruit of honor and of virtue?" (Sir 24:23.) Finally, "it is a tree of life to those who lay hold of it" (Prov 3:18). All the trees of the forest shall not be compared to it, because, even if there are trees beautiful and great which seem to offer help by praying, by ministering, by teaching, by aiding with examples, nevertheless Christ, the Wisdom of God, alone is the tree of life, alone the "living bread that descended from heaven and gives life to the world" (Jn 6:41, 33). Therefore she says: "I sat under the shadow of him whom I had desired, and his fruit was sweet to my palate" (Song 2:3). She had rightly desired his shadow, from whom she was about to receive both refreshment and nourishment alike. For the other trees of the forest indeed have the shade of solace, but not the nourishment of life, not the perpetual fruits of salvation. For there is one author of life, "one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim 2:5), who says to his bride: "I am your salvation" (Ps 34:3). "Not Moses," he says, "gave you this bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven" (Jn 6:32). Therefore she had desired the shadow of Christ above all, because he alone is the one who not only cools from the heat of vices, but also fills with the delight of virtues. "I sat under the shadow of him whom I had desired." His shadow is his flesh; his shadow is faith. The flesh of her own Son overshadowed Mary; the faith of the Lord overshadows me. Although, how does his flesh not overshadow me also, who eat it in the sacrament? And the holy Virgin likewise experienced the shadow of faith herself, to whom it was said: "And blessed is she who believed" (Lk 1:45). "I sat under the shadow of him whom I had desired." And the prophet says: "The Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord; in his shadow we shall live among the nations" (Lam 4:20). In the shadow among the nations, in the light with the angels. We are in the shadow, as long as we walk by faith and not by sight; and therefore the just man is in the shadow, who lives by faith. But he who lives by understanding is blessed; because he is no longer in the shadow, but in the light. David was just, and he lived by faith, when he was saying to God: "Give me understanding, that I may learn your commandments, and may live" (Ps 118:73, 144); knowing that understanding would succeed faith, and that the light of life would be revealed to the understanding, and the life of the light. It comes first to arrive at the shadow, and so to pass through to that of which it is the shadow, because, "unless you shall have believed," he says, "you shall not understand" (Isa 7:9). You see that faith is both life and the shadow of life. For on the contrary, the life that is spent in pleasures, because it is not of faith, is both death and the shadow of death. For "she who is a widow," he says, "living in pleasures, is dead while she lives" (1 Tim 5:6). Finally, "the wisdom of the flesh is death" (Rom 8:6). But it is also the shadow of death, namely of that death which torments for eternity. We too once sat in darkness and the shadow of death, living carnally and not living by faith; dead indeed already to justice, but very nearly about to be swallowed up by the second death. For as much as a shadow is near to the body whose shadow it is, so much assuredly did that life of ours draw near to hell. Finally: "Unless the Lord had helped me," he says, "my soul would have very nearly dwelt in hell" (Ps 93:17). But now we have passed from the shadow of death to the shadow of life; or rather "we have been translated from death to life" (1 Jn 3:14), living in the shadow of Christ, if indeed living, and not dead. For I do not think that as soon as anyone is in his shadow, he thereby lives in it, because plainly not everyone who has faith lives by faith. For faith without works is dead; nor can it give life, which it itself does not possess. Therefore the prophet, when he had said: "The Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord," was not content to follow and say: "We are in his shadow"; but: "In his shadow," he says, "we live among the nations." Therefore do you also see to it that you live, by the example of the prophet, in his shadow, so that at some time you may also reign in his light. For he does not have only a shadow; he has light also. He himself through his flesh is the shadow of faith; he himself is the light of understanding through the Spirit. For he is both flesh and spirit. Flesh, for those remaining in the flesh; spirit, before our face, that is, in the future; if indeed, forgetting those things which are behind and stretching ourselves forward to those things which are before, we may arrive at that point and experience concerning the Word what he said: "The flesh profits nothing, it is the Spirit that gives life" (Jn 6:64). Nor am I unaware that someone still remaining in the flesh said: "And if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer" (2 Cor 5:16). But that was for him: for us indeed, who have not yet merited to be caught up to paradise, not yet to the third heaven, let us meanwhile feed on the flesh of Christ, let us venerate his mysteries, follow his examples, preserve the faith; and we live indeed in the shadow. "I sat under the shadow of him whom I had desired." Perhaps she glories in having experienced something more blessed in this, that she says she is in the shadow: not, as the prophet, living, but sitting. For to sit is to rest. But it is more to rest in the shadow than to live in it, just as to live is more than merely to be in it. Therefore the prophet, assuming to himself what is common to many, says: "In his shadow we live"; but the bride, having the prerogative, glories also in this, that she alone sat under it. For not as he says in the plural, "We live," does she likewise say, "We sat"; but in the singular, "I sat," that you may recognize the prerogative. Where, therefore, we live with labor, we who, conscious of our sins, serve under fear, there this devoted and loving one sweetly reposes. Finally, fear has punishment, but love has sweetness. Whence she says: "And his fruit was sweet to my palate"; signifying the taste of contemplation, which she had obtained, having been sweetly lifted up through love. But this is in the shadow, because through a mirror and in a riddle. There will come a time when the shadows shall recede as the light increases, or rather shall utterly vanish, and there shall enter a vision as clear as it is perpetual; and there shall be not only sweetness to the palate, but also fullness to the belly; yet without weariness. "I sat under the shadow of him whom I had desired, and his fruit was sweet to my palate." Let us also, where the bride pauses, pause likewise, glorifying the master of the household for the taste we have received, who has invited us to such a feast, the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“On the Twofold Charity, Namely Actual and Affectual; and Its Ordering. 1. You perhaps expect the following verses to be treated, thinking the little verse which was most recently treated to be finished. But I am contriving something else: for I have something yet to set before you from the fragments of yesterday's banquet, which I had gathered for myself lest they perish. But they will perish if I set them before no one: for if I wish to have them for myself alone, I myself shall perish. Therefore I do not wish to defraud your gluttony, which I know well, of these things: especially since they are from the dish of charity, sweet insofar as they are subtle, savory insofar as they are small. Otherwise it is exceedingly contrary to charity to defraud of charity itself. And so here I am: "He ordered charity in me" (Song 2:4). 2. There is a charity in act, and there is one in affection. And concerning that which is of work, I think the law was given to men and a commandment was formed: for who so possesses it in affection as it is commanded? Therefore the one is commanded for merit, the other is given as a reward. We do not deny that divine grace can grant its beginning indeed, and its progress, to be experienced even in the present life; but its consummation we firmly reserve for future happiness. How then was it right to command what was in no way to be fulfilled? Or if it pleases you more that the commandment was given concerning affectual charity, I do not contend about that, provided that you too agree with me that it could in no way be fulfilled in this life by any man, or could have been. For who would dare arrogate to himself that which Paul himself confesses he has not comprehended? (Phil 3:13.) Nor was the weight of the precept, exceeding the powers of men, hidden from the teacher; but he judged it useful that they be reminded of their own insufficiency from this very thing, and that they might know clearly toward what end of righteousness they ought to strive with their powers. Therefore by commanding impossible things he did not make men transgressors, but humble, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be made subject to God; because by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified before him (Rom 3:19-20). For receiving the commandment, and feeling our transgression, we shall cry out to heaven, and God will have mercy on us: and we shall know in that day, that not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us (Titus 3:5). 3. And this I would have said, if indeed we agreed that affectual charity was commanded by law. But that this rather pertains to actual charity seems to appear most especially from this: that when the Lord had said, "Love your enemies," he at once adds concerning works: "Do good to those who hate you" (Lk 6:27). Likewise Scripture: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he thirsts, give him drink" (Rom 12:20). And here you have what concerns act, not affection. But hear likewise the Lord commanding also concerning love of himself: "If you love me," he says, "keep my words" (Jn 14:15). And here too we are sent to works by the enjoined observance of commandments. But he would have warned about works superfluously, if love had already been in the affection. So it is necessary that you also receive in this way the command that you love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:39), even if it is not so openly expressed. Or do you not finally judge it sufficient for fulfilling this commandment concerning love of neighbor, if you perfectly observe that which is rightly prescribed to every man by the law of nature: "What you do not wish done to you, do not do to another"? (Tob 4:16.) And likewise: "Whatever you wish that men should do to you, do also to them" (Mt 7:12). 4. Nor do I say this so that we should be without affection, and with a dry heart move only our hands to works. I have read among the other great and grievous evils of men which the Apostle writes, this also numbered: namely to be without affection (Rom 1:31). But there is an affection which the flesh begets; and there is one which reason rules; and there is one which wisdom seasons. The first is that which the Apostle says is not subject to the law of God, nor can it be (Rom 8:7); the second is that which he affirms on the other hand to be consenting to the law of God, because it is good (Rom 7:16); nor is there any doubt that the contentious and the consenting differ from each other. But the third is far distant from both, which both tastes and savors that the Lord is sweet (Ps 34:8), eliminating the first and rewarding the second. For the first indeed is sweet, but base; the second is dry, but strong; the last is rich, and sweet. Therefore through the second, works are done, and in it charity resides -- not that affectual charity, which, seasoned with the salt of wisdom, growing rich, brings to the mind a great multitude of the sweetness of the Lord; but rather a certain actual charity, which even if it does not yet sweetly refresh with that sweet love, nevertheless vehemently inflames with a love of that very love. "Let us not love," he says, "in word, nor in tongue, but in deed and in truth" (1 Jn 3:18). 5. Do you see how he carefully proceeds in the middle between vicious and affectionate love, distinguishing from each equally this actual and salutary charity? He receives in this love neither the pretense of a lying tongue, nor in turn does he demand the taste of affecting wisdom. "Let us love," he says, "in deed and in truth": namely that we be moved to good works more by a certain impulse of living truth than by the affection of that savory charity. "He ordered charity in me." Which of these do you think? Both, but in opposite order. For actual charity prefers inferior things, affectual prefers superior things. For indeed in a well-affected mind there is no doubt, for example, that the love of God is set before the love of man; and among men themselves, the more perfect before the weaker, heaven before earth, eternity before time, the soul before the flesh. Yet in a well-ordered action, the opposite order is often, or even always, found. For concerning care for our neighbor we are both more urgently pressed and more frequently occupied; and we attend to weaker brethren with more diligent care; and to the peace of earth rather than the glory of heaven we attend by the right of humanity and by necessity itself; and by the restlessness of temporal cares we are scarcely permitted to perceive anything of eternal things; and to the ailments of our body, with care of the soul set aside, we attend almost continuously; and indeed to our very weaker members we assign the more abundant honor, according to the judgment of the Apostle (1 Cor 12:23): by this in a certain way fulfilling the word of the Lord, concerning which you have: "The last shall be first, and the first last" (Mt 20:16). Finally, who doubts that one who prays speaks with God? Yet how often are we thence led away and torn away at the command of charity, on account of those who are in need of our work or word? How often does pious quiet piously yield to the tumult of business? How often is a book put down with good conscience, so that one may sweat at the work of the hands? How often, for the sake of administering earthly things, do we most justly abstain from celebrating the very solemnities of the Mass? The order is reversed: but necessity has no law. Actual charity therefore follows its own order according to the command of the head of the household, beginning from the last (Mt 20:8). Surely it is pious and just, for it is no respecter of persons; nor does it consider the value of things, but the necessities of men. 6. But affectual charity is not so: for it draws its order from the first things. For it is wisdom, through which certainly each thing savors as it is: so that, for example, what is of greater value by nature, the affection itself also feels to be of greater value; lesser things less, the least things least. And that order of charity truth makes; but this order the charity of truth claims for itself. For charity is true in this also, that those who are in greater need receive first: and in turn in this truth appears dear, if we hold in affection the order which truth holds by reason. If therefore you love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul, and your whole strength (Mt 22:37); and leaping beyond that love of love, with which actual charity is content, by a more fervent affection, you receive at close range the divine love itself, toward which that is a step, having received the Spirit in fullness, and wholly catch fire: God surely savors to you, even if not altogether worthily as he is (which indeed is impossible for every creature), yet certainly as your capacity for savoring is. Then you will also savor to yourself as you are, when you perceive that you have absolutely nothing for which you may love yourself except insofar as you are God's: since you have poured out the whole of that for which you love, into him. You will savor, I say, to yourself as you are, when by the very experience of your love, and the affection which you will have toward yourself, you find that you are worthy of nothing that might be loved by you yourself, except on account of him, without whom you yourself are nothing. 7. Now indeed your neighbor, whom you are truly bound to love as yourself, that he too may savor to you as he is, will surely savor to you no differently than you to yourself, who is what you are: for he is a man. You therefore who love yourself only because you love God; consequently all who similarly love him, you love as yourself. Furthermore an enemy, since he is nothing, inasmuch as he does not love God: he cannot indeed be loved as yourself, who love God; yet you will love him so that he may love. But it is not the same thing, to love so that he may love, and to love because he loves. Accordingly that he too may savor to you as he is, he will savor to you, not indeed for what he is, since he is certainly nothing; but for what he perhaps will be in the future -- which is close to nothing, inasmuch as it still hangs in doubt. For concerning one of whom it is established that he will never return to the love of God, he must savor to you not close to nothing, but altogether nothing, inasmuch as he is nothing for eternity. That one therefore excepted, who is now not only not to be loved, but moreover to be held in hatred, according to that: "Did I not hate those who hated you, O Lord, and waste away on account of your enemies?" (Ps 139:21.) For the rest, charity -- rightly ambitious in this respect -- permits that not even the most hostile man be denied some small measure of affection. Who is wise, and will understand these things? 8. Give me a man who above all things indeed loves God with his whole self; but himself and his neighbor, insofar as they love God himself; his enemy, however, as one who perhaps will love him some day; his parents according to the flesh, more tenderly on account of nature; but his spiritual teachers more abundantly on account of grace; and in this manner attends to all other things of God with ordered love, despising the earth, looking up to heaven, using this world as though not using it, and discerning between things to be used and things to be enjoyed by a certain inmost savor of the mind, so that he cares for transitory things in a transitory way, and only for what is needed and insofar as it is needed, and embraces eternal things with eternal desire: such a man, I say, give me, and I will boldly pronounce him wise, to whom indeed each thing truly savors as it is, and to whom it belongs in truth and security to glory and to say that "he ordered charity in me." But where is he, or when are these things so? Which I say weeping: how long do we smell and not taste, gazing upon the fatherland and not apprehending it, sighing and saluting from afar? O truth, fatherland of exiles, end of exile! I see you, but I am not permitted to enter, held back by the flesh; nor am I worthy to be admitted, soiled with sins. O Wisdom, who reaches from end to end mightily in establishing and sustaining things; and disposes all things sweetly in blessing and ordering affections! Direct our actions, as our temporal necessity demands; and dispose our affections, as your eternal truth requires, so that each one of us may securely glory in you and say that "he ordered charity in me." For you are the power of God and the wisdom of God, Christ the Bridegroom of the Church, our Lord, over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“In moral discipline likewise three things are to be noticed, as it were three cells in one storeroom. And perhaps for this reason she said storerooms in the plural, and not storeroom, thinking of this number of cells. Further on, indeed, she glories in having been brought into the "wine cellar" (Song 2:4). We therefore, because we read, "Give occasion to a wise man, and he will become wiser" (Prov 9:9), having the occasion from the name which the Holy Spirit saw fit to impose on this cell, let us impose names also on the other two: "aromatic" on one, and "ointment" on the other. Now however observe that all things with the bridegroom are found to be healthful, all things sweet: wine, ointments, spices. Wine, as Scripture attests, "gladdens the heart of man" (Ps 104:15). No less does one read that the face is made cheerful by oil (ibid.), in which indeed the powder of spices is infused to make ointments. Spices are not only pleasing by the sweet fragrance of their scent, but also useful by their healing power. Rightly does the bride exult that she has been brought in there, where so great an abundance of grace overflows. For as for the wine cellar too, I judge it to bear no other reason for its name than that in it is stored the wine of zeal fervent in charity. And no one at all who has not yet merited to be brought into it ought to preside over others. He who presides over others must absolutely burn with this wine, just as the Teacher of the Gentiles was burning when he said: "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I do not burn?" (2 Cor 11:29). Otherwise you quite improperly desire to preside over those whose good you do not seek; and you far too ambitiously claim for yourself the subjection of those for whose salvation you are not zealous. This cell I have also named of grace; not that anyone can obtain even the other two entirely without grace, but on account of the fullness which is singularly perceived in this one. For indeed "the fullness of the law is charity," and "he who loves his brother has fulfilled the law" (Rom 13:10, 8). Yet he easily fulfills both who has perfectly attained discretion, the mother of virtues, and is nevertheless inebriated with the wine of charity to the contempt of his own glory, to the forgetfulness of his very self, and not to seeking the things that are his own; which is obtained solely and wondrously by the instruction of the Holy Spirit within the wine cellar. For the virtue of discretion without the fervor of charity lies inert, and vehement fervor without the tempering of discretion falls headlong.”

“How Charity Is Ordered Through Discretion, So That All the Members of the Church, That Is, the Elect, May Be Bound Together With One Another. 1. "The king has brought me into the wine cellar, he has ordered charity in me" (Song 2:4). As indeed the letter of the proposed chapter seems to sound, after having enjoyed a sweet and quite familiar conversation with the beloved according to her desires, when he departed the bride returns to the young maidens, so refreshed and inflamed by the sight and speech of him that she appeared like one drunk. And as though they were astonished at the novelty and seeking the cause, she replied that it was not at all strange if she burned with wine, who had entered into the wine cellar. And according to the letter it is so. According to the spirit also she does not deny being drunk, but with love, not with wine, except that love is wine. "The king has brought me into the wine cellar." When the bridegroom is present and the bride directs her speech to him, then he is called bridegroom or beloved, or "him whom my soul loves," she says; but speaking of him to the young maidens, she names him king. Why is this? I believe it is because it befits the bride, loving and beloved, to use more familiarly the names of love, as pertains to herself, while the young maidens, as those needing discipline, must be pressed by the reverential word of majesty. 2. "The king has brought me into the wine cellar." What this wine cellar may be, I pass over saying, because I recall having already said it. Nevertheless, if the discourse is referred to the Church, when the disciples, filled with the Holy Spirit, were thought by the people to be drunk with new wine, then Peter, standing as it were the friend of the bridegroom on behalf of the bride, in the midst of them said: "These are not, as you suppose, drunk" (Acts 2:15). Observe meanwhile that he did not deny them to be drunk altogether, but drunk as they were supposed by those people. For they were drunk, but with the Holy Spirit, not with new wine. And as though they were testifying to the people that they had indeed been brought into the wine cellar, Peter again said on behalf of all: "But this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 'And it shall be in the last days, says the Lord, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy; your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams'" (Acts 2:16-17). Does not that house seem to you to have been a wine cellar, in which the disciples were gathered together, when suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting (Acts 2:2), and fulfilled the prophecy of Joel! And could not each one of them, going out inebriated from the abundance of that house, and given to drink from the torrent of so great pleasure, deservedly say: "The king has brought me into the wine cellar"? 3. But you also, if with your spirit gathered, with a sober mind and free from cares, you should enter alone into the house of prayer, and standing before God at one of the altars, you should touch the gate of heaven with the hand of holy desire, and being presented to the choirs of saints, your devotion penetrating (since indeed the prayer of the just penetrates the heavens), in their very presence you should, pitiable as you are, bewail the miseries and calamities which you suffer; with frequent sighs and unutterable groanings you should reveal your necessity, entreat for mercy; if, I say, you should do this, I am confident in him who said, "Ask, and you shall receive" (Mt 7:7), that if you persevere knocking, you shall not go out empty. But when you have returned to us full of grace and charity, and, fervent in spirit, you cannot conceal the gift received, which you will communicate without envy; and you shall be to all, in the grace that has been given to you, not only pleasing but perhaps even to be wondered at; you too will be able to declare truthfully that "the king has brought me into the wine cellar." Only be careful to glory not in yourself but in the Lord. Nor would I say that every gift, even a spiritual one, comes from the wine cellar, since there are also other cellars or storerooms in the possession of the bridegroom, having different gifts and charisms stored within them, according to the riches of his glory. "Are not these things stored up with me," he says, "and sealed in my treasuries?" (Deut 32:34). Therefore, according to the diversity of cellars, there are divisions of graces, and to each one the Spirit is manifested for profit. And although to one indeed is given the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge, to another prophecy, to another the grace of healings, to another kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of speeches, and other similar things to others (1 Cor 12:7-11), nevertheless none of these will be able to say on account of such things that he was brought into the wine cellar. For these are taken from other cellars or treasuries. 4. But if anyone by praying should obtain to go out of his mind into that divine mystery, from which he may soon return burning most vehemently with divine love, and aflame with zeal for justice, and exceedingly fervent in all spiritual pursuits and duties, so that he can say, "My heart grew hot within me, and in my meditations a fire blazes forth" (Ps 39:3): this one plainly, when from the abundance of charity he begins to belch forth the good and wholesome drunkenness of the wine of gladness, shall not undeservedly be said to have entered the wine cellar. For since there are two ecstasies of blessed contemplation, one in the intellect and the other in the affections, one in light and the other in fervor, one in recognition and the other in devotion: surely a pious affection, and a breast warm with love, and the infusion of holy devotion, and also a vehement spirit filled with zeal, are plainly brought back from nowhere else than from the wine cellar. And to whomever it is given to rise from prayer with an abundance of these things, he can speak in truth that "the king has brought me into the wine cellar." 5. There follows: "He has ordered charity in me." This was altogether necessary. For zeal without knowledge is indeed unbearable. Where therefore there is vehement zeal, there especially is discretion necessary, which is the ordering of charity. Indeed, zeal without knowledge is always found to be less effective and less useful; and very often it is even felt to be very harmful. Therefore, the more fervent the zeal, and the more vehement the spirit, and the more lavish the charity, the more need there is of watchful knowledge, which may restrain zeal, temper the spirit, and order charity. Therefore indeed, lest on account of the impetuousness of the spirit which she seems to have brought back from the wine cellar, the bride should be feared, especially by the young maidens, as excessive and unbearable, she adds that she has equally received what belongs to discretion, that is, the order of charity. For discretion sets order upon every virtue; order gives measure and beauty, and even perpetuity. Indeed he says: "By your ordering the day perseveres" (Ps 119:91), calling virtue the day. Discretion, therefore, is not so much a virtue as a certain governess and charioteer of the virtues, and an orderer of the affections, and a teacher of conduct. Take this away, and virtue will become vice, and natural affection itself will be turned rather into disturbance and the destruction of nature. "He has ordered charity in me." But this was done when in the Church he gave some indeed as apostles, some as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers, for the perfection of the saints (Eph 4:11-12). But it is necessary that charity bind all these together and temper them into the unity of the body of Christ, which it will by no means be able to do at all if it itself has not been ordered. For if each one is carried by his own impulse according to the spirit he has received, and has flown indiscriminately to whatever things he wishes, as he is moved, and not by the judgment of reason; since no one will be content with the office assigned to him, but all will attempt all things equally with indiscriminate administration, there will plainly be not unity but rather confusion. 6. "He has ordered charity in me." Would that the Lord Jesus might also order in me the little bit of charity he has given, so that I may be concerned for all things that are his, yet that what has been established to be most especially of my own calling or office, I may take care of before all things; but in such a way that what comes first is so arranged that nevertheless I am more moved toward many things that do not specially pertain to me. For not always will what must be taken care of first also be loved more, since often what comes first in solicitude is less in usefulness, and on that account ought to be less also in affection. Frequently therefore what is put first because of duty is put behind in judgment; and what truth judges should be put first, the order of charity demands should be embraced more dearly. Is it not the case, for example, that by the duty enjoined upon me the care of all of you rests upon me? Now whatever I should perhaps prefer to this work, so as to be less vigilant in carrying it out worthily and usefully to the best of my abilities, even if I may seem to do this perhaps out of charity, nevertheless the reason of order does not consent. But if I attend to this care before all things, as I ought, yet do not rejoice more at the greater gains of God which I perhaps discover are being accomplished through another, it is clear that I hold the order of charity in part, but by no means entirely. But if I show myself both more solicitous toward that which especially rests upon me, and no less more moved toward that which is greater, on both counts I am found to have attained the order of charity, and there is no reason why I too cannot say that "he has ordered charity in me." 7. But if you say it is difficult for anyone to rejoice more in the great good of another than in his own small good, you will certainly perceive from this the excellence of grace in the bride, and that it is not for just any soul to say "he has ordered charity in me." Why have the faces of some of you fallen just now at this discourse? For deep sighs bear witness to the sadness of your souls and the dejection of your consciences. Doubtless, measuring ourselves by ourselves, some of us perceive from the experience of our own imperfection how rare a virtue it is not to envy the virtue of another, much less to rejoice at it, much less even for each one to rejoice so much more than at his own virtue as he has perceived himself to be surpassed in virtue. There is still a little light in us, brothers, as many of us as feel thus about ourselves. Let us walk while we have the light, lest the darkness overtake us (Jn 12:35). To walk is to make progress. The Apostle was walking, who said: "I do not consider that I have comprehended"; and he adds: "But one thing, forgetting what lies behind, I stretch forward to what lies ahead" (Phil 3:13). What is "but one thing"? "But one thing," he says, has as it were remained to me for a remedy, for hope, for consolation. What is that? "Forgetting what lies behind, I stretch forward to what lies ahead." Great confidence! Because the great vessel of election, refusing to be called perfect, confesses his progress. For me, who am not walking but sitting, there is the danger of being overtaken by the darkness of death. And who is sitting, except he who does not care to make progress? Beware of this, and if you have been forestalled by death, you shall be in refreshment. You will say to God: "Your eyes have seen my imperfection, and in your book nevertheless," he says, "all shall be written." Who are "all"? Surely those who are found in the desire of making progress. For there follows: "Days shall be formed, and no one in them" (Ps 139:16); supply: shall perish. Understand "days" as those making progress, who, if they have been forestalled by death, are to be perfected in what they lack. They shall be formed, and no one in them shall be left unformed. 8. "And how," you say, "can I make progress, who envy a brother who is making progress?" If you grieve that you envy, you feel it but do not consent to it. It is a passion, to be healed in due time, not an action to be condemned. Only do not settle there, meditating wickedness on your bed, namely devising how to foster the disease, satisfy the plague, persecute the innocent one by slandering, suppressing, perverting, and impeding the good things done by him and those yet to be done. Otherwise, it does not harm one who is walking and stretching himself toward better things, that it is no longer he himself who works this, but sin that dwells in him (Rom 7:20). There is therefore no condemnation for him who does not yield his members as weapons of iniquity, not the tongue for slandering, nor any other part of the body for hurting or harming in any way; but rather is confounded at being so badly disposed, and strives to expel the vice ingrown from long habit by confessing, weeping, and praying; and when he does not prevail, he is found to be gentler toward all on that account, and more humble in his own eyes. What man of sound judgment would condemn one who has learned from the Lord to be meek and humble of heart? (Mt 11:29). Far be it that an imitator of the Savior should be found devoid of salvation, of the Bridegroom of the Church, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is over all things God blessed forever! Amen.”

“How the Bride Asks That the Fruits of Good Works Be Heaped Up for Her Together with the Flowers and Fragrances of Faith; Likewise on Hope and Fear. 1. "Sustain me with flowers, surround me with apples, because I languish with love" (Song 2:5). Love has grown, because more incentives of love than usual have come forth. For you see how great on this occasion was the abundance not only of seeing, but also of conversing. The vision itself appears granted with a more serene countenance, and the speech was more pleasant, and the conversation longer and more drawn out. Nor was she only delighted by the conversation, but she also gloried in his praise. Besides this, she was refreshed by the shadow of him whom she had desired, fed with his fruit, given drink from his cup. For she is not to be thought to have gone out thirsty from the wine cellar, into which she just now most recently glories that she was brought; nay rather she was thirsty, because "he who drinks me," he says, "will thirst yet again" (Sir 24:29). After all these things, with the Bridegroom withdrawing in his customary manner, she declares that she languishes with love, that is, on account of love. For the more gracious she had experienced his presence, the more burdensome she afterward felt his absence. For the withdrawal of the thing you love is the increase of desire; and what you desire more ardently, you lack more painfully. She asks therefore to be sustained in the meantime by the fragrances of flowers and fruits, until he returns again, whose delay she endures most grievously. And this is the order of the words. 2. Now let us attempt, with the Spirit of truth as guide, to draw out the spiritual fruit that is in them. And if it is the common Church of the saints that is received here as speaking, we are designated in the flowers and fruits; but also all who have been converted from the world in the whole world. In the flowers indeed the new and still tender manner of life of beginners is shown; in the fruits, however, the strength of those advancing and the maturity of the perfect. Surrounded by these, the mother, on pilgrimage and bearing fruit, for whom to live is Christ, and to die is gain, surely bears more equably the burden of her delay, since, according to Scripture, she is given of the fruit of her hands, as from the firstfruits of the spirit, and her works praise her in the gates (Prov 31:31). But if according to the moral sense you wish both of these to be assigned to you in a single soul, both flowers and fruits; understand faith as the flower, and the deed as the fruit. Nor unfittingly, as I think, will this seem to you, if you consider how, in the likeness of a flower necessarily preceding the fruit, a good work too must be preceded by faith. Otherwise, without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6), as Paul attests, or rather as he himself equally teaches: "Everything that is not from faith is also sin" (Rom 14:23). And so neither fruit without flower, nor good work without faith. But also faith without works is dead (Jas 2:20); just as a flower also appears uselessly where fruit does not follow. "Sustain me with flowers, surround me with apples, because I languish with love." Therefore from good works rooted in unfeigned faith, the mind accustomed to rest receives consolation, as often as the light of contemplation is withdrawn from it, as is its wont. For who, I do not say continuously, but even for any length of time, while remaining in this body, enjoys the light of contemplation? But as often as, as I have said, one falls from the contemplative life, so often does one retreat into the active life, from there assuredly about to return more familiarly into the same, as from a nearby place; since these two are mutual companions, and they dwell together equally; for Martha is the sister of Mary. For even if one falls from the light of contemplation, one does not however in any way suffer oneself to fall into the darkness of sin, or the sluggishness of idleness, retaining oneself surely in the light of good works. And that you may know that even works are light: "Let your light shine," he says, "before men" (Mt 5:16): which without doubt was said concerning works, which men were able to behold. 3. "Sustain me with flowers, surround me with apples, because I languish with love." When what is loved is at hand, love is vigorous; it languishes when it is absent. Which is nothing other than a certain weariness of impatient desire, by which the mind of one who loves vehemently is necessarily affected in the absence of the one it loves, while wholly in expectation, it reckons any haste, however great, as tardiness. And therefore she asks that the fruits of good works be heaped up for her together with the fragrances of faith, in which, while the Bridegroom delays, she may rest in the meantime. I speak to you of my own experience, which I have experienced. If ever I found that some of you had made progress from my admonitions, then it did not trouble me, I confess, to have preferred the care of preaching to my own leisure and quiet. For when, for example, after a sermon someone who was wrathful is found changed into a gentle person, a proud one into a humble one, a fainthearted one into a strong one: furthermore when a gentle, humble, and strong person is recognized to have grown in his own grace and to have become better than himself; but also when those who perhaps had grown lukewarm and languished, torpid and drowsy around spiritual study, are seen to have been re-kindled and awakened by the fiery word of the Lord; and those who, having forsaken the fountain of wisdom, had dug for themselves cisterns of their own will, unable to hold water, and therefore murmured at every command laid upon them, with parched heart, having no moisture of devotion in themselves: these, I say, when from the dew of the word, and the willing rain which God set apart for his inheritance, they are proved to have reflowered into works of obedience, made willing and devout in all things; there is no cause, I tell you, for sadness to steal upon the mind, as if for the interrupted pursuit of delightful contemplation, when I shall have been surrounded by such flowers and fruits of piety. Patiently am I torn from the embraces of the barren Rachel, so that from Leah the fruits of your progress may abound for me. Not at all shall it trouble me to have interrupted my rest for the care of preaching, when I shall see my seed germinate in you, and from it the increase of the fruits of your justice grow. For charity, which does not seek the things that are its own (1 Cor 13:5), has long since easily persuaded me of this, namely that none of my desirable things should be preferred to your benefits. To pray, to read, to write, to meditate, and whatever other gains of spiritual study there are, I have counted these as losses for your sake. 4. "Sustain me with flowers, surround me with apples, because I languish with love." This therefore the bride spoke to the young maidens in the absence of the Bridegroom, urging them to advance in faith and good works until he should come, perceiving that in this there would be both the good pleasure of the Bridegroom, and the salvation of the daughters, and her own consolation. I know that I have explained this passage more fully in the book On the Love of God, and under a different interpretation: whether a superior or inferior one, let the reader judge, if it should please anyone to see both. Surely I shall not be judged by a prudent person for the diversity of senses, provided that truth be our patron in both cases; and let charity, which the Scriptures ought to serve, edify the more, the more true meanings it has drawn out from them for its own work. For why should this be displeasing in the senses of the Scriptures, which we constantly experience in the uses of things? Into how many uses, for example, does water alone serve for our bodies? So any single divine word will not be out of place, if it begets diverse meanings, to be applied to the diverse needs and uses of souls.”

“5. There follows: "His left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me." And moreover this too I recall having discussed more abundantly in the aforesaid little work; but let us mark the order of the discourse. It is clear that the Bridegroom is present again, I believe, so that by his presence he may raise up the one who languishes. For how would she not regain strength in his presence, whom his absence had cast down? Therefore he does not endure the distress of his beloved: he is present, nor indeed can he delay, summoned by such great desires. And because he had found her, while he was absent, faithful to works and solicitous for gains, in the fact, namely, that she had commanded flowers and fruits to be gathered for her; he has also returned this time with a more generous recompense of grace. And so with one of his arms he supports the head of the one lying down, preparing the other for an embrace, that he might warm her in his bosom. Happy the soul that reclines upon the breast of Christ, and rests between the arms of the Word. "His left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me." She does not say, "embraces"; but, "shall embrace me," so that you may know her to be so far from ungrateful for the first grace, that she has anticipated the second with thanksgiving. 6. Learn not to be slow or sluggish in returning thanks; learn to give thanks for each individual gift. "Consider carefully," he says, "what is set before you" (Prov 23:1), so that, namely, no gifts of God may be defrauded of their due thanksgiving; not great ones, not moderate ones, not small ones. For we are commanded to gather up the fragments lest they perish (Jn 6:12); that is, not to forget even the smallest benefits. Does not that which is given to an ungrateful person perish? Ingratitude is the enemy of the soul, the emptying of merits, the scattering of virtues, the loss of benefits. Ingratitude is a burning wind, drying up for itself the fountain of piety, the dew of mercy, the streams of grace. For this reason, then, the bride, as soon as she felt the grace from the left hand, gave thanks, not waiting for the fullness that is in the right hand. For indeed, where she has mentioned that the left hand was already under her head, she did not follow this by saying that she was likewise embraced by the right; but, "shall embrace me," she said. 7. But what do we think the left hand and the right hand are to the Word, the Bridegroom? Does that which is called the word of man have in itself bodily parts of this kind, divided and with distinct lineaments, distinguishing between left and right? How much more does he, who is both of God and is God, the Word, admit of absolutely no variety, but is who he is (Exod 3:14), in his nature indeed so simple that he has no parts, so one that he has no numbers. For he is the wisdom of God, of which it is written: "And of his wisdom there is no number" (Ps 146:5). But if what is invariable is necessarily also incomprehensible, and therefore also ineffable; where, I ask, will you find words with which you may either worthily describe that majesty, or properly express it, or fittingly define it? Yet let us speak as best we can of what we perceive as best we can of it, the Holy Spirit revealing it. We are taught by the authority of the Fathers and the custom of the Scriptures that it is permitted to borrow fitting likenesses from known things; but also not to invent new words, but to borrow known ones, with which those same likenesses may be clothed worthily and fittingly. Otherwise you will ridiculously attempt to teach unknown things through unknown things. 8. Therefore because by right and left, adversity and prosperity are usually designated: it seems to me that in this place one may understand the left hand of the Word as the threat of punishment; the right hand, however, as the promise of the kingdom. But there are times when our mind is pressed down in servile fashion by the dread of punishment: and then the left hand is by no means to be said to be under the head, but over the head; nor can a soul so affected say at all that "his left hand is under my head." But truly if one advancing from this spirit of servitude shall have passed into a certain more worthy disposition of willing service, so that one is provoked by rewards rather than constrained by punishments, or rather if one is moved by love of the good itself; then one will undoubtedly be able to say that "his left hand is under my head": inasmuch as one has overcome that servile fear, which is on the left, by a better and more excellent disposition of soul, and by worthy desires has also drawn near to the right hand itself, in which are all the promises, as the Prophet says to the Lord: "Delights in your right hand forevermore" (Ps 15:11). Whence also, having conceived a sure hope, one speaks with confidence: "And his right hand shall embrace me." 9. You now consider with me, whether it is fitting for a soul so disposed and having attained this place of such great sweetness, to borrow also that verse from the psalm, so that she too may say: "In peace, in the selfsame, I will sleep and I will rest"; especially since the reason that follows supplies it: "Because you, O Lord, have singularly established me in hope" (Ps 4:9-10). Which is indeed of this nature. As long as one is pressed by the spirit of servitude, and has little of hope and very much of fear; there is no peace or rest for that one, the conscience indeed fluctuating between hope and fear, and especially because it is tormented more abundantly by the exceeding fear: for fear has punishment. And therefore it is not for that one to say: "In peace, in the selfsame, I will sleep and I will rest," since one cannot yet say that one has been singularly established in hope. But if gradually, through the increase of grace, fear begins to diminish, and hope to advance; when at length it has come to this, that charity rising with all its strength to the aid of hope casts out fear: will not a soul of this kind seem to be singularly established in hope, and therefore also to sleep and rest in peace, in the selfsame?”

“10. "If you sleep between the midst of the lots, the wings of the dove are silvered" (Ps 67:14). Which I think was said for this reason: that there is a place between fear and security, as between the left and the right, namely the middle place of hope, in which the mind and conscience, with the soft bedding of charity laid beneath, rests most sweetly. And perhaps in what follows in this very canticle, this place will have been designated, where in the description of the litter of Solomon among other things you have: "The middle he spread with charity on account of the daughters of Jerusalem" (Song 3:10). For he who feels himself singularly established in hope no longer serves in fear, but rests in charity. And so the bride rests and sleeps, on whose behalf it is said: "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and the deer of the fields, that you do not rouse or cause to awaken the beloved, until she herself wills." Great and astonishing is the condescension, that he makes the contemplating soul rest in his bosom, and moreover guards her from troublesome cares, and protects her from the disturbances of actions and the annoyances of business; nor does he allow her to be awakened at all, except indeed at her own will.”

“1. "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and the deer of the fields, that you do not rouse or cause to awaken the beloved, until she herself wills" (Song 2:7). The young maidens are forbidden: for he calls these the daughters of Jerusalem, because, even if they are delicate and soft, and as if still weak with womanly affections and actions, they nevertheless cling to the bride in the hope of advancing and of setting out for Jerusalem. They are forbidden, therefore, from the disturbance of the sleeping bride, lest, namely, they presume to awaken her in any way contrary to her own will. For the most sweet Bridegroom has placed his left hand under her head, according to the things that have been set forth above, so that he might cause her to rest and sleep in his bosom. And now, as the Scripture proceeds in turn, he himself, as her guardian, most graciously and most benevolently watches over her, lest, disturbed by the frequent and minor needs of the young maidens, she be forced to awaken. This is the literal coherence of the text. But indeed that adjuration made by the gazelles and the deer of the fields seems to have nothing at all of reasonable consequence according to the letter; to such a degree does the spiritual understanding claim it entirely for itself. But in whatever way that may stand, in the meantime it is good for us to be here, and to contemplate for a little while the goodness, sweetness, and condescension of the divine nature. For what, O man, have you ever experienced sweeter among human affections, than is now expressed to you from the heart of the Most High? And it is expressed by him who searches the deep things of God, and cannot be ignorant of what is in him, because he is his Spirit; nor can he speak anything other than what he has seen with him, since he is the Spirit of truth. 2. And indeed there is not lacking in our kind one who has merited to be made glad, blessed by this gift, and to have had in himself the experience of this most sweet mystery; unless, however, we entirely refuse to believe the passage of Scripture that is before us, where the heavenly Bridegroom is manifestly shown to be most vehemently zealous for the rest of a certain beloved of his, anxious to guard her sleeping in his own arms, lest she be perhaps disturbed from her most sweet sleep by some trouble or unrest. I cannot contain myself for joy, that that majesty does not at all disdain to incline itself to our weakness in so familiar and sweet a fellowship, and that the supreme Deity does not despise entering into marriage with an exiled soul, and showing to her the affection of a bridegroom seized with most ardent love. Thus, thus I do not doubt it is in heaven, as I read on earth, and the soul will feel for certain what the page contains, except that the page is not sufficient at all to express how much the soul will then be able to receive, nor even how much it already can. What, do you think, will she receive there, who here is endowed with such great familiarity, that she feels herself embraced by the arms of God, cherished in the bosom of God, guarded by the care and zeal of God, lest while sleeping she be awakened by anyone, until she awakens of her own accord?”

“3. Come then, let us say if we can, what that sleep may be, in which the Bridegroom wills his beloved to fall asleep, and does not suffer her at all to be awakened except at her own will; lest perhaps when someone reads in the Apostle: "It is now the hour for us to rise from sleep" (Rom 13:11), or in the Prophet, that he entreats God himself that his eyes may be enlightened lest he ever sleep in death (Ps 12:4), he be troubled by the equivocation of the terms, and not find at all what he might worthily think of the slumber of the bride that is spoken of in this place. For not even that which the Lord says of Lazarus in the Gospel is similar to this: "Lazarus our friend sleeps, let us go and awaken him from sleep" (Jn 11:11). For this he was saying of the death of his body, while the disciples thought it was said of the repose of sleep. But the sleep of the bride is not a slumber of the body, neither the peaceful kind, which gently lulls the senses of the flesh for a time, nor the dreadful kind, which is accustomed to take away life utterly. Much more indeed is it remote from that sleep in which one sleeps unto death, when, namely, one perseveres irrevocably in a sin that is unto death. Rather this sort of living and watchful slumber illuminates the interior sense, and, having driven away death, bestows eternal life. For it is truly a slumber, which however does not stupefy the sense, but carries it away. It is also a death, which I would say without hesitation, since the Apostle, commending certain ones still living in the flesh, speaks thus: "You are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Col 3:3). 4. Therefore I too would not absurdly call the ecstasy of the bride a death, one which however snatches her not from life, but from the snares of life, so that she may say: "Our soul, like a sparrow, has been snatched from the snare of the hunters" (Ps 123:7). For one walks in the midst of snares in this life, which indeed are not feared as often as the soul is carried away from itself by some holy and vehement thought; if only the mind so withdraws and flies away as also to transcend this common use and habit of thinking: for indeed "the net is spread in vain before the eyes of the winged" (Prov 1:17). For why should luxury be feared, where not even life is felt? For when the soul departs, if not from life, certainly from the sense of life, it is necessary that the temptation of life also not be felt. "Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly, and I will rest?" (Ps 54:7). Would that I might frequently fall by this death, so as to escape the snares of death, so as not to feel the deadly blandishments of a life given to luxury, so as to be numb to the sense of lust, to the heat of avarice, to the stings of anger and impatience, to the anguish of anxieties and the troubles of cares! Let my soul die the death of the just, so that no deceit may ensnare it, no iniquity may delight it. Good is the death that does not take away life, but transfers it to what is better; good, in which the body does not fall, but the soul is raised up.”

“5. But this is the death of men. Yet let my soul die also the death, if it can be said, of the angels, so that, departing from the memory of present things, it may strip itself not only of the desires but also of the likenesses of lower and corporeal things, and its conversation with those with whom there is a likeness of purity may be pure. Such an ecstasy, as I think, is either solely or chiefly called contemplation. For not to be held by the desires of things while living is a matter of human virtue; but not to be entangled by the likenesses of bodies while contemplating is a matter of angelic purity. Each, however, is a matter of the divine gift; each is a going out, each is a transcending of yourself, but the one goes far, the other not far. Blessed is he who can say: "Behold, I have gone far away in flight, and I have remained in solitude" (Ps 54:8). He was not content to go out, unless he also made himself far away, so that he might rest. You have leapt past the delights of the flesh, so that you no longer obey its desires, nor are held by its enticements: you have advanced, you have separated yourself, but you have not yet gone far away, unless you also prevail by purity of mind to fly beyond the phantasms of corporeal likenesses rushing in from every side. Until that point, do not promise yourself rest. You err, if you think to find on this side of that the place of quiet, the secret of solitude, the serenity of light, the dwelling place of peace. But give me one who has arrived there, and I will unhesitatingly confess him to be at rest, who may rightly say: "Return, O my soul, to your rest; because the Lord has been bountiful to you" (Ps 114:7). And this is truly a place in solitude and a dwelling in light, altogether according to the prophet, "a tabernacle for shade from the heat by day, for security and for a hiding place from the storm and from rain" (Isa 4:6); concerning which also the holy David says: "He hid me," he says, "in his tabernacle in the day of evils, he protected me in the secret place of his tabernacle" (Ps 26:5).”

“6. Think therefore that the bride has withdrawn into this solitude, and there, on account of the pleasantness of the place, has sweetly fallen asleep amid the embraces of the Bridegroom, that is, has gone out in spirit, when the young maidens were forbidden to awaken her, until she herself should will. But how was this done? For they were not forbidden simply, nor with a light admonition, as is customary; but with an altogether new and unusual adjuration, namely by the gazelles and the deer of the fields. By this kind of wild creature, it seems to me, the holy souls stripped of bodies are suitably enough expressed, and likewise the angels who are with God, on account of the keenness of their sight and the swiftness of their leaping. For we know that both of these things are fitting for both kinds of spirits: for they easily seek the heights and penetrate the innermost depths. Their dwelling also, designated in the fields, evidently marks out the free and unimpeded courses of contemplation. What then does the adjuration made by these mean? Assuredly, that the restless young maidens should not dare, for some slight reason, to call the beloved away from so reverend a company, with which she is without doubt mingled as often as she goes out in contemplation. Beautifully, therefore, they are frightened by the authority of those from whose fellowship it is clear she is torn away by their importunity. Let the young maidens consider whom they offend when they likewise disturb their mother; and let them not so rely on maternal charity as not to fear intruding without great necessity upon that heavenly assembly. For let them consider that this is what they do, as often as they are troublesome beyond what is just to one resting in contemplation. It is, to be sure, placed in her own will both to be free for herself and to attend to the care of those young maidens, as she shall judge it fitting, since she is forbidden to be awakened by them until she herself wills. The Bridegroom knows with how great a love the bride burns also toward her neighbors, and that the mother is sufficiently moved by her own charity concerning the progress of the daughters, and that she will in no way withdraw or deny herself to them as much and as often as shall be necessary: and therefore he judged that this dispensation should be securely entrusted to her discretion. For she is not of such a kind as we see many marked by the prophetic branding, who, "taking for themselves what is fat and strong, cast away what is weak" (Ezek 34:3-4). Does the physician seek those who are well, and not rather those who are sick? If it should happen, he acts perhaps as a friend, but not as a physician. Whom will you teach, good Master, if you have repelled all the unlearned? To whom, I ask, will you apply the diligence of discipline, if you have either driven away all the undisciplined, or fled from them? In whom, I beseech, will you prove your patience, if you have admitted only the gentle and excluded the restless?”

“7. There are, however, among those sitting here, some who I wish would observe the present chapter more attentively. They would certainly consider how great a reverence is owed to superiors, whom, by rashly disturbing them, they render themselves troublesome also to the citizens of heaven: and perhaps they would at last begin to spare us a little more than usual, and no longer thrust themselves upon us so irreverently and lightly when we are at leisure. Rare enough is the hour granted to me for resting from those who come upon me, as they well know, even when they themselves will bear with me in all patience. But I raise this kind of complaint rather scrupulously, lest perhaps some fainthearted one should conceal his needs beyond the strength of his own patience, while he fears to disturb me. I desist therefore, lest I seem rather to give an example of impatience to the weak. The little ones of the Lord are those who believe in him; I do not suffer that they should receive scandal from me (Mt 18:6). I do not use this power; rather let them use me as they please: only let them be saved. They will spare me if they have not spared me, and I will rather rest in this, if they have not feared to disturb me for their needs. I will accommodate them as far as I shall be able, and in them I will serve my God as long as I shall live, in charity unfeigned. I will not seek the things that are my own; nor what is useful to me, but what is useful to many, that I will judge to be useful to me. This alone I pray, that my ministry may be made acceptable and fruitful to them, if perhaps even from this I may find mercy in the evil day in the eyes of their Father and likewise of the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who with him is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“"The voice of my beloved." The bride, seeing the new modesty of the young maidens, and their modest fear, namely that they had newly begun not to dare to intrude upon her holy leisure, nor to presume to be troublesome to her as she rested in contemplation, as yesterday and the day before: she recognizes that this had come about for her by the care and work of the Bridegroom; and exulting in spirit, whether on account of their progress, in that they are restrained from excessive and superfluous restlessness, or on account of her own freer quiet henceforth to come, or even on account of the condescension and favor of the Bridegroom, who so zealously guards this very rest of hers, and with such great zeal defends her most sweet leisure—nay, her most fervent pursuits—she says that the voice of her beloved does this, made unto them for this purpose. For indeed he who presides over others in solicitude scarcely ever, or rarely, securely attends to himself, while he always fears to cause a lack of himself to his subjects, and not to please God, in that he prefers his own quiet and the sweetness of contemplation to the common advantage. But no small joy and security accrues from time to time to one sweetly resting, when, from a certain fear and reverence toward her divinely sent into the hearts of subjects, she understands that her rest is pleasing to God, who causes them to bear their own necessities with a more equable spirit rather than dare rashly to disturb the welcome leisure of their spiritual father. For the just trepidation of the little ones manifestly indicates that they have heard within, as it were, the threatening and rebuking voice, without doubt, of him who speaks in the prophet: "I who speak justice" (Isa 63:1). His voice is his inspiration, and the striking of just fear. Having discovered this voice, therefore, the bride, rejoicing and exulting, says: "The voice of my beloved." She is a friend, and rejoices with joy on account of the voice of the Bridegroom. And she adds: "Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills." Having discovered from the hearing of the voice the presence of the beloved, she without delay directs her well-curious eyes to see him whom she had heard. Hearing leads to sight, because faith comes from hearing (Rom 10:17), by which hearts are cleansed so that God may be seen: for thus you have: "Cleansing their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:9). She sees therefore the one coming, whom she had heard speaking, the Holy Spirit observing also here that order which is described in the Prophet thus: "Hear, O daughter, and see" (Ps 44:11). And that you may more surely notice that it is not by chance or accident, but rather by design and purpose, that hearing is here placed before seeing; see whether this order of words is not found observed also by holy Job, where he speaks thus to God: "By the hearing of the ear I heard you, and now my eye sees you" (Job 42:5). But also where the Holy Spirit is recalled to have descended upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, is not hearing described as having preceded sight? For it says: "Suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of a rushing mighty wind"; and below: "And there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire" (Acts 2:2, 3). And here therefore the coming of the Holy Spirit is reported to have been perceived first by hearing, then by sight.”

“Now let us consider that which requires more diligent inquiry: who those mountains or hills are, upon which, leaping and bounding over them, the Church beheld the Bridegroom with joyful gaze, as he hastened to the redemption of her whose beauty he had desired. Something similar from the Prophet occurs to me, evidently foreseeing in spirit and expressing the coming of the Savior: "In the sun he has set his tabernacle, and he himself as a bridegroom coming forth from his bridal chamber. He exulted as a giant to run his course: from the highest heaven is his going forth, and his circuit unto the highest part thereof" (Ps 18:6, 7). Shall we picture to ourselves a man of giant stature, captured by love of some absent little woman, and, while he hastens to the desired embraces, leaping over these mountains and hills which we see rising by their corporeal mass above the flat earth? Truly it is not fitting to imagine corporeal phantasies of this kind, especially when treating this spiritual canticle: but neither is it in any way permitted to us, who remember having read in the Gospel that "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit" (Jn 4:24). Who then are these spiritual mountains and hills, so that we may afterward consequently recognize what kind and what manner of leaps the Bridegroom (who is God, and therefore also spirit) gave upon them, or over them? If we think of those in which the Gospel relates that ninety-nine sheep were once left, when the pious shepherd came to seek on earth the one that had perished (Mt 18:12); the matter is nonetheless still in obscurity, and the understanding halts: since it is difficult to discover what or what kind of other spiritual mountains or hills likewise those spiritual and super-celestial blessednesses (for they themselves are without doubt the sheep which are there mentioned) have for dwelling in, or being pastured upon. Nevertheless, if some did not exist in truth, the Truth would not have said this. Nor would the Prophet long before have declared of the heavenly city Jerusalem that "its foundations are in the holy mountains" (Ps 86:1), if there were not truly holy mountains there. Finally, that that celestial habitation truly has not only spiritual, but also living and rational mountains and hills, hear Isaiah: "The mountains and the hills shall sing praises before God" (Isa 55:12). Who then are these, if not those same spirits who inhabit the heavens, whom by the Lord's voice we have said are called sheep, so that they themselves are the mountains who are the sheep? Unless perhaps it seems absurd to you that either mountains are pastured upon mountains, or sheep upon sheep. And according to the letter indeed it sounds harsh; but according to the spiritual understanding it has a sweet taste, if we subtly observe how the pastor of both flocks, namely Christ the wisdom of God, administers one and the same pasture of truth in one way on earth, in another way among his heavenly flocks. For we mortal men in the meantime in the place of our pilgrimage must eat our bread in the sweat of our face, begging it from outside in labor and hardship; that is, either from learned men, or from sacred books, or certainly, through the things that have been made, beholding the invisible things of God understood. But the angels in all fullness, if not from themselves, yet in themselves, receive with as much ease as felicity that by which they also live blessedly. For they are all taught of God: which the elect of men are promised with certain truth to attain one day, but are not yet granted to experience with secure felicity. Mountains are pastured upon mountains, therefore, or sheep upon sheep, when indeed those heavenly spiritual substances find abundantly within themselves, from the Word of life, that by which they perpetuate their blessed life; they themselves being both mountains and sheep: mountains, on account of their fullness or loftiness; sheep, on account of their meekness. Full indeed of God, lofty in merits, heaped with virtues, they nonetheless submit and incline their upraised summits with total and humble obedience to the command of that far surpassing majesty, as most meek sheep walking in all things at the nod of their shepherd, and following him wherever he goes. And in these, according to the prophet David, truly holy mountains, as it were the first-created wisdom, the foundations of the city of the Lord from the beginning stand firmly established (Ps 86:1); which city is assuredly one in heaven and on earth, although partly on pilgrimage, and partly reigning. And from these likewise, according to Isaiah, as from certain living cymbals sounding well, continual thanksgiving resounds, and the voice of praise (Isa 51:3), filling with sweet and unceasing voice what we recalled a little earlier from the same Prophet, that "the mountains and the hills shall sing praises before God": and likewise what that other one says, speaking to the Lord God: "Blessed are those who dwell in your house, O Lord: they shall praise you forever and ever" (Ps 83:5).”

“These therefore are the mountains and hills upon which the Church saw the heavenly Bridegroom leaping with wondrous eagerness, as he hastened to her embraces; and not only leaping, but also bounding over them. David says of him that "he set his tabernacle in the sun, and he himself as a bridegroom coming forth from his bridal chamber: he exulted as a giant to run his course, from the highest heaven is his going forth" (Ps 18:6, 7). Behold what a great leap he gave, from the highest heaven to earth! For indeed I do not find elsewhere where he set his tabernacle in the sun, that is, where the dweller in inaccessible light deigned to display his presence in the light and in the open, except assuredly on earth. Finally: "On earth he was seen, and he conversed with men" (Bar 3:38). On earth, I say, openly, which is "in the sun," he set his tabernacle, namely the body, which he deigned to fashion for himself from the body of the Virgin for this purpose, that in it he, invisible in himself, might be seen; and thus all flesh might see the salvation of God, since he had come in the flesh. He leaped therefore upon the mountains, that is, upon those supreme spirits, when he descended even to them, graciously revealing to them the mystery hidden from the ages, and the great mystery of godliness. But bounding over these higher and more eminent mountains, namely the cherubim and seraphim, and also the dominations, principalities and powers, and the virtues, he deigned to descend even to the lower order of angels, as to the hills. But did he even remain among them? He bounded over the hills also. For, it says, "not angels, but the seed of Abraham he takes hold of" (Heb 2:16), which is assuredly lower than the angels, so that the word might be fulfilled which the aforementioned Prophet spoke, saying thus to the Father concerning the Son: "You have made him a little less than the angels" (Ps 8:6). Although this can indeed be understood as said in commendation of human nature, in that man, made in the image and likeness of God, and endowed with reason in the likeness assuredly of an angel, yet differs a little from the angel on account of his body from the earth. But hear the apostle Paul openly declaring concerning him: "Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God: because he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man" (Phil 2:6, 7); and again: "When the fullness of time had come," he says, "God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law" (Gal 4:4, 5). He therefore who was made of a woman, and made under the law, without doubt not only bounded over the mountains, that is, the greater and higher blessednesses, but also the lesser angels by descending, who indeed in comparison with the higher ones are deservedly designated by the name of hills. For the rest, he who is lesser in the kingdom of heaven is greater than anyone bearing flesh upon the earth, even if that one be the great John the Baptist (Lk 7:28). For even though we confess that God as man also surpasses by far, incomparably, all principality and power; it is certain, however, that although he goes before in majesty, yet in infirmity he succumbed. Thus therefore he leaped upon the mountains, and bounded over the hills, when he most graciously showed himself lower not only than the higher, but also than the lower spirits. And not only to those heavenly spirits, but also to those very ones who inhabit houses of clay, did he show himself subject, bounding over and surpassing in humility even the humility of men. For he was indeed subject to Mary and Joseph, when he was twelve years old, at Nazareth (Lk 2:51, 42): and at the Jordan he inclined himself, now a young man, to the hands of John (Mt 3:13).”

“On the same chapter which was treated in yesterday's sermon, I am about to speak also another understanding which I have reserved for today: do you examine it, and choose what is better. There is no need to repeat what came before, which I do not think has slipped your mind in so short a time. If it has, however, what was said has been written down and taken down with a stylus, just as the other sermons, so that what has perhaps slipped away may easily be recovered. Therefore receive these other things. "Behold, he comes," she says, "leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills" (Song 2:8). She speaks of the Bridegroom: who indeed leaped upon the mountains at that time, when, sent by the Father to preach good tidings to the poor, he did not disdain to perform the office of Angels, being made the Angel of great counsel, he who was the Lord. He descended to the earth by himself, who was accustomed to delegate others: by himself the Lord made known his salvation, by himself in the sight of the nations he revealed his justice (Ps 97:2). Since, therefore, all are, according to Paul's declaration, ministering spirits, sent for service on account of those who receive the inheritance of salvation (Heb 1:14); he who was above them was made among them as one of them, concealing the injury, heaping up the grace. But hear him: "I came," he says, "not to be served, but to serve, and to give my life for many" (Mt 20:28). Which indeed no one else has been found to have done, so that all who have been seen to minister, he himself has surpassed in devoted and faithful services. A good minister, who ministered his flesh as food, his blood as drink, his soul as a price. Good indeed, who, eager in spirit, fervent in charity, devoted in piety, not only leaps upon the mountains, but also bounds over the hills, that is, surpasses and conquers them in the eagerness of his ministering, inasmuch as God his God anointed him with the oil of gladness beyond his companions (Ps 44:8): in which indeed he singularly exulted as a giant to run his course. And so he bounded over Gabriel, and arrived before him at the Virgin, the same archangel bearing witness, when he said: "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you" (Lk 1:28). What? Him whom you just left in heaven, now you find in a womb. How? He flew and flew ahead upon the wings of the winds. You are vanquished, O archangel: he who sent you before him has bounded over you. Or certainly he was leaping upon the mountains, when in angels he appeared of old to the fathers: which indeed seems to agree more properly with the letter. For he does not say, "leaping onto the mountains"; but, "upon the mountains," so that he himself may seem to leap in them, who makes and gives them to leap; just as he speaks in the prophets, works in the just, when he bestows words on the former, and works on the latter. Add that some of them bore his person, so that each one of them spoke, not as an angel, but as the Lord. For example, that angel who was speaking with Moses said, not, "I am of the Lord," but, "I am the Lord," and repeated this very frequently. He was leaping therefore upon the mountains, that is, in the angels, in whom he both spoke and exhibited his presence to men. For he was leaping to men, but in angels, not in himself; not in his own nature, but in a subject creature. For he who leaps goes from place to place: which does not apply to God. Therefore upon the mountains, that is, in the angels, he leaped, who could not in himself; and he leaped all the way to the hills, that is, the patriarchs and prophets, and the other spiritual men of the earth. But he bounded over the hills also, since he deigned not only to speak and appear in angels to great and spiritual men, but also to some of the people, and even to some women as well. Or by hills he means the aerial powers, which are no longer counted among the mountains, for the reason that they have flowed down from the height of virtues through pride; nor yet do they subside to the low places of the valleys, or to the valleys of the humble through repentance. Of these I believe that saying in the psalms was spoken: "The mountains melted like wax before the face of the Lord" (Ps 96:5). These swollen and barren hills, therefore, as though placed in the middle between the mountains of the perfect and the valleys of the penitent, he has beyond doubt bounded over, who leaps upon the mountains; and passing by and despising them he descends to the valleys, that the valleys may abound with grain. But they on the other hand are condemned to eternal dryness and barrenness, as you have the prophet's imprecation upon them: "Neither dew," he says, "nor rain descend upon you." And that you may know that under the figure of the mountains of Gilboa he speaks of the angels who transgressed, "Where," he says, "many wounded fell" (2 Sam 1:21). How many on these cursed mountains have fallen from the army of Israel from the beginning, and fall daily! Of whom you also have in the same prophet, when he says to the Lord: "Like the wounded sleeping in tombs, whom you remember no more, and they have been cast out from your hand" (Ps 87:6). It is therefore not surprising, if these remain barren and unfruitful, not heavenly mountains, but aerial hills, upon which neither dew nor rain descends; since the author of grace and the bestower of blessings bounds over them, and descends to the valleys, that he may drench with heavenly rain the humble who are upon the earth, and they may bear fruit in patience, fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold (Mt 13:8, 23; Lk 8:15). And so he visited the earth, and made it drunk: he multiplied to enrich it (Ps 64:10). He visited the earth, not the air, because the earth is full of the mercy of the Lord (Ps 32:5). And so, "He worked salvation in the midst of the earth" (Ps 73:12); did he also in the midst of the air? This against Origen, who with a shameless lie crucifies the Lord of glory anew in the air for the sake of demons, while Paul, conscious of this mystery, affirms that "rising from the dead he dies no more, death shall have dominion over him no more" (Rom 6:9). But not only did he visit the earth, who bounded over the air, but also heaven, as Scripture says: "O Lord, in heaven is your mercy, and your truth reaches to the clouds" (Ps 35:6). For up to the clouds is the heaven which the holy angels inhabit, whom the Bridegroom did not bound over, but leaps in them, so that he imprints upon them two certain footprints of his feet, mercy and truth: concerning which footprints of the Lord I recall having discussed more fully in earlier sermons. But from the clouds and below is the habitation of demons in this lowest and murky air; in whom the Bridegroom does not leap, but bounds over them and passes by, and they retain in themselves no footprint of God passing through. For how is there truth in the devil, of whom in the Gospels this judgment of the Truth stands, that he did not stand in the truth, but was a liar from the beginning? But neither would anyone call him merciful, who is equally convicted by that same truth of the Gospel to have been a murderer from the beginning (Jn 8:44). But as the master of the household, so also are his household members. Beautifully therefore the Church, singing of the Bridegroom, that he dwells on high and looks upon the lowly things in heaven and on earth (Ps 112:5-6), makes absolutely no mention of those spirits of pride who dwell in the air, since God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble (Jas 4:6).”

“She sees him therefore leaping upon the mountains and bounding over the hills, according to the imprecation of David who says: "All the mountains that are round about him," that is, round about Gilboa, "let the Lord visit; but from Gilboa let him pass by" (2 Sam 1:21). For the devil, who is designated by Gilboa, has mountains on either side which the Lord visits: above the angels, below men. For as his punishment he has received by lot a place in this air, midway between heaven and earth, having fallen from heaven, so that he may see and envy, and be tormented by that very envy, as Scripture says: "The sinner shall see and be angry, he shall gnash with his teeth and waste away" (Ps 111:10). How wretched, when he looks up at the heavens, in which he beholds innumerable mountains shining with divine brightness, resounding with divine praises, lofty in glory, abounding in grace! How much more wretched, when he looks down upon the earth, having likewise very many mountains from the people of God's possession, solid in faith, lofty in hope, spacious in charity, adorned with virtues, filled with the fruits of good works, from the dew of heaven as from the leap of the Bridegroom taking daily blessing! With how much grief and rancor, do we think, does that one most greedy for glory look upon these mountains around him so glorious, while he looks down upon himself and his own in contrast as uncultivated, dark, barren of all goods, so that he feels himself to be the reproach of men and angels, he who reproached all, according to that in the Psalms: "This dragon which you formed to make sport of him" (Ps 103:26). And this because, on account of their own pride, the Bridegroom bounds over them, leaping upon the mountains that are round about him, as a fountain ascending from the midst of paradise, irrigating all things, and filling every creature with blessing. Blessed are they who from the torrent of this pleasure are deemed worthy to drink from time to time, or even rarely, in whom, even if it does not flow continuously, at least through certain hours the water of wisdom and the fountain of life leaps, so that there may be made in them also a fountain of water leaping unto eternal life. And indeed the rush of this river gladdens the city of God, assuredly perpetually and abundantly. But upon our mountains that are on earth, would that from time to time, as if by a kind of flooding, he would not disdain to give certain leaps, by which, being sufficiently irrigated, they too might distill even rare drops for us, who are the valleys, lest we remain altogether dry and barren! Misery, and want, and altogether a mighty famine in that region which is never moistened by any such leaps or instillings, the fountain of wisdom flowing past and bounding over it: "And because they did not have wisdom," he says, "they perished on account of their foolishness" (Bar 3:28). "Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills." He leaps in order to bound over, who does not wish to reach all; for God is not well pleased in all. Brothers, if, according to the wisdom of Paul, these things have been written for our correction (1 Cor 10:11), let us observe the discerning and circumspect leaps of the Bridegroom, namely how, both among the Angels and among us, he leaps upon the humble and bounds over the proud: since the exalted Lord looks upon the lowly, and the lofty he knows from afar (Ps 137:6). Let us, I say, attend to these things, so that we may be cautious to prepare ourselves for the saving leaps of the Bridegroom, lest as from the mountains of Gilboa he pass by from us also, if he should see us unworthy of his visitation. Why are you proud, earth and ashes? Even from among the Angels the Lord bounds over, abhorring their pride. Therefore let the rejection of the angels become the correction of men: for it was written for their correction. Let even the evil of the devil work together for my good, and let me wash my hands in the blood of the sinner. How, you ask? Hear. Upon the proud devil certainly a dreadful and fearsome curse is hurled, the prophet David saying in the spirit concerning him under the figure of Gilboa, as was mentioned above: "The mountains," he says, "that are round about him, let the Lord visit, but from Gilboa let him pass by." Indeed when I read this, and turn my eyes upon myself, and look diligently, I find myself infected with that very plague which the Lord abhorred so greatly in the angel that on account of it he turned away from him, while he deigned to honor all the mountains round about him, whether of Angels or of men, with the grace of his visitation; and trembling and quaking I say to myself: If it was thus dealt with the angel, what will become of me, earth and ashes? He swelled with pride in heaven, I upon a dunghill. Who would not consider pride more tolerable in the rich man than in the poor? Woe to me! if such harsh punishment was dealt upon that powerful one because his heart was lifted up, and it did not profit him that pride is recognized as native to the powerful; what must be exacted from me, both wretched and proud? And so I am already paying the penalty, already being beaten most bitterly. Not without cause indeed from yesterday and the day before has this languor of soul invaded me, and this dullness of mind, a certain unaccustomed sluggishness of spirit. I was running well: but behold, a stone of stumbling in the way; I struck against it and fell. Pride was found in me, and the Lord turned away in anger from his servant. Hence this barrenness of my soul, and the poverty of devotion which I suffer. How is it that my heart has so dried up, has curdled like milk, has become like earth without water? I cannot even be moved to tears, so great is the hardness of heart. The psalm has no taste, reading gives no pleasure, prayer brings no delight, I cannot find my accustomed meditations. Where is that intoxication of spirit? Where the serenity of mind, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit? Therefore I am sluggish for manual labor, drowsy at vigils, headlong into anger, obstinate in hatred, more indulgent of tongue and throat, duller and more obtuse for preaching. Alas! The Lord visits all the mountains round about me, but does not draw near to me. Am I not a hill from among those which the Bridegroom bounds over? For I behold one man of singular abstinence, another indeed of admirable patience, another of the greatest humility and meekness, another of great mercy and piety; that one frequently going beyond himself in contemplation, this one knocking at and penetrating the heavens by the urgency of his prayers, and others excelling in other virtues. These, I say, I observe all fervent, all devout, all of one mind in Christ, all abounding in heavenly gifts and grace, as truly spiritual mountains who are visited by the Lord, and frequently receive the Bridegroom leaping in them. But I, who find none of these things in me, what else should I think myself than one of the mountains of Gilboa, whom he passes by in his wrath and indignation, that most kindly visitor of all the rest?”

“Little children, this thought takes away the haughtiness of the eyes, wins grace, and prepares for the leaps of the Bridegroom. These things I have transferred to myself on account of you, that you also may do likewise. Be imitators of me. Which I do not say now of the exercise of virtues, or the discipline of conduct, or the glory of holiness (for indeed of such things I would not rashly claim for myself anything worthy of imitation); but I want you not to spare yourselves, but to accuse your very selves, whenever perhaps you perceive that the grace in you has grown even a little tepid, or that virtue has grown languid, just as I too accuse my own self for such things. To do this is the mark of a man who is a diligent observer of himself, and a searcher of his ways and pursuits, and who in all things always holds the vice of arrogance suspect lest it creep in. In truth I have learned that nothing is equally efficacious for meriting grace, retaining it, and recovering it, as if at all times you be found before God not to savor lofty things, but to fear. "Blessed is the man who is always fearful" (Prov 28:14). Fear therefore when grace has smiled upon you, fear when it has departed, fear when it returns again; and this is to be always fearful. Let these three fears succeed one another in turn in the soul, according as grace is felt either to deign to be present, or to withdraw offended, or to return again appeased. When it is present, fear lest you not work worthily from it: for this the Apostle warns: "See," he says, "that you do not receive the grace of God in vain" (2 Cor 6:1); and to his disciple: "Do not," he says, "neglect the grace that is in you" (1 Tim 4:14); and of himself he said: "Because the grace of God in me was not in vain" (1 Cor 15:10). The man knew, having the counsel of God, that to neglect a gift and not to spend it for that for which it was given redounds to the contempt of the giver; and he judged this to be intolerable pride: and therefore he himself most studiously guarded against this evil, and taught that it should be guarded against. But again a pitfall lurks here, which I do not want to be hidden from you, from which that same spirit of pride, the more dangerously the more secretly, as you have in the psalm, "lies in ambush like a lion in his den" (Ps 10:9). For if he is not able to hinder the action, he tempts the intention, suggesting and persuading that you should arrogate to yourself the effect of grace. Which kind of pride indeed you should not doubt is far more intolerable than that former kind. For what is more hateful than that voice in which certain ones said: "Our hand is exalted, and not the Lord, has done all these things" (Deut 32:27)? If therefore one must fear while grace remains; what if it has departed? Must one not fear much more then? Certainly much more; because where grace fails you, you yourself fail. Hear indeed what the giver of grace says. "Without me," he says, "you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). Fear therefore when grace is withdrawn, as one about to fall immediately; fear and tremble, with God angry at you, as you feel; fear, because your guard has left you. Nor should you doubt that pride is the cause, even if it does not appear, even if you are conscious of nothing in yourself. For what you do not know, God knows; and he who judges you is he himself. But neither is he who commends himself approved, but he whom God commends (2 Cor 10:18). Does God commend you when he deprives you of grace? Or does he who gives grace to the humble (Jas 4:6) take away from the humble what was given? Therefore the privation of grace is the proof of pride. Although, however, sometimes grace is withdrawn, or held back, not for pride that already exists, but for that which would exist if grace were not withdrawn. You have a clear testimony of this from the Apostle, who endured the goads of his flesh unwillingly, not because he was being exalted, but lest he be exalted (2 Cor 12:7). But whether already existing or not yet, pride will nevertheless always be the cause of grace withdrawn. Now if grace, having been reconciled, should return, much more must one fear then, lest perhaps it happen that one suffers a relapse, according to that word from the Gospel: "Behold, you have been made well; go and sin no more, lest something worse befall you" (Jn 5:14). You hear that to relapse is worse than to fall in the first place. Therefore as the danger increases, let fear also increase. Blessed are you, if you have filled your heart with this threefold fear, so that you fear indeed for grace received, more for grace lost, far more for grace recovered. Do this, and you will be a water jar at the banquet of Christ, filled to the brim, containing indeed measures, not only two, but also three, that you may merit the blessing of Christ, which may convert your waters into the wine of gladness, and perfect charity may cast out fear (1 Jn 4:18). What I say is of this nature. Fear is water, because it cools from the heat of carnal desires. "The beginning," he says, "of wisdom is the fear of the Lord" (Ps 110:10); and you have: "The water of saving wisdom gave him to drink" (Sir 15:3). If fear is wisdom, and wisdom is water; fear is water; and so: "The fear of the Lord," he says, "is a fountain of life" (Prov 14:7). Moreover the water jar is your mind. "Containing each," he says, "two or three measures." Three measures, three fears. "And they filled them," he says, "to the brim" (Jn 2:6-7). Not one fear, not two either, but all three together fill to the brim. At all times fear God, and from your whole heart, and you will have filled your water jar to the brim. God loves an undivided offering, a full affection, a perfect sacrifice. Take care therefore to bring a full water jar to the heavenly wedding feast, so that of you too it may be said: "Because he filled him with the spirit of the fear of the Lord" (Isa 11:3). He who fears thus neglects nothing. For how would negligence enter into fullness? Otherwise that which can still receive something more is not full. By the same reasoning one cannot simultaneously both fear thus and savor lofty things. For there is no room to admit pride when one is filled with the fear of the Lord. And so it is to be understood concerning the other vices as well, because all must necessarily be excluded by the fullness of fear. Then at length, if you have feared fully, if perfectly, charity will give flavor to your waters at the blessing of the Lord. For without charity, fear has punishment. And indeed charity is wine, which gladdens the heart of man (Ps 103:15). But perfect charity casts out fear, so that where water had been, wine may begin to be, to the praise and glory of the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“"My beloved is like a gazelle and a young stag" (Song 2:9). This depends on the preceding verse. For him whom she had just described as leaping and hastening, she consequently compares to a gazelle and a young stag. Aptly indeed, because this kind of animal is swift in running and agile in leaping. Moreover the discourse is about the Bridegroom, and the Word is the Bridegroom. And the Prophet says of God that "his word runs swiftly" (Ps 147:15); surely fitting to this place, where the Bridegroom, who is the Word of God, is described as leaping and springing over, made like therefore to a gazelle and a young stag. And this is the reason for the likeness. Add, however, lest any portion of the likeness itself, however small, remain without a soul, that the gazelle indeed excels not only in swiftness of running, but also in sharpness of sight. Which indeed properly regards that part of the narrative in which the Bridegroom is reported to appear not only leaping, but also springing over; because unless with a keen and penetrating gaze he could not at all, especially while running, discern upon whom he should leap and whom he should spring over. Otherwise the comparison with the young stag alone could have sufficed to designate the swiftness of one hastening; for it is known to carry itself with a more rapid course. But now, because this Bridegroom, even if as one ardently loving he seems to rush headlong into the embraces of his beloved, nevertheless knows how to direct his steps, or rather his leaps, with prudent consideration, cautious as to where he ought to set his foot: it was assuredly necessary that the likeness be given not only of the young stag but also of the gazelle, so that through the former the desire of the one saving, and through the latter the judgment of the one choosing, might be expressed. For Christ is just and merciful, savior and judge: and because he loves, he wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4); and because he judges, he knows who are his (2 Tim 2:19), and he himself knows whom he has chosen from the beginning (Jn 13:18). Therefore let us in the meantime perceive these two goods of the Bridegroom, namely mercy and judgment, as commended to us by the Holy Spirit in these two animals, so that in testimony of the integrity and perfection of our faith, we too, imitating the Prophet, may sing to the Lord of mercy and judgment (Ps 100:1). But I do not doubt that other things too can be shown from the nature of these animals by those who are curious about and knowledgeable of such matters, which could be usefully and fittingly applied to the Bridegroom: but these, as I think, can suffice to give the reason for the likeness introduced. Beautifully, however, the Holy Spirit gave the likeness not of a stag, but of a young stag, in which he both made mention of the Fathers, from whom Christ according to the flesh, and recalled the infancy of the Savior. For as a young stag there appeared "the little one who was born for us" (Is 9:6). But you who desire the coming of the Savior, fear the scrutiny of the Judge, fear the eyes of the gazelle, fear him who says through the prophet: "And it shall be in that day, I will search Jerusalem with lamps" (Zeph 1:12). He is of keen sight; his eye will leave nothing unsearched. "He will search the hearts and minds" (Ps 7:10), and the very thought of man will confess to him (Ps 75:11). What is safe in Babylon, if scrutiny awaits Jerusalem? For I think the prophet in this place designated by the name Jerusalem those who in this age lead a religious life, imitating the manners of that heavenly Jerusalem by an honest and ordered way of life, as far as their powers allow; and not like those who are of Babylon, ruining their life in the disturbance of vices and the confusion of crimes. Indeed the sins of those are manifest, going before them to judgment, and they need not scrutiny, but punishment. But my sins, who seem to be a monk and a Jerusalemite, are certainly hidden, shadowed by the name and habit of a monk: and therefore it will be necessary for them to be investigated by a subtle examination, and as if by lamps brought near, to be brought out of darkness into light. We can bring forward something also from the psalm to confirm what is said about searching Jerusalem. For he says in the person of the Lord: "When I shall have received the time, I will judge justices" (Ps 74:3). The ways of the just, unless I am mistaken, and their acts he says he will examine and investigate. It is greatly to be feared, when it shall have come to this, lest under so subtle an examination many of our justices, as they are thought to be, may appear as sins. There is one thing, however: if we judge ourselves, we shall certainly not be judged (1 Cor 11:31). Good is the judgment that withdraws and hides me from that strict and divine judgment. Utterly do I dread to fall into the hands of the living God; I desire to be presented to the face of wrath as one already judged, not as one still to be judged. The spiritual man judges all things, and he himself is judged by no one (1 Cor 2:15). I will therefore judge my evil deeds, and I will judge also my good ones. The evil ones I will take care to correct by better acts, to wash away with tears, to punish with fasts and the other labors of holy discipline. In my good deeds I will think humbly of myself, and, according to the precept of the Lord, I will reckon myself an unprofitable servant, who has only done what I was obliged to do (Lk 17:10). I will take care neither to offer tares for grain, nor chaff with grain. I will search out my ways and my pursuits, so that he who is about to search Jerusalem with lamps may find nothing unsearched or unexamined in me. For he will not judge twice in the selfsame matter. Who will grant me to pursue and track down all my offenses so thoroughly, that I need fear the eyes of the gazelle in nothing, that I need blush at the light of the lamps in nothing? And now I am seen, but I do not see: present is the eye to which all things lie open, even if that eye itself does not lie open. There will be a time when I shall know, even as I also am known: but now indeed I know in part, yet not in part am I known, but wholly. I fear the gaze of that searcher who stands behind the wall. For Scripture adds this about him whom it has likened to a gazelle on account of his sharpness of sight: "Behold, he himself stands," it says, "behind the wall, looking through the windows, peering through the lattices." Of which we shall see in its own place. This one therefore I fear, the hidden searcher of hidden things. The bride fears nothing, because she is conscious of nothing against herself. What indeed should she fear, friend, dove, beautiful one? For straightway you have: "Behold, my beloved," she says, "speaks to me." He leaves nothing unsaid; and therefore I dread his gaze, because I do not have testimony. What do you hear about yourself, O bride? What does your beloved say to you? "Arise, hasten, my friend, my dove, my beautiful one" (Song 2:9-10). But this too I will reserve for another beginning, and I will not compress into brevity those things that require diligence; lest perhaps I be found guilty even of this, if somehow you are found less built up in this regard unto the understanding and love of the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“"Behold, he himself stands behind the wall, looking through the windows, gazing through the lattices" (Song 2:9). According to the letter indeed he seems to say that he who was seen approaching with leaps had drawn near even to the dwelling of the bride, and standing behind the wall was peering in more curiously through the windows and cracks, and bashfully did not presume to thrust himself in. According to the spirit, however, he is understood to have drawn near no less, but in another way, in such a manner assuredly as it was fitting both for the heavenly Bridegroom to act and for the Holy Spirit to speak. For the true and spiritual understanding will admit nothing that would be unbecoming either to the author or to the narrator. Therefore he drew near to the wall when he adhered to flesh. The flesh is the wall, and the drawing near of the Bridegroom is the incarnation of the Word. Furthermore, the lattices and windows through which he is said to look are, as I suppose, the senses of the flesh and human affections, through which he took up experience of all human necessities. For "he himself bore our weaknesses, and he himself carried our sorrows" (Is 53:4). Therefore he used human affections and bodily senses as openings and windows, so that, having been made man, he might know the miseries of men by experience, and might become merciful. He knew even before, but in another way. For the Lord of hosts himself knew the virtue of obeying, and yet, as the Apostle attests, "he learned obedience from the things which he suffered" (Heb 5:8). In this manner he also learned mercy, even though the mercy of the Lord is from eternity. The same teacher of the nations teaches this also, where he asserts that he was "tempted in all things according to likeness, without sin, that he might become merciful" (Heb 4:15). Do you see that he was made what he was, and learned what he knew, and sought for himself among us cracks and windows, through which he might explore our calamities more diligently? And he found as many openings in our ruinous wall full of cracks as he felt experiences of our weakness and corruption in his own body. Thus therefore the Bridegroom was standing behind the wall and looking through windows and lattices. And rightly standing, because he alone truly stood in the flesh who did not experience the sin of the flesh. We can also faithfully hold this, that he stood by the power of divinity who fell by the weakness of the flesh, as he himself said: "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Mt 26:41). But I think that also that other passage lends support to this meaning, which holy David, as a prophet of the Lord and prophesying, spoke of the Lord in this mystery; and indeed speaking of Moses, but looking to the Lord. For he himself is the true Moses, who truly came through water, and not in water only, but in water and blood. And so the aforementioned prophet said: "He said that he would destroy them" (for he was speaking of the Father), "if Moses his chosen one had not stood in the breach in his sight, to turn away his wrath, lest he destroy them" (Ps 105:23). In what way, I ask, did Moses stand in the breach? How, I say, did he either stand, if he was broken; or if he stood, how was he broken? But I will show you, if you wish, who truly stood in the breach. I know no other who could do this, except my Lord Jesus, who certainly was living in death, who, broken in body on the cross, was standing by divinity with the Father; in the one supplicating with us, in the other propitiating with the Father. And he was standing behind the wall, since what lay prostrate in him was manifest in the flesh, and that by which he stood was hidden in him as if behind the flesh; one and the same indeed, man manifest and God hidden.”

“But also for each one of us who desire his coming, I think he stands no less behind the wall, while this body of ours, which is certainly of sin, hides from us in the meantime his face and shuts off his presence. For: "As long as we are in this body," he says, "we are pilgrims from the Lord" (2 Cor 5:6). Not because we are in a body, but because we are in this body, which assuredly is of sin and is not without sin. And that you may know that it is not bodies but sins that obstruct, hear the Scripture: "Our sins," it says, "separate between us and God" (Is 59:2). And would that only one wall of the body stood in my way, and I suffered only the obstacle of that which is the sin in the flesh, and that not many partition walls of vices stood between! For I fear that beyond that which is in nature, I have added very many from my own iniquity, by the interposition of which I have set the Bridegroom exceedingly far from me; so that, if I wished to speak the truth, I should confess that he stands behind walls rather than behind a wall for me. But I say this more plainly. The Bridegroom indeed is equally and indifferently present everywhere, by the presence assuredly of the divine majesty, and by the greatness of his power. Yet by the exhibition or withholding of grace he is said to be far from some and near to others, that is, of angels and men, that is, of rational creatures. For "salvation is far from sinners" (Ps 118:155). And holy David likewise says: "Why, O Lord, have you withdrawn far off?" (Ps 9:1). But from the saints, by a pious dispensation, he makes himself far for a time and not entirely, but according to something, sometimes. But from sinners of whom it is said: "The pride of those who hate you ascends always" (Ps 73:23); and likewise: "Their ways are defiled at all times" (Ps 9:5); he is always and very far away, and this in wrath and not in mercy. Wherefore the saint prays to God and says: "Do not turn away in anger from your servant" (Ps 26:9); knowing that he could also turn away in mercy. The Lord is therefore near to his saints and his elect, even when he seems to be far away; and not equally to all, but to some more, to others less, according to the diversity of merits. For even if the Lord is near to all who call upon him in truth, and is close to those who are of a troubled heart; yet not to all perhaps, so that they may be able to say that he himself stands behind the wall. But how near he is to the bride, who is separated by only one wall! For this reason she desires to be dissolved, and with the middle wall broken through, to be with him whom she trusts to be behind the wall.”

“But I, since I am a sinner, do not desire to be dissolved but dread it, knowing that "the death of sinners is most wretched" (Ps 33:22). How is death not most wretched where Life does not come to aid? I dread going out, and I tremble at the very entrance of the harbor, since I do not trust that he who would receive me as I go out stands near. For what? Do I go out securely, if the Lord does not guard my going out? Alas! I shall be a mockery of demons intercepting me: with none standing by to redeem, nor to save. Nothing such was to be feared by the soul of Paul, for whom only one wall stood in the way from the sight and embrace of the Beloved, namely the law of sin, which he found in his members. This is the concupiscence of the flesh, which he could not entirely lack as long as he was in the flesh. With this one wall surely interposed, he was not wandering far from the Lord; whence also he wished, crying out: "Who will deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom 7:24). Knowing that by the shortcut of death he would immediately arrive at life. By this one law therefore Paul confessed himself to be held, namely concupiscence, which, immovably implanted in his flesh, he endured unwillingly; for the rest: "I am conscious," he says, "of nothing against myself" (1 Cor 4:4). But who is like Paul, who does not, namely, sometimes consent to this concupiscence so as to obey sin? Let him know therefore, he who has consented to sin, that he has set up another wall against himself, namely that very depraved and illicit consent: nor can he who is of this kind boast that the Bridegroom stands behind a wall for him, when already walls stand between, not a wall. Much less if the consent has proceeded to effect, since now a third wall also bars and impedes the access of the Bridegroom, namely the very act of sin. What if habit has perhaps led the sin into use, or use even into contempt? As it is written: "The impious one, when he has come into the depth of evils, shows contempt" (Prov 18:3). Will you not, if you go out in such a state, be devoured a thousand times by those roaring ones prepared for food, before you can reach the Bridegroom, who is now shut off from you not by one wall but by so great a number of walls? The first is concupiscence; the second, consent; the third, the act; the fourth, habit; the fifth, contempt. Take care therefore to resist the first concupiscence with all your strength, lest it drag you into consent; and every structure of malice thereafter vanishes: nor is there anything at all to prevent the Bridegroom from drawing near to you, except only the wall of the body, so that you may be able to boast, you too, saying of him: "Behold, he himself stands behind the wall."”

“But this too you must provide for with all vigilance, that he may always find open the windows and certain lattices of your confessions, through which he may kindly look upon you within, since his looking upon you is your progress. They say that lattices are narrower than windows, such as those assuredly who copy books are accustomed to fit for themselves to receive light upon the pages. Whence also I think those are called chancellors who are deputed by office to the writing of documents. Since therefore there are two kinds of compunction, one in sorrow for our transgressions, the other in exultation for divine gifts, as often surely as I make that confession of my sins which is by no means done without anguish of heart, I seem to myself to open a lattice, that is, a narrower window. Nor is there doubt that he who stands behind the wall, the pious searcher, willingly looks through this one, because "a contrite and humbled heart God will not despise" (Ps 50:19). For he also exhorts to this very thing: "Declare you," he says, "your iniquities first, that you may be justified" (Is 43:26). But if at times, with heart enlarged in charity, on account of the consideration of the divine condescension and compassion, it pleases to release the mind into a voice of praise and thanksgiving, I think I am opening no longer a narrow but a most ample window for the Bridegroom standing behind the wall, through which, unless I am mistaken, he looks all the more willingly, inasmuch as "the sacrifice of praise honors him" the more. It is ready at hand from the Scriptures to approve both of these confessions; but I speak these things to those who know, and you are not to be burdened with superfluous things, who scarcely suffice for investigating the necessary ones. For so great are the mysteries of this wedding song, and the proclamations of praise that are sung in it to the Church and to her Bridegroom Jesus Christ our Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“"Behold, my beloved speaks to me" (Song 2:10). See the advances of grace, and mark the degrees of divine condescension. Attend to the devotion and skill of the bride, with what vigilant eye she observes the advent of the bridegroom, and thereafter gazes upon all his movements more diligently. He comes, he hastens, he draws near, he is present, he looks upon her, he speaks to her; and none of these moments escapes the industry of the bride, anticipating each with her awareness. He comes in the angels, he hastens in the patriarchs, he draws near in the prophets, he is present in the flesh, he looks upon her in miracles, he speaks in the apostles. Or thus: He comes with the affection and zeal of showing mercy, he hastens with the eagerness of bringing aid, he draws near by humbling himself, he is present to those of the present time, he looks ahead to those of the future, he speaks teaching and persuading concerning the kingdom of God. Thus therefore is the advent of the bridegroom. Blessings and riches of salvation are with him, and all things that pertain to him overflow with delights, abounding surely in joyful and salutary sacraments. Moreover she who loves, watches and observes. And blessed is she whom the Lord shall find watching. He will not pass her by, nor will he go past her, but he will stand and speak to her, and he will speak words of love: he will speak indeed as a beloved. For thus you have it: "Behold, my beloved speaks to me." Rightly "beloved," who comes to speak words of love, and not of reproach. For she is not of those who are justly reproached by the Lord, that they knew how to discern the face of the sky, but did not at all recognize the time of his coming (Mt 16:3). For this bride, so skillful, and prudent, and well-watchful, both saw him coming from afar, and noticed him leaping on account of his haste, and most vigilantly observed him leaping over the proud, that he might draw near to his humble one through humility; and at last, when he was already standing and hiding himself behind the wall, she nonetheless recognized his presence, and also perceived him looking through the windows and lattices; and now, as a reward for such great devotion and religious solicitude, she hears him speaking. For indeed if he had looked upon her and had not at all spoken, that look could have been suspect, lest perhaps it were of indignation rather than of love. For he looked upon Peter, and did not make a word to him: and therefore Peter perhaps wept (Lk 22:61-62), because he who was looking upon him was silent. But this bride, since after his gaze she also merited his address, not only does not weep, but even glories with joy, crying out: "Behold, my beloved speaks to me." You see that the gaze of the Lord, although it always remains the same in itself, is nevertheless not always of the same efficacy; but it conforms itself to the merits of each one whom he regards, and to some indeed it strikes fear, but to others it rather brings consolation and security. For he looks upon the earth and makes it tremble, whereas on the other hand he looked upon Mary and poured grace into her. "He has regarded," she says, "the humility of his handmaid; for behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed" (Lk 1:48). These are not the words of one weeping or trembling, but of one rejoicing. He looked upon the bride similarly in this place, and she neither trembled nor wept after the manner of Peter, because she did not savor of the earth, as he did; but he gave joy in her heart, testifying by his address with what affection he had regarded her.”

“Hear then the words which he speaks, how they are not of one who is indignant, but of one who loves. There follows: "Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one." Happy the conscience that merits to hear these things of itself! Who, do you think, among us is so watchful and observant of the time of his visitation, and so diligently scrutinizing the bridegroom as he approaches through each of his movements, that when he has come and knocked, he may immediately open to him? For these things are not so related of the Church that we individually, who together are the Church, should not have to participate in these her blessings. For in this we are all generally and without distinction called, that we may possess blessings as an inheritance. Whence also one dared to say to the Lord indeed: "I have acquired your testimonies as an inheritance forever, because they are the exultation of my heart" (Ps 119:111); by that inheritance, I think, by which he presumed himself to be a son of his father, who is in heaven. Moreover if a son, then also an heir; an heir of God, and a co-heir with Christ. He glories that he has acquired a great thing by this inheritance, namely the testimonies of the Lord. Would that I had merited to hold even one testimony of the Lord concerning myself! because he exults not in one, but in many testimonies. For he says again: "In the way of your testimonies I have delighted, as in all riches" (Ps 119:14). And truly what are the riches of salvation, what are the delights of the heart, what is the true and prudent security of the soul, if not the attestations of the Lord? "For it is not he who commends himself," he says, "who is approved, but he whom God commends" (2 Cor 10:18). Why are we hitherto still defrauded of these divine commendations and attestations, and deprived of our paternal inheritance? As if he had not willingly begotten us also by the word of truth, so we remember ourselves commended by him in no such way, nor to have obtained any testimonies of his concerning ourselves. Where is what the Apostle says, that "the Spirit of God himself gives testimony to our spirit, that we are sons of God" (Rom 8:16)? How are we sons, if we are without share in the inheritance? Our very poverty itself convicts us surely of negligence and carelessness. For if any one of us, wholly and perfectly, according to the word of the Wise man, would give his heart to watching at dawn for the Lord who made him, and would pray in the sight of the Most High (Sir 39:6), and at the same time with all his desires would strive, according to Isaiah the prophet, to prepare the ways of the Lord, to make straight the paths of his God (Isa 40:3), so that it would be his to say with the Prophet: "My eyes are always toward the Lord" (Ps 25:15); and "I foresaw the Lord in my sight always" (Ps 16:8): would not this man receive a blessing from the Lord, and mercy from the God of his salvation? (Ps 24:5). He would be visited frequently indeed, nor would he ever be ignorant of the time of his visitation, however secretly and furtively he who visits in spirit may come, as being a bashful lover. Therefore while he is still far off, the well-watchful soul will discern him with a sober mind, and thereafter will discover all those things which we have shown the bride to have noticed so skillfully and so distinctly in the advent of the beloved, because he himself says: "Those who watch for me in the morning shall find me" (Prov 8:17). For she will also recognize the desire of the one hastening; and when he is near, and when he is already at hand, she will immediately perceive; and also the eye of the one looking upon her, entering like a ray of the sun through windows and cracks of the wall, she will behold with a blessed eye: and at last she will hear voices of exultation and love, being called love, dove, beautiful one.”

“Who is wise and will understand these things, so as to be able also worthily to distinguish them from one another, and to designate each one, and to define them for the understanding of others? If that is expected of me, I would prefer to hear these things from one experienced, and one who is accustomed and exercised in such matters. But since everyone who is of this kind modestly chooses rather to conceal in silence what he perceives in silence, and to keep his secret to himself, judging that safer for himself: I say, I whose office it is to speak, and to whom silence is not permitted, whatever it is that I hold of such matters either from my own or from another's experience, and what many can easily experience, leaving aside indeed the higher things for those who are able to grasp them. If therefore I shall have been admonished, either outwardly by a man or inwardly by the Spirit, concerning the guarding of justice and the keeping of equity; such a salutary persuasion will be for me indeed a herald of the imminent coming of the bridegroom, and a certain preparation for worthily receiving the heavenly visitor, the Prophet indicating this to me by saying that "justice shall walk before him" (Ps 85:13); and likewise he speaks to God thus: "Justice and judgment," he says, "are the preparation of your seat" (Ps 89:14). No less indeed will the same hope smile upon me, if a word has sounded concerning humility or patience, or even concerning fraternal charity and obedience to be rendered to superiors; but especially concerning the pursuit of holiness and peace, and the seeking of purity of heart, since indeed Scripture says: "Holiness befits the house of the Lord" (Ps 93:5); and: "His place has been made in peace" (Ps 76:2); and: "The pure in heart shall see God" (Mt 5:8). Whatever therefore, whether concerning these or any other virtues, shall have been suggested to the mind, it will be a sign, as I have said, that the visitation of the Lord of hosts is imminent for my soul. But also if a just man shall correct me in mercy, and rebuke me, I shall feel the same thing, knowing that the zeal and benevolence of the just man make a way for him who ascends above the west (Ps 68:4). A good setting, when at the correction of the just man the man stands firm, and the vice falls, and the Lord ascends above it, trampling it underfoot and crushing it lest it rise again. Therefore the rebuke of the just man is not to be despised, for it is the ruin of sin, the health of the heart, and moreover the way of God to the soul. But neither is any word at all which builds up toward piety, toward virtues, toward the best conduct, to be heard negligently; since in that too is "the way by which the salvation of God is shown" (Ps 50:23). But if the word comes welcome and pleasing, so that, with disgust driven away, it is heard with desire, then the Bridegroom is to be believed not only to come, but also to hasten, that is, to come with desire. For his desire creates your desire; and the reason you hasten to admit his word is that he himself hastens to enter; for "it was not we who loved him, but he himself," it says, "first loved us" (1 Jn 4:10). Now if you also feel the word to be fiery, and your conscience to be burned by it in the remembrance of sin; remember then of whom the Scripture says that "a fire shall go before him" (Ps 97:3), and do not doubt that he himself is near. For "the Lord is near to those who are of a troubled heart" (Ps 34:18). But if in that word you are not only pricked with compunction, but also turned wholly to the Lord, swearing and resolving to keep the judgments of his justice, know that he is also already present, especially if you feel yourself burning with love of him. For you read both of him, that a fire indeed precedes him, and that he himself is no less a fire. For Moses says of him that "he is a consuming fire" (Deut 4:24). But they differ, in that the fire which is sent before has burning heat, but not love: it singes, but does not refine; it stirs, but does not advance. It is sent ahead only to arouse and prepare, and at the same time to remind you of what you are of yourself, so that what you will shortly be of God may taste all the sweeter afterward. But the fire which is God indeed consumes, but does not afflict; it burns sweetly, it lays waste blessedly. For it is truly a desolating coal, but one which so exercises the power of fire upon vices, that in the soul it performs the office of anointing. Therefore in the power by which you are changed, and in the love by which you are inflamed, understand the Lord to be present. For "the right hand of the Lord works power" (Ps 118:16). Moreover this change "of the right hand of the Most High" (Ps 77:10) does not happen except in fervor of spirit, and in charity unfeigned, so that he who is of this kind may say: "My heart grew hot within me, and in my meditation a fire shall burn" (Ps 39:3). Moreover, when by this fire every stain of sin, and the rust of vices, has been consumed, if upon a cleansed and serene conscience there follows a certain sudden and unwonted enlargement of the mind, and an infusion of light illuminating the understanding either for the knowledge of the Scriptures, or for the awareness of mysteries, of which I believe the one is given for our delight, the other for the edification of our neighbors; that is without doubt the eye of the one looking upon you, bringing forth "as the light your justice, and your judgment as the noonday," according to that word of the prophet Isaiah: "Your light shall arise," he says, "as the sun" (Isa 58:10), etc. But assuredly not through open doors, but through narrow openings, will this ray of such great brightness pour itself in, while this ruinous wall of the body still stands. You err if you hope otherwise, to whatever degree of purity of heart you may advance, since that preeminent contemplator says: "We see now through a mirror and in an enigma, but then face to face" (1 Cor 13:12).”

“After this regard of such great condescension and mercy, there follows a voice gently and softly insinuating the divine will, which is nothing other than love itself, which cannot be idle, urging and persuading concerning the things that are of God. For the bride hears that she should arise and hasten, without doubt for the winning of souls. For this is what true and chaste contemplation has, that the mind which it has vehemently kindled with divine fire, it sometimes so fills with zeal and desire for winning for God those who would similarly love him, that it most willingly interrupts the leisure of contemplation for the zeal of preaching; and again, having obtained its desires, it returns all the more ardently to the same, inasmuch as it remembers itself to have interrupted more fruitfully; and in turn, having tasted contemplation, it runs back with greater strength and accustomed eagerness to pursue its gains. But amid these alternations the mind often fluctuates, fearing, and vehemently burning with anxiety, lest perhaps it cling to one of these more than is just, while it is pulled in different directions by its affections on this side and that; and so in either one deviate even slightly from the divine will. And perhaps holy Job was suffering something of this kind, when he said: "If I sleep, I say, when shall I arise? and again I shall wait for the evening" (Job 7:4): that is: Both at rest, I accuse myself of neglected work; and occupied, I accuse myself no less of disturbed rest. You see the holy man gravely distressed between the fruit of work and the sleep of contemplation: and although always engaged in good things, yet always as if doing penance for evils, and seeking the will of God with groaning at every moment. For the sole remedy and refuge in such matters is prayer, and frequent groaning to God; that he may deign continually to show us what, when, and to what extent he wills us to do. You have, as I think, these three things, that is, preaching, prayer, and contemplation, commended and designated in three words. For rightly is she called "love," who zealously and faithfully seeks the gains of the bridegroom by preaching, counseling, and ministering. Rightly "dove," who no less, groaning and supplicating in prayer for her own faults, does not cease to reconcile divine mercy to herself. Rightly also "beautiful one," who, shining with heavenly desire, puts on the beauty of supernal contemplation, at those hours, at least, when she can do so conveniently and opportunely. But see also whether this can be fitted to this threefold good of one soul; concerning those three persons, namely, dwelling together in one house, friends surely of the Savior, and exceedingly familiar to him. I speak of Martha serving, and Mary at leisure, and Lazarus as if groaning under the stone, and pleading for the grace of resurrection (Lk 10:38-42; Jn 11). These things have been said on account of the fact that the bride is described as so skillful and watchful in observing the paths of the bridegroom, that it can in no way be hidden from her when, and with how great haste, he comes to her; but also when he is far, and when near, and when present, she cannot be taken by surprise so as to be unaware: and that for this reason she merited, not only to be looked upon mercifully, but also to be graciously gladdened by voices of love, and to rejoice with joy on account of the voice of the bridegroom. We also have added to these things, though boldly, that any soul among us also, if it watches similarly, will similarly be greeted as a love, consoled as a dove, and embraced as a beautiful one. Everyone will be considered perfect in whose soul these three things are seen to come together fittingly and opportunely, so that he both knows how to groan for himself, and to exult in God, and at the same time is capable of serving the needs of his neighbors; pleasing to God, watchful over himself, useful to his own. But for these things who is sufficient? Would that these things themselves in all of us, if not all in each individual, yet at least each one in different persons, as they seem to be held today, may be preserved for a long time! For we have Martha, as a friend of the Savior, in those who faithfully administer external affairs. We have also Lazarus, as a groaning dove, namely the novices, who, having recently died to sins, still labor in their groaning under recent wounds with fear of judgment; and as the wounded sleeping in the tombs, of whom no one is mindful any longer, so they do not think themselves regarded, until at Christ's command, with the weight of fear removed, as if the burden of a pressing stone, they can breathe again into the hope of pardon. We have also Mary contemplating, in those who, by the progress of a longer time, with the grace of God cooperating, have been able to advance to something better and more joyful; when now, presuming upon forgiveness, they are not so anxious to turn over within themselves the sad image of their sins, as they are insatiably delighted to meditate in the law of God day and night; sometimes also with unveiled face beholding the glory of the bridegroom with ineffable joy, they are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor 3:18). Now to what end the bridegroom urges the bride to arise and hasten, he who a little before seemed to have defended her lest she be awakened while sleeping, we shall see in another sermon. May he himself be present, that he may deign to open for us the meaning of this mystery also, the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“"Arise, make haste, my friend, my dove, my beautiful one, and come" (Song 2:10). Who says this? Without doubt the Bridegroom. And is he not the one who a little before was so earnestly forbidding the beloved to be awakened? By what agreement then does he now command not only that she arise, but also that she hasten? Something similar from the Gospel comes to mind. For on that very night in which the Lord was betrayed, when he had at last commanded the disciples who were with him, fatigued by the prolonged vigils, to sleep and to rest, in that very hour he said: "Arise, let us go; behold, he who will betray me has drawn near" (Mt 26:46). Now likewise in almost one and the same moment he both forbids the bride to be awakened and awakens her, saying: "Arise and come." What then does so sudden a change of will or counsel mean? Do we suppose that the Bridegroom acted from levity, and willed something before which he shortly after did not will? Not at all. But recognize those alternations which I commended to you above, if you remember, and not once only, alternations namely of holy repose and necessary action; and that in this life there is no abundance of contemplating nor length of leisure, where the more pressing and more urgent usefulness of duty and work presses upon us. After his custom, therefore, when the Bridegroom perceives that the beloved has rested a little in his own bosom, he does not delay to draw her again to those things which seemed more useful. Not however as though she were unwilling: for what he forbade to be done, he himself would by no means do. But for the bride to be drawn by the Bridegroom is to receive from him the desire by which she is drawn, the desire for good works, the desire to bear fruit for the Bridegroom; since for her to live is the Bridegroom, and to die is gain. And this is a vehement desire, which urges her not only to arise but also to arise hastily: for thus you have it: "Arise, make haste, and come." And it comforts her not a little that she hears "come" and not "go": understanding by this that she is not so much sent as led, and that the Bridegroom would come equally with her. For what would she reckon difficult with him as companion? "Set me," she says, "beside you, and let the hand of whomever fight against me" (Job 17:3); likewise: "If I shall walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will not fear evils, for you are with me" (Ps 22:4). She is therefore not awakened against her will, since it is first brought about that she wills: which is nothing other than an infused eagerness for holy gain. She is also animated toward the enjoined work, and is rendered more eager by the opportunity of the time. "It is the time for doing," he says, "O bride, because the winter has passed, when no one could work. The rain also, which having made a flood covered the earth, impeded cultivation, and either destroyed what had been sown or prevented sowing; this rain, I say, has run off, has departed and receded; flowers have appeared in our land, signifying indeed that the springtime mildness is at hand, the convenience for working, the nearness of crops and fruits." Then he adds where and what must first be worked: "The time of pruning has arrived" (Song 2:11-12). She is led therefore to cultivating the vineyards: which, in order that they may repay the vine-dressers with more abundant fruits, it is above all necessary that the sterile branches be cast off, the noxious ones cut down, the superfluous ones pruned. These things according to the letter.”

“Furthermore, the winter time, which he signifies has passed, seems to me to designate that period when the Lord Jesus no longer walked openly among the Jews, because they had conspired against him, wishing to kill him. Whence also he said to certain ones: "My time has not yet come; but your time is always ready"; and again: "Go up yourselves to this feast; I am not going up" (Jn 7:1-10). Yet he went up afterward himself also, not openly, but as it were in secret. From that time, then, and thenceforth until the coming of the Holy Spirit, by which the sluggish hearts of the faithful grew warm again, as by fire, which the Lord sent upon the earth for this very purpose (Lk 12:49), it was winter. Will you deny that it was winter then, when Peter sat at the coals, his heart no less frozen than his body? Finally: "It was cold," it says (Jn 18:18). A great cold indeed had gripped the heart of the one denying. Nor is it surprising, since the fire had been taken from him. For a little before he was burning with no small zeal, being as yet close to the fire, who, with sword drawn, lest he lose the fire, cut off the ear of the servant. But it was not the time of pruning: and therefore he hears: "Put your sword back in its place." For it was the hour and the power of darkness: and if any of the disciples then raised the sword either of iron or of the word, he was either to be cut down by iron and would gain no one, nor bring forth any fruit; or certainly he was to be compelled by the sword of fear to deny, and so rather he himself would perish, according to the word of the Lord which he added immediately, saying thus: "All who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Mt 26:51-52). For who among the rest would stand undaunted before the dreadful image of death, when the chief himself was trembling and yielding, he who had been fortified by the encouraging voice of his commander, and forewarned to strengthen the others? (Lk 22:32.) But neither he nor they had yet clothed themselves with power from on high; and on this account it was not safe for them to go out into the vineyards, to wield the hoe of the tongue, and to prune the vines with the sword of the Spirit, to cleanse the branches, that they might bear more fruit. Finally, the Lord himself was silent in the Passion, and when questioned on many things did not answer (Mt 27:12), having become, according to the Prophet, "like a man not hearing, and not having reproofs in his mouth" (Ps 37:15). But he said: "If I shall tell you, you will not believe me; and if I shall also question you, you will not answer me" (Lk 22:67-68): knowing that the time of pruning had not yet arrived, and that his vineyard would in no way respond to the labors expended, that is, would bring back no fruit of faith or of good works. Why? Because it was winter in the hearts of the faithless, and certain wintry rains of malice had occupied the earth, readier to smother than to foster the seeds of the word that had been cast; but also to frustrate all the labor that should be equally expended on the cultivation of the vineyards.”

“What rains do you now think I mean? These which we see the turbulent clouds running through the air scattering upon the earth? It is not so. But those which men of turbulent spirit carry upward from the earth into the air, setting their mouth against heaven, and their tongue passing over the earth, as a most bitter rain, makes the earth itself marshy and barren, and useless both for plants and for sowings -- not indeed those visible and corporeal ones given for our bodily uses, of which plainly, as neither of oxen, God has no care. But which ones? Assuredly those which the hand of God, and not of man, sowed and planted; which could either sprout or take root in faith and charity, and bring forth fruits of salvation, if they were watered by good and timely rains. Souls, in short, they are, for which Christ died. Woe to the clouds raining such rains upon them, which make mud and bring forth no fruit! For just as there are both good and bad trees, each bearing fruits differing according to their unlikeness, good ones good and bad ones bad: so also I think there are both good clouds, which rain good rains, and bad ones, which rain bad. And see whether perhaps he who said this did not hint to us at this difference of clouds and rains: "I will command my clouds not to rain upon it" (beyond doubt upon the vineyard) "rain" (Is 5:6). Why do you think he pointedly added "my," unless because there are also bad clouds which are not his? "Away, away with him," they say, "crucify him" (Jn 19:15). O violent and turbulent clouds! O stormy rain! O torrent of iniquity, fit to overthrow rather than to make fruitful! Nor was that rain which followed any less bad or less bitter, though bursting forth with lesser force: "He saved others, he cannot save himself. Let Christ the King of Israel come down now from the cross, and we will believe him" (Mt 27:42). The windy loquacity of the philosophers is not a good rain, which brought barrenness to the lands rather than fertility. Much more are the perverse dogmas of the heretics bad rains, which produce thorns and thistles instead of fruits. Bad rains also are the traditions of the Pharisees, which the Savior rebuked, and they themselves are bad clouds. And unless you think I am doing an injustice to Moses -- for that cloud is a good one -- yet I will say that not everything which even it rained was good, lest I contradict him who says: "I gave them," that is, the Jews, "precepts that were not good" (without doubt through Moses) "and ordinances in which they would not live in them" (Ezek 20:25). That literal observance, for example, of the Sabbath, sounding of rest but not granting it; the prescribed rite of sacrifices; the prohibited eating of pork and of certain similar things which are judged unclean by Moses -- all this is rain descending from that cloud, but I do not want it ever to descend upon my field or my garden. It may well have been good in its own time; after its time, if it comes, I no longer judge it good. Even every gentle rain and gently descending, if it is untimely, is troublesome.”

“For us, brothers, it is always the time of pruning, just as it is always the work to be done. For I trust that for us the winter has now passed. You know what winter I mean? That fear which is not in charity, which although it initiates all to wisdom, perfects no one; because charity coming upon it drives it out, as summer does winter. For charity is summer: and if it has now come -- indeed, because it has come, as it is right for me to think of you -- it has necessarily dried up every wintry rain, every tear of anxiety, namely, which the bitter recollection of sin and the fear of judgment formerly wrung from us. And so -- which I say without doubt, even if not of all of you, certainly of very many -- this rain has now departed and receded: for flowers too appear, tokens of a sweeter rain. Summer has its own rains too, sweet and plentiful. What is sweeter than the tears of charity? For charity weeps, but from love, not from sorrow; it weeps from desire, it weeps with those who weep. With such rain I do not doubt that the acts of your obedience are more abundantly watered, which I look upon with gladness -- not gloomy with murmuring, not dimmed with sadness, but pleasant and blooming with a certain spiritual joy. They are as if you always bore flowers in your hands.”

“Now let us see what is spiritually to be understood by us from this quasi-historical figure. That the vineyards are souls or Churches, and at the same time what the reason for this is, I have already told you, and you have heard, nor do you need to hear it again. To revisiting these, then, to correcting, instructing, and saving them, the more perfect soul is invited, one who has received that ministry not by her own ambition but called by God, as was Aaron. Furthermore, what is this invitation itself, if not a certain inward stirring of charity piously urging us to be zealous for the salvation of our brothers, zealous for the beauty of the house of the Lord, for the increase of his gains, the increase of the fruits of his righteousness, the praise and glory of his name? Whenever, therefore, he who has the charge of governing souls, or who by office must devote himself to the study of preaching, perceives his inner man to be moved by such devout affections toward God, let him understand for certain that the Bridegroom is present, that he is being invited by him to the vineyards. For what purpose, unless to uproot and to destroy, and to build and to plant? But since for this work, as also for every thing under heaven, not every time is available and fit, he who invites adds that the time of pruning has arrived. He who said this knew it was at hand: "Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation; giving no offense to anyone, that our ministry may not be blamed" (2 Cor 6:2-3). Without doubt he was admonishing them to prune and cut away the vicious and superfluous, and indeed everything that could give offense and impede the fruit of salvation, knowing that the time of pruning had arrived. Therefore he also said to a certain faithful cultivator of vineyards: "Rebuke, reprove, exhort" (2 Tim 4:2); enjoining in the first and second of these pruning or uprooting, and in the last, planting. And these things the Bridegroom spoke through the mouth of Paul concerning the time for working. But hear what he spoke through his own mouth concerning the consideration of times, under indeed a different figure and name of things, when the bride was new. "Do you not say," he says, "that there are yet four months and the harvest comes? Behold, I say to you: Lift up your eyes and see the regions, for they are already white for the harvest" (Jn 4:35); likewise: "The harvest indeed is great, but the laborers are few: pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest" (Mt 9:37-38). Just as there, therefore, he was showing that the time for reaping the harvests of souls was at hand, so also here he announces that the time for pruning the equally intelligible vineyards, that is, souls or Churches, has arrived; wishing perhaps that this distinction be made between the two things by the diversity of terms, that by harvests we understand the peoples, and by vineyards the congregations of saints dwelling together.”

“As long, therefore, as pestilent waters of this kind had occupied the earth and prevailed upon it, the vineyards did not have their time, nor was there cause for the bride to be invited to prune the vineyards. But when those had run off, the dry land appeared, and flowers appeared in it, signifying that the time of pruning was at hand. You ask when this was? When do you think, if not when the flesh of Christ reflowered in the resurrection? And this is the first and greatest flower that appeared in our land. For "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep is Christ" (1 Cor 15:20). He himself, I say, "the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys," Jesus (Song 2:1), as he was supposed the son of Joseph, from Nazareth (Lk 3:23), which is interpreted "flower." This flower therefore appeared first, not alone. For "many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep also arose together," who, like certain most brilliant flowers, appeared at the same time in our land. Finally, "they came into the holy city, and appeared to many" (Mt 27:52-53). Flowers also were those who first believed from among the people, the firstfruits of the saints. Their miracles were flowers, producing fruit of faith after the manner of flowers. For after that rain of unbelief had somewhat, or in part, departed and receded, there followed immediately a willing rain, which God set apart for his inheritance, and flowers began to appear. "The Lord gave his bounty, and our land gave its flowers," so that in one day three thousand, and in another five thousand from the people believed (Acts 2:41; 4:4): to such a degree in a short time the number of flowers, that is, the multitude of believers, increased. And the frost of malice could not prevail against the flowers that were appearing, nor snatch away, as it is wont to do, the fruit of life which they promised. For when all who had believed were clothed with power from on high, there arose from among them men who despised the threats of men, strong in faith. They suffered indeed very many contradictors; but they did not yield, nor did they shrink from both doing and proclaiming the works of God. For according to that in the psalm, spiritually indeed: "And they sowed fields, and planted vineyards, and made the fruit of their produce" (Ps 106:37). In the course of time the storm was calmed, and with peace restored to the lands, the vineyards grew, and were propagated, and extended, and multiplied beyond number. And then at last the bride is invited to the vineyards, not indeed to plant, but to prune what had already been planted. Opportunely indeed: for that work required a time of peace. For when in a time of persecution would this be permitted? Otherwise, to take in hand two-edged swords, to execute vengeance upon the nations, rebukes upon the peoples; to bind their kings in fetters, and their nobles in chains of iron; and to execute upon them the judgment that was written (Ps 149:6-9) -- for this is to prune the vineyards -- these things, I say, are scarcely carried out even in a time of peace peaceably. And enough of these things.”

“The sermon could also have been ended, if first I had admonished each one of you, according to my custom, about his own vineyard. For who has so precisely cut away from himself all superfluous things that he thinks he has nothing worthy of pruning? Believe me, even what has been pruned sprouts again, and what has been driven off returns, and what has been extinguished is rekindled, and what has been lulled to sleep is once more stirred up. It is therefore too little to have pruned once; one must prune often -- indeed, if it could be, always -- because always, if you do not dissemble, you find what ought to be pruned. However far you may have advanced while remaining in this body, you err if you think your vices are dead and not rather suppressed. Whether you will or not, the Jebusite dwells within your borders (Judg 1:21); he can be subjugated, but not exterminated. "I know," he says, "that good does not dwell in me." It is not enough unless he also confesses that evil is present in him. For he says: "Not what I will, this I do; but what I hate, that I do. But if what I hate, that I do, it is no longer I who work it, but sin which dwells in me" (Rom 7:18-20). Either therefore, if you dare, prefer yourself to the Apostle -- for this is his own voice -- or confess with him that you too are not free from vices. Virtue indeed holds the middle ground among vices; and therefore you need not only diligent pruning, but also circumcision. Otherwise it is to be feared that, while the vices lick at it all around, or rather gnaw at it, virtue, while you are unaware, may little by little grow feeble; or, if they have grown over it, may be suffocated. In so great a peril, the one counsel is to observe diligently, and as soon as the heads of the regrowing ones appear, to cut them down with ready severity. Virtue cannot grow equally alongside vices. Therefore, that it may flourish, let these not be allowed to increase. Take away the superfluous, and wholesome things arise. Whatever you subtract from cupidity accrues to usefulness. Let us devote ourselves to pruning. Let cupidity be pruned, that virtue may be strengthened.”

“For us, brothers, it is always the time of pruning, just as it is always the work to be done. For I trust that for us the winter has now passed. You know what winter I mean? That fear which is not in charity, which although it initiates all to wisdom, perfects no one; because charity coming upon it drives it out, as summer does winter. For charity is summer: and if it has now come -- indeed, because it has come, as it is right for me to think of you -- it has necessarily dried up every wintry rain, every tear of anxiety, namely, which the bitter recollection of sin and the fear of judgment formerly wrung from us. And so -- which I say without doubt, even if not of all of you, certainly of very many -- this rain has now departed and receded: for flowers too appear, tokens of a sweeter rain. Summer has its own rains too, sweet and plentiful. What is sweeter than the tears of charity? For charity weeps, but from love, not from sorrow; it weeps from desire, it weeps with those who weep. With such rain I do not doubt that the acts of your obedience are more abundantly watered, which I look upon with gladness -- not gloomy with murmuring, not dimmed with sadness, but pleasant and blooming with a certain spiritual joy. They are as if you always bore flowers in your hands. If therefore the winter has passed, the rain has departed and receded; if indeed flowers have appeared in our land, and thereupon a certain springtime mildness of spiritual grace announces the time of pruning: what remains except that henceforth we devote ourselves entirely to this work so holy, so necessary? Let us search, according to the prophet, our ways (Lam 3:40) and our pursuits, and in this let each one judge himself to have profited, not when he finds nothing to reprove, but when he reproves what he has found. Then you have not searched yourself in vain, if you have noticed that there is again need for searching: and so many times your inquiry has not deceived you, as many times as you have thought it must be repeated. But if you always do this when there is need, you always do it. Let it always be remembered therefore that you are in need of heavenly aid, and of the mercy of the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“1. "The voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land" (Song 2:12). I can by no means any longer conceal the fact that behold, for a second time, he who is from heaven speaks of the earth: assuredly so condescendingly, so companionably, as if he were one from the earth. This is the Bridegroom: who, when he had said beforehand that flowers had appeared in the earth, added "our"; and now no less: "The voice," he says, "of the turtledove has been heard in our land." Shall then a manner of speaking so unusual for God, not to say unworthy, be without reason? Nowhere, as I think, will you find him having spoken thus of heaven, nowhere elsewhere of earth. Attend therefore, how great a sweetness it is for the God of heaven to say, "in our land." You also, O earth-born and sons of men, hear; "the Lord has done great things for us" (Ps 125:3). Much has he to do with the earth, much with the bride, whom he was pleased to take to himself from the lands. "In our land," he says. This word plainly does not sound of sovereignty, but of partnership, of familiarity. As a Bridegroom he says this, not as a Lord. What? He is the Creator, and he reckons himself a partner! Love is speaking, which knows no lord. This is indeed a song of love, and it was fitting that it be supported by none other than amatory expressions. God also loves, nor does he have this from elsewhere, but he himself is the source whence he loves. And therefore he loves more vehemently, because he does not so much have love, as he himself is this very thing. But those whom he loves, he has as friends, not as servants. Finally, from a master he becomes a friend: for he would not have called his disciples friends, if they were not such. 2. You see that even majesty yields to love? So it is, brothers; love looks up to no one, but neither does it look down on anyone. It regards all equally, who love one another perfectly, and in itself it tempers together the lofty and the lowly; not only making them equals, but one. Perhaps you still think that God is excepted from this rule of love; but "he who clings to God is one spirit" (1 Cor 6:17). Why do you marvel at this? He himself was made as one of us. I have said too little: not as one, but one. It is a small thing to be equal to men: he is man. Thence he claims our land for himself, but as a homeland, not as a possession. Why should he not claim it? Thence comes his bride, thence the substance of his body; thence the Bridegroom himself; thence "two in one flesh." If one flesh, why not also one homeland? "The heaven of heaven is the Lord's," it says, "but the earth he has given to the sons of men" (Ps 113:16). Therefore as Son of Man he inherits the earth, as Lord he subjects it, as Creator he administers it, as Bridegroom he shares it. For by saying "in our land," he plainly renounced exclusive ownership, but did not refuse partnership. And let this suffice concerning the fact that the Bridegroom used so kindly a word, that he deigned to say, "in our land." Now let us consider the rest.”

“3. "The voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land." This too is a sign that winter has passed, announcing no less that the time of pruning is at hand. This according to the letter. Otherwise, the voice of the turtledove does not sound very sweet, but it signifies sweet things. The little bird itself, if you buy it, is not of great cost; if you examine it, it is not of small worth. And its voice indeed, more like a moaning than a singing, reminds us of our pilgrimage. Gladly do I hear the voice of that teacher: who moves not applause for himself, but lamentation in me. Truly you display the turtledove, if you teach how to groan: and if you wish to persuade, you will need to strive for it by groaning rather than by declaiming. Example indeed, both in many other things and especially in this matter, is more effective than the word. You will give to your voice the voice of power, if what you urge you are recognized to have first persuaded yourself of. The voice of deed is stronger than the voice of mouth. Do as you speak, and not only will you correct me more easily, but you will also free yourself from no slight reproach. It will no longer pertain to you, if someone says: "They bind heavy and unbearable burdens, and lay them on the shoulders of men, but with their own finger they are unwilling to move them" (Mt 23:4). But neither need you fear that saying: "You who teach others, do you not teach yourself?" (Rom 2:21). 4. "The voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land." As long as men received for the worship of God a reward only on earth, and only earth, namely that land flowing with milk and honey, they by no means recognized themselves as pilgrims upon earth, nor did they groan after the manner of the turtledove as if remembering their homeland; but rather, using their exile as a homeland, they gave themselves to eating rich foods and drinking sweet wine. Thus for so long the voice of the turtledove was not heard in our land. But when the promise of the kingdom of heaven was made, then men understood that they did not have here an abiding city, but began to seek the future one with all eagerness; and then for the first time the voice of the turtledove sounded clearly in the land. For while each holy soul was sighing for the presence of Christ, bearing with difficulty the delay of the kingdom, greeting from afar the desired homeland with groans and sighs: does it not seem to you that any soul that had so acted on earth was fulfilling the role of the groaning and most chaste turtledove? From that time therefore and henceforth the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land. Why should not the absence of Christ move me to frequent tears and daily groaning! "Lord, before you is all my desire, and my groaning is not hidden from you" (Ps 37:10). "I have labored in my groaning," you know; but blessed is he who was able to say: "I will wash my bed every night, with my tears I will drench my couch" (Ps 6:7). And not only for me, but also for all who love his coming, these groanings have been experienced. For this is what he himself was saying. "Can the sons of the bridegroom mourn," he says, "as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then they will mourn" (Mt 9:15); as if he were saying: And then the voice of the turtledove will be heard.”

“5. So it is, good Jesus, those days have come. For "creation itself groans and travails until now, awaiting the revelation of the sons of God. And not only it, but we ourselves also groan within ourselves, awaiting the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body" (Rom 8:22-23): knowing this, that "as long as we are in this body, we are pilgrims from the Lord" (2 Cor 5:1-6). Nor are the groanings vain, to which such a merciful answer is given from heaven: "Because of the misery of the helpless and the groaning of the poor, now I will arise, says the Lord" (Ps 11:6). There was also in the time of the Fathers this voice of those groaning; but it was rare, and each one's groaning was kept to himself. Whence also someone would say: "My secret is mine, my secret is mine" (Is 24:16). But also he who said: "My groaning is not hidden from you," surely showed that it was hidden from all, since it was not hidden from God alone. And therefore it could not then be said: "The voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land"; because the secret, still belonging to a few, had not yet gone out to the multitude. But when it was openly proclaimed: "Seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God" (Col 3:1), this turtle-like groaning began to pertain to all, and there was one reason for groaning for all, because all knew the Lord, according to what is read in Jeremiah: "And they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest, says the Lord" (Jer 31:34). 6. But if many are groaning, what does the mention of one signify? "The voice of the turtledove," it says. Why not "of turtledoves"? Perhaps the Apostle resolves this, where he says that "the Spirit himself intercedes for the saints with unutterable groanings" (Rom 8:26). So it is. He himself is introduced as groaning, who makes others groan. And however many they be whom you hear groaning thus, the voice of one sounds through the lips of all. Why not his, who forms that very voice in the mouth of each according to the needs of each? Finally, "to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for profit" (1 Cor 12:7). His own voice makes each one manifest and indicates his presence. And hear from the Gospel, that the Holy Spirit has a voice. "The Spirit," he says, "breathes where he wills, and you hear his voice; and you do not know whence he comes or where he goes" (Jn 3:8). Even if that one did not know, who, a dead teacher, was teaching the dead the letter that kills; let us know, who, having been translated from death to life through the life-giving Spirit, prove by certain and daily experience, with him illuminating us, that our prayers and groanings come from him, and go to him, and there find mercy in the eyes of God. For when would God make void the voice of his own Spirit? But he himself knows what the Spirit desires, because he intercedes according to God for the saints.”

“7. Nor do groanings alone commend the turtledove; chastity also commends it. By the merit of this chastity indeed it was worthy to be given as an offering for the virginal birth. For so you have it: "A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons" (Lk 2:24). And although elsewhere indeed the Holy Spirit is usually designated by a dove; yet because it is a lustful bird, it was not fitting that it be offered in sacrifice to the Lord, except at that age when it would not know lust. But no age is specified for the turtledove, because its chastity is recognized at every age. For it is content with a single mate; and when that one is lost, it no longer admits another, reproving the multiplicity of marriages among humans. For even if perhaps the fault is venial on account of incontinence, yet such great incontinence itself is shameful. It is a cause for shame that reason in a human being cannot accomplish for the matter of honor what nature can accomplish in a bird. For one may observe the turtledove in the time of its widowhood, strenuously and tirelessly carrying out the work of holy widowhood. You will see it everywhere solitary, everywhere you will hear it groaning; nor will you ever observe it perching on a green branch, so that you may learn from it to avoid the poisonous greenery of pleasures. Add that on the ridges of mountains and on the tops of trees its dwelling is more frequent: so that, what especially befits the commitment of chastity, it may teach us to despise earthly things and to love heavenly things. 8. From these things it is gathered that the voice of the turtledove is also the preaching of chastity. For in the beginning this voice was not heard on earth, but rather that one: "Increase and multiply and fill the earth" (Gen 1:28). In vain indeed would the voice of chastity have sounded, when the homeland of those rising again had not yet been revealed: in which far more happily "men will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven" (Lk 20:35-36). You would say that there was a time for that voice, when every barren woman in Israel was subject to a curse, when the Patriarchs themselves had several wives at the same time, when a brother was compelled by the law to raise up offspring for a brother who had died without children. But when the commendation of those eunuchs "who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of God" (Mt 19:12) sounded from the mouth of the heavenly turtledove; and likewise the counsel of another, that same most chaste turtledove, concerning virgins everywhere prevailed (1 Cor 7:25), then for the first time it could be truly said, that "the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land."”

“9. Therefore, if in our land both flowers have appeared and the voice of the turtledove has been heard, then assuredly the truth has been ascertained both by sight and by hearing. For a voice is heard, a flower is seen. A flower is a miracle, as our earlier interpretation has it, which, coming to the voice, brings forth the fruit of faith. Even if faith comes from hearing, yet from sight comes confirmation. A voice sounded, a flower shone forth, and "truth has sprung from the earth" (Ps 84:12) through the confession of the faithful, with word and sign alike concurring in testimony of faith. These testimonies have been made exceedingly credible, since the flower testifies to the voice, the eye to the ear. Things heard are confirmed by things seen, so that the testimony of the two (I speak of the ear and the eye) may be established. For this reason the Lord was saying: "Go, report to John" (for he was speaking to his disciples) "what you have heard and seen" (Lk 7:22). Nor could the certainty of faith have been conveyed to them more briefly or more clearly. The same persuasion was indeed made in a short time to the whole earth as well, and by the same shortcut of argument. "What you have heard," he says, "and seen." O abbreviated word, yet living and effective! Without doubt I surely assert what I have perceived with my ears and eyes. The trumpet of salvation sounds, miracles flash forth, and the world believes. What is said is quickly believed, when what causes astonishment is shown. But you have it that the apostles "went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs that followed" (Mk 16:20). You have him on the mountain transfigured with stupendous brightness, and no less attested by a voice from above (Mt 17:2-5). You have at the Jordan likewise both a dove designating, and a voice testifying (Mt 3:16-17). Thus these two things everywhere equally, voice and sign, concur from divine bounty for the introduction of faith: so that a wide entrance to the soul through both windows may lie open for the truth.”

“On the Unbelief of the Jews, by Which They Filled Up the Measure of Their Fathers in Killing Christ. 1. "The fig tree has put forth its green figs" (Song 2:13). The present passage depends on what preceded. For he had said that the time of pruning had come, asserting this both from the flowers that were already appearing and from the voice of the turtledove that had been heard. He affirms the same thing still further from the production of green figs; because the evidence of the season is taken not only from the flowers and the voice of the turtledove, but is taken also from the fig tree. For the air is not other than more clement when the fig tree has put forth its green figs. The fig tree has no flowers, but in place of flowers it sends forth green figs at the time when the other trees bloom. And just as flowers appear and pass away, useful for nothing except that they are certain forerunners of the fruit to follow, so also the green figs. They arise, but they fall prematurely, and give place to the fruits that are to ripen, being themselves in no way fit for eating. And from this therefore, as I said, the Bridegroom takes the evidence of the season, and the argument of his persuasion, that the bride should not be slow to go to the vineyards, because the labor is not lost that comes in due season. And the letter indeed is thus. 2. But what does the spirit say? That plainly in this place we may look not upon a fig tree, but upon a people: for God has care for men, not for trees. Truly a fig tree is the people, fragile in flesh, small in understanding, humble in spirit, whose first fruits, that we may meanwhile play upon the name, are certainly gross and earthly. For it is not the pursuit of the common people to seek first the kingdom of God and his justice (Mt 6:33); but, as the Apostle says, to think about the things of the world, how they may please their wives, or they their husbands. "Those of this kind will have tribulation of the flesh" (1 Cor 7:33, 28); but in the last things we do not deny that they will attain the fruits of faith, if they have had a good final confession, and especially if they have redeemed the works of the flesh with almsgiving. Therefore the first fruits of the common people are no more fruits than the green figs of fig trees. Finally, if they shall afterward have brought forth worthy fruits of repentance (for "that which is spiritual is not first, but that which is natural" [1 Cor 15:46]), it shall be said to them: "What fruit did you have then in those things of which you are now ashamed?" (Rom 6:21). 3. Yet in this place I do not think it free to interpret this of just any people: one is pointedly expressed. For he did not say "they put forth," as if speaking of many; but as if of one, he says, "the fig tree put forth its green figs"; and, as I understand it, she who is the people of the Jews. How much does the Savior seem to speak parabolically against this people in the Gospel? As is that saying: "A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard" (Lk 13:6) etc.; likewise: "Look at the fig tree and all the trees" (Lk 21:29); and to Nathanael it was said: "When you were under the fig tree, I saw you" (Jn 1:48). And again he curses the fig tree, because he did not find fruit on it (Mk 11:13-14). Rightly a fig tree, which, although it came forth from the good root of the patriarchs, nevertheless never wished to grow up on high, never to lift itself from the ground, never to correspond to its root in the loftiness of its branches, the nobility of its flowers, the fruitfulness of its fruits. Badly indeed do you agree with your root, O tree small, twisted, and knotted. For the root is holy. What appears in your branches that is worthy of it? "The fig tree," he says, "has put forth its green figs." You did not draw these from your noble root, O wicked seed. What is in it is from the Holy Spirit; and therefore is altogether subtle and sweet. From where do you have these green figs? And truly what was not gross in that nation? Neither its deeds, certainly, nor its affections, nor its understanding, and not even the rite it had in worshipping God. For its deeds were entirely in wars, its affections entirely in profits, its understanding in the thickness of the letter, its worship in the blood of cattle and herds. 4. But someone says: since that nation never at any time ceased to put forth green figs of this kind, therefore there was never a time when the time of pruning did not exist, because one and the same time is declared to exist for both things. It is not so. We say that women have brought forth children, not when they are in labor, but when they have already given birth. We also say that trees have put forth their flowers, not when they have begun to bloom, but rather when they have ceased. So here also it is said that the fig tree has put forth its green figs, not when it produced some of them, but when it produced them all, that is, when the production reached its end. You ask at what time such a completion befell that people? When it killed Christ, then its malice was completed, according to what he himself had foretold to them: "Fill up the measure of your fathers" (Mt 23:32). Whence on the cross, about to deliver up his spirit, he said: "It is finished" (Jn 19:30). O what a consummation this accursed fig tree gave to its green figs, and was thereupon condemned with eternal barrenness! O how the last things are worse than the first! Beginning from useless things, it arrived at things pernicious and poisonous. O gross and viperous affection, to hate the man who heals the bodies of men and saves their souls! O understanding no less gross and certainly bovine, who did not recognize God even in the works of God! 5. Perhaps the Jew may complain that I am too much given to reviling him, since I call his understanding bovine. But let him read in Isaiah, and he will hear it is worse than bovine. "The ox," he says, "has known its owner, and the ass the manger of its lord: Israel has not known me; my people has not understood" (Is 1:3). You see me, O Jew, more mild toward you than your own prophet. I have compared you to beasts; he sets you beneath them. Although the prophet did not say this in his own person, but in the person of God, who proclaims himself God even by his very works: "Even if you do not believe me," he says, "believe the works: if I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe" (Jn 10:38, 37); and not even so do they rouse themselves to understanding. Not the flight of demons, not the obedience of the elements, not the life of the dead, was able to drive away from them this bestial, and more than bestial, dullness: from which no less wondrous than wretched blindness it came about that they rushed into that so horrible and so enormously gross crime, laying sacrilegious hands upon the Lord of majesty. From that time therefore it could be said that the fig tree had put forth its green figs, when now the lawful things of that people began to be, as it were, at their departure upon the summit: so that, according to the ancient prophecy, as new things came upon them, the old things might be cast away (Lev 26:10). Not otherwise, surely, than as green figs fall and yield to the good figs arising after them. "So long," he says, "as the fig tree did not cease producing its green figs, I did not call you, O bride, knowing that the best figs could not come forth at the same time. But now, when those that had first to be produced have been produced, I invite you not now untimely, since good and salutary fruits are known to be near at hand, about to replace the useless ones." 6. "For the vines in flower have given their fragrance"; which is likewise a sign of approaching fruit. This fragrance puts serpents to flight. They say that when the vines are in flower, every poisonous creeping thing yields its place, and can in no way bear the fragrance of the new flowers. I wish our novices to attend to this, and to act with confidence, considering what manner of spirit they have received, whose first-fruits the demons cannot endure. If such is the fervor of a novice, what will be the accomplished perfection? Let the fruit be estimated from the flower, and the virtue of the savor from the force of the fragrance. "The vines in flower have given their fragrance." And indeed in the beginning it was so. Upon the preaching of the new grace there followed a newness of life in those who had believed, who had their manner of life good among the nations. They "were the good odor of Christ in every place" (2 Cor 2:14-15). A good odor, a good testimony. This fragrance proceeds from a good work as from a flower. And since with such a flower and such a fragrance in the beginnings of the nascent faith, faithful souls, as certain spiritual vineyards, appeared filled, having good testimony also from those who were outside; not unfittingly, as I think, we understand it to be said of them that "the vines in flower have given their fragrance." To what end? So that those who had not yet believed, provoked by that fragrance, considering them from their good works, might themselves also glorify God, and so that fragrance might begin to be for them "an odor of life unto life." Therefore they are not without cause reported to have given their fragrance, who sought not their own glory, but the salvation of others from their good reputation. Otherwise they might, in the manner of certain ones, "esteem godliness as gain," for example, of display, of reward. But that would be not to give the fragrance, but to sell it. But now, because they did all their things in charity, they plainly did not sell the fragrance, but gave it. 7. Moreover, if the vines are souls, the flower is the work, the fragrance is the reputation: what is the fruit? Martyrdom. And truly the fruit of the vine is the blood of the martyr. "When he has given sleep to his beloved, behold, the inheritance of the Lord is children, the reward is the fruit of the womb" (Ps 126:2-3). I had nearly said, the fruit of the vine. Why should I not call it the most pure blood of the grape, the blood of the innocent, the blood of the just? Why not the ruddy must, proven, precious, plainly from the vineyard of Sorech, pressed out in the winepress of the passion? Finally, "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints" (Ps 115:5). This is said on account of the statement that the vines in flower have given their fragrance. 8. Thus, if we prefer to refer this passage to the times of grace, or if it is more pleasing that it be referred to the Fathers (for "the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel" [Is 5:7]), the meaning will be: the prophets and patriarchs caught the scent of Christ, who was to be born and to die in the flesh, but they did not then give forth this same fragrance of theirs, because they did not exhibit in the flesh him whom they perceived in the spirit. They did not give their fragrance, nor did they make public their secret, waiting for it to be revealed in its own time. Who indeed would then have grasped the wisdom hidden in mystery, not yet exhibited in the body? And so the vines at that time did not give their fragrance. But they gave it afterward, when through the successions of generations they brought forth Christ born from them according to the flesh by a virginal birth into the ages. Then plainly, I say, those spiritual vines gave their fragrance, when "the kindness and the humanity of God our Savior appeared" (Tit 3:4); and the world began to have present him whom few had yet perceived while absent. That man, for example, who touching Jacob and sensing Christ, said: "Behold, the odor of my son is as the odor of a full field, which the Lord has blessed" (Gen 27:27); when he said this, he kept his delights to himself and communicated them to no one. But when the fullness of time came, "in which God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law" (Gal 4:4-5); then altogether the fragrance that was in him spread itself everywhere, so that the Church, sensing it from the ends of the earth, cried out: "Your name is oil poured out"; and "the young maidens ran in the odor of this oil" (Song 1:2, 3). So this vine gave its fragrance, and at that time the others also gave theirs, in whom this same odor of life had existed. Why should they not have given it, they from whom is Christ according to the flesh? It is said therefore that the vines have given their fragrance, either because faithful souls spread a good reputation of themselves everywhere; or because the oracles and revelations of the Fathers were made manifest to the world, and into all the earth went forth their fragrance, the Apostle saying: "Confessedly great is the mystery of godliness, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, appeared to angels, was preached to the nations, was believed in the world, was taken up in glory" (1 Tim 3:16). 9. It would be strange indeed if neither the fig trees nor these vines have anything that edifies our conduct. I judge this passage to be a moral one as well. I say moreover, by the grace of God which is in us, that we have both fig trees and vines. Fig trees indeed are those who are sweeter in their ways; but vines, those who are more fervent in spirit. Everyone who among us acts in a common and sociable manner, and not only lives without complaint among the brethren, but also with much sweetness offers himself to all for their enjoyment in every office of charity, why should I not most fittingly say that he takes the place of a fig tree? Who nevertheless must first put forth and cast away his green figs, namely the fear of judgment, which perfect charity casts out; and the bitterness of sins, which must yield to true confession and the infusion of grace and the frequent shedding of tears, and other such things which, in the manner of green figs, precede the sweetness of the fruits: which things you also can think of by yourselves. 10. That I may nevertheless still add something of this kind that occurs to me, consider whether perhaps even these may be reckoned among the green figs: knowledge, prophecy, tongues, and the like. For these, in the manner of green figs, are destined to fail and to yield to better things, the Apostle saying that "knowledge will be destroyed, and prophecies will be emptied, and tongues will cease." Faith itself too understanding will exclude, and it is necessary that vision succeed hope. For what one sees, why does he hope for it? "Charity alone never falls away" (1 Cor 13:8), but that by which God is loved with the whole heart, the whole soul, and the whole strength (Lk 10:27). Therefore I would by no means number this among the green figs, nor would I say it pertains to the fig tree, but to the vines. Now those who are vines show themselves to us as more severe than sweet, acting in a vehement spirit, zealous for discipline, most sharply rebuking vices, fitting to themselves most congruently that voice: "Did I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and waste away over your enemies?" (Ps 138:21). Likewise: "The zeal of your house has consumed me" (Ps 68:10). And to me indeed the former seem to excel in the love of neighbor, while the latter excel in the love of God. But it is pleasing to rest under this vine and under this fig tree, where the love of God and of neighbor gives its shade. I hold both when I love you, Lord Jesus Christ, who are my neighbor, because you are man, and have shown mercy to me; and who are no less God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“"Arise, my love, my bride, and come" (Song 2:13). The Bridegroom commends his great love by repeating words of affection. For repetition is an expression of feeling: and that he again urges the beloved to the labor of the vineyards shows how anxious he is for the salvation of souls. For you have already heard that the vineyards are souls. Let us not linger needlessly on things that have been said. See what follows. Yet nowhere, as I recall, in this entire work had he yet openly called her bride, except now when they go to the vineyards, when the wine of charity is being approached. When this has come and been perfected, it will make a spiritual marriage; and they will be two, not in one flesh, but in one spirit, as the Apostle says: "He who clings to God is one spirit" (1 Cor 6:17).”

“10. There follows: "The fig tree has put forth its green figs." Let us not eat of them: for they are not fit for eating on account of their unripeness. They have the appearance of good figs, but the likeness, not the flavor, perhaps designating hypocrites. Let us not cast them away, however; perhaps at another time we will have need of them. Otherwise they will fall of themselves easily enough, and before their time, "like grass upon the rooftops, which withers before it is plucked up" (Ps 128:6); which I believe is said of hypocrites. Not without reason, however, was mention made of them in the wedding song. They will without doubt be of some use, even if not for eating. Many things besides food are necessarily provided at weddings. I indeed consider this matter so far from something to be passed over, that whatever it is, I am unwilling to discuss it within the constraints of the closing of this sermon; but I defer it to another day and a freer hour. Whether indeed it is necessary, you will then be able to judge: only let your prayers obtain for me the opportunity and the ability to set forth what I think, for your own edification, to the praise and glory of the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ the Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“There follows: "My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hollows of the wall, show me your face, let your voice sound in my ears." He loves and continues to speak words of love. Again he calls her dove as a term of endearment; he says she is his, and claims her as his own: and what he himself was accustomed to be more earnestly asked by her, he now in turn requests both her presence and her conversation. He acts as a bridegroom; but as a modest one, he blushes at what is public, and resolves to enjoy his delights in a secluded place, namely in the clefts of the rock and in the hollows of the wall. Suppose therefore the Bridegroom to speak thus: Do not fear, my love, as though this labor of the vineyards to which we exhort you should impede or interrupt the business of love. There will certainly be some use in it for what we both desire. The vineyards indeed have walls, and these have retreats pleasant to the modest. This is the play of the letter. Why should I not call it play? For what serious thing does this sequence of the letter have? What is heard outwardly is not even worthy of hearing, unless the Spirit inwardly aids the weakness of our understanding. Let us therefore not remain outside, lest we seem to be rehearsing the enticements of shameful loves, which God forbid! Bring chaste ears to the discourse that is in hand concerning love; and when you think of the lovers themselves, you ought to understand not a man and a woman, but the Word and a soul. And if I should say Christ and the Church, it is the same; except that by the name of the Church is designated not one soul, but the unity of many, or rather the unanimity. Nor indeed should you think the clefts of the rock or the hollows of the wall to be hiding places of workers of iniquity, lest any suspicion at all should arise concerning works of darkness. Another has expounded this passage thus, interpreting the clefts of the rock as the wounds of Christ. Rightly indeed; for the rock is Christ. Good clefts, which build up faith in the resurrection and the divinity of Christ. "My Lord," he says, "and my God" (Jn 20:28). Whence was this oracle brought back, if not from the clefts of the rock? In these the sparrow has found herself a house, and the turtledove a nest where she may place her young (Ps 83:4); in these the dove protects herself, and fearlessly beholds the hawk circling about. And therefore he says: "My dove in the clefts of the rock." The voice of the dove: "Upon a rock he has exalted me" (Ps 26:6); and likewise: "He has set," she says, "my feet upon a rock" (Ps 39:3). A wise man builds his house upon a rock, because there he fears neither the injuries of winds nor of floods (Mt 7:24-25). What good thing is not in the rock? Upon the rock I am exalted, upon the rock I am secure, upon the rock I stand firmly. Secure from the enemy, strong against falling; and this because I am exalted from the earth. For everything earthly is uncertain and prone to falling. Let our way of life be in heaven, and we shall fear neither to fall nor to be cast down. The rock is in heaven; in it is firmness and security. "The rock is a refuge for hedgehogs" (Ps 103:18). And truly, where is there safe and firm security and rest for the weak, if not in the wounds of the Savior? So much the more securely do I dwell there, as he is more powerful to save. The world rages, the body presses, the devil lies in ambush: I do not fall; for I am founded upon a firm rock. I have sinned a great sin: my conscience will be troubled, but it will not be confounded, because I will remember the wounds of the Lord. For indeed "he was wounded for our iniquities" (Is 53:5). What is so deadly that it cannot be loosed by the death of Christ? If therefore so powerful and so efficacious a remedy comes to mind, I can no longer be terrified by any malignity of disease. And therefore it is clear that he erred who said: "My iniquity is greater than that I should deserve pardon" (Gen 4:13). Except that he was not of the members of Christ, nor did it pertain to him to presume upon the merit of Christ, to call his own what was Christ's; as a member would claim what belongs to the head. But I confidently take for myself from the bowels of the Lord what I lack of my own, because they overflow with mercy; nor are there lacking clefts through which they may flow out. They have dug his hands and his feet, and they have pierced his side with a lance: and through these openings it is permitted me to suck honey from the rock, and oil from the hardest stone; that is, to taste and see that the Lord is sweet. He was thinking thoughts of peace, and I did not know it. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? But the key that opens, the nail that penetrates, has become for me the means to see the will of the Lord. Why should I not see through the opening? The nail cries out, the wound cries out, that truly God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself. The iron pierced through his soul, and drew near to his heart, so that he might now know how to have compassion on my weaknesses. The secret of the heart lies open through the openings of the body; that great mystery of godliness lies open, the bowels of the mercy of our God lie open, in which the Rising Sun from on high has visited us. Why should not the bowels lie open through the wounds? For in what would it have shone forth more clearly than in your wounds, that you, O Lord, are sweet and gentle, and of great mercy? For no one has greater compassion than that one should lay down his life for those condemned to death and damnation. My merit, therefore, is the compassion of the Lord. I am surely not lacking in merit, so long as he is not lacking in compassion. If the mercies of the Lord are many, I likewise am great in merits. What if I am conscious to myself of many transgressions? For surely where sin abounded, grace superabounded also (Rom 5:20). And if the mercies of the Lord are from eternity and unto eternity (Ps 102:17), I too will sing the mercies of the Lord forever (Ps 88:2). Shall I sing my own righteousness? "O Lord, I will remember your righteousness alone" (Ps 70:16). For it is also mine; for you have been made for me righteousness from God. Should I fear that one will not suffice for both? It is not a short cloak, which, according to the prophet, cannot cover two (Is 28:20). "Your righteousness is righteousness forever" (Ps 118:142). What is longer than eternity? It will cover both you and me generously, this generous and eternal righteousness. And in me indeed it covers a multitude of sins; but in you, O Lord, what but treasures of loving-kindness, riches of goodness? These are stored up for me in the clefts of the rock. "How great is the multitude of your sweetness" in them, hidden indeed, but from those who perish! For why should what is holy be given to dogs, or pearls to swine? But to us God has revealed them through his Spirit, and has even introduced us through the opened clefts into the holy places. How great in these is the multitude of sweetness, the fullness of grace, the perfection of virtues! I will go for myself to those storerooms so filled, and at the admonition of the prophet I will leave the cities and dwell in the rock (Jer 48:28). I will be as a dove nesting at the very mouth of the opening, so that, like Moses placed in the cleft of the rock, with the Lord passing by, I may deserve at least to behold his back (Ex 33:22-23). For the face of him who stands, that is, the brightness of the Unchangeable, who may see, except one who has already merited to be introduced, not into the holy places, but into the holy of holies? Yet the contemplation of his back is neither worthless nor to be despised. Let Herod despise it; I all the more do not despise it, the more contemptible he showed himself to Herod. Even the back of the Lord has something that it delights one to see. "Who knows if he may turn and forgive, and God may leave behind him a blessing?" There will come a time when he will show his face, and we shall be saved. But in the meantime let him go before us with blessings of sweetness, those indeed which he is accustomed to leave behind himself. Now let him show the back of his condescension; at another time he will show his face in the glory of his majesty. He is sublime in his kingdom, but sweet on the cross. Let him go before me with this vision, and with that let him fulfill me. "You will fill me," he says, "with joy before your face" (Ps 15:11). Both visions are salutary, both are sweet; but the former is in sublimity, the latter in humility; the former is in splendor, the latter is in pallor. Finally he says: "And the back parts of his back in the pallor of gold" (Ps 67:14). How should he not grow pale in death? But gold that is pale is better than gleaming brass, and "the foolishness of God is wiser than men." Gold is the Word, gold is Wisdom. This gold discolored itself, hiding the form of God and displaying the form of a servant. It discolored also the Church, who says: "Do not consider me because I am dark, for the sun has discolored me" (Song 1:5). Therefore her back parts also are in the pallor of gold, she who did not blush at the darkness of the cross, was not horrified by the burning of the passion, did not flee from the bruising of wounds. Indeed she takes pleasure in these things, and desires her own end to be like unto them. For this reason she hears: "My dove in the clefts of the rock," because she occupies herself in the wounds of Christ with total devotion, and dwells upon them in continual meditation. From this comes the endurance of martyrdom, from this her great confidence before God most high. The martyr has no cause to fear lifting up to him a bloodless and bruised face, by whose bruise he has been healed, to present a glorious likeness of his death, indeed in the pallor of gold. What should he fear, to whom even the Lord says: "Show me your face"? For what purpose? As it seems to me, he wishes rather to show himself. So it is: he wishes to be seen, not to see. For what does he not see? There is no need for anyone to show himself to him by whom nothing is unseen, not even if one should hide himself. Therefore the gracious commander wishes to be seen, wishes that the devoted soldier lift up his face and eyes to his own wounds, so that he may thereby raise up his spirit, and by his own example render him stronger for endurance. For indeed he will not feel his own wounds while he gazes upon those of his Lord. The martyr stands exulting and triumphing, though his whole body is torn; and as the iron probes his sides, not only bravely but even eagerly he watches the sacred blood bubbling forth from his flesh. Where then is the soul of the martyr? Surely in safety, surely in the rock, surely in the bowels of Jesus, in the wounds that lie open for entering. If he were in his own bowels, the iron searching them would surely be felt; he would not bear the pain, he would succumb and deny. But now, dwelling in the rock, what wonder if he has hardened after the manner of rock? But neither is this a wonder, if one exiled from the body does not feel the pains of the body. Nor does insensibility produce this, but love. For sensation is suppressed, not destroyed. Nor is pain absent, but it is overcome, it is despised. Therefore from the rock comes the fortitude of the martyr, from there he is certainly able to drink the cup of the Lord. "And this cup that inebriates, how splendid it is!" (Ps 22:5). Splendid, I say, and joyful no less to the commander watching than to the soldier triumphing. "For the joy of the Lord is our strength" (Neh 8:10). Why should he not rejoice at the voice of the most brave confession? Indeed he seeks it with desire: "Let your voice sound," he says, "in my ears." Nor will he delay to repay in turn according to his promise: as soon as one has confessed him before men, he himself also will confess him before his Father (Mt 10:32).”

“"My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hollows of the wall" (Song 2:14). Not only in the clefts of the rock does the dove find a safe refuge; she finds it also in the hollows of the wall. But if by the wall we understand not a heap of stones, but the communion of saints, let us see whether perhaps he has called the hollows of the wall the places, as it were left empty, of the angels who fell through pride: inasmuch as these are to be filled up from among men, as ruins to be repaired from living stones. Whence the apostle Peter says: "Coming to the living stone, you also as living stones are being built up into spiritual houses" (1 Pet 2:4-5). Nor do I think it beside the point, if we understand the guardianship of the angels to serve in the place of a wall in the vineyard of the Lord, which is the Church of the predestined, since Paul says: "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth for service on behalf of those who are to inherit salvation?" (Heb 1:14), and the Prophet: "The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him" (Ps 33:8). And if this is agreeable, the sense will be that two things console the Church in the time and place of her pilgrimage: from the past indeed, the memory of the passion of Christ; and from the future, that she thinks and trusts she will be received into the lot of the saints. Both of these, as if having eyes before and behind, she gazes upon with insatiable desire; and each view is exceedingly welcome to her, each is a refuge for her from the tribulation of evils and sorrow. Full is the consolation, when she knows not only what is to be hoped for, but also on what ground this may be presumed. A joyful and not uncertain expectation, which has been confirmed by the death of Christ. Why should she tremble at the greatness of the reward, when she considers the worth of the price? How gladly does she visit in mind the clefts through which the price of the most sacred blood flowed for her! How gladly does she traverse the hollows and lodgings and mansions which are many and diverse in the house of the Father, in which she may place her children according to the diversity of the merits of each! And now indeed, since this alone is possible for the present, she rests in these by memory alone, already putting on in her mind the heavenly habitation which is from above. But there will come a time when she will fill up the ruins, when she will inhabit the hollows both in body and in mind; when the empty dwellings which the ancient inhabitants abandoned she will illuminate by the presence of her whole company, nor will any hollow appear any longer at all in the heavenly wall, thenceforth rejoicing in its happy perfection and integrity. Or, if you prefer this more, we shall say that these hollows are not found by studious and pious minds, but made. In what way, you ask? By thought and ardent desire. For the pious wall yields to the desire of the soul, as a softer wall would yield; it yields to pure contemplation, it yields to frequent prayer. Indeed "the prayer of the righteous penetrates the heavens" (Ecclus 35:21). It will not, to be sure, cut through the spacious heights of this corporeal air, as if by some rowing of its wings like a flying bird, nor will it pierce through the solid and lofty summit of the firmament itself like a sharp sword: but there are heavens that are holy, living, rational, who "declare the glory of God," who with a certain favorable piety willingly incline themselves to our prayers, and with their affections curved at the touch of our devotion receive us into their inmost depths, whenever we knock upon them with a worthy intention. For "to him who knocks it will be opened." It will be permitted therefore to each one of us, even in this time of our mortality, to hollow out for ourselves, in whatever part we wish, hollows in the supernal wall; now indeed to revisit the patriarchs, now truly to greet the prophets, now to mingle with the senate of the apostles, now to be inserted into the choirs of the martyrs; but also to traverse and survey with the entire alacrity of the mind the stations and mansions of the blessed virtues, from the least angel even to the cherubim and seraphim, as each one's devotion may carry him. With whichever ones he will be more moved, the Spirit sending itself into him as it wills; if he has stood and knocked, immediately it will be opened to him, and a hollow having been made, as it were, in the mountains, or rather in the holy minds, since they freely bend themselves to piety, he will rest even a little while among them. The face and voice of every soul that acts thus is pleasing to God: the face, on account of its purity; the voice, on account of its confession. For "confession and beauty are before him" (Ps 95:6). Whence it is also said to the one who is of this kind: "Show me your face, let your voice sound in your ears." The voice is wonder in the mind of the one contemplating, the voice is the giving of thanks. God is exceedingly delighted by hollows of this kind, from which the voice of the giving of thanks resounds to him, the voice of wonder and praise. Happy is the mind that has striven to hollow frequently for itself in this wall; but happier the one that has done so in the rock. It is indeed permitted to hollow also in the rock; but for this a purer edge of the mind is needed, and an altogether more vehement intention, and also superior merits of holiness. And for these things, who is fit? Surely he who said: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: this was in the beginning with God" (Jn 1:1-2). Does he not seem to you to have immersed himself in the very inmost recesses of the Word, and to have drawn out from the hidden depths of his breast a certain most sacred marrow of interior wisdom? What of him who spoke wisdom among the perfect, wisdom hidden in a mystery, which none of the princes of this world knew? (1 Cor 2:6, 8). Did he not, with one heaven and then another pierced by his keen but pious curiosity, bring forth this at last from the third, a pious searcher? But he did not keep it silent from us, faithfully making it known in whatever words he could to the faithful. Yet he heard "unspeakable words, which it was not permitted for him to speak" (2 Cor 12:2, 4). Not indeed to any man, for he spoke those things to himself and to God. Suppose therefore that God consoles the anxious charity of Paul in this manner, and says: Why are you troubled that what you have conceived cannot be grasped by human hearing? Let your voice sound in my ears; that is: If what you feel is not permitted to be revealed to mortals, take comfort nevertheless, that your voice is able to soothe the divine ears. You see the holy soul, now indeed sober for us by charity, now truly exceeding to God by purity? (2 Cor 5:13). See also concerning holy David, whether perhaps he himself is the very man of whom he speaks with God, as if about another: "For the thought of man shall confess to you, and the remnants of thought shall keep festival to you" (Ps 75:11). Therefore whatever of prophetic thought could come forth publicly by the word and example of the Prophet, the Prophet immediately released into public confession, and from it he confessed to the Lord among the peoples, keeping the remainder for himself and God, and together with him spending it festively in joy and exultation. This, then, is what he wished to make known to us by the aforementioned verse. Whatever, that is, he was able to draw out from the secret place of wisdom by his searching and eager thought, the part that he could he imparted for the salvation of the peoples by zealous preaching; the remainder that the common people could not grasp, he spent in festive jubilation in the praises of God. You see that nothing is lost to holy contemplation, since what cannot be spent for the edification of the people is, on that very account, a most pleasing and fitting praise to God. Since these things are so, it is clear that there are two kinds of contemplation: one, concerning the state and happiness and glory of the heavenly city, with what activity or rest that great multitude of heavenly citizens may be occupied; the other, concerning the majesty, eternity, and divinity of the King himself. The former is in the wall, the latter is in the rock. But the latter, the more difficult it is to hollow, the more sweetly does what you draw out from it taste. Nor should you fear that which Scripture threatens against searchers of majesty (Prov 25:27). Only bring a pure and simple eye; you will not be oppressed by glory, but admitted to it, unless you have sought not God's glory but your own. Otherwise each person is oppressed by his own glory, not God's, while inclined toward the former, he is not permitted to lift his neck to the latter, weighed down as it is by desire. With this cast off, let us securely search in the Rock, in which "are hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col 2:3). If you still doubt, hear the Rock itself: "Those who work in me," it says, "will not sin" (Ecclus 24:30). "Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly, and I will rest?" (Ps 54:7). There the gentle and simple one finds rest, where the deceitful, or the proud, and the one desirous of vain glory is oppressed. The Church is a dove, and therefore she rests. A dove, because she is innocent, because she groans. A dove, I say, because "in meekness she receives the implanted word". And she rests in the Word, that is in the rock: for the rock is the Word. The Church therefore is in the clefts of the rock, through which she peers in and sees the glory of her Bridegroom; nor is she oppressed by the glory, because she does not usurp it for herself. She is not oppressed, because she is not a searcher of majesty, but of the will. For as regards majesty, sometimes indeed she dares to gaze even upon it, but as if wondering, not as if searching. But even if it should happen at some time that she is carried away into it by an ecstasy, this is the finger of God, graciously lifting up the human person, not the temerity of a human person insolently invading the heights of God. For since the Apostle recalls that he was "caught up" (2 Cor 12), so as to excuse his boldness, what other mortal would presume to entangle himself in this dread scrutiny of the divine majesty by his own efforts, and as an importunate contemplator burst into the awesome mysteries? Searchers of majesty, therefore, I consider to be called intruders, that is, not those who are caught up into it, but those who burst in. They themselves therefore are oppressed by glory. Therefore the searching of majesty is fearsome: but that of the will is as safe as it is pious. Why should I not press on with all diligence in searching the mystery of the glory of the will, which I know I must obey in all things? Sweet is the glory that proceeds from nothing else than the contemplation of his very sweetness, than from the beholding of the riches of goodness and of great compassion. Indeed "we have seen this glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father" (Jn 1:14). For all that appeared of glory in this regard was entirely benign and truly paternal. That glory will not oppress me, even if I strain toward it with all my strength: I rather will be imprinted upon it. For "with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror, we are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor 3:18). We are transformed when we are conformed. But far be it that conformity to God by man should be presumed in the glory of majesty, and not rather in the modesty of the will! This shall be my glory, if ever I should hear concerning myself: "I have found a man after my own heart." The heart of the Bridegroom, the heart of his Father. What is it like? "Be merciful," he says, "just as your Father also is merciful" (Lk 6:36). This is the form which he desires to see, when he says to the Church: "Show me your face": the form of piety and meekness. This face she lifts up with all confidence to the Rock, to which she is like: "Come to him," he says, "and be enlightened, and your faces shall not be confounded" (Ps 33:6). In what way will the humble be confounded by the humble, the holy by the pious, and the modest by the meek? Surely the pure face of the bride will not be abhorrent to the purity of the rock, no more than virtue to virtue, or light to light. But since the Church cannot yet for the present approach the rock for hollowing in every respect (for it does not belong to all who are in the Church to inspect the mysteries of the divine will, or to apprehend by themselves the deep things of God), therefore she is shown to dwell not only in the clefts of the rock, but also in the hollows of the wall. Therefore in the perfect indeed, who dare to search out and penetrate the secrets of wisdom by purity of conscience, and are able to do so by keenness of understanding, she dwells in the clefts of the rock. For the rest, in the hollows of the wall: so that those who either are not able or do not presume to dig in the rock by themselves, may dig in the wall, being content to behold even the glory of the saints in their mind. If for anyone not even this is possible, for him indeed Jesus will be set forth, and him crucified: so that even he, without labor of his own, may dwell in the clefts of the rock, in which he himself did not labor. The Jews labored in these, and he himself shall enter into the labors of the faithless, so as to be faithful. Nor should it be feared that he will suffer rejection, who is even called to enter. "Enter into the rock," he says, "hide yourself in the pit of the ground from the face of the fear of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty" (Is 2:10). To the soul that is still weak and sluggish (which, as a certain man in the Gospel confesses of himself, "is not able to dig, and is ashamed to beg") (Lk 16:3), a pit of the ground is shown where it may hide, until it grows strong and advances, so that it too may be able by itself to hollow out for itself clefts in the rock, through which it may enter into the interior things of the Word, assuredly by vigor and purity of mind. And if we have understood the pit of the ground to be that which says: "They have dug my hands and my feet" (Ps 21:17), there will be no doubt about the health to be more quickly obtained in it for the wounded soul that will abide in it. For what is so efficacious for healing the wounds of conscience, and also for purging the eye of the mind, as the diligent meditation on the wounds of Christ? But until it has been perfectly purged and healed, I do not see how that which is said can be applied to it: "Show me your face, let your voice sound in my ears." How indeed should it dare to show its face, or lift up its voice, when it is also told to hide? "Hide yourself," he says, "in the pit of the ground." Why? Because its face is not beautiful, nor worthy to be seen. It will not be worthy to be seen, so long as it is not fit to see. But when through the inhabiting of the pit of the ground it has made so much progress in healing the interior eye, that "with unveiled face" it too can "behold the glory of God"; then at last what it will see, it will speak with confidence, pleasing in voice and face. The face must needs be pleasing, which is able to gaze upon the brightness of God. For it could not do this unless it were itself also bright and pure, having been transformed indeed into the same image of brightness which it beholds. Otherwise it would recoil from the very dissimilarity, repelled by the unaccustomed splendor. Therefore when, being pure, it has been able to behold the pure truth, then the Bridegroom will desire to see its face, and consequently also to hear its voice. For how much the preaching of truth with purity of mind pleases him, he shows when he immediately adds: "For your voice is sweet." That indeed the voice does not please if the face displeases, he demonstrates when he forthwith adds: "And your face is beautiful." What is the beauty of the interior face, if not purity? In many, this has been pleasing without the voice of preaching; the latter without the former, in no one. Truth does not show itself, Wisdom does not entrust itself, to the impure. What therefore do they speak, who have not seen it? "What we know," he says, "we speak, and what we have seen we testify" (Jn 3:11). Go then, you, and dare to testify what you have not seen, and to speak what you do not know. You ask whom I call impure? He who seeks human praises, who does not provide the Gospel without charge, who preaches in order to eat, who considers piety to be gain, who does not seek the fruit, but the gift. Such persons are impure; and while they do not have the means to see the truth on account of their impurity, they do have the means to speak it. Why do you act so hastily? Why do you not wait for the light? Why do you presume upon the work of light before the light? "It is vain for you to rise before the light." The light is purity, the light is charity, "which does not seek the things that are its own" (1 Cor 13:5). Let this go before, and the foot of the tongue is not placed on uncertain ground. By the proud eye the truth is not seen; to the sincere eye it lies open. There is no reason for the truth to deny itself to be seen by the pure heart, and therefore neither to be spoken. But to the sinner God says: "Why do you declare my statutes, and take my covenant upon your mouth?" (Ps 49:16). Many, having neglected purity, have tried to speak before they could see; and they have either erred gravely, not knowing the things of which they spoke, nor the things which they affirmed; or they have sunk into disgrace shamefully, since those who would teach others had not taught themselves. From this twofold evil may the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever, ever guard us, entreated by you. Amen.”

“"Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards: for our vineyard has flourished" (Song 2:15). It is clear that the visit to the vineyards was not made in vain, since foxes were found there destroying them. This indeed is according to the letter. But what does the Spirit say? Before all things, certainly, let us thoroughly reject from this explanation the common and customary sense of the letter, as being inept and tasteless, and plainly unworthy to be received in Scripture so holy, so authoritative. Unless perhaps someone is so senseless and dull of mind that he considers it a great thing to have learned from it, after the manner of the children of this age, to take care of earthly possessions, to guard and defend vineyards from the incursions of beasts, lest perchance the fruit of wine, in which is excess, should happen to be lost; and at the same time the labor and expense should perish. A great loss indeed, that we should therefore read the holy book with such zeal and such great veneration, because we are taught in it to guard vineyards from foxes, lest in cultivating them our purses be emptied in vain, if we have been lazy in guarding them! You are not so unlearned, nor so devoid of spiritual grace, as to think so carnally. Therefore let us seek these things in the spirit. There indeed we find, with a sound understanding and a sense no less worthy, both flourishing vineyards and destroying foxes, in capturing or removing which we labor both more honorably and more fruitfully. Or do you doubt that we must attend far more vigilantly to keeping our minds than to keeping our crops; that we must watch far more carefully against spiritual wickednesses on account of the former, than against cunning little foxes on account of the latter? But now these spiritual vines, as well as foxes, must be shown by me. It will be your concern, sons, for each one to look after his own vineyard, when from my discussion he shall have perceived in what things and from what things he must especially be on guard. To the wise man his own life is a vineyard, his own mind, his own conscience. For a wise man will leave nothing in himself uncultivated or deserted. Not so the fool. You will find everything neglected in him, everything lying prostrate, everything uncultivated and squalid. There is no vineyard for the fool. How can there be a vineyard, where nothing planted, nothing worked upon anywhere is to be seen? The whole life of the fool grows wild with thorns and thistles: and is it a vineyard? Even if it was one, it is no longer, having been reduced indeed to a wasteland. Where is the vine of virtue? Where is the cluster of good work? Where is the wine of spiritual joy? "I passed by the field of the lazy man," he says, "and by the vineyard of the foolish man: and behold, nettles had filled the whole of it, and thorns had covered its surface, and the stone wall was broken down" (Prov 24:30-31). You hear the wise man mocking the fool, because the goods of nature and the gifts of grace, which he had perhaps received through the washing of regeneration, as though that first vineyard of his, which God and not man had planted, he reduced by negligence into a non-vineyard. Finally, there cannot be a vineyard where there is no life. For that the fool lives, I would judge to be death rather than life. How can there be life with barrenness? A tree that is dry and turned to barrenness, is it not judged to be dead? And dead branches they are. "And he killed," it says, "their vines with hail" (Ps 78:47); showing that those which were condemned to barrenness were deprived of life. So the fool, by the very fact that he lives uselessly, is living yet dead. To the wise man alone, therefore, does it belong to have, or rather to be, a vineyard, who has life. He is a fruit-bearing tree in the house of God, and therefore a living tree. Since indeed wisdom itself, by which he is called and is wise, is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her (Prov 3:18). Why should not he who lays hold of her live? He lives, but by faith. For the wise man is certainly just, and the just lives by faith (Heb 10:38). And if the soul of the just is the seat of wisdom, as it is; then assuredly he is wise who is just. He therefore, whether you call him just or wise, will never live without a vineyard, because he will never not live. For the vineyard is the same to him as life. And good is the vineyard of the just man, indeed good is the vineyard that the just man is, for whom virtue is the vine, action is the branch, wine is the testimony of conscience, and the tongue is the press of expression. Finally: "Our glory is this," he says, "the testimony of our conscience" (2 Cor 1:12). Do you see that nothing is idle in the wise man? Speech, thought, conduct, and whatever else comes from him, why is not the whole of it God's agriculture, God's building, and the vineyard of the Lord of hosts? What indeed can perish of his own, when even his leaf shall not fall away? But for such a vineyard, infestations and ambushes will never be wanting. For where there are many riches, many also are those who consume them (Eccl 5:10). The wise man will be solicitous to guard his vineyard no less than to cultivate it, and will not allow it to be devoured by foxes. A most wicked fox is the secret detractor, but no less wicked is the smooth flatterer. The wise man will beware of these. He will take pains, indeed as much as is in him, to catch those who do such things; but to catch them with benefits and services, with salutary admonitions, and with prayers to God on their behalf. He will not cease to heap such coals of fire upon the head of the slanderer (Rom 12:20), and likewise upon the head of the flatterer, until, if it can be done, he removes envy from the heart of the one and pretense from the heart of the other, carrying out the command of the Bridegroom who says: "Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards." Does not that man seem to you to be caught, who, his face suffused with blushes, blushing indeed at his own judgment, is himself the witness of his own confusion and repentance; either because he hated a man most worthy of love, or because he loved only in word and tongue the one by whom he has discovered, even if late, that he is loved in deed and in truth? Caught plainly, and caught for the Lord, according to what he himself expressly said: "Catch," he says, "for us." Would that I could so catch all who oppose me without cause, that I might either restore them or gain them for Christ! So, so let those who seek my soul be confounded and put to shame; let those who wish me evil be turned back and blush: so that I too may be found obedient to the Bridegroom, that I too may catch the foxes, not for myself, but for him. But let the discourse be turned back to its beginning, so that the sequence of the explanation may proceed in its order. "Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards." This is a moral passage; and according to the discipline of morals we have already shown that these spiritual vineyards are none other than spiritual men, whose whole interior is cultivated, and everything germinating, everything bearing fruit and bringing forth the spirit of salvation, just as it is said of the kingdom of God; so of these vineyards of the Lord of hosts we can equally say that they are within us (Lk 17:21). Finally, in the Gospel we read that the kingdom of God shall be given to a nation bringing forth its fruits (Mt 21:43). These are what Paul enumerates, saying: "But the fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace, patience, long-suffering, goodness, kindness, meekness, faith, modesty, continence, chastity" (Gal 5:22-23). These fruits are our progress. These are acceptable to the Bridegroom, because he himself has care for us. Does God care about trees? It is men, not trees, that God-made-Man loves, and he reckons our progress as his own fruits. He diligently observes the time of these, he smiles upon them as they appear, and anxiously busies himself lest they perish to us, when they have appeared; or rather lest they perish to him: for he reckons himself as it were as us. And therefore, foreseeing, he commands that the foxes lying in ambush be caught for him, lest they snatch away the new fruits. "Catch," he says, "us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards." And as if someone should say: You fear prematurely, the time of fruits has not yet come: "It is not so," he says, "for our vineyard has flourished." After the flowers there is no delay of fruits; while the former are still falling, the latter burst forth at once, at once they begin to appear. This parable is of the present time. Do you see these novices? They have come recently, they have been recently converted. We cannot say of them that our vineyard has flourished: for it is flourishing. Meanwhile, what you see appearing in them is a flower: the time of fruits has not yet arrived. The flower is their new conversion, the flower is the fresh form of an amended life. They have put on a disciplined countenance and a good composure of the whole body. I confess that the outward appearances are pleasing: a more negligent style of dress is what shows outwardly in their bodies and garments, speech is rarer, the face more cheerful, the look more modest, the gait more measured. But since these things have been recently begun, by their very newness they are to be reckoned as flowers, and hopes of fruits rather than fruits. For you, little children, we do not fear from the fraud of foxes, which are known to envy fruits rather than flowers. Your danger is from another quarter. I certainly fear burning for the flowers; not a stealing away, but a burning from the cold. The north wind is suspect to me, and the morning frosts, which are accustomed to destroy untimely flowers and to snatch away fruits before they come. Indeed from the north your evil is disclosed. "Before his cold, who shall stand?" (Ps 147:17). If this cold should once pervade the soul (and indeed, as is usual, the soul is heedless while the spirit sleeps), and if then, with no one checking it, which God forbid, it should reach its interior parts, should descend into the depths of the heart and the bosom of the mind, should shake the affections, should occupy the paths of counsel, should disturb the light of judgment, should bind the freedom of the spirit: then soon, as is accustomed to happen in the body of those who have fever, a certain rigidity of soul follows, and vigor grows slack, a languor of strength is feigned, horror of austerity is heightened, fear of poverty agitates, the spirit contracts, grace withdraws, the length of life stretches out before one, reason is lulled to sleep, the spirit is extinguished, the novice fervor cools, a tedious lukewarmness grows heavy, fraternal charity grows cold, pleasure flatters, false security deceives, old habit calls one back. What more? The law is ignored, justice is renounced, right is proscribed, the fear of the Lord is abandoned. Finally the hands are surrendered to shamelessness; that reckless, that shameful, that most disgraceful leap is presumed, full of ignominy and confusion, from the heights into the abyss, from the pavement into the dunghill, from the throne into the sewer, from heaven into the mire, from the cloister into the world, from paradise into hell. The beginning and origin of this plague, and by what skill it may be avoided or by what virtue it may be overcome, it is not the time to demonstrate now: that will be for another occasion; for now let us pursue what we have begun. The discourse must be turned back to the more advanced and the stronger, to the vineyard that has already flourished, which indeed, even if it has nothing to fear for its flowers from the cold, yet its fruits are not safe from the foxes. It must be stated more openly what these foxes are spiritually, why they are called little, why they are commanded especially to be caught and not driven away or killed: also the diverse kinds of these beasts must be introduced for the greater knowledge and caution of the hearers; not indeed in this sermon, that we may take thought for weariness, and that the readiness of our devotion may be perpetuated in the grace and confession of the glory of the great Bridegroom of the Church, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God over all things, blessed forever. Amen.”

“I am present to my promise. "Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards: for our vineyard has flourished" (Song 2:15). Foxes are temptations. It is necessary that temptations come. For who will be crowned, unless he has competed lawfully? (2 Tim 2:5.) Or how will they compete, if there is no one to attack them? You therefore, coming to the service of God, stand in fear, and prepare your soul for temptation (Sir 2:1), certain that all who wish to live piously in Christ will suffer persecution (2 Tim 3:12). Moreover, temptations are diverse, according to the diversity of times. And indeed upon our beginnings, as upon the tender flowers of newly planted vines, the force of cold presses down openly, which we mentioned in the other sermon, and we made beginners cautious against this plague. But now against the holier pursuits of those who are advancing, the opposing powers indeed do not at all dare to set themselves openly, but are accustomed to lie in ambush in secret, like certain deceitful little foxes; in appearance indeed virtues, but in reality vices. How many, for example, who had entered the ways of life, who had progressed to better things, who were well and securely proceeding and advancing upon the paths of justice, have I found to have been shamefully supplanted by the fraud, O the shame! of these foxes, and to bewail too late the fruits of virtues suffocated within themselves! I myself saw a man running well; and behold a thought: was it not a little fox? To how many, he says, could I share the good of which I alone enjoy, if I were in my homeland, with brothers and relatives, acquaintances and friends? They love me, and would easily consent to one persuading them. Why this waste? I shall go there, and save many of them, and myself likewise. Nor need I fear in a change of place. For so long as I do good, what does it matter where? except that there it is without doubt more profitable, where I may live more fruitfully. What more? He goes, and perishes, wretched man, not so much an exile returning to his homeland, as one having returned to the vomit of the flesh. And the unhappy man lost himself, and acquired none of his own. Behold one little fox, namely that deceptive hope which he had in the gaining of his own people. You too can by yourself find or notice in yourself other and yet other foxes similar to this one, if you are not negligent. But do you wish me to show you yet one more? I will do it, and I will demonstrate a third and a fourth as well, if I find you vigilant to catch those which you may have noticed in your own vineyard from among these. Sometimes the soul of someone who is advancing well, when he has felt something of heavenly grace more lavishly sprinkled upon him, is seized by the desire of preaching, not indeed to parents and relatives, according to that word: "Immediately I did not acquiesce to flesh and blood" (Gal 1:16); but as if more purely, more fruitfully, and more strongly, indiscriminately to strangers and to all. Altogether cautiously! Indeed he fears to incur the prophetic curse, if the grain which he has received in secret he should hide among the peoples (Prov 11:26): and to act contrary to the Gospel, unless what he has heard in his ear he should preach upon the rooftops (Mt 10:27). It is a fox, and one more harmful than the former by as much as it comes more secretly. But I catch it for you. First Moses says: "You shall not plow with the firstborn of the ox" (Deut 15:19). Paul interpreting this says: "Not a neophyte, lest being puffed up with pride, he fall into the judgment of the devil" (1 Tim 3:6): and again, "Nor does anyone," he says, "take the honor to himself, but he who is called by God as Aaron" (Heb 5:4); likewise he himself says: "How shall they preach unless they are sent?" (Rom 10:15.) And we know that the duty of a monk is not to teach, but to mourn. From these and similar texts collected together I weave a net for myself, and I catch the fox, lest it destroy the vineyard. From these indeed it is clear and certain that to preach publicly neither befits a monk, nor is expedient for a novice, nor is permitted to one not sent. Moreover, to go against these three things, how great a destruction of conscience it is! Therefore whatever such thing is suggested to the soul, whether it be your own thought, or an immission through an evil angel, recognize a deceitful little fox, that is, an evil under the appearance of good. But behold another. How many fervent in spirit has the solitude of the desert received from monasteries, and either vomited them out grown tepid, or held them contrary to the law of the desert, not only relaxed, but even dissolute? And so it appeared that a little fox had been present, where so great a devastation of the vineyard had occurred, that is, the detriment to the life and conscience of the man. He was thinking that if he lived alone, he would receive far more abundant fruits of the spirit, since he had experienced such great spiritual grace in the common life. And his thought seemed good to himself; but the outcome of the matter showed that the same thought had been for him rather a fox destroying the vineyard. What of that which also disturbs us so often and so gravely in this house: I mean the conspicuous and superstitious abstinence of certain ones who are among us, by which they render themselves troublesome to all, and all troublesome to themselves? How is this very discord, so general, not a dissipation of one's own conscience, and, so far as is in his power, a destruction of this great vineyard which the right hand of the Lord has planted, namely the unanimity of you all? "Woe to the man through whom the scandal comes!" (Mt 18:7.) "Whoever shall scandalize one of these little ones" (Mk 9:42): what follows is harsh. How much harsher does he deserve, who scandalizes so great and so holy a multitude? Truly, he shall bear a most severe judgment, whoever he may be. But of these things at another time. Now let us attend to those things which are said by the Bridegroom concerning these little and crafty animals that destroy the vineyards. I would say they are little, not in malice, but in subtlety. For this kind of animal is by nature crafty, and very ready to do harm in secret: and it seems to me to designate most fittingly certain most subtle vices concealed under the appearance of virtues, of which kind indeed I have already somewhat expressed the form through the examples set forth above for your knowledge, few though they be. For they cannot harm in any other way, except that they feign themselves virtues by a certain likeness to virtues. But they are either the vain thoughts of men, or immissions made through evil angels, angels of Satan, who transform themselves into angels of light (2 Cor 11:14), preparing their arrows in the quiver, that is, in secret, to shoot in the dark at the upright of heart (Ps 11:2). Whence also I think they are called little for this reason, that while other vices manifest themselves by a certain, so to speak, corpulence of their own, this kind, on account of its subtlety, can hardly be recognized, and therefore can hardly be guarded against, except only by the perfect and the trained, who have the eyes of their heart illumined for the discernment of good and evil, and especially for the discernment of spirits, who can say with the Apostle that "we are not ignorant of the devices of Satan, nor of his thoughts" (2 Cor 2:11). And see whether perhaps for this reason they are ordered by the Bridegroom not indeed to be exterminated, or driven away, or killed, but to be caught: because, namely, such spiritual and crafty little beasts ought to be observed and examined with all vigilance and caution, and so caught, that is, comprehended, in their own craftiness. Therefore, when the deceit is exposed, when the fraud is laid open, when the falsehood is convicted, then most rightly is it said that a little fox has been caught that was destroying the vineyard. Indeed, we say a man is caught in his speech, just as you have in the Gospel, that the Pharisees came together to catch Jesus in speech (Mt 22:15). So then the Bridegroom commands the little foxes that destroy the vineyards to be caught, that is, to be detected, convicted, exposed. This kind of malice alone has this proper quality, that once recognized it no longer harms, so that to be recognized is for it to be vanquished. For who, unless he is mad, having discovered a trap, knowingly and deliberately puts his foot in it? It suffices therefore if those which are of this kind are caught, that is, if you expose them and bring them to the open; since for them to appear is to perish. It is not so with other vices. For they come openly, they harm openly; they captivate the knowing, they overcome the resisting, inasmuch as they act by force, not by deceit. Therefore against beasts of this kind that rage openly, there is need not of investigation, but of restraint. Only these little foxes, greatest dissemblers, because once exposed they no longer harm, it suffices to bring them into the light and to catch them in their cunning. For they have dens. For such a reason, therefore, these foxes are both commanded to be caught and described as little. Or they are called little so that, watching vigilantly for vices arising in their very beginning while they are still little, you may immediately apprehend them, lest growing they harm more and be caught with greater difficulty. And if according to the allegory we understand the vineyards as Churches, the foxes as heresies, or rather the heretics themselves: the meaning is simple, that heretics should rather be caught than driven away. Let them be caught, I say, not by arms, but by arguments, by which their errors may be refuted; and they themselves, if it can be done, let them be reconciled to the Catholic Church, let them be called back to the true faith. For this is the will of him who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4). Indeed he declares that he wills this, who does not simply say "catch the foxes," but "catch," he says, "the foxes for us." Therefore he commands these foxes to be acquired for himself and his bride, that is, for the Catholic Church, when he says, "Catch them for us." And so a man of the Church, experienced and learned, if he undertakes to dispute with a heretical man, ought to direct his intention to this, that he may so convince the one who errs that he also converts him, considering that word of the Apostle James: "That he who has caused a sinner to be converted from the error of his way, will save his soul from death, and will cover a multitude of sins" (Jas 5:20). But if he will not wish to return, even having been convicted after a first and now a second admonition, inasmuch as he is utterly perverted, he must according to the Apostle be avoided (Tit 3:10). From this point on it is better, as indeed I judge, that he be driven away, or even bound, than that he be permitted to destroy the vineyards. Nor on that account should the one who has defeated and convicted a heretic, who has confuted heresies, who has clearly and openly distinguished the plausible from the true, who has shown by plain and irrefutable reasoning that depraved doctrines are depraved, who has finally brought into captivity the depraved understanding that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, think that he has accomplished nothing. For he has nonetheless caught the fox, he who has worked such things, even if not for the heretic's salvation; and he has caught it for the Bridegroom and the bride, albeit in another way. For even if the heretic has not risen from the dregs, the Church is nonetheless confirmed in the faith: and indeed the Bridegroom without doubt rejoices at the progress of the bride. For "the joy of the Lord is our strength" (Neh 8:10). Indeed he does not consider our gains as foreign to himself, he who so graciously associates himself with us, when he commands the foxes to be caught, not for himself, but for us together with himself. "Catch," he says, "for us." For one may observe that he says "for us." What is more companionable than this word? Does he not seem to you to speak thus, like a certain head of a household, who has nothing of his own, but all things in common with his wife and children and household members? And he who speaks is God -- yet he speaks this not at all as God, but as the Bridegroom. "Catch us the foxes." You see how companionably he speaks, who has no companion? He could have said: "For me," but he preferred "for us," delighting in partnership. O sweetness! O grace! O the force of love! Has the highest of all thus become one of all? Who has done this? Love, which knows not dignity, rich in condescension, powerful in affection, efficacious in persuasion. What is more violent? Love triumphs over God. Yet what is so non-violent? It is love. What is this force, I ask, so violent unto victory, so conquered unto violence? Indeed "he emptied himself" (Phil 2:7), that you might know that it was love's doing that the fullness was poured out, that the height was made equal, that singularity was made companionable. With whom, O wondrous Bridegroom, have you so familiar a partnership? "For us," you say, "catch them." With whom do you share? Is it with the Church from the Gentiles? She has been gathered from mortals and sinners. We know what she is. But who are you, so devoted, so ardent a lover of this Ethiopian woman? Surely not another Moses, but more than Moses (Num 12:1). Are you not he who is "beautiful in form beyond the sons of men"? (Ps 45:2.) I have said too little; you are the brightness of eternal life, the splendor and the image of the substance of God (Heb 1:3); and finally, over all things, God blessed forever. Amen (Rom 9:5).”

“I have discussed two sermons for you on one chapter: I prepare a third, if you are not weary of hearing. And I think it necessary. For as regards our own domestic vineyard, which you are, I consider that in two sermons I have done enough to fortify it against the wiles of the threefold kind of foxes, who are flatterers, detractors, and certain seductive spirits, skilled and accustomed to introduce evils under the appearance of good. But not so for the Lord's vineyard. I speak of that one which has filled the earth, of which we too are a portion: a vineyard exceedingly great, planted by the hand of the Lord, redeemed by his blood, watered by his word, propagated by grace, made fruitful by the Spirit. Therefore, caring more for my own, I have profited less for the common good. But I am moved on behalf of it by the multitude of those who demolish it, the fewness of those who defend it, and the difficulty of the defense. The concealment creates the difficulty. For although the Church has always had foxes from its beginning, all were quickly discovered and caught. The heretic contended openly (for he was chiefly a heretic because he desired to conquer openly), and he was overcome. Thus those foxes were easily caught. For what did it matter if, when the truth was set in the light, the heretic, remaining in the darkness of his obstinacy, alone withered outside, bound fast? No less was the fox considered caught, when the impiety was condemned and the impious one was cast out, thenceforth to live for display, not for fruit. From this, according to the prophet, his were "breasts that are dry, and a barren womb" (Hos 9:14); because an error publicly refuted does not sprout again, and an exposed falsehood does not germinate. What shall we do with these most malignant foxes, that they may be caught, who prefer to harm rather than to conquer, and do not even wish to appear, but to creep? All heretics have always had one single intention: to seize glory from the singularity of their knowledge. This one alone, more malignant and more cunning than the other heresies, feeds on the losses of others, neglectful of its own glory. Taught, I believe, by the examples of the ancients, which, once betrayed, were unable to escape but were immediately caught, it is careful to work the mystery of iniquity by a new kind of malice, all the more freely as it is more hidden. Finally, as it is said, they have appointed hiding places for themselves, they have strengthened for themselves an evil speech. Swear, forswear; do not betray the secret. Yet on other occasions they do not consent to swear even slightly at all, on account of that saying from the Gospel: "Do not swear, neither by heaven, nor by the earth" (Mt 5:34-35), etc. O foolish and slow of heart, plainly filled with the Pharisaic spirit, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! (Mt 23:24). It is not lawful to swear, and it is lawful to perjure? Or is it only in this one matter that both are lawful? From what passage of the Gospels do you produce for me this exception, you who, as you falsely boast, do not pass over even an iota? It is clear that you both superstitiously observe the rule about swearing, and shamefully presume upon perjury. O perversity! That which was counseled as a precaution, namely, not to swear, this they observe so contentiously as though it were a commandment: and that which was established by immovable law, namely, that one must not perjure, this they dispense as though indifferent, according to their own will. No, they say, but lest we make public the mystery. As if it were not the glory of God to reveal a word. Or do they begrudge God his glory? But I rather believe that they blush to disclose it, knowing it to be inglorious. For they are said to do unspeakable and obscene things in secret, since indeed the hind parts of foxes also stink. But I pass over what they would deny: let them answer to what is manifest. Do they, according to the Gospel, take care not to give what is holy to dogs, and pearls to swine (Mt 7:6)? But to confess this openly is to admit that they are not of the Church, since they consider all who are of the Church to be dogs and swine. For without exception they hold that their thing, whatever it is, must be withheld from all who are not of their sect. However, even if they think this, they will not answer so, lest they become manifest, which is certainly what they flee by every means, but they will not escape. Answer me, O man, who are wiser than you ought to be, and more foolish than can be said. Is it, or is it not, a mystery of God that you conceal? If it is, why do you not make it known for his glory? For the glory of God is to reveal a word. If it is not, why do you have faith in that which is not of God, unless because you are a heretic? Either, therefore, let them disclose the secret of God for the glory of God; or let them deny that it is a mystery of God, and let them by no means deny that they are heretics; or certainly let them confess themselves to be nonetheless manifest enemies of the glory of God, they who do not wish that to be made manifest which they know will be to his glory. For the truth of Scripture stands firm: "It is the glory of kings to conceal a word, the glory of God to reveal a word" (Prov 25:2). You do not wish to reveal? Therefore you do not wish to glorify God. But perhaps you do not receive this Scripture. So it is: they profess themselves to be zealots of the Gospel alone, and the only ones. Let them answer, therefore, to the Gospel. "What I say to you in darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach upon the housetops" (Mt 10:27). Now silence is no longer permitted. How long is that kept concealed which God commands to be made public? How long is your Gospel covered? I suspect; yours is not Paul's: for he confesses that his own is not covered. "Even if," he says, "my Gospel is covered, it is covered in those who perish" (2 Cor 4:3). See whether he was not speaking of you, among whom the Gospel is found to be covered. What is more evident than that you are perishing? Or perhaps you do not even receive Paul? Concerning some I have heard it is so. For not all among you agree on all things, even though you all dissent from us. But truly the words, and writings, and traditions of those who were bodily with the Savior, all of you, unless I am mistaken, receive without distinction, with equal authority of the Gospel. Did they keep their Gospel covered? Did they keep silent about the weakness of the flesh, the horrors of death, the ignominy of the cross--all in God? Indeed, "their sound has gone out into all the earth" (Ps 19:4). Where is the apostolic form and life that you boast of? They cry out, you whisper; they in public, you in a corner; they "fly as clouds" (Is 60:8), you lurk in darkness and underground houses. What likeness to them do you show in yourselves? Is it that you do not exactly lead women about with you, but rather shut them in? The suspicion attaches not equally to companionship as to cohabitation. But who would suspect anything sinister about those who raised the dead? Do you likewise, and I will consider the woman reclining there to be a man. Otherwise you rashly usurp for yourself the dispensation of those whose sanctity you do not have. To be always with a woman and not to know a woman, is that not more than raising the dead? What is less you cannot do; and what is greater you wish me to believe of you? Daily your side is at the side of a young woman at table; your bed is next to her bed in the chamber; your eyes are upon her eyes in conversation; your hands are upon her hands in work: and you wish to be thought continent? Granted that you are: but I am not free from suspicion. You are a scandal to me: remove the cause of scandal, so that you may prove yourself a true zealot of the Gospel, as you boast. Does not the Gospel condemn the one who scandalizes even one of the Church? You scandalize the Church. You are a fox demolishing the vineyard. Help me, companions, that she may be caught; or rather, catch her for us, O holy angels. She is very cunning, covered with her wickedness and impiety. Plainly she is so small and subtle that she easily frustrates human eyes. Surely not yours as well? Therefore that voice is addressed to you, as friends of the Bridegroom: "Catch us the little foxes" (Song 2:15). Therefore do what you are commanded; catch for us this so crafty little fox, whom behold we have long pursued in vain. Teach and suggest how the fraud may be detected. For this is to have caught the fox; because a false catholic does far more harm than if a true heretic were to appear. But it is not for a man to know what is in a man, unless one has been either illumined by the Spirit of God for this very purpose, or informed by angelic effort. What sign will you give, so that this most wicked heresy may become manifest, which has learned to lie not only with the tongue, but with its life? And indeed the recent devastation of the vineyard indicates that a fox has been present: but by I know not what art of pretense, this most cunning animal so confuses its tracks that by what way it either enters or exits can hardly be detected by a man. And while the work is evident, the author does not appear; so through those things which are on the surface, it disguises everything. Finally, if you inquire about its faith, nothing is more Christian; if about its conduct, nothing is more irreproachable: and what it speaks, it proves by deeds. You see a man, in testimony of his faith, frequenting the church, honoring the presbyters, offering his gift, making confession, sharing in the sacraments. What is more faithful? Now as regards his life and manners, he defrauds no one, overreaches no one, extorts from no one. Their faces moreover are pale with fasting, they do not eat bread in idleness, they work with their hands to sustain their life. Where now is the fox? We had hold of her: how has she slipped from our hands? How has she so suddenly disappeared? Let us press on, let us search: by her fruits we shall know her. And certainly the demolition of vineyards bears witness to a fox. Women, leaving their husbands, and likewise men, dismissing their wives, betake themselves to these people. Clerics and priests, having abandoned their people and their churches, are frequently found among them, unshaven and bearded, among weavers, both men and women. Is this not a grave demolition? Are not these the works of foxes? But perhaps these things are not discovered so manifestly among all of them: and if they exist, there is no way to prove them. How shall we catch them? Let us return to their association and cohabitation with women, for there is no one among them who lacks this. I question some one of them. Ho there, good man! Who is this woman, and how is she yours? Is she your wife? No, he says, for that does not agree with my vow. Your daughter then? No. What then? Not a sister, not a niece, not anyone connected to you by any degree at least of kinship or affinity? None at all. And how is your continence safe with her? Indeed this is not even lawful for you. The Church forbids the cohabitation of men and women among those who have vowed continence, if you did not know. If you do not wish to scandalize the Church, cast out the woman. Otherwise, from this one thing the other things, which are not so manifest, without doubt become credible. But from what passage of the Gospel, he says, do you show me that this is forbidden? You have appealed to the Gospel; to the Gospel you shall go. If you obey the Gospel, you will not cause scandal: for the Gospel plainly forbids scandal to be made. But you cause it, by not removing her according to the decree of the Church. You were suspect, but now you will be manifestly judged both a despiser of the Gospel and an adversary of the Church. What do you judge, brothers? If he is obstinate so that he neither obeys the Gospel nor acquiesces to the Church, what further evasion is possible? Does not the fraud seem to you to be openly detected and the fox caught? If he does not remove the woman, he does not remove the scandal; if he does not remove the scandal when he is able to remove it, he is held to be a transgressor of the Gospel. What is the Church to do, except remove him who does not wish to remove the scandal, lest she be like him, disobedient? For she has a commandment from the Gospel about this: not to spare the eye that scandalizes her, nor the hand, nor the foot; but to pluck it out, to cut them off, and to cast them from her. "If," it says, "he will not hear the Church, let him be to you as a heathen and a publican" (Mt 18:6-9, 17). Have we accomplished anything? I think we have. We have caught the fox, because we have perceived the fraud. Manifest are those who lay hidden as false Catholics, true plunderers of the Catholic faith. For while with me you were taking sweet food (I mean the body and blood of Christ), while in the house of God we walked in agreement, there was a place for persuasion, indeed an opportunity for seduction, according to that saying of Wisdom: "The dissembler deceives his friend with his mouth" (Prov 11:9). But now easily, according to the wisdom of Paul, after a first and second admonition I will avoid a heretical man, knowing that such a one is subverted (Tit 3:10-11); and therefore cautious to take care lest he now become also a subverter. And so it is something, according to the word of the Wise Man, that "the wicked are caught in their own snares" (Prov 11:6), those wicked especially who are careful to use snares in place of arms. For open conflict and defense have utterly perished from among them. For this is a base and rustic sort, without letters, and altogether unwarlike. Finally, they are foxes, and small ones; but neither are those things in which they are said to think wrongly defensible; nor so subtle as they are persuasive, and that only to rustic and ignorant women, such as indeed all of them are, as many as I have yet found to be of this sect. Nor in all their assertions, for they are many, do I recall having heard anything new or unheard of, but what is well-worn and long debated among the ancient heretics, yet crushed and thoroughly winnowed by our own. Nevertheless it must be said, and I will say, what those absurdities are; partly what they themselves have confessed, answering less cautiously when Catholics questioned them; partly what, divided from one another and quarreling, they have revealed about each other; partly also what some of them, returning to the Church, have disclosed: not that I may respond to all of them, for that is not necessary, but only that they may become known. But that will be the work of another sermon, to the praise and glory of the name of the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“"Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards" (Song 2:15). Behold, I go after these foxes. They are the ones who pass beyond the way and who plunder the vineyard. They are not content to desert the way, unless they can also lay waste the vineyard, adding transgression. It is not enough for them to be heretics, unless they be also hypocrites, so that sin may be sinful beyond measure. These are they who come in sheep's clothing to strip the sheep bare and to despoil the rams. Does not each of these things seem to you to have been fulfilled, where both the people have been robbed of their faith and the priests of their people? Who are these robbers? They are sheep in garb, foxes in cunning, wolves in deed and in cruelty. These are they who wish to seem good, not to be so; who wish not to seem evil, but to be so. They are evil, and they wish to seem good, lest they be evil alone; they fear to seem evil, lest they be insufficiently evil. For malice openly practiced has always done less harm, and no good man was ever deceived except by the pretense of goodness. And so they strive to appear good, for the ruin of the good; they do not wish to appear evil, so that more license may be given to their malignity. For it is not their way to cultivate virtues, but to color over vices with a certain vermilion, as it were, of virtues. And so the impiety of superstition they entitle with the name of religion. Innocence they define as merely not harming openly, thereby claiming for themselves only the color of innocence. As a covering for their turpitude, they mark themselves with the vow of continence. Moreover, they consider turpitude to consist only in having wives: whereas the only case in which turpitude in intercourse is excused is that which is with a wife. They are rustic men and unlearned, and altogether contemptible: but there is no dealing negligently with them, I tell you. For they advance greatly unto impiety, and their speech spreads like a cancer (2 Tim 2:16-17). And so the Holy Spirit did not neglect this, who once prophesied concerning them so manifestly, the Apostle saying: "Now the Spirit manifestly says that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error and to doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared, forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving" (1 Tim 4:1-3). It was precisely these, precisely these he was speaking of. These forbid to marry, these abstain from foods which God created, concerning which we shall see afterward. But now see whether this is not properly a mockery of demons and not of men, according to what the Spirit had foretold. Inquire of them the author of their sect; they will give you none. What heresy has not had from among men its own heresiarch? The Manicheans had Mani as their founder and teacher, the Sabellians Sabellius, the Arians Arius, the Eunomians Eunomius, the Nestorians Nestorius. So all the other plagues of this kind are known to have had, each one, individual masters, men from whom they drew both their origin and their name. By what name or title will you designate these? By none; since their heresy is not from man, nor did they receive it through man. Far be it, however, that it should be through a revelation of Jesus Christ; rather and without doubt, as the Holy Spirit foretold, it is through the insinuation and fraud of demons, "speaking lies in hypocrisy, forbidding to marry!" In hypocrisy plainly and with fox-like craftiness they speak this, feigning that they say it from love of chastity, which they have rather devised for the sake of fostering and multiplying turpitude. Yet the matter is so much in the open that I wonder how any Christian man could ever have been persuaded of it, except that these are either so bestial that they do not perceive how he who condemns marriage gives free rein to every uncleanness; or else so full of wickedness and swallowed up in diabolical malignity that, perceiving, they dissemble, and rejoice in the destruction of men. Take away from the Church honorable marriage and the undefiled bed (Heb 13:4); will you not fill her with fornicators, the incestuous, those who waste their seed, the effeminate, men who lie with men, and indeed every kind of unclean persons? Choose therefore whichever you will: either all these monstrosities of men are to be saved, or the number of those to be saved is to be reduced to the small number of the continent. How sparing in the one! How lavish in the other! Neither of these befits the Savior. What? Shall turpitude be crowned? Nothing less becomes the author of honor. Shall the whole world be damned except a few continent ones? This is not what it means to be a Savior. Continence is rare upon the earth, and not for so small a gain did that fullness empty itself to the earth. And how have we all received from that fullness, if he granted participation in himself to the continent alone? They have nothing they can answer to this. But neither, I believe, to the following. If there is a place in heaven for what is honorable, but there is no fellowship between the honorable and the base, just as there is no partnership of light with darkness: then assuredly no place of salvation awaits any of the unclean. If anyone thinks otherwise, the apostolic voice will refute him, asserting without all ambiguity: "For those who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God" (Gal 5:21). By what way now will this treacherous little fox come out of her den? I think she has been caught in the pit in which she has made for herself, as it were, two openings: one by which to enter, another by which to exit. For she is accustomed to do so. See therefore how the exit is blocked for her on both sides. If she places only the continent in heaven, salvation perishes for the most part; if she places all filthiness together with the continent, what is honorable perishes. But more justly she herself perishes, who shall go out neither by this way nor by that, shut up in perpetuity and caught in the pit which she has made. Certain ones, however, dissenting from the others, confess that marriage can be contracted only between virgins. But what reason they can offer in this distinction, I do not see: except that each one, according to his own pleasure, strives in competition with the others to tear apart the sacraments of the Church, as the mother's womb, with the tooth of a viper. For as to what they are said to allege concerning the first married couple, that they were virgins: how, I ask, does this prejudice the freedom of marriage, so that it should not be lawfully contracted also between non-virgins? But I know not what they whisper about having found in the Gospel, which they vainly suppose to support their foolishness. It is this, I believe: that the Lord, having first set forth the testimony from Genesis, "And God created man in his own image and likeness; male and female he created them," afterward added: "Therefore what God has joined together, let not man put asunder" (Gen 1:27; Mt 19:4, 6). These, they say, God joined together because both were virgins, and thereafter it was not permitted to be separated: but a coupling presumed otherwise will not be from God. Who told you they were joined by God on account of the fact that they were virgins? For Scripture does not say this. Were they not virgins? one asks. They were; but it is not the same thing, to have been coupled as virgins and to have been coupled because they were virgins. Although not even this will you find stated by name, that they were virgins, even though they were. What was expressly stated was the diversity of sexes, not virginity, when it was said: "Male and female he created them." And rightly so. For the marital coupling of bodies does not require integrity, but the aptitude of sexes. Well therefore did the Holy Spirit, instituting this very thing, express the sex and was silent concerning virginity, and gave no occasion for entrapping a word to the treacherous little foxes. Which they would readily have done; though even that would have been in vain. For what if he had said: "Virgins he created them"? Would you therefore immediately have established that only virgins may be lawfully joined? And yet how you would have exulted at the mere occasion of the word! How you would have blown away second and third marriages! How you would have insulted the Catholic Church, which all the more willingly joins harlots and pimps to each other, inasmuch as it does not doubt that thereby they pass from the base to the honorable! Perhaps you would also have reproved God for commanding the prophet to take a fornicating woman (Hos 1:2): but now even the occasion is lacking, and it pleases you to be a heretic gratuitously. For the testimony which you usurped to build up your error has been found to be of greater force for destroying it; it does nothing for you, everything against you. But now hear that which either altogether confounds or corrects you, and utterly crushes and shatters your heresy. "A woman is bound to her husband as long as her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is freed from the law of her husband; let her marry whom she wishes, only in the Lord" (1 Cor 7:39). It is Paul who grants to a widow that she may marry whom she wishes: and you on the contrary prescribe: "No one may marry except a virgin, and she only to a virgin," so that not even she herself may marry whom she wishes. Why do you shorten the hand of God? Why do you restrict the ample blessing of marriage? Why do you claim as proper to a virgin what has been granted to the sex? Paul would not concede this unless it were lawful. But I say too little, he concedes: he also wills it. "I wish," he says, "the younger women to marry" (1 Tim 5:14): and there is no doubt that he is speaking of widows. What is more manifest? Therefore what he concedes, because it is lawful, he also wills, because it is expedient. What is lawful and expedient, the heretic forbids? He will persuade nothing by this prohibition except that he is a heretic. It remains that we also pursue them somewhat concerning the rest of the apostolic prophecy. For these abstain, as he foretold, "from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving" (1 Tim 4:3): by this also proving themselves heretics, not indeed because they abstain, but because they abstain heretically. For I too abstain at times; but my abstinence is a satisfaction for sins, not a superstition in the service of impiety. Do we reprove Paul for chastising his body and bringing it into subjection? (1 Cor 9:27). I will abstain from wine, because in wine there is wantonness (Eph 5:18); or if I am weak, I will use a little, according to Paul's counsel (1 Tim 5:23). I will abstain from meats, lest while they nourish the flesh too much, they nourish at the same time the vices of the flesh. I will endeavor to take bread itself with measure, lest with a burdened stomach it should be wearisome to stand for prayer, and lest the prophet also reproach me, because I have eaten my bread in satiety (Ezek 16:49). But neither will I accustom myself to gorge on even plain water, lest the distension of the stomach reach all the way to the titillation of lust. The heretic does otherwise. Indeed he shudders at milk and whatever is made from it: and lastly at everything that is procreated from coitus. Rightly and in a Christian manner, if not on account of its being from coitus, but lest they provoke to coitus. But what does it mean that everything that is generated from coitus is thus universally avoided? This observance of foods so pointedly expressed generates suspicion in me. Nevertheless, if you bring this forward to us from the rules of physicians, we do not reprove the care of the flesh, which no man ever hated, provided it is not excessive. If from the discipline of abstainers, that is, from the school of spiritual physicians, we approve even the virtue by which you tame the flesh and bridle lust. But if from the madness of Mani you prescribe against the beneficence of God, so that what he created and gave to be received with thanksgiving, you, not only ungrateful but also a rash censor, should decree unclean and should abstain from it as from something evil; I will by no means commend the abstinence, but will execrate the blasphemy: and I would call you yourself more unclean, who think something unclean. "All things are clean to the clean," says that best evaluator of things: "and nothing is unclean, except to him who thinks something unclean: but to the unclean and unfaithful nothing is clean, but their mind and conscience are polluted" (Tit 1:15). Woe to you who reject foods which God created, judging them unclean and unworthy for you to convey into your bodies: whereas on that very account the body of Christ, which is the Church, has spewed you out as polluted and unclean. I am not unaware that they glory that they alone are the body of Christ: but let those persuade themselves of this who are also persuaded that they have the power daily at their table to consecrate the body and blood of Christ for nourishing themselves into the body of Christ and its members. Indeed they boast that they are successors of the apostles, and call themselves apostolics, yet they are able to show no sign of their apostleship. How long is the lamp under a bushel? "You are the light of the world," was said to the apostles: and therefore the apostles are upon the lampstand, so that they might shine upon the whole world. Let the successors of the apostles be ashamed to be the light not of the world but of a bushel, and to be the darkness of the world. Let us say to them: You are the darkness of the world: and let us pass on to other things. They call themselves the Church. But they contradict him who says: "A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden" (Mt 5:14-16). Do you believe that the stone cut from the mountain without hands, which has become a mountain and fills the world (Dan 2:34-35), is enclosed in your caves? But neither should we linger here. The opinion itself shuns being published, content with its own whispering. Christ has, and always will have, his inheritance intact, and his possession the ends of the earth. They rather withdraw themselves from this great inheritance, who strive to take it away from Christ. Behold the detractors, behold the dogs. They mock us because we baptize infants; because we pray for the dead; because we seek the intercession of the saints. In every kind of men and in both sexes they hasten to proscribe Christ: in adults and in little ones, in the living and the dead; on the one hand prescribing against infants from the impossibility of nature, and on the other against adults from the difficulty of continence. Furthermore, they defraud the dead of the helps of the living, and despoil the living no less of the intercession of the saints who have departed. Far be it! The Lord will not forsake his people, which is as the sand of the sea, nor will he be content with the small number of heretics, he who redeemed all. For redemption with him is not small, but truly plentiful. But how great is their number in comparison with the greatness of the price? They rather defraud themselves of the price, who strive to empty it of its value. For what if an infant cannot speak for himself, on whose behalf the voice of the blood of his brother, and of such a brother, cries to God from the earth? The mother Church also stands and cries. But what of the infant? Does he not also seem to you to gape in a certain way toward the fountains of the Savior, to cry out to God, and by his very wailings to clamor: "Lord, I suffer violence, answer for me"? (Isa 38:14). He begs the aid of grace, because he suffers violence from nature. The innocence of the wretched one cries out, the ignorance of the little one cries out, the weakness of the condemned one cries out. And so all these things cry out: the blood of the brother, the faith of the mother, the destitution of the wretched one, and the wretchedness of the destitute: and the cry is to the Father. Now the Father cannot deny himself: for he is a father. Let no one say to me that the infant does not have faith, when the mother imparts her own to him, wrapping him in it in the Sacrament, until he becomes fit to receive it, set free and pure, by his own not only understanding but also assent. Surely the cloak is not so short that it cannot cover both? Great is the faith of the Church. Is it less than the faith of the Canaanite woman, which was able, as is established, to suffice both for her daughter and for herself? Therefore she heard: "O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you have asked" (Mt 15:28). Is it less than the faith of those who, lowering the paralytic through the tiles, obtained for him the health of soul and body alike? Indeed you have: "When he saw their faith, he said to the paralytic: Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven you; and shortly after: Take up your bed and walk" (Mt 9:2, 5-6). He who believes these things will easily be persuaded that the Church rightly presumes, by its own faith, salvation not only for baptized infants but also a crown of martyrdom for infants slain for Christ. Since this is so, those regenerated will suffer no prejudice from that which was said: "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Heb 11:6), since they are not without faith, who have received the grace of baptism in testimony of faith. Nor from that which was likewise said: "But he who does not believe will be condemned" (Mk 16:16). For what is to believe, if not to have faith? And so also a woman will be saved through the bearing of children, if she continues in faith with gentleness (1 Tim 2:15); and infants will be succored through the regeneration of the font; and adults who cannot be continent will redeem themselves by the thirtyfold fruit of marriage; and the dead who have need of it and are worthy will receive, through the mediation of angels, the prayers and sacrifices of the living; and the consolations of those who have already arrived will by no means be lacking to those still living, through the God who is everywhere and through a love that in God is never absent from those afar. For Christ also died and rose again for this purpose, that he might be Lord both of the living and of the dead (Rom 14:9). For this reason also an infant was born, and advanced through each degree of age into manhood, so that he might be lacking to no age. They do not believe that a purgatorial fire remains after death; but that the soul, once freed from the body, passes either to rest or to damnation. Let them therefore inquire of him who said that there is a certain sin that will be forgiven neither in this age nor in the age to come (Mt 12:32), why he said this, if no remission or purgation of sin remains in the future. But now, those who do not acknowledge the Church, it is no wonder if they detract from the orders of the Church, if they do not accept her institutions, if they despise the sacraments, if they do not obey the commandments. "Sinners," they say, "are the popes, archbishops, bishops, and priests: and therefore they are fit neither for giving nor for receiving the sacraments. Shall these two things ever agree, to be a bishop and to be a sinner?" It is false. Caiaphas was a bishop: and yet how great a sinner was he, who pronounced a sentence of death against the Lord? If you deny he was a bishop, the testimony of John will refute you, who relates that he even prophesied in testimony of his pontificate (Jn 11:51). Judas was an apostle: and though avaricious and wicked, he was yet chosen by the Lord. Or do you doubt his apostleship, whom the Lord chose? "Did I not choose you twelve," he says, "and one of you is a devil?" (Jn 6:71). You hear that he was at once a chosen apostle and turned out to be a devil; and you deny that one who is a sinner can be a bishop? Upon the seat of Moses sat the Scribes and the Pharisees, and those who did not obey them as bishops were guilty of disobedience, even against the Lord himself who commanded and said: "Whatever they tell you, do" (Mt 23:2-3). It is clear therefore that although they were Scribes, although Pharisees, although indeed the greatest sinners, yet on account of the seat of Moses, to them also no less pertains what he likewise said: "He who hears you hears me; and he who despises you despises me" (Lk 10:16). Many other evils indeed have been persuaded upon this foolish and senseless people by spirits of error speaking lies in hypocrisy: but it is not possible to answer all of them. For who knows them all? Then the labor would be infinite and not at all necessary. For as regards these people, they are not convinced by arguments, because they do not understand; nor are they corrected by authorities, because they do not accept them; nor are they moved by persuasions, because they are perverted. It has been proven: they choose to die rather than to be converted. Their end is destruction, their last state a fire awaits. For indeed the figure of these went before them in the deed of Samson, when the tails of the foxes were set on fire (Judg 15:4-5). Often the faithful, having laid hands upon some of them, have dragged them out into the open. When asked about their faith, since they denied outright, in their usual manner, all the things of which they were suspected, they were examined by the ordeal of water and were found to be liars. And when they could no longer deny, being exposed since the water did not receive them, having taken the bit between their teeth, as they say, as wretchedly as freely they did not confess but professed their impiety, openly asserting their piety and prepared to undergo death for it. And those who stood by were no less prepared to inflict it. And so the people, rushing upon them, gave the heretics new martyrs of their own perfidy. We approve the zeal, but we do not recommend the deed; for faith is to be persuaded, not imposed. Although without doubt it is better that they be restrained by the sword, namely of him who does not bear the sword in vain, than that they be permitted to draw many into their error. For he is the minister of God, an avenger unto wrath against him who does evil (Rom 13:4). Some wonder that they were led to death not only patiently, but even gladly, as it seemed; but they do not sufficiently consider how great is the power of the devil, not only over the bodies of men, but also over the hearts which, once permitted, he has possessed. Is it not a greater thing for a man to lay hands upon himself than to endure it willingly from another? But that the devil has been able to do this in many cases we have frequently experienced, of those who either drowned themselves or hanged themselves. Indeed Judas hanged himself (Mt 27:5), the devil without doubt putting it into him. Yet I consider it a greater thing, and marvel at it more, that he was able to put it into his heart to betray the Lord (Jn 13:2), than to hang himself. There is therefore no likeness between the constancy of the martyrs and the obstinacy of these; because contempt of death is wrought in the former by piety, in the latter by hardness of heart. And therefore the Prophet, perhaps with the voice of the martyr, was saying: "Their heart is curdled like milk, but I have meditated on your law" (Ps 113:70): on account of this, that even though the punishment might seem the same, the intention was far different; the one, to be sure, hardening his heart against the Lord, the other meditating on the law of the Lord. Since this is so, there is no need, as I have said, to say many things in vain against men most foolish and most obstinate: it suffices that they have been made known so that they may be avoided. Wherefore, in order that they may be detected, they must be compelled either to put away their women or to go out of the Church, as those who scandalize the Church by cohabitation and companionship with women. It is greatly to be lamented that not only lay princes, but also certain men, as is said, of the clergy, and even of the order of bishops who ought rather to have persecuted them, tolerate them for the sake of gain, receiving gifts from them. "And how," they say, "shall we condemn those who are neither convicted nor confessed?" A frivolous enough excuse, not a reason but a pretext. By this alone, even if there were nothing else, you easily detect them if, as I have said, you separate the men and women who call themselves continent from one another: and compel the women indeed to live with others of their own sex and vow; and the men equally with men of the same profession. For by this provision will be made for the vow and the reputation of both alike, since they will have both witnesses and guardians of their continence. But if they do not endure this, they will be most justly expelled from the Church, which they scandalize by cohabitation that is not only notable but also illicit. Therefore let these things suffice for detecting the wiles of these foxes, to give knowledge and caution to the beloved and glorious Bride of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“1. "My beloved is mine, and I am his, who feeds among the lilies" (Song 2:16). Who would now charge her with presumption or insolence, if she says she has entered into fellowship with him who feeds among the lilies? Even if he fed among the stars, by the sole fact that he fed, I know not what greatness could appear in having friendships or familiarity with one of this sort. Something altogether ignoble and lowly sounds in the word "to feed." But now, since he is declared to feed among the lilies, this addition of lowliness further removes and drives away the charge of recklessness. For what are lilies? According to the word of the Lord, grass, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven (Mt 6:28-30). How great is this one who feeds on grass, as though one of the lambs or calves? And indeed a lamb, and a fatted calf. But perhaps you have more watchfully noticed that it is not pasture that is designated in this place, but a place: for it was not said that he feeds on lilies, but among lilies. So be it. He does not eat grass like an ox; yet to dwell in the grass and to recline upon the grass as one of the crowd, what eminence can this have? And what glory to her, to have as beloved one who does this? And according to the letter indeed, the modesty and prudent caution of the bride in speaking sufficiently appears, she who disposes her words in judgment, and tempers the glory of things by the modesty of her words. 2. But otherwise she is not ignorant that the one who is fed and the one who shepherds are one and the same; he who dwells among the lilies and he who reigns above the stars. Yet she more gladly recalls the lowly things of her beloved, on account of humility indeed, as I said; but more so because he began to be beloved from the time he also began to feed. And not only from that time, but on account of that. For he who is Lord in the highest is beloved in the lowest; reigning above the stars, and loving among the lilies. He loved also above the stars, because nowhere and never could he not love, because he is love; but until he descended to the lilies and was found to feed among the lilies, he was neither loved nor made beloved. What? Was he not loved by the patriarchs and prophets? He was: but not before he was seen by them also to feed among the lilies. For indeed they did see him whom they foresaw; unless someone is so devoid of the Spirit as to think that one who sees in the Spirit sees nothing. Whence then are they called Seers, for so the prophets were named (1 Sam 9:9), if they saw nothing? Hence it is that they wished to see him whom they did not see. For they could not have wished to see in the body him whom they had not seen in the Spirit. But I say: Were all of them prophets? As if all wished to see, or the faith belonged to all. But indeed those who saw were either prophets or those who gave assent to the prophets. For to have believed is to have seen. For not only he who sees through the spirit of prophecy, but also he who sees through faith, if someone should say that he too sees in the Spirit, does not seem to me to err. 3. And so that he who feeds all deigned to descend to the lilies and to feed among the lilies, this made him beloved, because he could not be loved before he was known. And on this account, when mention was made of the beloved, beautifully that too was recalled which was the cause of love and recognition. This refreshment among the lilies is to be sought in the Spirit: for to think of a bodily one is ridiculous. Indeed the lilies themselves, being spiritual, must be demonstrated by us, if we are able. I think we must also say this: whence the beloved feeds among the lilies -- whether on the lilies themselves, or on other herbs or flowers hidden among the lilies? And in these matters that seems more difficult to me, that he is said to feed, not to shepherd. For that he shepherds, there is no doubt, nor indeed is it unworthy of him: but to feed implies need, and not even spiritually does it seem possible to assign this to him easily without injury to his majesty. Nor do I indeed recall having noticed until now in this canticle that he is anywhere said to feed, though I think you recall with me that he shepherds. Finally, she once asked that it be shown to her where he shepherded and rested at midday (Song 1:7). And now indeed she declares what she had not yet said, that he feeds, but she does not similarly ask that the place be shown to her; rather she herself points it out, assigning it as among the lilies. She knows this, but that she did not know; because what is sublime and in the heights cannot be equally at hand as what is lowly and upon the earth. The work is sublime, and the place is sublime: nor is there access to it even for the bride herself as yet. 4. And therefore he emptied himself even to this, that the very shepherd of all should himself feed; and he was found among the lilies, and seen by the Church, he was loved by the needy as a poor man, made beloved on account of his likeness. And not only so, but also on account of truth, and meekness, and justice: because through him, that is, the promises were fulfilled, because iniquities were forgiven, because the proud demons together with their prince were judged. Such therefore did he appear who was rightly to be loved: truthful on his own behalf, gentle toward men, just on behalf of men. O truly to be loved and to be embraced with all the marrow of the heart, this Bridegroom! Why should the Church now hesitate to commit herself entirely with all devotion to so faithful a restorer, so gracious a pardoner, so just a champion? Moreover the Prophet had said before: "In your splendor and beauty stretch forth prosperously." Whence this splendor and beauty? I think, from the lilies. What is more beautiful than a lily? So nothing is more beautiful than the Bridegroom. What then are those lilies from which the splendor of his beauty comes? "Proceed," he says, "and reign, on account of truth, and meekness, and justice" (Ps 45:4). They are lilies, lilies, I say, sprung from the earth, shining upon the earth, preeminent among the flowers of the earth, fragrant beyond the scent of spices. Therefore the Bridegroom is among these lilies, and altogether from them is he beautiful and fair. For otherwise (as regards the weakness of the flesh) he had no splendor nor beauty (Isa 53:2). 5. Now truth is a good lily, conspicuous in whiteness, preeminent in fragrance; indeed it is the brightness of eternal light, the splendor and figure of the substance of God (Wis 7:26). Plainly a lily, which our earth brought forth to a new blessing, and prepared before the face of all peoples, a light for the revelation of the nations (Lk 2:31-32). While the earth was under a curse, it brought forth thorns and thistles. But now Truth has sprung from the earth, the Lord blessing it (Ps 85:11-12), a certain altogether beautiful flower of the field and lily of the valleys. Recognize the lily by its whiteness, which immediately at the very rising of the flower shone upon the shepherds by night, as the Gospel says, because the angel of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God shone round about them (Lk 2:9). Rightly of God, because it was not the brightness of the angel, but of the lily. The angel was present, but the lily was gleaming all the way from Bethlehem. Recognize the lily also by its fragrance, by which it became known even to those far off. And indeed a star appeared; but grave men would by no means have followed it, unless they were drawn by a certain inmost sweet scent of the lily that had sprung forth. And truly truth is a lily, whose fragrance animates faith, whose splendor illumines the understanding. Lift up your eyes now also to the very person of the Lord, who speaks in the Gospel: "I am the truth" (Jn 14:6). And see how fittingly truth is compared to a lily. If you have not noticed, notice from the center of this flower something like golden rods coming forth, and encircled by the whitest petals, beautifully and fittingly arranged in a crown: and recognize the golden divinity in Christ, crowned with the purity of human nature, that is, Christ in the diadem with which his mother crowned him. For in that with which his Father crowned him, he dwells in unapproachable light, nor could you see him in it for the present. But of this another time. 6. Now truth is a lily; and meekness is one also. And well is meekness a lily, having the whiteness of innocence and the fragrance of hope, since "there are remnants," he says, "for the man of peace" (Ps 37:37). A man of good hope is the meek man, and no less also in the present he is a certain shining example of social life. Is it not a lily, which shines in its service and is fragrant in hope? Add that just as truth has sprung from the earth, so also has meekness. Unless someone doubts that the Lamb, the ruler of the earth, has sprung from the earth (Isa 16:1), that Lamb who was led to the slaughter and did not open his mouth (Isa 53:7). Nor has meekness or truth alone sprung from the earth, but justice also, as the prophet says: "Drop down, you heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down the just one; let the earth be opened, and let it bud forth the Savior, and let justice arise together" (Isa 45:8). That justice is a lily, remember from Scripture, that "the just one shall bud forth like a lily and shall flourish forever before the Lord" (Hos 14:5). By no means does this lily today exist and tomorrow is cast into the oven, because it shall flourish forever. And it shall flourish before the Lord, in whose memory the just one shall be forever, and he shall not fear an evil report (Ps 112:6-7), namely that report by which sinners are commanded to go into the furnace of fire. Moreover, the whiteness of this lily, for whom does it not shine, except for him whom it does not please? Indeed it is a sun, but not the one that rises upon the good and the evil. For indeed those who shall say: "The sun of justice has not risen upon us" (Wis 5:6), never saw its light. But as many as heard saw: "For you who fear God, the sun of justice shall arise" (Mal 4:2). Therefore the whiteness of this lily is among the just; its fragrance is diffused even to the wicked, though not for their good. For we have heard the just saying that "we are the good odor of Christ in every place; but to some indeed the odor of life unto life, and to others the odor of death unto death" (2 Cor 2:15-16). Who, even the most wicked, does not approve the reputation of a just man, even though he does not love the work? And blessed is he, if he does not judge himself in that which he approves. But he does judge himself, approving the good and not loving it: and therefore he is plainly not blessed but wretched, condemned by his own judgment. What is more wretched than one to whom the odor of life is not the herald of life, but of death? Indeed not even a herald, but a bearer. 7. There are many other lilies besides these with the Bridegroom, which have occurred to us from the Prophet; I speak of truth, and meekness, and justice; nor will it be difficult now for any of you to find similar ones by yourself in the garden of so delightful a Bridegroom. He abounds and superabounds with such: who could enumerate them? Indeed as many virtues, so many lilies. What end of virtues is there with the Lord of virtues? But if there is a fullness of virtues in Christ, then also of lilies. And perhaps for this reason he called himself a lily, because he is wholly engaged among lilies, and all things that are his are lilies: his conception, his birth, his manner of life, his words, his miracles, his sacraments, his passion, his death, his resurrection, his ascension. Which of these is not white and not most sweetly fragrant? So great indeed was the brightness of heavenly light that shone forth in his conception from the abundance of the Spirit coming upon her, that not even the holy Virgin herself would have endured it, had she not been overshadowed by the power of the Most High. Moreover, his birth was made white by the uncorrupted virginity of his mother; his manner of life by the innocence of his life; his words by truth; his miracles by purity of heart; his sacraments by the mystery of godliness; his passion by the willingness to suffer; his death by the freedom of not dying; his resurrection by the fortitude of the martyrs; his ascension by the fulfillment of promises. How good is the odor of faith in each of these, filling the seasons and the inmost depths of us, we who did not see the whiteness! And blessed are they who have not seen and have believed (Jn 20:29). My portion in these is the odor of life which proceeds from them. This, infused into my nostrils by a certain fitting instrument of faith, and indeed more copiously on account of the multitude of lilies, both lightens my exile and continually renews the longing for my homeland in my inmost depths. 8. Certain companions of the Bridegroom also have lilies, but not in abundance. For all have received the Spirit in measure, virtues and gifts in measure; he alone has no measure (Jn 3:34), who has the whole. It is one thing to have lilies, another to have nothing but lilies. Whom will you give me from among the children of captivity so innocent and holy that he could have occupied his entire land with flowers, and flowers of this kind? Not even an infant of one day is without stain upon the earth (Job 14:4-5, according to the LXX). Great is the one who has been able to build up three or four lilies in his land, amid so great a density of thorns and thistles, which are the long-established sprouts of the ancient curse. But with me, who am poor, it goes well if ever from this most wretched crop, namely of iniquities and vices, I can reclaim by rooting out and cultivating so small a piece of my land, from which I might produce at least one lily, if perhaps he who feeds among the lilies might deign to feed sometimes even with me. 9. But I have said too little, one: from the poverty of my heart my mouth has spoken. One is utterly not sufficient; two at least are necessary. I mean continence and innocence: of which the one without the other will not save. In vain therefore shall I invite the Bridegroom to any one of these alone, since he is declared to feed not at a lily, but among lilies. I shall therefore give my effort to having lilies, lest he find fault with the singleness of a lily, he who wills to feed only among lilies, and so turn away in anger from his servant. I set innocence first of all: and if I shall have been able to join continence to it, I shall think myself rich in the possession of lilies. But I am a king if I can add to these a third, patience. And indeed those two can suffice; but because they can also fail in temptations, since the life of man upon earth is a trial (Job 7:1): there is need indeed of patience, which may be a certain guardian and keeper of both. I think, if that lover of lilies shall come and shall find it thus, he will not disdain to feed with us and to make his Passover with us: where there will be for him both much sweetness in the two, and great security on account of the third. But how he who feeds all things is said to feed, will be seen afterward. Now, however, it is clear that the Bridegroom not only appears among the lilies, but can by no means ever be found outside of lilies, since everything that is of him, and he himself, is a lily, the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“1. The end of the preceding sermon is the beginning of this one. The Bridegroom, then, is a lily, but not a lily among thorns, since he has no thorns who committed no sin. Indeed he declared the bride to be a lily among thorns; since even she, if she should say that she has no thorns, deceives herself, and the truth is not in her. But he professed himself indeed a flower and a lily, yet not among thorns. Rather he says: "I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys" (Song 2:1-2). And there is no mention of thorns, because he alone among men has no need to say: "I was turned in my affliction, while the thorn was fastened in me" (Ps 31:4). Therefore he is never without lilies, who is always without vices; because he is wholly and always radiant, beautiful in form beyond the sons of men (Ps 44:3). You therefore who hear or read these things, take care to have lilies in your possession, if you wish to have this dweller among lilies dwelling in you. Let your work, your pursuit, your desire: let a certain moral radiance and fragrance of the things themselves declare them to be lilies. Customs too have their colors, and they have their odors. For in spiritual things color and odor are not the same thing, no more than in bodily things. Therefore let conscience be consulted regarding the color, and reputation regarding the odor. "You have made our odor to stink before Pharaoh and his servants," say those men (Ex 5:21), speaking of opinion. Moreover, the intention of the heart and the judgment of conscience give color to your work. Vices are black, virtue is radiant. Between the one and the other, conscience, when consulted, discerns. The sentence of the Lord stands concerning the evil eye and the bright one (Mt 6:22-23), because he fixed certain boundaries between bright and black, and divided the light from the darkness. Therefore what proceeds from a pure heart and a good conscience is radiant, and is virtue; but if a good reputation has also followed, then it is a lily, since it lacks neither the radiance of a lily nor its fragrance. 2. Moreover virtue, even if not made greater on that account, is nevertheless made more beautiful and more illustrious. But if there is a blemish in the conscience, neither will that which proceeds from it be free from blemish. For if the root is in vice, so also is the branch. And accordingly, whatever it may be that a vitiated root produces from itself not without the transmission of vice — for example, a word, an action, a prayer — even if reputation seems to applaud, it is not something that ought to be called a lily; because even if the fragrance seems to agree, the color does not. For how can there be a lily with a blemish of impurity? Nor indeed will reputation be able to vindicate for virtue what conscience has convicted of being vice. Virtue will indeed be content with the radiance of conscience, where the fragrance of reputation cannot follow: but the fragrance of reputation will not suffice even to excuse the vice of a discolored conscience. Yet the man of virtue will always provide, so far as it lies in him, for good things, not only before God, but also before men (Rom 12:17), that he may truly be a lily. 3. But there is also a radiance of the soul that comes from the forgiveness of God, as he himself says through the prophet: "If your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made white as snow; and if they be red as a little worm, they shall be as white wool" (Isa 1:18). And there is a radiance which he puts on who shows mercy with cheerfulness. For if you look upon that man whom the Prophet depicts as a joyful man, who shows mercy and lends (Ps 111:5), does he not seem to you to have imparted from that very joyfulness of mind a certain radiance to the face, and equally to the work, of his compassion? Just as, on the other hand, if someone gives out of sadness and as if out of necessity, he displays in hand and countenance not a radiant but a gloomy color. And therefore God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor 9:7). Does he love a sad one? Surely he who looked upon Abel on account of the radiance of his eagerness, turned his face from Cain, because his countenance had fallen (Gen 4:4-5), namely from sadness and envy. Consider what kind of color sadness or envy has, which turns the gaze of God away from itself. Beautifully and elegantly, in coloring a good deed, the radiance of joyfulness was praised in that saying of the poet: "Above all things, kind looks were added" (Ovid, Metamorphoses VIII). And not only the cheerful giver, but also he who gives in simplicity (Rom 12:8), is loved by God. And simplicity is a radiance. We prove it from the contrary: for duplicity is a blemish. I have said too little: it is a stain. What is duplicity but deceit? But indeed he who has acted deceitfully in the sight of God, his iniquity has been found unto hatred (Ps 35:3). And therefore blessed is he to whom the Lord will not impute sin, nor is there deceit in his spirit (Ps 31:2). Beautifully the Lord marked both stains, deceit and sadness, in few words: "Do not become," he said, "like the hypocrites, sad" (Mt 6:16). The Bridegroom, therefore, since he is virtue, takes delight in virtues; and since he is a lily, he willingly dwells among lilies; and since he is radiance, he is delighted by radiant things. 4. And perhaps this is what is meant by being fed among the lilies: to be delighted by the radiance and fragrance of virtues. And indeed he was fed of old in bodily fashion at the home of Mary and Martha, reclining also in body among lilies (I speak of those women, for they were lilies), while no less he refreshed his spirit with the devotion and virtues of the women. And if at that hour a prophet had entered, or an angel, or any other spiritual being who was not unaware of what majesty was reclining there; would he not, astonished at the condescension and familiarity which he would perceive him to have with pure souls and chaste bodies, yet earthly and of the weaker sex, rightly have testified: "I have seen him not only dwelling, but also feeding among lilies"? So then according to both, I mean flesh and spirit, the Bridegroom was found to be fed among lilies. But I think that he in turn likewise fed them, but in the spirit. By this very fact that he was fed, how was he feeding? How, I ask, was he strengthening the timidity of the women, gladdening their humility, enriching their devotion? But if you have seen that for him to be fed is to feed; see now also, whether perhaps conversely to feed is for him to be fed. "Lord, who feeds me from my youth," says the holy patriarch Jacob (Gen 48:15). A good head of household, who takes care of his own domestics, especially in evil days, so that he may nourish them in famine, feeding them with the bread of life and understanding, and so nurturing them unto eternal life. But while he feeds, I believe, he is himself no less fed, and indeed with foods on which he gladly feasts — our progress. For the joy of the Lord is our strength. 5. So then both when he feeds he is fed, and when he is fed he feeds, at once refreshing us with his spiritual joy, and equally rejoicing in our spiritual progress. My repentance is his food, my salvation is his food, I myself am his food. Does he not eat ashes like bread? But I, because I am a sinner, am ashes, that I may be eaten by him. I am chewed when I am reproved, swallowed when I am instructed, cooked when I am changed, digested when I am transformed, made one when I am conformed. Do not marvel at this: he eats us, and is eaten by us, so that we may be more tightly bound to him. For we are not otherwise perfectly united to him. For if I eat and am not eaten, he will seem to be in me, but I am not yet in him. And if I am indeed eaten, but do not eat, he will seem to have me in himself, but not also to be in me; and there will not be perfect union in either one of these alone. But let him eat me, that he may have me in himself; and let him in turn be eaten by me, that he may be in me: so that the connection may be whole and firm, since I shall be in him and he will be no less in me. 6. Do you wish me to show you by a likeness what is being said? Raise your eyes now to a certain higher correspondence, yet similar to this one. If the Bridegroom himself were so in the Father that the Father was nevertheless not in him; or if the Father were so in him that he himself were not in the Father; I dare to say that even their unity would remain short of perfection, if indeed it would still be unity. But now since both he is in the Father and the Father is in him, there is no way for their unity to limp, but truly and perfectly he and the Father are one. So then let the soul, for whom it is good to cling to God (Ps 72:28), not consider itself perfectly united to him, unless it has perceived both him remaining in it and itself remaining in him. Not that even then it would be called one with God, in the way that the Father and the Son are one: although he who clings to God is one spirit (1 Cor 6:17). I have read this, but that other I have not read. I do not speak of myself, who am nothing, but plainly no one, unless he be mad, whether from earth or from heaven, will claim for himself that saying of the Only-Begotten: "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10:30). And yet I, though dust and ashes, relying indeed on the authority of Scripture, would by no means be afraid to say this, that I am one spirit with God — if ever, however, I shall have been persuaded by certain experiences that I cling to God after the manner of one of those who remain in charity, and through this remain in God, and God in them, eating God and eaten by God. For of such clinging I think it was said: "He who clings to God is one spirit." What then? The Son says: "I am in the Father, and the Father is in me" (Jn 14:11), and "we are one" (Jn 10:30); man says: "I am in God, and God is in me," and "we are one spirit." 7. But do the Father and the Son, in order to be in each other and accordingly one, eat each other, as God and man pass into each other by a certain mutual eating, being through this, even if not one thing, certainly one spirit? Far from it! For those two are not in each other in one and the same way as these, nor is the unity of both pairs one and the same. "One spirit" and "one thing": since neither can "one spirit" be fitting to the Father and the Son, nor can "one thing" be fitting to man and God. You, if you are wise, having taken this occasion, will be wiser, prudently observing that there indeed through "one thing" a unity of substance or nature is signified; but here through "one spirit" equally a unity, but therefore a far different one, because between the substances and natures of man and God, each has its own nature and its own substance, whereas it is established that the nature and substance of the Father and the Son is entirely one. You see that the former is not even a unity, if indeed it is compared to this singular and supreme unity. For how can there be unity where there is a plurality of natures, a diversity of substances? And yet the soul clinging to God is said to be, and is, one spirit with God; nor does the plurality of things prejudice this unity, which is made not by a confusion of natures but by a harmony of wills. On account of this also, many hearts are called one, and many souls one, as it is written: "The multitude of believers had one heart and one soul" (Acts 4:32). And this, then, is also a unity. 8. But what is it compared to that unity which does not consist in a uniting, but subsists in eternity? Plainly that unity is not produced by any mutual eating, as in this case, because it is not produced at all. For it simply is. Nor is it a conjunction, or a kind of composition, or anything of the sort, which does not belong to what is one. But the Father and the Son have a nature, essence, and will that is not only one but one thing. For their being is nothing other than their being their nature; their willing is nothing other than their being, or their being their nature. It is not, therefore, that the unity by which the Father and Son are one should be said to be made from natures or essences or wills, because there are not multiple ones; nor is it something that should be said even to come into being, because it simply is. For it is not fabricated, but native. The Father and the Son are in each other, not only in an ineffable but also in an incomprehensible manner, capable and containing each other; but so capable as to be not divisible, so containing as not to be participatory. For as the Church sings in a hymn: "In the Father the whole Son, and the whole Father in the Word" (Hymn for Monday at Matins). The Father is in the Son, in whom he has always been well pleased; and the Son is in the Father, from whom, as he was never not begotten, so he was never separated. Moreover, through charity man is in God and God is in man, as John says: "He who remains in charity remains in God, and God in him" (1 Jn 4:16). "One spirit" and "one thing": the difference between the two unities is also indicated; since indeed neither can "one spirit" be fitting to the Father and the Son, nor "one thing" to man and God. The Father and the Son cannot be called "one spirit," because the one is the Father and the other is the Son: yet they are called and are "one thing," because their substance is entirely one, and not each his own. On the contrary, man and God, because they are not of one substance or nature, cannot indeed be called "one thing," yet they are called "one spirit" in certain and absolute truth, if they cling to each other with the glue of love. Which unity indeed is made not so much by a coherence of essences, as by an agreement of wills. 9. It is clear, unless I am mistaken, not only the diversity but also the disparity of the two unities, the one existing in one essence, the other in diverse essences. What is so distant from itself as the unity of many and the unity of one? So between the two unities, as I have said, "one spirit" and "one thing" mark the distinction, because through "one thing" indeed in the Father and the Son a unity of essence is designated, but through "one spirit" between God and man not this, but a certain concordant piety of affections. Yet with an addition, the Father and the Son are most rightly called "one" as well; for instance, one God, one Lord, and whatever else is said of each in himself and not in relation to the other. For their divinity or majesty is not different, no more than their substance, or essence, or nature. For all these very things, if you consider piously, are not different or divided in them, but are one. I have said too little: they are one also with them. What of that unity by which many hearts are read as one, and many souls as one? It ought not, I think, to be reckoned worthy of the name of unity, when compared to this one, which does not unite many things, but singularly designates one. Therefore that unity is singular and supreme which does not consist in a uniting, but subsists in eternity. Nor does the aforementioned spiritual eating produce it, because it is not produced. It simply is. Much less should it be thought that any conjunction of essences or consensus of wills produces it, because there are not multiple ones. For theirs, as has been said, is one essence and one will; but for what is one there is no consensus, no composition, no coupling, or anything of the sort. There must be at least two wills for there to be consensus; and likewise two essences for there to be a conjunction or union through consensus. None of these exist in the Father and the Son, since they have neither two essences nor two wills. Each of these two things is one for them; or rather, as I recall having said above, these two things are one in them, one also with them; and through this they, as incomprehensibly so also immutably remaining in each other, are truly and singularly one. If, however, someone should say that there is a consensus between the Father and the Son, I do not contend, provided he understands not a union of wills, but a unity of will. 10. But God and man, because they stand and are distant in their own proper wills and substances, we sense to remain in each other in a far different manner, that is, not confused in substances, but concordant in wills. And this union is itself a communion of wills and a consensus in charity. Happy union, if you experience it; nothing at all, if you compare it. The voice of one who has experienced it: "But for me, to cling to God is good" (Ps 72:28). Good indeed, if you have clung in every respect. Who is he who perfectly clings to God, unless he who, remaining in God, as one beloved by God, has no less drawn God into himself by loving in return? Therefore when man and God cling to each other on every side (and they cling on every side when they are bound to each other by intimate and mutual love), through this I would unhesitatingly say that God is in man and man is in God. But man indeed has been in God from eternity, as one loved from eternity, if at least he is one of those who say that he loved and graced us in his beloved Son before the constitution of the world (Eph 1:4, 6); but God is in man from the time he is loved by man. And if this is so, man indeed is in God even when God is not yet in man; but God is not in a man who is not in God. For he cannot remain in love, even if perhaps he loves for a time without being loved; but one who is loved can also not yet love. Otherwise how will it stand that he himself first loved us? (1 Jn 4:10). Moreover, when he who was loved before now also loves, both man is in God and God is in man. But he who never loves, it is certain that he was never loved; and accordingly neither is he himself in God, nor God in him. Let these things be said to give the difference between that connection by which the Father and the Son are one, and that by which the soul clinging to God is one spirit, lest perhaps because it is read of man remaining in charity that he remains in God and God in him, and likewise of the Son that he is no less in the Father and the Father in him, the prerogative of the adopted and of the Only-Begotten should be thought equal. 11. Having settled these matters, then, we must return to him who is fed among the lilies, because the digression was made from there to this point: whether it was made idly, you will judge. And indeed I had already set down two meanings of the passage itself: either that he is fed by the virtues of the radiant ones, he who is virtue and radiance; or that he receives sinners to repentance in his body, which is the Church, for whom, in order to incorporate them into himself, he made himself sin, he who committed no sin, so that the body of sin might be destroyed, to which sinners had once been united, and that they might be justice in him, justified freely. 12. I set down yet a third interpretation which presents itself; and I think it will suffice not only for the explanation of the passage, but also for the conclusion of the sermon. The Word of God is truth, and he is the Bridegroom. You know this; hear the rest. When he is heard and not at all obeyed, he remains in the meantime empty and hungry in a certain way, altogether sad and complaining that he was put forth in vain. But if he has been obeyed, does not the word seem to you to have grown into a certain fullness, because to the word a work has been added, as if it were nourished by certain fruits of obedience, by the harvests of justice? Hence it is that he says in the Apocalypse: "Behold I stand at the door and knock: if anyone hears my voice and opens the door to me, I will enter in to him, and I will dine with him, and he with me" (Rev 3:20). This sense seems to be confirmed also by the sentence of the Lord in the prophet, where he says that his word will not return to him empty, but will prosper and will accomplish that for which he sent it (Isa 55:11). It will not return to me empty or hungry, he says, but as if prospering in all things, it will be sated by the good deeds of those who acquiesce in it with love. Indeed in common usage a word is said to be fulfilled when it has been consigned to effect: that is, it is for so long empty and lean, and in a certain way famished, until it is completed by a work. 13. But hear him say with what food he is nourished. "My food," he says, "is to do the will of my Father" (Jn 4:34). This is the word of the Word openly indicating that his food is a good deed — if, however, he has found it among lilies, that is, among virtues. Otherwise, if he has found it outside, even if the food seems good in itself, he who is fed among lilies will not touch it. For instance, he does not accept an alms from the hand of a plunderer or a usurer; but neither indeed from a hypocrite, who when he gives alms, has a trumpet sounded before him, so that he may be glorified by men. Nor will he in any way hear the prayer of him who loves to pray on the corners of the streets, so that he may be seen by men (Mt 6:2, 5). For the prayer of a sinner shall be execrable (Prov 28:9). In vain also does he offer his gift at the altar, who is conscious that his brother has something against him (Mt 5:23-24). Indeed he did not look upon the offerings of Cain (Gen 4:5), for the reason that he did not walk rightly with his brother. By the testimony of the holy prophet, he also abominated the sabbaths, and new moons, and sacrifices of the Jews, so that he openly declared that his soul hated them, and he said: "When you came before my face, who required these things from your hands?" I believe those hands did not smell of lilies, and therefore he who is accustomed to be fed among lilies, and not among thorns, rejected the gift from them. Why would they not have thorny hands, to whom he said: "Your hands are full of blood" (Isa 1:13-15)? And the hands of Esau were hairy, similar to thorny ones; and therefore they were not admitted to minister to the Holy One. 14. I fear that even among us there may be some whose gifts the Bridegroom does not accept, because they do not smell of lilies. For if on the day of my fasting my own will is found, the Bridegroom has not chosen such a fast, nor does my fasting please him which savors not of the lily of obedience but of the vice of self-will. And I say this not only of fasting, but of silence, of vigils, of prayer, of reading, of manual labor, and lastly of every observance of a monk: wherever his own will is found in it, and not the obedience of his master, I hold the same view. By no means at all would I consider those observances, even though good in themselves, to be reckoned among the lilies, that is, among the virtues; but he who is of this sort will hear from the prophet: "Is such the service that I have chosen, says the Lord?" And he will add: "On the day of your good works your own wills are found" (Isa 58:3-5). Self-will is a great evil, by which it comes about that your good things are not good for you. It is necessary, therefore, that such things as these become lilies, because he who is fed among lilies will taste absolutely nothing that has been contaminated by self-will. He is Wisdom, reaching everywhere on account of his purity, and nothing defiled enters into him (Wis 7:24-25). So then the Bridegroom loves to be fed among lilies, that is, in clean and bright hearts. But for how long? "Until the day breathes and the shadows decline." This is a shadowy and dense place: let us not enter this forest of a profound sacrament except in the clear light of day. For already as I have been discoursing too long, the day has declined; and we are unwillingly torn away from these lilies. Nor have I been overcome by the length, from which the fragrance of the flowers was removing all weariness. A little bit seems to remain of the present chapter. But that little bit is too hidden, just as are all the other things of this canticle. But he who reveals mysteries will be present, as I trust, when we begin to knock: and he will not close the mouths of those who speak of him, he whose custom it is rather to open what is closed — the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“1. "My beloved to me, and I to him" (Song 2:16). Thus far the words of the Bridegroom. May he himself be present, so that worthily, to his own glory and for the salvation of ourselves, we may be able to search out the words of his Bride. For they are not such as can be considered and examined by us, as would be worthy, unless he himself shall have been the guide of the word. For they are as sweet in grace as they are fruitful in meaning, and indeed as profound in mysteries. To what shall I liken them? To some one dish of a feast, which excels with a certain threefold grace: delicious in flavor, solid in nourishment, efficacious as medicine. So, I say, so each and every word of the Bride: both from the fact that it sounds sweetly, it soothes the affection; and from the richness of its meanings it fattens and nourishes the mind; and from the depth of its mysteries, while it exercises the understanding more, it terrifies it more, and in a wondrous way heals the swelling of inflating knowledge. For if any one of those who seem to themselves to be learned shall have given himself rather curiously to the scrutiny of these words, when he has seen the powers of his intellect succumb and has perceived every understanding reduced to captivity, will he not, humbled, be compelled to that utterance, so that he says: "Your knowledge has become wonderful beyond me; it is strengthened, and I cannot attain to it" (Ps 138:6)? And now indeed, what a mark of sweetness does the beginning of her words set forth! For see what a beginning she has given. "My beloved," she says, "to me, and I to him." The utterance seems simple, since it sounds sweetly; but about this more will be seen later. 2. Now indeed she begins from love, she continues about the beloved, indicating that she knows nothing else except the beloved. It is clear whom the discourse concerns; but with whom, not so. For it is not permitted to feel as though it were with him, since he himself is no longer present. Nor is this doubtful: for soon she seems to call him back, and as if to cry out after him from behind: "Return," she says, "my beloved." Whence we are led to conjecture nothing other than that, his words being finished, he has again in his manner absented himself, and she has remained speaking nonetheless about him, who is never absent from her. So it is: she retained on her lips him who did not depart from her heart, not even when he was departing. For what goes out from the mouth comes from the heart, and from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Lk 6:45). Therefore she speaks of the beloved, as one truly beloved and truly worthy of being loved, because she loves much. We ask with whom she speaks: for about whom, we know. And no one occurs to us, unless perhaps the young maidens, who cannot be absent from their mother when the Bridegroom has departed. But it is better, as I think, to understand her as having spoken rather with herself and not with another, especially since the speech itself is found to be broken and not fully connected, plainly insufficient for giving understanding to a hearer, on account of which we especially speak with one another. "My beloved to me," she says, "and I to him." Nothing more? The discourse hangs; nay, it does not hang, but it fails. The hearer is held in suspense, not instructed, but raised up. 3. What is this that she says, "He to me, and I to him"? We do not know what she is saying, because we do not feel what she feels. O holy soul, what is he, your beloved, to you, and what are you to him? What, I ask, is this exhibition and return of favor, running back and forth between you so familiarly and so favorably? He to you, and you in turn to him. But what? Are you the same thing to him that he is to you, or something different? If you speak to us, if you speak to our understanding, declare plainly what you feel. How long do you hold our souls in suspense? Or according to the prophet, is your secret yours alone? (Is 24:16.) So it is: affection has spoken, not understanding, and therefore not for the understanding. For what then? For nothing, except that, having been wonderfully delighted and vehemently moved by the desired words, when he had made an end, she could neither be altogether silent nor yet express what she felt. For she did not speak thus in order to express it, but lest she should be silent. From the abundance of the heart the mouth has spoken, but not in proportion to the abundance. Affections have their own voices, through which they betray themselves even when they are unwilling: fear, for example, has timid voices; grief, voices of groaning; love, joyful voices. Surely the lamentations of those who are grieving, or the sobs and sighs of those who are sorrowful, the sudden and wild cries of those who are struck or of those who are frightened, or even the belching of those who are sated -- does custom create these, or reason excite them, or deliberation order them, or premeditation form them? It is certain that things of this kind go forth not by a nod of the mind, but burst forth by an impulse. So a burning and vehement love, especially a divine one, when it cannot contain itself within itself, does not attend to the order, the rule, or the sequence or fewness of words in which it may boil over, provided that from this it feels no detriment to itself. Sometimes it does not require words, sometimes it requires no voices at all, content with sighs alone for this. Hence it is that the Bride, burning with holy love, and that in an incredible manner, indeed for the sake of catching any slight evaporation of the ardor that she suffers, does not consider what or how she may speak: but whatever has come to her mouth, with love pressing, she does not enunciate but belches forth. And why should she not belch, so refreshed and so replenished? 4. Go over the text of this nuptial song from its very beginning up to this point, and see if so great an abundance of his presence was ever indulged to her as on this occasion in all the visitations and addresses of the Bridegroom; and if she has ever received from his mouth not only so many but also so delightful discourses. She, then, who had filled her desire with good things, what wonder if she made a belch rather than a word? And if it seems to you that she has made a word, consider it belched forth and not prepared or preordained. For the Bride does not consider it robbery to apply to herself the saying of the Prophet: "My heart has belched forth a word" (Ps 44:2), being filled indeed with the same Spirit. "My beloved to me, and I to him." It has no logical sequence; the sentence is lacking. What of it? It is a belch. What do you seek in a belch -- the junctures of sentences, the proprieties of diction? What rules or regulations do you impose upon your own belch? It does not receive your moderation, it does not await composition from you, it does not require convenience, it does not seek opportunity. By itself from the inmost parts, not only when you do not will it, but even when you do not know it, it bursts forth, torn out rather than sent forth. Nevertheless, a belch carries an odor, sometimes good, sometimes bad, according to the contrary qualities of the vessels from which it ascends. Finally, "a good man from a good treasure brings forth good, and an evil man evil" (Mt 12:35). The Bride of my Lord is a good vessel, and good is the odor from her. 5. I give thanks to you, Lord Jesus, who have deigned to admit me at least to the smelling. Yes, Lord, for even the little dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters (Mt 15:27). To me, I confess, the belch of your beloved smells good, and from her fullness, however small a portion, I receive gratefully. She belches forth for me the memory of the abundance of your sweetness, and I have caught the scent of something ineffable of your condescension and love in this utterance: "My beloved to me, and I to him." Let her, as is worthy, feast and exult in your sight, and delight in gladness: yet so let her exceed for you, that she may be sober for us. Let her, then, be filled with the good things of your house, and let her be given to drink from the torrent of your pleasure: but, I ask, let at least a thin odor reach me, a poor man, as she belches forth, when she has been sated. Moses belched well for me, and the odor in his belch was good, the odor of creating power: "In the beginning," he says, "God created the heaven and the earth" (Gen 1:1). Isaiah belched well: for he gave the most sweet odor of redeeming mercy, belching thus: "He delivered his soul unto death, and was reckoned with the transgressors, and he himself bore the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors" (Is 53:12), that they might not perish. What equally smells of mercy? Good also was the belch from the mouth of Jeremiah; good from David, who says: "My heart has belched forth a good word." They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and belching they filled all things with goodness. You ask for the belch of Jeremiah? I have not forgotten; I was just now preparing it. "It is good to wait with silence for the salvation of the Lord" (Lam 3:26). It is his, if I am not mistaken; bring it to your nostrils; the sweetness of rewarding justice, which it carries, surpasses balsam. He wants me, patient for the sake of justice, to await the reward in the future, not to receive it in the present, because the reward of justice, salvation, is not of the world but of the Lord. "If he makes a delay," he says, "wait for him" (Hab 2:3); and do not murmur, because it is good to wait with silence. Therefore I will do what he exhorts; I will wait for the Lord my Savior. 6. But I am a sinner, and still a great journey remains for me, because salvation is far from sinners. I will not murmur, however: in the odor I will meanwhile console myself. "The just man shall rejoice in the Lord," experiencing by taste what I perceive by smell. What the just man beholds, the sinner awaits; and the awaiting is the smelling. For "the expectation of the creature," he says, "awaits the revelation of the sons of God" (Rom 8:19). Moreover, to behold is to taste and to see that the Lord is sweet. Or rather, is the just man blessed who awaits and who already holds? For "the expectation of the just is gladness" (Prov 10:28). For the sinner awaits nothing. And he is a sinner on this account: that, not only detained but also content with present goods, he awaits nothing for the future, deaf to that voice: "Wait for me, says the Lord, in the day of my resurrection in the future" (Zeph 3:8). And therefore Simeon was just, because he was waiting for and already smelling Christ in the spirit, whom he did not yet adore in the flesh. And he was blessed in his expectation, because through the odor of expectation he arrived at the taste of contemplation. Finally he says: "And my eyes have seen your salvation" (Lk 2:25). Just also was Abraham, who himself awaited to see the day of the Lord, and was not confounded by his expectation; for he saw and rejoiced (Jn 8:56). Just were the apostles when they heard: "And you yourselves be like men waiting for their master" (Lk 12:36). 7. Why should David not also be just, when he was saying: "Waiting I waited for the Lord"? (Ps 39:2.) He is the fourth among the number of my aforementioned belchers, whom I had almost passed over. It is not fitting indeed. He opened his mouth and drew in the spirit (Ps 118:131), and being sated he not only belched but also sang. Good Jesus! How great a sweetness this one poured into my nostrils and ears in his belch and song, of the oil of gladness with which God, your God, anointed you above your companions: of myrrh and stacte and cassia from your garments, from ivory palaces, from which the daughters of kings have delighted you in your honor! (Ps 44:8-10.) Would that you might deign to meet me with so great a prophet and friend of yours on a day of solemnity and gladness, when he shall go forth from your bridal chamber, singing his nuptial song on a joyful psaltery with the harp, abounding in delights, sprinkled and sprinkling all things with the aromatic dust of this kind! On that day, or rather in that hour: for it is an hour if it ever is, and perhaps not even an hour, but half an hour, according to that Scripture: "There was silence in heaven for about half an hour" (Rev 8:1): therefore in that hour my mouth will be filled with joy, and my tongue with exultation, while I feel that each -- I do not say each psalm, but each verse -- is a belch, and indeed more fragrant than all spices. What is more fragrant than the belch of John, which smells to me of the eternity, generation, and divinity of the Word? What shall I say of the belches of Paul, with how great a sweetness they have filled the world? For "he was the good odor of Christ in every place" (2 Cor 2:14-15). The ineffable words, even if he does not bring them forth for me to hear, he nevertheless offers them so that I may desire, and it may be pleasing to smell what it is not permitted to hear (2 Cor 12:4). For I know not by what means, the more they lie hidden, the more they please, and the more eagerly we gape after what is denied. But now observe in the Bride a similar thing: how, in the likeness of Paul, in the present chapter, she neither opens the secret nor passes over it untouched, granting something as it were to our sense of smell, which she may have judged not to be fitting for the taste at this time, either on account of our unworthiness, or on account of our incapacity. 8. "My beloved to me, and I to him." What is not in doubt is that in this place the mutual love of two burns; but in the love, the supreme happiness is assuredly of the one, the wondrous condescension of the other. For this agreement or embrace is not between equals. Moreover, as to what she may glory in from this prerogative of love -- what has been bestowed upon her and what has been repaid in turn by her -- who presumes that he clearly knows, unless one who by an extraordinary purity of mind and sanctity of body shall have merited to experience something of this kind in himself? The thing lies in the affections; nor is it reached by reason, but by conformity. How few indeed are those who say: "But we, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor 3:18). 9. But so that what is read may be reduced to some form of understanding, however humble: with the Bride's own singular secret being reserved, to which for now it is not given to approach, especially for such as we are; something must indeed be set forth for us, all the more fitted to the common sense as it is more familiar, which may give both consequence to the words and understanding to little ones. And to me indeed it seems sufficient for our rough and in some way popular understanding, if in saying "My beloved to me," we supply the word "attends"; so that the sense may be: "My beloved attends to me, and I to him." Although even so I was neither the only one to have perceived this, nor the first, since the Prophet before me had said: "Waiting I waited for the Lord, and he attended to me." You have clearly the attention of the Lord to the Prophet: you have also the Prophet's to the Lord in the fact that he says: "Waiting I waited." For he who waits attends, and to wait is to attend. The meaning is altogether the same, nearly the same words, in the Prophet as in the Bride; but by the Prophet they are transposed. For he placed first what she placed last, and conversely. 10. Moreover, the Bride has spoken more rightly, and not putting forward merit but setting forth the benefit first, and confessing that she has been preceded by the grace of the beloved. Rightly indeed. For "who has first given to him, and it shall be recompensed to him?" (Rom 11:35.) Finally, hear John, what he perceived in his Epistle on this matter. "In this is love," he says, "not as though we have loved God, but that he first loved us" (1 Jn 4:10). The Prophet, however, even if he was silent about the anticipation of grace, did not deny the following thereof: plainly he was not silent. But receive in another place his more certain confession concerning this matter. "And your mercy," he says (he was speaking to the Lord), "will follow me all the days of my life" (Ps 22:6). Hear also concerning the anticipation, his no less certain and manifest knowledge. "My God," he says, "his mercy will anticipate me" (Ps 58:11); likewise to the Lord: "Quickly," he says, "let your mercies anticipate us, for we have become exceedingly poor" (Ps 78:8). Beautifully the Bride later, if I am not mistaken, places these same words not in the same order, but she too follows the order of the Prophet, speaking in this manner: "I to my beloved, and my beloved to me." Why so? Surely so that she may then prove herself the more full of grace, when she shall have given all to grace, and ascribed to it, of course, both the first and the last parts. Otherwise, how full of grace, if she has anything that is not from grace? There is no place for grace to enter where merit has already occupied. Therefore the full confession of grace marks the fullness of grace itself in the soul of the one confessing. For if anything of one's own is present, to that extent grace must yield to it. Whatever you assign to merits is lacking to grace. I do not want the merit that excludes grace. I shudder at whatever is of my own, insofar as it makes me my own, except that perhaps that is more mine which makes me mine. Grace returns me to myself, justified freely, and so freed from the servitude of sin. For where the Spirit is, there is liberty. 11. O foolish Bride, the Synagogue, who despising the justice of God, that is, the grace of her Bridegroom, and wishing to establish her own, has not been subject to the justice of God! On this account the wretched one has been repudiated, and is no longer the Bride; but the Church, to whom it is said: "I have betrothed you to myself in faith; I have betrothed you to myself in judgment and justice; I have betrothed you to myself in mercy and in compassions" (Hos 2:19-20). "Nor did you choose me, but I chose you"; nor did I find your merits in order to choose you, but I anticipated them. Therefore in faith I betrothed you to myself, and not in the works of the law; and I betrothed you in justice, but the justice which is from faith, not from the law. It remains that you judge a right judgment between me and you, the judgment in which I betrothed you, where it is established that not your merit but my good pleasure intervened. But this is the judgment: that you do not exalt your merits, do not put forward the works of the law, do not boast of the burden of the day and the heat, you who are known to have been betrothed rather in faith and in the justice which is from faith, and no less in mercy and in compassions. 12. She who is truly the Bride recognizes these things and confesses both graces: first indeed, that which is first, by which she was also anticipated; and afterward, the subsequent one as well. And so she says now: "My beloved to me, and I to him"; assigning the beginning to the beloved. In what follows: "I," she says, "to my beloved, and my beloved to me"; granting the consummation to him equally. Now let us see what she says: "My beloved to me." For if this is accepted so that we supply "attends," as we have already said, and as the Prophet says: "Waiting I waited for the Lord, and he attended to me": I perceive in this word something not at all small, and of no ordinary prerogative. But a matter worthy of all eagerness is not to be thrust upon wearied ears and minds. If it is not burdensome, let it be deferred, and not for long; let tomorrow's sermon begin from there. Only pray that from rushing occupations the grace and mercy of the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God over all things blessed forever, may meanwhile guard us. Amen.”

“1. Hear now what we deferred yesterday, hear my joy which I have felt. And it is yours: hear it rejoicing. In one word of the bride I felt this, and as it were caught the scent of something hidden, to be set forth for you today all the more festively, inasmuch as it comes more seasonably. The bride has spoken, and she said that the bridegroom attends to her. Who is the bride, and who is the bridegroom? He is our God: and she, if I dare say it, is we ourselves, together indeed with the remaining multitude of captives, whom he himself knows. Let us rejoice: this is our glory; we are those to whom God attends. How great, however, is the disparity. What are the earthborn and the sons of men before him? According to the prophet, so they are as though they were not, and as nothing and emptiness are they accounted by him (Isa 40:17). What then does this comparison between ones so unequal mean? Either she glories beyond measure, or he loves beyond measure. How admirable it is that she claims his attention for herself as though it were her own, saying: "My beloved is mine"! Nor content with this, she proceeds to glory further, that she responds to him as though from an equal standing, that she complies, that she repays in kind. For there follows: "And I am his" (Song 2:16). A bold word, "and I am his." No less bold, "my beloved is mine": except that bolder than either is both together. 2. O what does a pure heart dare, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned! "He attends to me," she says. Is it so, that that majesty, upon which the governance and administration alike of the universe falls, is attentive to this one; and the care of the ages is transferred to the sole business, or rather the sole leisure, of this love and desire? It is plainly so. For she is the Church of the elect, concerning whom the Apostle says: "All things for the sake of the elect" (2 Tim 2:10). And who doubts that the grace and mercy of God is upon his saints, and his regard upon his elect? (Wis 4:15). Therefore we do not deny providence to the other creatures: but the bride claims the care for herself. "Does God care about oxen?" (1 Cor 9:9). Nor is there any doubt that we can say the same of horses, of camels, of elephants, and of all the beasts of the earth: likewise also of the fish of the sea, and the birds of the sky; lastly, of every thing that is upon the earth, with the sole exception of those to whom it is said: "Casting all your care upon him, for he himself cares for you" (1 Pet 5:7). Does it not seem to you as if it were said in these words: Attend to him, because he himself attends to you? And observe whether the apostle Peter (for they are his words) did not himself also observe the order of the bride's words. For he does not say: "Casting all your care upon him, so that he may care for you"; but "because he himself cares for you": openly showing thereby that the Church of the saints is not only how beloved, but also that she was beloved first. 3. It is established that the word which the Apostle spoke about oxen does not pertain to her: for he who loved her and gave himself for her has care of her. Is not this that wandering sheep, whose care was set above even the care of the flocks above? At length, those having been set aside, the shepherd descended to this one, sought her diligently, and when found did not lead her back but carried her back: he brought into the heavens new festivities of joy with her and on her account, the peoples of the angels having been invited to the solemnity (Lk 15:4-7, 10). What then? He deigned to carry her back on his own shoulders; and will he not have care of her? Therefore she is not ashamed to say: "The Lord is concerned for me" (Ps 39:18). Nor does she consider herself to err when she likewise says: "The Lord will repay on my behalf" (Ps 137:8); and if there is anything else of the kind that seems to signify the care of God concerning her. Hence it is that she calls the Lord of hosts her beloved, and glories that he who judges all things with tranquillity (Wis 12:18) attends to her. Why should she not glory? She has heard him saying to her: "Can a mother forget, so as not to have mercy on the son of her womb? And even if she should forget, yet I will not forget you" (Isa 49:15). Finally, "the eyes of the Lord are upon the just" (Ps 33:16). And what is the bride, if not the congregation of the just? What is she, if not a generation of those seeking the Lord, seeking the face of the bridegroom? For he does not attend to her without her attending to him. Therefore she sets down both, saying: "He is mine, and I am his." He is mine, because he is kind and merciful; I am his, because I am not ungrateful. He attends to me with grace upon grace, I to him with grace for grace; he to my liberation, I to his honor; he to my salvation, I to his will; he is mine, and not another's, since I am his one dove; I am his, and not another's: for I do not hear the voice of strangers; nor do I acquiesce to those who say to me: "Behold, here is Christ"; or, "Behold, there he is" (Mk 13:21). Thus speaks the Church. 4. What of each single one of us? Do we think there is anyone among us to whom what is said can be fitted? What did I say, among us? But even concerning anyone at all established within the Church, if someone should ask this, I would not consider it altogether to be censured. For the account of one is not the same as that of many. For it was not on account of one soul, but on account of many to be gathered into one Church, to be bound together into a single bride, that God both did and endured so many things, when he worked salvation in the midst of the earth. That most dear one is one for one, not clinging to another bridegroom, not yielding to another bride. What would she not dare with so ambitious a lover? What would she not hope from him, who sought her from heaven, called her from the ends of the earth? Nor did he merely seek her, but he acquired her. Consider also the manner of the acquisition, in the blood of the acquirer. But otherwise, as is her wont, she presumes all the more on this account, because looking forward into the future she is not ignorant that the Lord has need of her. You ask for what? For seeing in the goodness of his elect, for rejoicing in the joy of his nation, that he may be praised with his inheritance (Ps 105:5). Nor should you consider this a small work: no work, I tell you, will remain perfect if this one should waver. Does not the end of all things depend on the state and consummation of the Church? Take this away, and in vain does the lower creation await the revelation of the sons of God. Take this away, and neither the patriarchs nor any of the prophets will be made perfect, since Paul asserts that God so provided for us, that without us they should not be made perfect (Heb 11:40). Take this away, and the glory of the holy angels themselves will limp on account of the incompleteness of their number, and the city of God will not rejoice in its own integrity. 5. Whence then shall the purpose of God be fulfilled, and the mystery of his will, and that great sacrament of piety? Whence lastly will you give me infants and sucklings, from whose mouth God may perfect his praise? (Ps 8:3). Heaven does not have infants; the Church has them, to whom she also says: "I gave you milk to drink, not solid food" (1 Cor 3:2). And these are invited by the Prophet to complete the praise, as it were, saying: "Praise the Lord, you children" (Ps 112:1). Do you think our God will have the full praise of his glory, until those come who in the sight of the angels may sing to him: "We rejoiced for the days in which you humbled us, for the years in which we saw evil"? (Ps 89:15). This kind of joy the heavens have not known, except through the children of the Church; no one ever rejoices in this way, who never does not rejoice. Fittingly does joy come after sadness, rest after labor, a harbor after shipwreck. Security pleases all, but more so him who has feared. Light is delightful to all, but more delightful to one escaping from the power of darkness. To have passed from death to life doubles the grace of life. This is my portion in the heavenly banquet, and set apart from the blessed spirits themselves. I dare to say that the blessed life itself is without experience of my blessedness, unless it deigns to confess that through charity it enjoys it in me and through me. Something indeed seems to have been added to that very perfection from me, and this not a little. For the angels rejoice at the repentance of a sinner. But if my tears are the delights of the angels, what are their own delights? Their whole work is to praise God: but something is wanting to the praise, if those are lacking who say: "We passed through fire and water, and you brought us out into refreshment" (Ps 65:12). 6. Happy therefore in her universality is the Church, whose every boasting is unequal to its cause, not only for those things which have already been done for her, but also for those which must yet be done concerning her. For why should she be anxious about merits, when a firmer and more secure ground of boasting lies at hand in the purpose of God? God cannot deny himself, nor can he fail to do what he has already done, as it is written, "who has done the things that are to come" (Isa 46:10). He will do it, he will do it, nor will God be wanting to his own purpose. Thus there is no reason for you to ask by what merits we may hope for good things, especially since you hear from the prophet: "Not for your sake, but for my own sake I will do it, says the Lord" (Ezek 36:22). It suffices for merit to know that merits do not suffice. But as it is enough for merit not to presume upon merits, so to be without merits is enough for judgment. Furthermore, none of the reborn infants is without merits, but they have the merits of Christ. Those, however, render themselves unworthy of these, who have not been unable but have neglected to join their own. Which danger indeed belongs to those already of adult age. Therefore take care to have merits; once you have them, know that they were given; hope for the fruit, which is the mercy of God: and you will have escaped every danger of poverty, of ingratitude, and of presumption. Pernicious is the poverty that is a penury of merits; but presumption of spirit is deceitful riches. And therefore "give me neither riches nor poverty, Lord," says the Wise Man (Prov 30:8). Happy is the Church, which lacks neither merits without presumption, nor presumption without merits. She has that on which to presume, but not merits: she has merits, but for deserving, not for presuming. Is not this very not-presuming itself a deserving? Therefore she presumes the more securely, inasmuch as she does not presume: and there is nothing by which she should be confounded in the word of glory, for whom there is ample matter for glorying. The mercies of the Lord are many, and his truth endures forever. 7. Why should she not glory in security, in testimony of whose glory mercy and truth have met together? (Ps 84:11). Whether she says: "My beloved is mine"; or whether she says: "With expectation I waited for the Lord, and he attended to me"; or whether: "The Lord is concerned for me" (Ps 39:2, 18); or if there are any other voices of this kind, which seem likewise to express a certain divine affection and singular favor toward something: she will consider none of these foreign to herself, whose ground for presuming is the decree of the Lord, especially since she sees no other bride, no other Church, to whom can be done the things that cannot not be done. Therefore concerning the Church it is clear that she will not hesitate to apply all those things to herself in any respect. Concerning a single soul the question is also asked, whether, if she is spiritual and holy, it is in any way permissible for her to dare such things. For she will not arrogate to herself all the prerogatives of that one catholic multitude, on account of which all things are done, she being one of the multitude, however eminent she may be in holiness. And therefore with greater difficulty, as I sense it, will it be found, if indeed it is found, how this can be permissible. Whence I consider it necessary that this be attempted in another sermon, and that we not now enter upon the paths of a thorny disputation, whose exit we still do not know, unless first prayer concerning the hidden word shall have been made to him who opens and no one shuts, the bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“"My beloved to me, and I to him." The preceding discourse assigned this voice to the universal Church, on account of the promises of life made to her by God, both of the life which now is and of the life to come; the question now before us concerns the individual soul, because one soul cannot arrogate to itself what the whole body dares to claim, nor in any way draw that claim to itself. If it is not permitted, let us therefore refer it to the Church in such a way that it applies by no means to a single person; and not only this voice, but also the remaining voices similar to it, speaking great things. But if anyone thinks it is permitted, I do not refuse; yet it matters to whom: for it is not permitted to just anyone. Assuredly the Church of God has her spiritual ones, who not only faithfully, but also confidently deal in this matter, speaking with God as with a friend, their conscience bearing witness to the glory that is his. Who they are is known to God alone; but you, hear what manner of person you ought to be, if you wish to be such. What I shall say, however, is not as one who has experienced it, but as one who desires to experience it. Give me a soul loving nothing besides God, and that which is to be loved on account of God; for whom to live is Christ, not only now but for a long time already; whose study and leisure it is to set the Lord always before its sight; whose one will—not to say great will—and whose capacity it is to walk carefully with the Lord its God: give me, I say, such a soul, and I do not deny it worthy of the Bridegroom's care, of the regard of his majesty, of the favor of him who rules, of the solicitude of him who governs; and if it should wish to glory, it will not be foolish, provided that he who glories, glories in the Lord. Thus in what many dare, one also dares, but for a different reason. How great, do you think, is the grace of familiarity that arises from this abiding between the soul and the Word, how great the confidence that follows from the familiarity? It is not, I think, that such a soul should any longer be afraid to say: "My beloved to me"; for from the fact that it feels itself loving, and loving vehemently, it does not doubt that it is loved no less vehemently in return; and from its own singular intention, solicitude, care, effort, diligence, and zeal, with which it incessantly and ardently watches over how to please God, it recognizes without doubt all these same things equally in him, remembering his promise: "In what measure you shall have measured, it shall be measured to you again"; except that the prudent Bride is more cautious in drawing the requital of grace to her own side, knowing that she was rather preceded by the beloved. Hence it is that she puts forward his work first: "My beloved," she says, "to me, and I to him." Therefore from her own dispositions she recognizes what is in God; nor does she doubt that she is loved, she who loves. So it is. The love of God begets the love of the soul, and his preceding intention makes the soul intent, and his solicitude makes it solicitous. For I know not by what closeness of nature, once the soul shall have been able to behold the glory of God with face unveiled, it is necessary that it soon be conformed to it and transformed into the same image. Therefore, as you shall have prepared yourself for God, so it is necessary that God appear to you. "With the holy he will be holy, and with the innocent man he will be innocent." Why not equally with one who loves, a lover; and with one who is at leisure, at leisure; and with one who is intent, intent; and solicitous with one who is solicitous? For indeed he says: "I love those who love me, and those who watch for me at dawn will find me." You see how he not only makes you certain of his love, if indeed you love him, but also of his solicitude, which he bears for you, if he has perceived you solicitous for him. Do you watch? He also watches. Rise up in the night at the beginning of your watches, hasten to anticipate even the watches themselves as much as you will; you will find him, you will not precede him. Rashly in such a matter you attribute to yourself something either prior or greater; he both loves more and loved before. If the soul knows this, nay because it knows it, do you marvel that it glories that that majesty, as if caring for nothing else, attends to it alone, to whom alone, all other cares set aside, it keeps itself with total devotion? This discourse desires an end; but one thing I say to those among you who are spiritual, a thing wondrous indeed but true: the soul that sees God sees no differently than as if it alone were seen by God. Therefore with this confidence it says that he attends to it, and it to him, seeing nothing besides itself and him. You are good, O Lord, to the soul that seeks you! You meet it, you embrace it, you show yourself as Bridegroom, you who are Lord, nay who are God blessed above all things forever.”

“1. "My beloved is mine, and I am his, who feeds among the lilies: until the day breathes, and the shadows decline" (Song 2:16-17). Only the last part of this chapter remains to be treated, and I hesitate at the very entrance as to which of the two preceding parts I should most fittingly join it to: for I can indifferently assign it to either. For whether you say: "My beloved is mine, and I am his until the day breathes, and the shadows decline," with only "who feeds among the lilies" interposed; or following the order of the text, "who feeds among the lilies, until the day breathes, and the shadows decline": you assign it not unfittingly to either. This indeed matters, that if you join "until" to the first, you must understand it as inclusive; if to the middle part, you must take it as exclusive. Suppose, for example, that the Bridegroom indicates that he will then feed among the lilies when the day has breathed: will he likewise also cease to attend to the bride, or she to him? Far from it! They will persevere with each other forever, except that then more happily, because more intensely; then more intensely, because more freely. Let this "until," therefore, be of the same kind as that one in Matthew, where it is narrated that Joseph did not know Mary until she bore her firstborn son (Mt 1:25): for neither did he know her afterward. Or certainly of the same kind as that in the psalm: "Our eyes are toward the Lord our God, until he have mercy on us" (Ps 122:2): for they will not be turned away when he begins to have mercy. Or like that saying of the Lord to the apostles: "Behold I am with you even to the consummation of the age" (Mt 28:20): for neither will he afterward not be with them. But this holds true only if you refer "until" to "my beloved is mine, and I am his." If, however, you prefer it to look to "who feeds among the lilies," it will have to be taken in another sense. Moreover, it will be shown with more labor how the beloved then ceases to feed when the day has breathed. For indeed if that day is the day of the resurrection, why would it not all the more delight him to feed among lilies there, where there will be a far greater abundance of them? And let these things be said for the sake of fitting the sequence of the text. 2. Now attend with me: although the whole kingdom is gleaming with lilies, and the Bridegroom is in their midst and delighting, nevertheless there is no reason to say that he also feeds, at least not in the way he was accustomed to before. For where now are the sinners whom Christ might incorporate into himself, chewed and bitten, as it were, by certain teeth of more austere discipline, namely by affliction of the flesh and contrition of the heart? But neither will the Word the Bridegroom any longer demand food for himself from any deeds or works of obedience, where all business is leisure, and the whole matter will consist solely in contemplation and love. And indeed his food is to do the will of his Father; but here, not there. For what would he do with what is already done? And it is established that it will then be perfect. For then at last it is for all the saints to prove what is the good and well-pleasing and perfect will of God. And certainly after what is perfect, nothing remains to be done. It remains henceforth to enjoy, not to be made; to experience, not to labor; to live by it, not to be exercised in it. Is this not the very thing which, taught indeed by the Lord, we ask with the most urgent prayer to be accomplished on earth as it is in heaven (Mt 6:10), so that the fruit of it may now delight, and the doing of it not weary? Therefore there will be no food of work for the Bridegroom the Word, because every work must necessarily cease where wisdom is more fully perceived by all. For those who are lessened in action perceive it (Sir 38:25). 3. But let us see now whether what we say can stand also according to that interpretation by which to feed among the lilies is taken by some to mean to be delighted by the radiance of virtues; for we too did not pass over that interpretation among the others. Shall we say either that virtues will not exist then, or that they will not please the Bridegroom? To hold either of these is madness. But see whether perhaps he may be delighted by them in another way; for it is certain that he is delighted, but perhaps by drink rather than by food. Indeed in this time and in this body, no virtue of ours will be so purified to clarity, none so sweet and pure, as to be fit for the Bridegroom to drink. But he who wills all men to be saved overlooks much, and what he cannot meanwhile swallow with the ease of drinking, he takes care to extract from it at least something savory, as if by a certain art and labor of chewing. The time will come when virtue will be drinkable, and it will not be crushed by the tooth, nor will it be wearied by the one chewing — or rather, it will not weary the one chewing — for it will delight the one drinking without any labor, just as a drink, not as food. For in the Gospel you have him pledging: "I will not drink of this fruit of the vine," he says, "until I drink it new with you in the kingdom of my Father" (Mt 26:29). And of food there is no mention. But also in the Prophet it is read: "Like a mighty man intoxicated with wine" (Ps 77:65); but of food nothing at all is found there. The bride, therefore, conscious of this mystery, having perceived and testified that the beloved feeds among the lilies, set a term for how long he would deign to do so — or rather, she recognized and testified to the term already set, saying: "Until the day breathes, and the shadows decline." For she knew that he would afterward be given the virtues to drink rather than to eat. 4. Now let us apply ourselves to consider that day and its shadows: what it is, what they are; by what reason it breathes, and in what power they may be made to decline. It was said altogether pointedly, "until the day breathes" — indeed singularly. For in this place alone, unless I am mistaken, you will find a day that breathes. For breezes, not times, are said to breathe. Man breathes, the other animals breathe, for whom air unceasingly exchanged sustains life. And what is this but wind? The Holy Spirit also breathes, and from this he is called "spirit." In what manner, then, is a day breathing, which is neither wind, nor spirit, nor animal? Although indeed it is said not merely "breathing," but, what sounds more pointedly, "aspirating." No less unusually said is "and the shadows decline." For at the rising of this bodily and visible light, shadows are not made to decline, but are annihilated. Therefore these things must be sought outside of bodies. And if indeed we find a spiritual day and spiritual shadows, then perhaps the declining of the latter and the breathing of the former will more easily become clear. He who supposes that day of which the Prophet says, "Better is one day in your courts than a thousand" (Ps 83:11), to be corporeal, I know not what he would not suppose to be corporeal. There is also a day in a bad sense, which the prophets cursed (Job 3:3; Jer 20:14). But far be it that this should be one of those visible days which the Lord made! And so it is spiritual. 5. Now who would doubt that the shadow is spiritual by which Mary was overshadowed when she conceived (Lk 1:35); and likewise that one which is thus recalled in the prophet: "Christ the Lord is the spirit before our face, under his shadow we shall live among the nations" (Lam 4:20)? Yet by the name of shadows in this place I think rather the contrary powers are designated, which are called by the Apostle not only shadows or darkness, but also princes of these darknesses (Eph 6:12), and together with them those of our race who cling to them, children indeed of night and not of light, nor of the day. For these shadows, when the day has breathed, will not plainly return to nothing, as we see bodily shadows before the face of this bodily light not merely disappear but also utterly perish. And so they will by no means be reduced beyond nothing, yet they will be more wretched than nothing. They will exist, but declined and subjected. For: "He shall bow down," it says, "and shall fall" (no doubt the prince of shadows), "when he has had dominion over the poor" (Ps 9:10). Therefore nature will not be destroyed, but power will be withdrawn; substance will not perish, but the hour and power of darkness will pass away. They are taken away, lest they see the glory of God; they are not annihilated, so that they may burn forever. Why would the shadows not be made to decline, when the mighty are cast down from their seat, and made a footstool for feet? (Rom 13:12.) Which indeed must come to pass quickly. It is the last hour; the night has preceded, but the day has drawn near. The day will breathe, and the night will expire. The night is the devil, the night is the angel of Satan, even if he transforms himself into an angel of light. The night is also the Antichrist, whom the Lord will slay with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the brightness of his coming (2 Thess 2:8). Is not the Lord the day? A day indeed illuminating and breathing, who by the breath of his mouth puts the shadows to flight, and destroys phantoms by the brightness of his coming. Or if you prefer to take the word "declining" simply, and to suppose that to decline is nothing other than to be annihilated: lest we fail even this sense, we say that the shadows are the figures and enigmas of the Scriptures, and also the sophistical expressions and cavils of words and the entanglements of arguments, all of which meanwhile cast shadow upon the light of truth. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when the day breathes, the shadows will decline, because with the fullness of light occupying all things, no part of darkness will be able to remain. For when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part shall be made void (1 Cor 13:9-10). 6. Up to this point enough might have sufficed, if that day had been said to be breathing and not aspirating. But now, on account of that small addition, I think something more must be added, namely for the sake of investigating the reason for this difference. For I, to confess the truth, have long since persuaded myself that in the text of the sacred and precious utterance not even the slightest particle is empty of meaning. Now we are accustomed to use this word when we vehemently desire something; as, for example, when we say: "That man aspires to that honor, or to that dignity." Therefore by this word is designated a wondrous future abundance and vehemence of the spirit on that day, when not only hearts but also bodies will in their own kind be spiritual; and those who are found worthy will be inebriated by the abundance of the house of the Lord, and will be given to drink from the torrent of his pleasure. 7. Or in another way. Already for the holy angels a sanctified day has shone, breathing upon them with the unceasing rush of perpetual flow the honeyed secrets of the eternal divinity. For: "The rush of the river makes glad the city of God" (Ps 45:5); but the city to which it is said: "The dwelling of all who rejoice is in you" (Ps 86:7). But when it has begun to breathe upon us also who inhabit the earth, it will be not merely breathing but aspirating, because with widened bosom it will admit us also. Or (to repeat from a little higher, and to discuss more broadly) when man had been formed from the mud of the earth, the Creator, as the truthful history narrates, breathed into his face the breath of life (Gen 2:7), having become thereby for him a day inspiring: and behold, the envious night craftily collided with this day, under a simulated light indeed. For while it promised, as it were, a more splendid light of knowledge, it poured the darkness of evil counsel upon the unsuspecting new light, and brought a foul darkness of ruinous transgression upon the beginnings of our origin. Woe, woe! They knew not, nor understood; they walk in darkness, not knowing, putting darkness for light, and light for darkness. For the woman ate from the tree which the serpent had given her, and God had forbidden; and she gave to her husband, and it began to dawn for them as if anew. For immediately the eyes of both were opened, and a day conspiring was made, thrusting out the day inspiring and substituting the day expiring. For they conspired and came together as one against the Lord and against his Christ: the cunning of the serpent, the blandishments of the woman, the weakness of the man. Whence the Lord and his Christ also spoke to one another: "Behold, Adam has become as one of us" (Gen 3), because to the injury of both he had acquiesced to the sinners who enticed him. 8. In this day we are all born. For we all bear stamped upon us the brand of the ancient conspiracy; Eve indeed living in our flesh, through whose hereditary concupiscence the serpent labors with sedulous care to claim our consent for his faction. For this reason, as I said, the saints cursed this day, desiring it to be brief and quickly turned into darkness (Job 3:3; Jer 20:14), because it is a day of contention and contradiction, since in it the flesh does not cease to desire against the spirit, and a contrary law in the members with untiring rebellion continually contradicts the law of the mind. And so a day expiring was made. For from that time and henceforth, who is the man who shall live and not see death? (Ps 88:49.) Let someone say this on account of wrath: I would think it no less on account of mercy, so that the troublesome contradiction, by which even the elect themselves are led captive in the law of sin which is in their members, might not long weary those for whose sake all things come to pass. For they shudder at and most painfully bear the shameful captivity and the sorrowful contention. 9. Let us hasten, therefore, to catch our breath from the ancient and wicked conspiracy, for the days of man are short (Job 14:5). May a day of breathing again receive us before a night of sighing swallow us up, to be wrapped in the exterior darkness of eternal gloom. You ask wherein this breathing again consists? In this: if the spirit begins in turn to desire against the flesh. If you fight against this, you are breathing again; if by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you have breathed again; if you crucify this flesh with its vices and concupiscences, you have breathed again. "I chastise my body," he says, "and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps when I have preached to others, I myself should be found reprobate" (1 Cor 9:27). This is the voice of one breathing again — indeed of one who had already breathed again. "Go, and do thou likewise" (Lk 10:37), that you may prove yourself to have breathed again, that you may know that a day of inspiring has dawned for you anew. Nor will the night of death prevail against this revived day; rather it shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. So far am I from thinking that this light of life yields even when life departs, that I judge that voice to be assigned to no one more fittingly than to the one who has thus died: "And the night is my illumination in my delights" (Ps 138:11). Why would he not see more clearly, having been freed from the cloud — or rather, the dregs — of the body? Without doubt, released from the chains of the body, he will be free among the dead, and seeing among the blind. For just as of old, when every eye grew dim throughout all Egypt, the people that sees God — that is, the people Israel — alone saw clearly in the midst of darkness, Scripture saying that wherever Israel was, there was light (Ex 10:23): so among the children of darkness, in the foul gloom of death, the just will shine and see, and indeed all the more clearly as they are stripped of the shadows of bodies. For those who did not breathe again beforehand — for neither did they seek the light of the inspiring day, and the sun of justice did not rise for them — these, I say, will go from darkness into thicker darkness, so that those who are in darkness may grow still darker, and those who see may see the more. 10. Here that word of the Lord may perhaps not unfittingly be adduced which he spoke: "To him who has, it shall be given, and he shall abound; but from him who has not, even what he seems to have shall be taken away" (Lk 19:26). So it is: to those who see, more is added in death, and from those who do not see, more is taken away. For in the degree that the latter see less and less, the former see more and more, until the night of sighing receives the one group, and the day of aspiring receives the other; which are the final states of both, namely ultimate blindness and supreme clarity. From this point onward there is nothing that may be taken away from those who are wholly empty, nothing that may be added to those who are full, except that the latter presume that they will receive some I-know-not-what beyond fullness, according to the promise made to them. And the word of the promise is this: "Good measure, and pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall they give into your bosom" (Lk 6:38). Does not that which runs over seem to you to be in some way more than full? Moreover, you will calmly hear of "full" and "fuller," if you remember having read: "Forever and beyond" (Ex 15:18). Therefore that heaping up will belong to the aspirating day. That day itself, I say, will add to the measure of the inspired fullness, to the abundance of the inspiring day, working above measure a sublime weight of glory, so that the superabounding addition of glorification may overflow even into the bodies. For this reason indeed it was called not breathing but aspirating, because it adds to the inspiring day, the Holy Spirit signifying this through the added preposition "ad-"; because those whom the inspiring day illuminates within, the aspirating day adorns without, and clothes them with the robe of glory. 11. And let this suffice for giving an account of the word "aspirating." And if you wish to know, the aspirating day is the Savior himself whom we await, who will reform the body of our lowliness, made conformable to the body of his glory (Phil 3:20-21). For the inspiring day is likewise none other than he himself, according to the operation by which he first makes us breathe again in the light which he inspires, so that we too may be a day breathing again in him, according as our inner man is renewed from day to day, and is renewed in the spirit of his mind after the image of him who created him, and made thereby day from day and light from light. When, therefore, two days precede in us — one indeed inspiring for the life of the body, the other breathing again in the grace of sanctification — and moreover a third remains, aspirating in the glory of the resurrection: it is clear that what went before in the head will at some time be fulfilled in the body, a great indeed sacrament of piety, and the testimony of the prophet who says: "He will revive us after two days, on the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight; we shall know, and we shall follow on, that we may know the Lord" (Hos 6:3). He it is into whom the angels desire to look, the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“1. "Return; be like, my beloved, to a roe or to a young hart of the stags" (Song 2:17). What? Just now he goes, and now you call him back? What sudden thing has emerged in so short a time? Has she forgotten something? Indeed she has forgotten everything that is not he, herself as well. For although she is not devoid of reason, she is nevertheless not at this moment, as it seems, in possession of reason. Nor does any sense of modesty at all appear in her feelings, which she perhaps has in her character. Intemperate love does this. For it is love that, triumphing over and captivating every sense of shame, the measure of propriety, and the counsel of deliberation, produces a certain neglect and a certain carelessness of all modesty and timeliness. For see now how she demands that he return, though he has scarcely yet begun to go. She even asks him to hasten, and indeed to run like some wild creature of the forests running swiftly, namely a roe, or a young hart of the stags. This is the tenor of the letter, and this is the portion of the Jews. 2. But I, just as I have received from the Lord, will search out for myself the spirit and the life in the deep bosom of the sacred eloquence; and this is my portion, who believe in Christ. Why should I not draw out a sweet and saving feast of the spirit from the barren and tasteless letter, as grain from the chaff, a kernel from the shell, marrow from the bone? I have nothing to do with this letter which, when tasted, savors of flesh, and when swallowed, brings death; but indeed what is hidden in it is from the Holy Spirit. Moreover the Spirit speaks mysteries, as the Apostle testifies (1 Cor 14:2); but Israel holds the very veil of the mystery in place of the veiled mystery. Why, unless because the veil is still placed over his heart? Thus what the letter sounds is his; what it signifies is mine; and through this, his is the ministry of death in the letter, mine is life in the spirit. For the spirit is what gives life (Jn 6:64): for it gives understanding. Is not understanding life? "Give me understanding, and I shall live," the Prophet says to the Lord. Understanding does not remain outside, does not cling to the surface, does not, like a blind man, feel about the exterior; but it searches the depths, accustomed to snatch from thence with all eagerness the most precious spoils of truth and to carry them off for itself, and to say with the Prophet to the Lord: "I will rejoice over your words, as one who finds great spoils" (Ps 118:144, 162). For thus the kingdom of truth suffers violence, and the violent seize it (Mt 11:12). But that elder brother, who coming from the field held the figure of the old and earthly people, who, taught to love the threshing for the sake of the earthly inheritance, groans anxiously with worn brow under the heavy yoke of the law, and bears the burden of the day and the heat. He, I say, because he had no understanding, stands outside even now, and does not wish, even when invited by the father, to enter the house of the feast, defrauding himself until now of participation in the music, and the dancing, and the fatted calf (Lk 15:25-30). Wretched is he who refuses to experience how good it is and how pleasant for brothers to dwell in unity. And let these things be said for the distinction between the portion of the Church and the portion of the Synagogue, so that the blindness of the latter may become more manifest from the prudence of the former, and the happiness of the former may stand out from the pitiable foolishness of the latter. 3. Now let us examine the words of the bride, and let us attempt so to express the chaste affections of holy love, that nothing devoid of reason, nothing unbecoming or importunate may appear to have remained at all in the sacred eloquence. And if that hour should come to mind, when the Lord Jesus (for he is the bridegroom) was passing from this world to the Father (Jn 13:1), and at the same time what his own domestic Church was then bearing in her soul, a new bride indeed, when she perceived herself deserted, as it were a desolate widow bereft of her sole hope — I speak of the apostles, who having left all things had followed him, and had remained with him in his trials; if, I say, we shall have considered these things, not undeservedly nor incongruously, I think, will she seem to have been as much sorrowful over his departure as anxious about his return, especially being so affected and so left. And so for one who loved and was in need, this same double reason was cause to urge her beloved, that since he could not be persuaded not to go and ascend where he was before, he should at least hasten again the promised coming. For the fact that she wishes and asks that he be like wild creatures, and such wild creatures as seem to be swifter in running, is an indication of a desiring soul, for which nothing is hastened enough. Does she not ask this daily, when she says in prayer: "Your kingdom come" (Mt 6:10)? 4. Yet beyond the agility, I think there is expressed no less pointedly also the weakness, and indeed of sex in the roe, and of age in the young hart. She wishes therefore, as it seems to me, that even if he comes with power, he should nevertheless not appear in the form of God in judgment; but rather in that form in which not only was he born, but was born a little child for us, and that from the weaker feminine sex alone. Why this? Namely so that by both weak images he may be admonished to grow gentle on the day of wrath, and may remember in judgment to exalt mercy above judgment. For if he should observe iniquities, even of the elect, who shall endure? (Ps 129:3.) The stars are not pure in his sight, and in his angels he has found crookedness (Job 4:18). Hear, finally, what a saint and an elect one says to God: "You," he says, "have forgiven the wickedness of my sin. For this shall every holy one pray to you in a suitable time" (Ps 31:5-6). Therefore even the saints have need to pray for their sins, that they may be saved by mercy, not trusting in their own justice. For all have sinned, and all need mercy. Therefore, so that when he shall have been angered he may remember mercy, he is asked by her to appear in the garment of mercy, that of which the Apostle says: "And being found in fashion as a man" (Phil 2:7). 5. Necessarily indeed. For if even with this tempering there will be such equity in the judgment, such ferocity in the judge, such sublimity in the majesty, such strangeness in the very face of things, that according to the prophet the day of his coming cannot be thought upon (Mal 3:2): what, do you think, would it be, if that consuming fire (I speak of the omnipotent God) had come in that magnitude of his divinity, in might, in purity, to show his power against a leaf that is carried by the wind, and to pursue a dry straw? (Job 13:25.) "And he is a man," he says, "and who shall see him? And who shall stand to behold him?" (Mal 3:2). How much more would no one among men endure God showing himself to us without the man, as one inaccessible in brightness, unattainable in loftiness, incomprehensible in majesty? But now "when his anger shall burn for a brief time" (Ps 2:13), how welcome, on account of the sons of grace, will appear a certain gentle vision of the man, truly a firmament of faith, a strength of hope, an increase of confidence: that grace and mercy will be upon his saints, and regard upon his elect (Wis 4:15). Finally, the Father God himself gave to the Son the power of judgment, and not because he is his Son, but because he is the Son of Man (Jn 5:27). O truly Father of mercies! He wills that men be judged through a man, so that in so great a trepidation and perturbation of the wicked, the likeness of nature may furnish confidence to the elect. Holy David had foretold this once, both praying and prophesying: "O God," he said, "give your judgment to the king, and your justice to the son of the king" (Ps 71:2). Nor does the promise made through the angels disagree with this, who when he had been taken up spoke thus to the apostles: "This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven shall so come, just as you have seen him going into heaven" (Acts 1:11), that is, in this very form and substance of body. 6. It is clear from all these things that the bride has in herself divine counsel, and is by no means ignorant of the mystery of the heavenly will, she who, under the shadow of weak and feeble creatures, announces the weaker, or rather inferior, nature (for it will then no longer be weak) to be exhibited in the judgment, both with the affection of one who prays and with the spirit of one who prophesies; so that he who will move heaven and earth by his power, girded with might against the senseless, may nevertheless appear gentle and mild, and as though wholly unarmed, for the sake of the elect. Here this too can be added, that for distinguishing the one group from the other, he will need in a certain way both the leaps of a young hart and the eyes of a roe; so that he may be able to see and discern in so great a multitude and in so great a tumult upon whom he ought to leap and whom he ought to leap over, lest it happen that the just be trampled in place of the impious, when in his wrath he shall shatter the peoples. For as regards the impious, it is necessary that the prophecy of David be fulfilled, indeed the word of the Lord speaking through his mouth: "I will crush them like dust before the face of the wind, like the mud of the streets I will destroy them" (Ps 17:43); and likewise another word, which he had foretold through another prophet, will be recognized as fulfilled then, when returning to the angels he will say: "I have trampled them in my fury, and trodden them down in my wrath" (Isa 63:3). 7. But if to anyone it seems rather to be understood in such a way that our young hart ought to leap over the wicked, and to leap upon the good, I do not contend: only let him consider that the leaps will be arranged for the discrimination of the good and the wicked. For even by me, if I remember rightly, it was said thus in another sermon, where this same passage is found placed elsewhere above by the author, and expounded by me no less (see above, Sermon 54). But there, according to the dispensation of grace, which in the present life is given to some and not given to others, by the just judgment of God indeed, but a hidden one, this young hart was said to leap and to leap over; but here, according to the final and varied retribution of merits. And perhaps the end of this passage, which I had almost forgotten, may seem to support this meaning. For saying, "Be like, my beloved, to a roe and to a young hart of the stags," she adds, "upon the mountains of Bethel." For in the house of God, which is what Bethel means, there are no evil mountains. Wherefore the young hart, leaping upon them, does not trample but gladdens them, so that the Scripture may be fulfilled which says: "The mountains and the hills shall sing praises before God" (Isa 55:12). And indeed there are mountains which, according to the Gospel, faith compared to a mustard seed removes (Mt 17:19), but they are not mountains of Bethel. For whichever ones are of Bethel, faith does not remove them but cultivates them. 8. But if principalities and powers, and no less also the other hosts of the blessed Spirits, and the virtues of the heavens are mountains of Bethel, so that we may understand it said of these: "His foundations are in the holy mountains" (Ps 86:1), surely this young hart is not base and contemptible, who was seen to appear above such excellent mountains, "being made so much better than the angels, as he has inherited a more excellent name than they" (Heb 1:4). For what of it, if we read in the psalm that he was made less than the angels? (Ps 8:6.) For not on that account is he not better, because he is less; nor have the Apostle and the Prophet spoken contradictory things, since they have the same Spirit. For if it was of condescension that he was made less, not of necessity, then nothing at all is thereby prejudiced against his goodness, but rather ascribed to it. Finally, the Prophet declared him made less, not lesser, exalting grace and repelling injury. For nature refuses being lesser, and the cause excuses being made less. For he was made less because he himself willed it: he was made less by his own will and by our necessity. To be made less in this way was to have mercy. What kind of loss is this? Surely whatever seemed to have been lost to his majesty accrued to his piety. Although neither did the Apostle keep silent about this great mystery of great piety, but says: "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor" (Heb 2:9). 9. And let these things be said on account of the name and likeness of the young hart, so that we might fit it to the bridegroom, according to the word of the bride, without injury to his majesty. What am I saying, without injury to his majesty, when not even his weakness has remained unhonored? He is a young hart, he is a little one; he is also said to be like a roe, as though made of a woman: yet upon the mountains of Bethel, yet made higher than the heavens (Heb 7:26). He does not say: "Higher than the heavens being or existing," but "higher than the heavens made": lest anyone think it said of that nature, in which he is who is. But also where he is declared superior to the angels, he is likewise said to have been made better, and is not called remaining or existing better. From which it appears that not only in that which he is from eternity, but also in that which he was made in time, he claims for himself all eminence above every principality and power, and above every creature, as the firstborn of all creation. And so "the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Cor 1:25). This indeed the Apostle says. But to me one does not seem to err, if he should say that even to the wisdom and strength of angels the same foolishness and weakness of God is to be preferred. Thus therefore the present passage will be fittingly applied to the universal Church. 10. But now as to what pertains singularly to the one soul (for even one soul, if she loves God sweetly, wisely, and vehemently, is a bride), each spiritual person can observe in himself what his own experience may answer to him from these things. But I, whatever that is which has been given me to experience of this kind in myself, shall not be afraid to speak of it openly. For even if it will perhaps seem vile and contemptible when heard, it is no concern of mine; because he who is spiritual will not despise me, and he who is less so will not understand me. Yet if I shall have reserved this for another sermon, perhaps there will not be lacking those who may be edified by those things which the Lord, entreated in the meantime, will inspire — the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.”

“1. "Return," she says (Song 2:17). It is clear that he whom she calls back is not present; yet that he had been present, and that not long before: inasmuch as he who is still going away seems to be called back. An untimely calling-back, a sign of great love on the one part, and of great loveliness on the other. Who are these cultivators of charity, and such untiring pursuers of the business of love, of whom the one follows after, the other urges on, so restless a love? And indeed it falls to me, as I remember my promise, to assign this passage to the Word and the soul; but for this to be done worthily even for a little while, I confess that I need the help of the Word itself. And certainly this discourse would have been more fitting for one more experienced, and more privy to holy and secret love; but I cannot fail in my office, nor entirely disappoint your desires. I see my peril, and I do not avoid it; you compel me. You utterly compel me to walk in great things and in wonders above me. Alas! how I fear lest presently I hear: "Why do you declare my delights, and take up my sacrament through your mouth?" Yet hear me, a man who trembles to speak, and cannot be silent. Perhaps the very trembling itself will excuse my boldness; but more so your edification, if it shall result. And perhaps these tears will likewise be seen. "Return," she says. Good. He was going away; he is called back. Who will unseal for me the sacrament of this changeableness? Who will worthily explain for me the going and returning of the Word? Does the Bridegroom act with fickleness? Whence, whither can he come or go again, who fills all things? What local motion, finally, can he have, who is a spirit? Or what motion at all, of whatever kind, do you ascribe to him who is God? For he is altogether unchangeable. 2. But let him who can grasp this, grasp it. Let us, however, walking cautiously and simply in the exposition of the sacred and mystical utterance, follow the custom of Scripture, which speaks wisdom hidden in mystery with our words; which, while it uses figures, insinuates God through our affections; which, by known likenesses of sensible things, as if by certain cups of cheaper material, pours forth to human minds those things which are precious, unknown, and invisible of God. Let us therefore follow also the custom of the chaste utterance, and say that the Word of God, God the Bridegroom of the soul, both comes to the soul as he wills and again leaves her: provided only that we perceive these things to happen by the perception of the soul, not by any motion of the Word. For example, when she perceives grace, she recognizes his presence: when she does not, she laments his absence, and again seeks his presence, saying with the Prophet: "My face has sought you; your face, O Lord, I will seek" (Ps 26:8). Why should she not seek? For indeed, with so sweet a Bridegroom withdrawn from her, she will not in the meantime care — I do not say to desire, but not even to think of — anything else. It remains therefore that she diligently seek the absent one, and call back the departing one. Thus then the Word is called back, and called back by the desire of the soul, but of that soul to which he has once granted the sweetness of himself. Is not desire a voice? And a powerful one. Indeed: "The desire of the poor the Lord has heard" (Ps 9:17). Therefore, as the Word departs, the one continuous voice of the soul in the meantime is its continuous desire for him, as one continuous "Return," until he comes. 3. And now give me a soul which the Word the Bridegroom is accustomed to visit frequently, to which familiarity has given boldness, tasting has given hunger, contempt of all things has given leisure: and I will unhesitatingly assign to this soul alike the voice and the name of bride; nor will I at all judge the passage which is in hand to be alien from her. For such a one is presented here as speaking. For she who calls him back proves without doubt that she has deserved his presence, even if not his abundance. Otherwise she would not have called him back, but called him. Moreover the word of calling back is "return." And perhaps he withdrew himself for this reason, that he might be called back more eagerly, and held more firmly. For he also once pretended to go further, not because he wished this, but because he wished to hear: "Stay with us, Lord, because it is growing toward evening" (Lk 24:28-29). And again on another occasion, walking upon the sea, while the apostles were sailing and laboring at the oars, as though wishing to pass them by, not even then did he wish this, but rather to test their faith and to draw forth their prayer. Indeed, as the evangelist says: "They were troubled, and cried out, thinking it to be a phantom" (Mk 6:48-49). Therefore this kind of pious pretense, or rather saving dispensation, which the Word in the body then exhibited bodily from time to time, the Word as spirit does not cease to carry out continually in its own spiritual manner with the soul devoted to him. Passing by, he wills to be held; going away, he wills to be called back. For this is not an irrevocable Word. He goes, and returns according to his good pleasure, as if visiting at daybreak and suddenly testing. And his going is in a certain way dispensatory; but his returning is always voluntary: yet each is full of judgment. But the reason for these things rests with him. 4. Now truly it is established that such alternations of the Word going and returning happen in the soul, as he says: "I go, and I come to you" (Jn 14:28); likewise: "A little while, and you shall not see me; and again a little while, and you shall see me" (Jn 16:17). O little while and little while! O long little while! Good Lord, you call it a little while that we shall not see you? May the word of my Lord be safe: it is long, and exceedingly very much. Yet both are true: both a little while in respect of merits, and long in respect of desires. You have both in the prophet: "If he shall delay," he says, "wait for him, because coming he shall come, and shall not tarry" (Hab 2:3). How shall he not tarry, if he shall delay, unless because what is sufficient for merit is not sufficient for desire? Moreover, the loving soul is carried by desires, drawn by longings, disregards merits, closes its eyes to majesty, opens them to delight, resting in the Savior and acting confidently in him. Fearless, then, and unabashed, she calls back the Word, and with confidence claims again her delights, with her accustomed freedom calling him not Lord, but beloved: "Return, my beloved": and she adds: "Be like a gazelle, and a young hart upon the mountains of Bethel." But of this later. 5. Now indeed bear with a little of my foolishness. I wish to tell, for I have agreed to this, how it goes with me in such matters. It is not expedient indeed. But let me be exposed so that I may be of use: and, if you shall profit, I will console my foolishness; if not, I will confess my foolishness. I confess that the Word has come to me also — I speak in foolishness — and many times. And although he has entered into me quite often, I did not at certain times perceive when he entered. I perceived that he was present, I remember that he had been present, sometimes I was even able to have a presentiment of his entering, but never to perceive it, nor indeed even his departure. For whence he came into my soul, or whither he went again when leaving it; but also by what way he either entered or departed; even now I confess that I do not know, according to that saying: "You do not know whence he comes, or whither he goes" (Jn 3:8). Nor is it a wonder, for he is the one to whom it was said: "And your footsteps shall not be known" (Ps 76:20). Certainly he did not enter through the eyes, because he is not colored; nor through the ears, because he made no sound; nor through the nostrils, because he is not mixed with the air, but with the mind; nor did he taint the air, but made it; nor indeed through the mouth, because he is not chewed or drunk; nor did I find him by touch, because he is not palpable. By what way then did he enter? Or perhaps he did not even enter, because he did not come from outside? For he is not some one thing from among those things which are outside. Yet neither did he come from within me, since he is good, and I know that there is no good in me. I ascended also above my higher part: and behold, the Word was towering above this. To my lower part also I descended as a curious explorer; and no less was he found below. If I looked outward, beyond all that is outside of me I found him to be; if inward, he was more inward still. And I knew that what I had read was true, that in him we live, and move, and are (Acts 17:28): but blessed is he in whom he is, who lives for him, who is moved by him. 6. You ask then, since his ways are thus altogether unsearchable, how I know that he is present? He is living and efficacious: and as soon as he came within, he awakened my drowsing soul; he moved, and softened, and wounded my heart, for it was hard and stony and diseased. He began also to pluck up and to destroy, to build and to plant, to water what was dry, to illuminate what was dark, to open what was closed, to inflame what was cold, and also to make the crooked straight and the rough into smooth ways; so that my soul blessed the Lord, and all that is within me blessed his holy name. Thus, then, as the Word the Bridegroom entered into me from time to time, he never made his entrance known by any signs, not by voice, not by appearance, not by step. By none of his movements, finally, was he discovered by me, by none of my senses did he slip into my inmost parts: only from the movement of my heart, as I said above, did I understand his presence; and from the flight of vices, and the suppression of carnal affections, I perceived the power of his virtue; and from the examination or reproof of my hidden things I marveled at the depth of his wisdom; and from whatever small amendment of my ways I experienced the goodness of his gentleness; and from the renewal and reformation of the spirit of my mind, that is, of my inner man, I perceived in some measure the beauty of his comeliness; and from the contemplation of all these things together I was struck with awe at the multitude of his greatness. 7. But because all these things, when the Word has withdrawn, begin at once to lie languid and cold and torpid, just as if you had taken the fire away from a boiling pot; and this is for me the sign of his departure — my soul must needs be sad until he returns again, and my heart grows warm within me as is its custom; and let this be the sign of his return. Having then such experience of the Word, what wonder if I too take up for myself the voice of the bride in calling him back, when he has absented himself, who am carried, if not by an equal, yet by a similar desire at least in part? It will be familiar to me, as long as I live, for the calling back of the Word, that word of calling back which is "return." And as often as he shall slip away, so often shall it be repeated by me; nor will I cease to cry out as if after one going away, with the burning desire of my heart, that he return, and restore to me the joy of his salvation, restore to me himself. I confess to you, sons, nothing else in the meantime is pleasing, while that which alone is pleasing is not at hand. And this I pray, that he come not empty, but full of grace and truth (Jn 1:14): in his custom surely, as yesterday and the day before. In which the likeness of the gazelle and the young hart seems to me to be able to be exhibited, since truth has the eyes of a gazelle, and grace the gladness of a young hart. 8. Each thing is necessary to me: both truth, from which I cannot be hidden; and grace, from which I would not wish to be. Otherwise, without either one the visitation will not be full, since the severity of the one without the other can seem burdensome, and the cheerfulness of the other without the one can seem dissolute. Bitter is truth without the seasoning of grace; just as without the bridle of truth, devotion itself is light and lacking in measure, and often even insolent. How many it has not profited to have received grace, for this reason, that they did not equally receive the tempering of truth! For from this they were pleased with themselves more than was fitting, while they did not fear the gaze of truth, while they did not look to the gravity of the gazelle, but rather gave themselves over entirely to the lightness and cheerfulness of the young hart. From this it came about that they were deprived of that grace in which they had wished to exult privately, to whom it could be said, even if too late: "Go therefore and learn what this means: Serve the Lord in fear, and exult before him with trembling" (Ps 2:11). For a certain holy soul had said in her abundance, "I shall never be moved": when suddenly she perceived the face of the Word turned away from her, and herself not only moved, but even troubled (Ps 29:7-8); and so in sadness she learned that she had needed, together with the gift of devotion, also the weight of truth. Therefore the fullness of grace is not in grace alone, but neither is it in truth alone. What does it profit to know what you ought to do, if the will to do it is not also given? What, if you will indeed, but are in no way able? How many I have known to be made sadder by truth once recognized, and all the more so because it was no longer permitted to flee to the excuse of ignorance, knowing, and not doing, what Truth was urging! 9. Since these things are so, neither without the other suffices. I have said too little: neither is it even expedient. Whence do we know this? "To him who knows the good," he says, "and does it not, it is sin for him" (Jas 4:17); likewise: "The servant knowing the will of his master, and not doing what is worthy, shall be beaten with many stripes" (Lk 12:47). But this is for the part of truth. For the part of grace, what? It is written: "And after the morsel Satan entered into him" (Jn 13:27). He speaks of Judas, who, having received the gift of grace, because he did not walk in truth with the Master of truth, or rather with the mistress Truth, gave place in himself to the devil. Hear further: "He fed them with the fat of wheat, and from the rock with honey he satisfied them." Whom? "The enemies of the Lord lied to him" (Ps 80:17-16). Those whom he fed with honey and fat, these lied to him, having become enemies; because they did not join truth to grace. Of whom you have elsewhere: "Strange children lied to me; strange children grew old, and limped from their paths" (Ps 17:46). Why would they not limp, being content with the one foot of grace, and not adding truth? "Their time therefore shall be forever" (Ps 80:16), just as also their prince's, who himself also did not stand in the truth, but was a liar from the beginning (Jn 8:44), and therefore heard: "You have destroyed your wisdom in your beauty" (Ezek 28:17). I do not want a beauty that takes my wisdom from me. 10. You ask who that beauty is, so harmful and so pernicious? Your own. Perhaps you are still without understanding? Hear more plainly. Private, one's own. We do not blame the gift, but the use. Indeed, if you have noticed, not in beauty, but in his own beauty was he said to have lost his wisdom. And, if I am not mistaken, the one beauty of angel and soul is wisdom itself. For what is either this one or that one without wisdom, if not rude and deformed matter? By it, then, he was not only formed, but also beautiful. But he lost it when he made it his own: so that to have lost wisdom in his beauty is nothing other than to have lost wisdom in his own wisdom. Ownership is the cause. That he was wise for himself, that he did not give glory to God, that he did not return grace for grace, that he did not walk according to truth in it, but bent it back to his own will: this is why he lost it; indeed this is what it means to have lost it. For to have in this way is to have lost. "And if Abraham," he says, "was justified by works, he has glory, but not before God" (Rom 4:2). And I: not I in safety, I say. I have lost whatever I have not before God. For what is so lost as what is exiled outside God? What is death, but the privation of life? So perdition is nothing but alienation from God. "Woe to you who are wise in your own eyes, and prudent before your own faces!" (Isa 5:21.) Of you it is said: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the prudence of the prudent I will reject" (1 Cor 1:19). They have lost wisdom, because their own wisdom has destroyed them. What have they not lost, who are themselves also lost? Or are they truly not lost, whom God does not know? 11. Moreover the foolish virgins, whom I think to be foolish for no other reason than that, calling themselves wise, they became fools; these, I say, shall hear from God: "I know you not" (Mt 25:12). And likewise those who usurped the grace of miracles for their own glory shall no less hear, that "I do not know you" (Mt 7:23): so that it may be clearly evident from these things that grace does not profit where truth is not in the intention; but rather harms. And indeed both things rest with the Bridegroom. Indeed: "Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ," says John the Baptist (Jn 1:17). If therefore with one or the other of these without the other the Lord Jesus Christ shall have knocked at my door (for he is the Word of God, the Bridegroom of the soul), he will enter indeed not as Bridegroom, but as judge. Far be it; let this by no means happen! Let him not enter into judgment with his servant. Let him enter as the peaceful one, let him enter joyful and cheerful: yet let him enter grave and serious, who by a certain sterner countenance of truth may, while he suppresses insolence, purge my gladness. Let him enter as a young hart leaping, as a gazelle looking keenly about, who by overlooking fault may leap past it, and by having compassion may look upon punishment. Let him enter as if descending from the mountains of Bethel, festive and splendid, and as if proceeding from the Father, gentle and mild, who does not disdain to be called and to become the Bridegroom of the soul that seeks him, since he is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“A Subtle Disputation Concerning the Image, or the Word of God, and the Soul Which Is to the Image: and Concerning the Error of Gilbert, Bishop of Poitiers. 1. Certain of you, as I have learned, bear it with less than a fair spirit that behold, now for several days, while it delights us to dwell upon the wonder and admiration of the mysteries, the discourse which we have administered has been seasoned either with no salt of moral teaching, or with exceedingly little. This indeed is beyond our custom. But may it be permitted to revisit those things which have been said? I do not proceed unless I first review all things. Come, say, if you remember, from what place in Scripture this defrauding began, that I may take up the matter again from there. It is mine to repair the losses — nay, it is the Lord's, from whom we presume all things. From what beginning, then, must we resume? Perhaps from this: "In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves" (Song 3:1)? Unless I am mistaken, it is from there. From that point and onward my one concern has been, having dispersed the dense fog of these allegories, to bring into the light the secret delights of Christ and the Church. Therefore let us return to investigating the moral senses. For what shall be profitable to you cannot be wearisome to me. And this will fittingly be done if the things that have been said concerning Christ and the Church we assign no less to the Word and the soul. 2. But someone says to me: Why do you join these two together? For what has the soul to do with the Word? Very much in every way. First indeed, because there is so great a kinship of natures, that the one is the image, and the other is made to the image. Then, because likeness bears witness to the kinship. For the soul was made not only to the image, but also to the likeness. You ask in what it is like? Hear first concerning the image. The Word is truth, is wisdom, is justice: and this is the image. Of what? Of justice, of wisdom, and of truth. For this image is justice from justice, wisdom from wisdom, truth from truth, as it were light from light, God from God. The soul is none of these things, because it is not the image. Yet it is capable of them, and desirous of them, and perhaps on that account it is to the image. A lofty creature, bearing the mark of majesty indeed in its capacity, and of rectitude in its desire. We read that "God made man upright" (Eccl 7:30), which also its great capacity, as has been said, proves. For it is necessary that what is to the image agree with the image, and not participate in vain in the name of the image, just as the image itself is not called image by a mere or empty name. You have indeed concerning him who is the image, that "being in the form of God, he did not consider it robbery to be equal with God" (Phil 2:6). Where certainly both his rectitude in the form of God, and his majesty in the equality, are indicated to you: so that when rectitude is compared to rectitude, and greatness to greatness, that which is to the image and the image may appear to correspond to each other harmoniously on both sides; just as the image also no less corresponds in both respects to him whose image it is. For he is the one of whom you have heard holy David singing in the psalms, now indeed: "Great is our Lord, and great is his power" (Ps 146:5); and now: "The Lord our God is upright, and there is no iniquity in him" (Ps 91:16). From this upright and great God, his image has it that it too is upright and great: the soul has it, which is to the image. 3. But I say: Does the image, then, have nothing more than the soul which is to the image, since we assign greatness and uprightness to the latter as well? Very much more. The soul received these according to measure, the image according to equality. Is this not more? Consider also another thing. To the soul, both of these were bestowed either by creation or by gracious condescension; to the image, by generation. And that this is more magnificent admits no doubt. But neither let anyone deny that this too is more eminent: that whereas both belong to the soul from God, to the image they belong also of God, that is, of the substance of God. For the image is consubstantial with God, and everything which he is seen to impart to his image is substantial to both, not accidental. Attend yet to one thing more, in which the image stands out not a little. Greatness and uprightness (and who does not know that these two differ from each other by nature?) are one in the image. Nor is this alone: they are one also with the image. For to the image, to be upright is not merely the same as to be great, but also to be great and upright is the same as to be. It is not so with the soul. Both its greatness and its uprightness are diverse from it, and diverse from each other. For if, as I taught above, the soul is great in that it is capable of eternal things, and upright in that it desires heavenly things: the soul which does not seek or savor the things that are above, but the things that are upon the earth, is plainly not upright, but crooked, even though on account of this it does not cease to be great, remaining as it does even so capable of eternity. For it will never at any time not be capable of eternity, even if it never shall have been actually possessing it, so that it may be as it is written: "Surely man passes through as an image" (Ps 38:7); yet only in part, so that the eminence of the Word may be apparent from its very wholeness. For in what respect could the Word fall from being great or upright, since it so possesses these things that it is what it has? Or it is in part for this reason: lest, if the soul were deprived of the whole, no hope of salvation would remain. For if it should cease to be great, it would also cease to be capable. For the greatness of the soul, as I said, is estimated from its capacity. But what could it hope for, of which it were not capable? 4. And so through the greatness which it retains even when uprightness is lost, man passes through as an image, limping as it were on one foot, and become an alien son. For of such I believe it was said: "The alien sons have lied to me, the alien sons have grown old, and they have limped from their paths" (Ps 17:48). Fittingly they are called alien sons: for sons, on account of the greatness they have retained; aliens, on account of the uprightness they have lost. Nor would he have said "they limped," but rather "they fell," or something similar, if men had entirely put off the image. But as things stand, according to greatness indeed man passes through as an image; but as far as uprightness is concerned, as one limping, he is troubled and cast down from the image, Scripture speaking thus: "Surely man passes through as an image; but indeed he is troubled in vain." In vain altogether: for it follows: "He heaps up treasure, and knows not for whom he gathers it" (Ps 38:7). Why does he not know, unless because, bending himself down to these lowest and earthly things, he heaps up earth for himself? Assuredly he does not know, concerning those things which he commits to the earth, for whom he gathers them: whether for the moth that destroys, or for the thief that digs through; for the enemy that plunders, or for the fire that devours. And thence that lamentable voice from the psalm belongs to the wretched man bending himself down and brooding over the things that are upon the earth: "I am made wretched and bowed down utterly; all the day long I went about in sadness" (Ps 37:7). In himself indeed he experiences the truth of that sentence of the Wise Man: "God made man upright, but he has entangled himself in many sorrows" (Eccl 7:30). And immediately the voice of mockery comes to him: "Bow down, that we may pass over" (Isa 51:23). 5. But whence have we come to this point? From this, surely: when we wished to teach that the upright and the great (by which twofold good we had defined the image) are neither one in the soul, nor one with the soul, just as we taught with equally faithful assertion that they are one in the Word and with the Word. And concerning uprightness indeed, from what has been said it is clear that it is diverse both from the soul and from the soul's greatness: since even when uprightness does not exist, both the soul remains, and remains great. But whence will the diversity of greatness and the soul be shown? For it cannot be shown from the same place whence the diversity of uprightness and the soul was demonstrated, since the soul cannot be deprived of its greatness as it can of its uprightness. Nevertheless, the soul is not its own greatness. For even though the soul is not found without its greatness, that greatness itself is nevertheless found also outside the soul. You ask where? In the angels. For the angels are great from the same source from which the greatness of the soul is established, namely from the capacity for eternity. But if the soul was established to differ from its uprightness by the fact that it can lack it, why should it not equally be clear that it is diverse from its greatness too, which it cannot claim as belonging to itself alone? Since, then, the one is not in every soul, and the other is not in the soul alone, it is evident that both differ from it without distinction. Again, no form is the thing of which it is the form. But greatness is a form of the soul. Nor is it not a form because it is inseparable from it. For this is true of all substantial differences, this is true not only of the most proper properties, but also of certain proper attributes, and also of innumerable other forms. Therefore the soul is not its own greatness, no more than the crow is its own blackness, than snow is its own whiteness, than man is his own risibility or rationality: even though you will never find a crow without blackness, nor snow without whiteness, nor a man who is not both risible and rational. So too the soul and the soul's greatness, even though inseparable, are nevertheless diverse from each other. How are they not diverse, when the one exists in a subject, and the other is the subject and substance? Only the supreme and uncreated nature, which is the Trinity, God, claims for itself this pure and singular simplicity of its essence, such that neither one thing and another, nor yet here and there, nor even now and then, is found in it. For remaining in itself, what it has, it is; and what it is, it is always and in one manner. In it both many things are brought back into one, and diverse things into the same, so that it neither takes plurality from the number of things, nor experiences alteration from their variety. It contains all places, and arranges all things in their proper places, itself contained nowhere by places. Times pass beneath it, not for it. It does not await things future, nor recollect things past, nor experience things present. 6. Let them depart from us, dearest ones, let them depart — these new men, not dialecticians, but heretics — who most impiously argue that the greatness by which God is great, and likewise the goodness by which he is good, and the wisdom by which he is wise, and the justice by which he is just, and lastly the divinity by which he is God, is not God. By divinity, they say, God is God, but the divinity is not God. Perhaps the divinity does not deign to be God, which is so great as to make God. But if it is not God, what is it? For either it is God, or something which is not God, or nothing. Certainly you do not grant it to be God, but neither, I think, will you grant it to be nothing, which you confess to be so necessary to God that not only can God not exist without it, but that he is it. But if it is something which is not God: it will be either less than God, or greater, or equal. But how can that be less, by which God is God? It remains that you must confess it either greater or equal. But if greater, then it is the supreme good, not God; if equal, there are two supreme goods, not one: both of which the catholic sense rejects. Now concerning greatness, goodness, justice, and wisdom, we hold the same in all respects as concerning divinity: they are one in God, and one with God. For he is not good from one source and great from another, nor just or wise from one source and great and good from another, nor finally all these things at once from one source and God from another, and this last from nothing other than himself. 7. But the heretic says: What? Do you deny that God is God by his divinity? No, but I assert nonetheless that that same divinity, by which he is God, is God, lest I should assent that something more excellent than God exists. For I say also that he is great by his greatness, but one which is himself, lest I should posit something greater than God; and I confess him good by his goodness, but not by any other than he himself is, lest I should seem to have found something better than him; and concerning the rest in this manner. Securely and gladly I proceed with unimpeded foot, as they say, into the opinion of him who said: "God is great by no other greatness than that which is what he himself is. Otherwise that greatness will be greater than God." This is Augustine, the most powerful hammer of heretics. If therefore anything can be said properly of God, it will be said more rightly and more fittingly: God is greatness, goodness, justice, wisdom, than: God is great, good, just, or wise. 8. Whence not undeservedly, at the recent council which Pope Eugenius held at Reims, both to him and to the other bishops that exposition appeared perverse and altogether suspect, which was found in the book of Gilbert, Bishop of Poitiers, in which he commented on the words of Boethius concerning the Trinity — words most sound and catholic indeed — in this manner: "The Father is truth, that is, true; the Son is truth, that is, true; the Holy Spirit is truth, that is, true. And these three together are not three truths, but one truth, that is, one true." O obscure and perverse explanation! How much more truly and soundly he would have said the reverse: The Father is true, that is, truth; the Son is true, that is, truth; the Holy Spirit is true, that is, truth. And these three are one true, that is, one truth. Which indeed he would have done, had he deigned to imitate the holy Fulgentius, who says: "For the one truth of the one God — nay, the one truth which is the one God — does not permit the worship and service of the Creator and the creature to be joined together." A good corrector, who would speak most truthfully concerning truth, who would think piously and in a catholic manner concerning the true and pure simplicity of the divine substance, in which there can be nothing which is not that substance itself, and that substance is God. Although in certain other places more plainly that book of the aforesaid bishop was seen to depart from the rectitude of faith; of which, by way of example, I set down yet one more. For when the author said, "When it is said, God, God, God, it pertains to substance," our commentator added, "Not the substance which is, but by which he is." God forbid that the catholic Church should assent to this: namely, that there is a substance, or any thing at all, by which God is, and which is not God! 9. But we no longer say these things against him personally; for in that same assembly, humbly acquiescing in the judgment of the bishops, he condemned with his own mouth both these and the other things found worthy of reproof. Rather, it is on account of those who are reported still to transcribe and eagerly read that book — contrary indeed to the apostolic interdict promulgated there — persisting more contentiously in following the bishop in that wherein he himself did not stand, and preferring to have him as a master of error rather than of correction. But not only for their sake, but also for yours: having taken occasion from the difference between the image and the soul which is made to the image, I thought it worthwhile to make this excursus, so that if any perhaps have at some time drunk something from stolen waters, which seem sweeter (Prov 9:17), having taken the antidote, they may vomit it up, and with the stomach of the mind purged, approaching what remains to be said concerning the likeness according to our promise, they may now draw purer things in joy not from our own, but from the fountains of the Savior, the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“On the Fitness and Likeness of the Soul to the Word According to Identity of Essence, Immortality of Life, and Freedom of Choice. 1. The affinity of the soul to the Word was inquired into before, and that indeed necessarily. For what agreement is there between so great a majesty and so great a poverty, that in the manner and love of spouses, as if on equal terms, that sublimity and that humility should be reported to embrace one another? For if we say this truly, there is a very joyful confidence; if falsely, a very punishable audacity. Therefore it was necessary to inquire about the fitness of these two: and indeed much has already been found, but not all. For who, even if exceedingly dull, does not see how closely the image and that which is according to the image look upon one another from nearby? Of which two things, one was assigned to one and the other to the other by yesterday's discourse, if you recall. Nor was the closeness demonstrated there only from the image, but also from the likeness, except that in what or in which things that likeness chiefly consists has not yet been declared by us. Come, let us now attend to this declaration, so that the more fully the soul recognizes its own origin, the more it may blush at having a degenerate life; or rather, what it discovers to have been vitiated by sin in its nature, it may strive to reform by diligence; so that, governing itself worthily of its lineage, by God's gift indeed, it may confidently approach the embraces of the Word. 2. Let it observe therefore, from this inborn character of the divine likeness, that there belongs to it that natural simplicity of its own substance, by which for it to be is the same as to live, even if not the same as to live well or to live blessedly, so that there is a likeness, not an equality. A close step, yet still a step. For it is not of one and the same excellence or equal height, to have being be the same as living, and likewise to have being be the same as living blessedly. Therefore if the latter belongs to the Word on account of its sublimity, and the former to the soul on account of likeness, with the eminence of the Word preserved, the affinity of natures is manifest, the prerogative of the soul is manifest. And that what is said may become more plain: to God alone, being is the same as blessed being; and this is the first and purest simplicity. But the second is like to this, namely to have being be the same as living; and this belongs to the soul. From this, even if from a lower step, one can ascend not only to living well, but even to living blessedly: not because even then being will be the same as blessed being for the one who has arrived there; inasmuch as one may thus glory on account of the likeness, yet on account of the disparity may always have cause for all one's bones to say: "Lord, who is like you?" (Ps 35:10). Nevertheless a good step for the soul, from which alone one ascends to the blessed life. 3. For there are living things, and of these two kinds: those that sense and those that do not sense. Furthermore, sensible things are preferred to insensible, and to both is preferred the life by which one both lives and senses. Life and a living thing will not stand equally on one step; much less life and those things which are without life. The soul is life, living indeed, but not from any other source than itself; and on that account not so much a living thing as life itself, if we speak properly of it. Hence it is that when infused into a body it vivifies it, so that the body, from the presence of life, is not life but a living thing. Whence it is clear that not even for a living body is living the same as being, since it can be and yet not live at all. Much less will those things which are devoid of life rise to this step. But neither will everything that is called or is life straightaway be able to reach this point. There is the life of cattle, there is also the life of trees: the one endowed with sense, the other lacking it. Yet for neither is being the same as living: since, as indeed is the opinion of many, they existed previously in the elements before the one existed in limbs or the other in branches. But according to this, when they cease to vivify, they cease at the same time to live, but not also to be. They are dissolved and broken apart equally, as things not merely bound but also compounded together. For none of these is one simple thing, but consists of many parts. And therefore it is not reduced to nothing, but flies apart into its parts, so that each part may return to its own principle; for example, air to air, fire to fire, and the rest in this manner. By no means therefore is being the same as living for such a life, which exists even when it does not live. 4. Furthermore, none of those things for which being is not the same as living will at any time advance or emerge to living well and blessedly: inasmuch as it could not even arrive at this lower step. Alone, she who is known to stand in this very step, the soul of man, was created in that dignity — a life from Life, a simple from the Simple, an immortal from the Immortal — so that she is not far from the highest step, where, namely, being is the same as living blessedly, on which alone stands the blessed and alone powerful one, the King of kings and Lord of lords. The soul received therefore in its creation, if not being blessed, nevertheless the power to be blessed; and thus it approaches the highest step as closely as is permitted, yet does not reach it. For not even for the soul itself, as we said above, will being ever be the same as blessed being, not even when it will be blessed. We confess the likeness; we refuse the equality. For example: God is life, and the soul is life; similar indeed, but unequal. Similar, because it is life, because it lives by itself, because it is not only living but also vivifying, just as he too is all these things. But unequal, as much as the created from the Creator. Unequal, because just as it would not exist unless created by him, so it would not live unless vivified by him. I say it would not live, but by the spiritual life, not the natural. For by the natural life, even that which does not live spiritually must live immortally. But what kind of life is that, in which it would be better not to have been born than not to die from it! It is rather a death: and therefore more grievous, because it is a death of sin, not of nature. Finally, "the death of sinners is the worst" (Ps 34:21). Thus therefore the soul that lives according to the flesh is living yet dead; inasmuch as it would be good for it not to live at all, rather than to live thus. From which death, indeed a kind of living death, it will never rise, except through the word of life, nay rather through the Word who is life, living indeed and vivifying. 5. But in other respects the soul is immortal, and in this no less similar to the Word indeed, but not equal. For to such an extent does the immortality of the Godhead surpassingly excel, that the Apostle says of God: "Who alone has immortality" (1 Tim 6:16). Which I think was said for this reason, that God alone is by nature unchangeable, who says: "I am the Lord, and I do not change" (Mal 3:6). For true and complete immortality admits of change no more than it admits of an end, because all change is a certain imitation of death. For everything that is changed, while it passes from one state of being to another, in a certain way must die to what it is, so that it may begin to be what it is not. But if there are as many deaths as changes, where is immortality? And to this vanity the creature itself was subjected, not willingly, but on account of him who subjected it in hope (Rom 8:20). Nevertheless the soul is immortal; because since it is life to itself, just as there is no way it can fall from itself, so there is no way it can fall from life. But since it is established that it is changed by its own affections, let it recognize itself as similar to God in immortality in such a way that it knows a not inconsiderable part of immortality to be lacking in itself, yielding absolute and perfect immortality to him alone, with whom "there is no change, nor shadow of turning." Nevertheless, no small dignity of the soul has been discovered in the present discussion, which by a certain twofold closeness of nature is seen to approach the Word: by simplicity of essence and by perpetuity of life. 6. But indeed one more thing occurs, which I will by no means pass over: for it makes the soul no less distinguished and no less similar to the Word, and perhaps even more so. This is freedom of choice, a plainly divine something shining forth in the soul, as a gem in gold. From this there belongs to it, between good indeed and evil, and also between life and death, and likewise between light and darkness, both a knowledge of judging and an option of choosing; and if there are any other things which similarly appear to look upon one another from opposite sides regarding the disposition of the mind. No less among these very things a certain censorial arbiter (this is the eye of the soul) judges and discerns: just as an arbiter in discerning, so free in choosing. Whence it is also called free choice, because it is permitted to deal in these things according to the choice of the will. Hence man has the power to merit. For everything good or evil that you shall have done, which it was free not to do, is rightly reckoned to merit. And, just as not only he who was able to do evil and did not do it is justly praised, but also he who was able not to do good and did it; so he who was able not to do evil and did it does not lack bad merit, just as he who was able to do good and did not do it. But where there is no freedom, there is no merit. Therefore animals lacking reason merit nothing; because just as they lack deliberation, so also they lack freedom. They are driven by sense, carried by impulse, dragged by appetite. For they have no judgment by which to judge or govern themselves, nor even the instrument of judgment, that is, reason. Hence it is that they are not judged, because they do not judge. For by what reason should an account be required from those who have not received it? 7. This force from nature man alone does not suffer, and therefore alone among living things is he free. And yet, with the intervention of sin, he too suffers a certain kind of force, but from the will, not from nature, so that not even thus is he deprived of his inborn freedom. For what is voluntary is also free. And indeed through sin it has come about that the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul; but by love, not by weight. For the reason the soul can no longer rise by itself, though it could fall by itself, is the will, which, languishing and lying prostrate through the vitiated and vicious love of the corrupted body, does not at the same time admit the love of justice. Thus by a certain perverse and wondrous manner the will itself makes necessity for itself, changed as it is for the worse by sin: so that neither can the necessity, since it is voluntary, excuse the will; nor can the will, since it is enticed, exclude the necessity. For this necessity is in a certain way voluntary. It is a kind of flattering force, pressing while caressing, and caressing while pressing: whence the guilty will, once it has consented to sin, can neither shake itself off by itself, nor by any means excuse itself on rational grounds. Hence that plaintive voice, as if groaning under the burden of this necessity: "Lord," it says, "I suffer violence; answer for me." But again, knowing that it could not justly complain against the Lord, since its own will was rather the cause, attend to what it went on to say: "What shall I say, or what will he answer me, since I myself have done it?" (Isa 38:14-15). It was pressed by a yoke, yet none other than that of a certain voluntary servitude; and it was pitiable on account of the servitude, but inexcusable on account of the will. For it is the will that made itself, when it was free, the servant of sin, by consenting to sin: it is the will no less that holds itself under sin, by serving voluntarily. 8. "See what you say," someone says to me. "Do you call voluntary what is clearly now necessary? It is true indeed that the will bound itself over: but it does not itself hold itself; rather it is held, and unwillingly." You grant this much at least, that it is held. But hold vigilantly to the fact that it is a will that you confess is held. And so you say the will is unwilling? Not at all is a will held as not willing. For will belongs to the willing, not to the unwilling. But if it is held willingly, it holds itself. What then will it say, or what will it answer to him, since it has itself done it? What has it done? It made itself a servant: whence it is said: "He who commits sin is the servant of sin" (Jn 8:34). Therefore, when it sinned (and it sinned when it decreed to obey sin), it made itself a servant. But it becomes free, if it no longer does so. But it does so, retaining itself in the same servitude. For a will is not held against its will: for it is a will. Therefore because it is willing, it not only made itself a servant, but also makes itself one. Rightly therefore — what must often be recalled — what will it answer to him, since it has itself done it and continues to do it? 9. "But you will not make me disbelieve the necessity which I suffer," you say, "which I experience in myself, against which I also constantly struggle." Where, I ask, do you feel this necessity? Is it not in the will? Therefore you will not a little firmly what you also will necessarily. You will greatly what you are unable not to will, and you do not struggle much against it. Furthermore, where there is will, there is also freedom. Yet I say this of the natural freedom, not of the spiritual, with which freedom, as the Apostle says, Christ has set us free (Gal 5:1). For of that the same one says: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Cor 3:17). Thus by a certain wondrous and evil manner, under this voluntary and badly free necessity, the soul is both held as a handmaid and is free: a handmaid on account of the necessity, free on account of the will. And what is more wondrous and more wretched, it is guilty inasmuch as it is free, and a handmaid inasmuch as it is guilty, and therefore a handmaid inasmuch as it is free. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the reproach of this shameful servitude? Wretched, but free. Free, because a man; wretched, because a servant. Free, because like God; wretched, because contrary to God. "O keeper of men, why have you set me contrary to you?" You set me so, when you did not prevent it. Otherwise, I set myself, "and I have become burdensome to myself" (Job 7:20). Most justly indeed, so that your enemy is also my enemy; and he who fights against you, fights also against me. But I who have become contrary to you, I who have become contrary to myself, and find in my members that which contradicts both my mind and your law; who will deliver me from my own hands? "For what I will, this I do not do," but it is I, not another, who prevents it; "and what I hate, that I do" (Rom 7:15), but it is I, not another, who compels it. And would that this prevention and this compulsion were so violent as not to be voluntary; for perhaps then I could be excused: or certainly that it were so voluntary as not to be violent; for assuredly then I could be corrected. But now there is nowhere an escape for the wretch, whom both will, as I said, makes inexcusable, and necessity makes incorrigible. "Who will rescue me from the hand of the sinner, and from the hand of the lawbreaker and the unjust?" (Ps 71:4). 10. If anyone asks of whom I complain, it is of myself. I am that sinner, that lawbreaker, that unjust one. A sinner, because I have sinned; a lawbreaker, because by my will I persist in acting against the law. For my own will is itself the law in my members, kicking against the divine law. And since the law of the Lord is the law of my mind, as it is written: "The law of his God is in his heart" (Ps 37:31); through this, my own will is found to be contrary even to myself, which is the greatest iniquity. For to whom is he not unjust, who is unjust to himself? "He who is wicked to himself, to whom will he be good?" (Sir 14:5). I confess, I am not good, because there is no good in me. Yet I will console myself, because this is also the voice of the saints: "I know that there is no good in me," he says. Yet he distinguishes what he says: "in me." He interprets this as "in my flesh," on account of the contradictory law which is in it. For he has a law also in the mind, and that one is better. Is not the law of God good? But if he is evil on account of the evil law, how is he not good on account of the good one? Or is his own that which is in his flesh, and therefore evil from the evil one; and not at all good from the good one? It is not so. The law of his God is in his mind, and so in his mind that it is also of his mind. The witness is he who says: "I find another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind." Is that which belongs to his flesh his own, and not that which belongs to his mind? I say even more. Why should I not say what that same teacher says? For serving the law of God with his mind indeed, but with his flesh the law of sin, he clearly shows which he confesses to be more truly his own, when the evil that is in the flesh he considers so alien to himself that he says: "Therefore it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me." And therefore perhaps he pointedly said he found another law in his members, because he reckoned this law as alien and as if adventitious. Whence I too dare something yet more, not rashly indeed: namely that Paul is no longer evil on account of the evil that he has in the flesh; but rather good on account of the good that he has in the mind. Is he not good, who consents to the law of God, because it is good? For even if he likewise confesses himself to serve the law of sin, he does this with the flesh, not with the mind. But when he serves the law of God with the mind indeed, and with the flesh the law of sin, which of these two you think should chiefly be imputed to Paul, you decide for yourself. For to me, I confess, it is easily persuaded that what is of the mind is of greater value than what is of the flesh, not only to me but also to Paul himself, as has already been said, who says: "But if what I do not will, that I do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me" (Rom 7:18, 23, 25, 20). 11. But let these things suffice concerning this freedom. In the booklet which I wrote On Grace and Free Choice, things perhaps different concerning the image and likeness are read to have been discussed; but, as I judge, not contrary. You have read those; you have heard these: which you approve more, I leave to your judgment; or if you have a better understanding than either, in this I rejoice and will rejoice. But however those things may stand, three certain preeminent things you hold commended to you for the present: simplicity, immortality, freedom. And this I now judge appears clearly to you: that the soul, on account of its inborn and noble likeness which shines so eminently in these things, has no small affinity with the Word, the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“How the Soul, Remaining Like God, Was Nevertheless Made Unlike through Sin in Simplicity, Immortality, and Freedom. 1. What does it seem to you? Can we now return to the order of exposition from which we digressed, since the affinity of the Word and the soul is now clear, for the demonstration of which indeed the digression itself was made? We could, as it seems to me, if I did not sense that some small measure of doubt still remained in the things that have been said. I wish to steal nothing. I do not willingly pass over what I think useful to you. And how should I dare to do so, especially concerning those things which I receive on your behalf? I know a certain man who once, while speaking, was retaining and reserving for himself something from the things which the Spirit was suggesting, with a mind not indeed unfaithful, but insufficiently trusting, so that he might have something to say when he would treat the matter again; and behold a voice came to him, as indeed it seemed to him: "As long as you hold on to that, you will not receive another." What if he had retained it, not providing for his own want, but envying the progress of the brethren? Would not even that very thing which he seemed to have be taken away from him, and rightly so? May God ever keep this far from your servant, as indeed he has always done. May that unfailing fountain of saving wisdom deign to flow abundantly for me continually, just as without envy I have communicated to you and poured back whatever he himself has deigned to pour into me until now. If I defraud you, from whom shall I not fear to be defrauded myself? Not even from God. 2. There is therefore in the things that have been said something which, as I fear, could give offense, if it is not smoothed out. And, unless I am mistaken, there are some standing here to whom what I wish to say has caused a scruple. That threefold likeness of the Word, which we assigned to the soul, or rather which we observed to be stamped upon it — do you recall that it also appeared to us to belong to it inseparably? This indeed may seem to conflict with certain testimonies of the Scriptures, as for example, that passage in the Psalms: "Man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he was compared to the senseless beasts, and was made like to them" (Ps 48:13, 21); and likewise that: "They exchanged their glory for the likeness of a calf that eats grass" (Ps 105:20); but also what was said plainly in the person of God: "You thought wickedly that I would be like you" (Ps 49:21); and many other passages which seem concordantly to assert that the likeness of God in man was destroyed after sin. What therefore shall we say to these things? That those three things do not at all exist in God, and so other things must be sought in which we may assign the likeness? Or that they do indeed exist in God, but not in the soul, and that thus neither is the likeness found in these? Or that they exist also in the soul, but can also not be present, and therefore are not inseparable? Far from it! They are both in God and in the soul, and they are always present; nor is there reason for us to regret having said any of these things, so entirely is the whole supported by undoubted and most absolute truth. But what Scripture speaks of concerning the unlikeness that was made, it does not speak because this likeness was destroyed, but because another was drawn over it. The soul did not at all strip off its native form, but put on over it a foreign one. That one was added, this one was not lost; and what came upon it was able to obscure the inborn likeness, but not to destroy it. Finally: "Their foolish heart was darkened," says the Apostle (Rom 1:21); and the prophet: "How is the gold become dim, the finest color changed?" (Lam 4:1). He laments the gold darkened, but it is gold nonetheless; the finest color changed, but the foundation of the color not uprooted. The simplicity remains in its foundation utterly unshaken, but it scarcely appears, covered over by the duplicity of human deceitfulness, dissimulation, and hypocrisy. 3. How incongruously is duplicity mixed with simplicity! How unworthily is such a structure committed to such a foundation! The serpent had put on craftiness of this kind for himself, when, in order to deceive, he presented himself as a counselor, pretending to be a friend. The inhabitants of paradise, seduced by him, had likewise put on this kind of craftiness for themselves, when they attempted to cover their now shameful nakedness, both with the shade of a leafy tree, and with coverings of leaves, and with words of excuse (Gen 3). How widely from that time forward the hereditary poison of hypocrisy has infected all posterity! Whom will you find among the sons of Adam who would wish, I do not say, but would even endure to appear as what he is? But nevertheless the general simplicity persists in every soul alongside the original duplicity, so that from the comparison the confusion may be increased: immortality likewise persists, but darkened and gloomy, with the shadowy murk of bodily death rushing in. For, even if the soul is not deprived of life, yet it no longer suffices to vindicate the benefit of life for its own body. What is more, it does not even retain its own spiritual life for itself. For "the soul that sins, it shall die" (Ezek 18:4). Does not this twofold death pressing in render that immortality of whatever kind, which it retains, sufficiently darkened and wretched? Add that the craving for earthly things, which indeed are all heading toward destruction, thickens the darkness, so that in a soul living thus, in no part whatsoever is anything seen to appear except a pallid face and a certain image of death. For why does she who is immortal not desire things immortal and eternal like herself, so that what she is may be apparent, and she may live as what she was made? But instead, she savors and seeks contrary things, and conforming herself to mortality by a degenerate manner of life, she blackens the brightness of immortality with a certain pitch-dark color of death-dealing habit. Why should not the appetite for mortal things make the immortal one like to mortal things, and unlike to the immortal? "He who touches pitch," says the Wise Man, "will be defiled by it" (Sir 13:1). By enjoying mortal things she has clothed herself in mortality, and the garment of immortality she has discolored by the encroaching likeness of death, but she has not cast it off. 4. Consider Eve, how her immortal soul brought upon the glory of its immortality the paint of mortality, by desiring mortal things indeed. For why, since she was immortal, did she not despise mortal and transitory things, content with things like herself, immortal and eternal? "She saw," it says, "the tree, that it was beautiful to the eyes and delightful to behold, and sweet to eat" (Gen 3:6). That sweetness, O woman, is not yours, that delight, that beauty: and if yours in part on account of the clay, not yours alone, but common to all living creatures of the earth. Yours, which is truly yours, is from elsewhere, and is other: for it is eternal, from eternity. Why do you imprint upon your soul another form, or rather an alien deformity? For indeed what one delights in having, one also fears to lose: and fear is a color. This fear, while it tinges freedom, covers it, and renders it no less unlike to itself. How much more worthily would it desire nothing beyond its origin, where it would fear nothing, and by this would defend from that servile fear its inborn freedom, remaining in its own vigor and beauty! Alas! It is not so! "The finest color is changed." You flee, and you hide: you hear the voice of the Lord God, and you conceal yourself. Why this, unless because you fear him whom you used to love, and the servile form has excluded the appearance of freedom? 5. But also that voluntary necessity, and that contrary law inflicted upon the members, about which I discoursed in the recent sermon, weighs upon that same freedom, and the creature free by nature, through its own will, while it entices, subjects it to servitude, filling its face with shame, so that even with the flesh it serves the law of sin, and not willingly. Because therefore it neglected to defend the nobility of its nature by uprightness of character, by the just judgment of its Author it came about, not indeed that it was stripped of its own freedom, but nevertheless that it was "clothed, as with a double garment, with its confusion" (Ps 108:29). And fittingly "as with a double garment," where with the garment as it were doubled, while freedom remains on account of the will, a servile manner of life nonetheless proves the necessity. This is what one may observe concerning the simplicity, and concerning the immortality of the soul: and nothing will appear to you in it, if you consider well, which is not covered over with a double garment of this kind of likeness and unlikeness alike. Is it not a double garment, where fraud is not innate but affixed, and sewn as it were with a certain needle of sin to simplicity, death to immortality, necessity to freedom? For the duplicity of heart does not overrule the simplicity of essence; nor does death overrule the immortality of nature, whether the voluntary death of sin or the necessary death of the body; nor does the necessity of voluntary servitude overrule the freedom of the will. Thus the adventitious evils, since they do not succeed but accede to the goods of nature, disfigure them indeed but do not destroy them; they disturb them but do not overthrow them. Hence the soul is unlike God, hence it is unlike also itself; hence it is compared to the senseless beasts and made like to them; hence what is read about exchanging its glory for the likeness of a calf that eats grass; hence men, like foxes, have dens of duplicity and fraud, and because they have made themselves equal to foxes, they shall be the portions of foxes; hence, according to Solomon, "there is one end for man and for beast" (Eccl 3:19). Why should he not go out similarly, who lived similarly? He lay upon earthly things in a bestial manner; by a bestial death he will depart from the earth. Hear another thing. What wonder if we receive a similar departure, who also have a similar entrance? For whence comes to men, if not from the bestial likeness, that so intemperate ardor in coitus, that so immoderate pain in childbirth? Thus man in conception and birth, in life and death, is compared to the senseless beasts and is made like to them. 6. What of the fact that the free creature does not govern its appetite, which is subject to it, as a mistress, but follows and serves it as a handmaid? Does it not in this too liken and number itself among the other living creatures, which nature did not call into freedom, but created in servitude to serve their belly, to obey appetite? Is not God ashamed, given such desert, to be declared or thought similar? And therefore he says: "You thought wickedly that I would be like you"; and he adds: "I will reprove you, and set it before your face" (Ps 49:21). It is not of a soul that sees itself, to think that God is like itself, at least of a soul such as mine is, sinful and wicked. For such a one is reproved: "You thought wickedly," he says; and he does not say: "You thought, O soul"; or, "You thought, O man, that I would be like you." But, if the wicked one is set before his own face, and is made to stand against the sickly and putrid countenance, as it were, of his inner man, so that he cannot dissimulate or turn away from the impurity of his own conscience, but sees even against his will the filth of his sins, and gazes upon the deformity of his vices, he will by no means any longer be able to think that God will be like him, but as if losing confidence on account of the great unlikeness which he will see, I think he will cry out and say: "Lord, who is like you?" (Ps 34:10). Which indeed was said on account of that voluntary and newfound unlikeness. For the first likeness remains: and therefore that unlikeness displeases all the more, because this likeness remains. O how great a good is this likeness, and how great an evil is that unlikeness! Yet from their mutual comparison each thing stands out more in its own kind. 7. When therefore the soul perceives in itself so great a distance of things, how should it not cry out, placed as it is between hope and despair: "Lord, who is like you?" It is drawn toward despair on account of so great an evil; but it is called back to hope by so great a good. Hence it is that the more it displeases itself in the evil which it sees in itself, the more ardently it draws itself toward the good which it equally perceives in itself, and desires to become what it was made to be: simple and upright, and fearing God, and departing from evil. Why should it not be able to recede from that to which it was able to approach? Why should it not be able to approach that from which it was able to recede? Which two things, however, I would say must be presumed from grace, not from nature, nor indeed even from industry. For "wisdom overcomes malice" (Wis 7:30), not industry or nature. Nor is the occasion for presuming lacking: its conversion is toward the Word. The noble kinship of the soul with the Word is not idle, about which we have been treating now for three days, and the persevering likeness is the witness of that kinship. The Word graciously admits into the fellowship of the Spirit one who is like in nature. And certainly by the reason of nature, like seeks like. The voice of the one seeking: "Return, O Shulamite; return, that we may behold you" (Song 6:12). He will behold the like one, he who was not beholding the unlike one; but he will also present himself to be beheld. "We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 Jn 3:2). Think therefore that that question, "Lord, who is like you?", comes more from the difficulty than from the impossibility. 8. Or, if you prefer this more, it is the voice of one marveling. Truly to be marveled at and wondered at is that likeness which accompanies the vision of God, or rather which is the vision of God; but I say it consists in charity. That charity is the vision, that is the likeness. Who would not be astonished at the charity of God who was spurned and yet calls back? Rightly is that wicked one reproved, who was introduced above, usurping for himself the likeness of God, when, by loving iniquity, he can neither love himself nor God: for thus you have it: "He who loves iniquity hates his own soul" (Ps 10:6). When therefore iniquity is removed from the midst, which causes the unlikeness that is partial, there will be a union of spirit, there will be a mutual vision and a mutual love. Indeed, when that which is perfect comes, that which is partial will be done away with; and there will be between them a chaste and consummated love, a full recognition, a manifest vision, a firm conjunction, an undivided fellowship, a perfect likeness. Then the soul will know, even as it is known (1 Cor 13:10, 12); then it will love, even as it is loved; and the Bridegroom will rejoice over the bride, knowing and known, loving and loved, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“How the Soul, However Much Corrupted by Vices, Can Still Return Through Chaste and Holy Love to the Likeness of the Bridegroom, That Is, of Christ. 1. As much as the regular hour permitted, which we have appointed for ourselves for speaking, this period of three days has been spent in demonstrating the affinity of the Word and the soul. What profit is there in all this labor? Surely this. We have taught that every soul, though burdened with sins, entangled with vices, captured by allurements, captive in exile, imprisoned in the body, stuck in the mud, fixed in the mire, fastened to its members, nailed at the calves, stretched out with occupations, contracted with fears, afflicted with sorrows, wandering with errors, anxious with solicitudes, restless with suspicions, and lastly a stranger in the land of enemies, according to the voice of the prophet, defiled with the dead, reckoned among those who are in hell (Bar 3:11); though, I say, thus condemned, and thus despaired of, we have taught nevertheless that this soul can discover in itself, not only that from which it may breathe again into the hope of pardon, into the hope of mercy; but also that from which it may dare to aspire to the nuptials of the Word, may not tremble to enter into a covenant of fellowship with God, may not be afraid to draw the sweet yoke of love with the King of angels. For what may it not safely dare before him, whose distinguished image it perceives in itself, whose illustrious likeness it knows in itself? What, I say, should it fear from his majesty, when confidence is given it from its origin? It need only take care to preserve the nobility of its nature by the honesty of its life, or rather let it strive to adorn and decorate the heavenly beauty, which is originally in it, with certain worthy colors of conduct and affections. 2. For why should diligence slumber? A great gift of nature in us is indeed this very thing: which if it should fail to carry out its part, will not all that remains of nature in us be entirely disturbed, entirely covered over as if by a certain rust of antiquity? This indeed is an injury to the Author. And assuredly for this reason the Author himself, God, willed that the mark of divine nobility be perpetually preserved in the soul, so that the soul may always have in itself from the Word that by which it is admonished either to stand with the Word, or to return, if it has been moved. Not moved as if migrating in places, or walking with feet, but moved (as indeed it belongs to a substance that is certainly spiritual to be moved by its own affections, or rather defections) it goes from itself in a certain way into something worse, when it makes itself unlike itself by the depravity of life and conduct, rendering itself degenerate: which unlikeness, however, is not an abolition of nature, but a vice, elevating the good of nature itself by comparison with itself as much as it defiles it by conjunction with itself. But indeed the return of the soul is its conversion to the Word, to be reformed through him, to be conformed to him. In what? In charity. For he says: "Be imitators of God, as most beloved children; and walk in love, as Christ also loved you" (Eph 5:1-2). 3. Such conformity weds the soul to the Word, when, namely, to him to whom it is similar by nature, it shows itself no less similar by will, loving as it has been loved. Therefore, if it loves perfectly, it has been wedded. What is more delightful than this conformity? What more desirable than charity, by which it comes about that, not content with human instruction, through yourself, O soul, you confidently approach the Word, constantly cling to the Word, familiarly question the Word, and consult it about every matter, as much daring in desire as you are capable in understanding? Truly this is the contract of a spiritual and holy marriage. I have said too little, a contract: it is an embrace. An embrace indeed, where to will the same thing and to not will the same thing makes one spirit out of two. Nor should it be feared that the disparity of persons may cause the agreement of wills to limp in any respect, because love knows no reverence. For love is named from loving, not from honoring. Let him honor who shudders, who is astonished, who fears, who marvels: all these things are absent in the one who loves. Love is sufficient unto itself; love, where it has come, draws all other affections into itself and takes them captive. Therefore she who loves, loves, and knows nothing else. He himself who is deservedly held in honor, deservedly the object of astonishment and wonder: yet he loves more to be loved. They are Bridegroom and bride. What other bond or connection do you seek between spouses, besides to be loved and to love? This bond conquers even what nature has more tightly bound, the bond of parents to children. For "on account of this," he says, "a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his bride" (Mt 19:5). You see how this affection in spouses is not only more powerful than other affections, but even more powerful than itself. 4. Add that this Bridegroom is not only loving, but is love. Is he honor? Let someone contend that he is: I have not read it. But I have read that God is charity (1 Jn 4:16); and I have not read that he is honor, or dignity. Not that God does not will honor, who says: "If I am a father, where is my honor?" But that is as Father. But if he presents himself as Bridegroom, I think he will change his voice, and will say: "If I am a Bridegroom, where is my love?" For even before he spoke thus: "If I am the Lord, where is my fear?" (Mal 1:6). God therefore requires to be feared as Lord, to be honored as father, and as Bridegroom to be loved. Which of these excels, which stands out? Surely love. Without this, fear has its punishment, and honor has no grace. Fear is servile, so long as it is not set free by love. And honor that does not come from love is not honor, but flattery. And indeed to God alone be honor and glory: but neither of these will God accept, if they have not been seasoned with the honey of love. Love is sufficient in itself, love is pleasing in itself and on account of itself. It is its own merit, it is its own reward. Love requires no cause beyond itself, no fruit. Its fruit is its use. I love, because I love; I love, in order that I may love. Love is a great thing, if only it runs back to its own beginning, if, restored to its origin, if poured back into its own fountain, it always draws from it whence it may continually flow. Love alone, out of all the motions, senses, and affections of the soul, is that in which the creature can respond to the Author, even if not as an equal, or repay a mutual exchange from something similar. For example, if God is angry with me, shall I similarly be angry with him in return? Not at all, but I shall fear, I shall tremble, I shall beg for pardon. So if he rebukes me, he will not be rebuked by me, but from me rather he will be justified. Nor, if he judges me, shall I judge him, but I shall adore him: and saving me, he does not himself require to be saved by me, nor does he in turn need to be freed by anyone, who frees all. If he rules, I must serve; if he commands, I must obey, and not in turn demand either service or compliance from the Lord. Now you may see how different it is with love. For when God loves, he wills nothing other than to be loved: for he loves for no other purpose than that he may be loved, knowing that those who have loved him are made blessed by that very love. 5. Love is a great thing; but there are degrees in it. The bride stands at the summit. For children also love, but they think of the inheritance: and while they fear to lose it by any means, they revere him from whom the inheritance is expected more than they love him. That love is suspect to me which the hope of obtaining something else seems to support. It is weak, which is perhaps extinguished or diminished if hope is withdrawn. It is impure, which desires something else as well. Pure love is not mercenary. Pure love does not draw its strength from hope, nor yet does it suffer the losses of distrust. This belongs to the bride, because this is what a bride is, whoever she is. The one possession and hope of the bride is love. In this the bride abounds, with this the Bridegroom is content. He seeks nothing else, nor does she have anything else. Hence he is the Bridegroom, and she is the bride. This is proper to spouses, which no other may attain, not even a son. For to sons he cries: "Where is my honor?" and not "Where is my love?" he says; reserving the prerogative for the bride. But also man is commanded to honor his father and his mother (Deut 5:16), and about love there is silence: not because parents are not to be loved by children, but because many children are more inclined to honor parents than to love them. Granted that the honor of the king loves judgment: but the love of the Bridegroom, or rather the Bridegroom who is Love, requires only the exchange of love and faithfulness. Let it be permitted therefore for the beloved to love in return. Why should not the bride love, and the bride of Love? Why should Love not be loved? 6. Rightly, renouncing all other affections, she devotes herself solely and wholly to love, who must respond to Love itself by loving in return. For even when she has poured out her whole self in love, how much is this compared to the perennial outpouring of that fountain? Not indeed with equal abundance do the lover and Love flow, the soul and the Word, the bride and the Bridegroom, the Creator and the creature, no more than the thirsty one and the fountain. What then? Shall the vow of the one about to be wed perish on account of this, and be wholly emptied out — the desire of the one sighing, the ardor of the one loving, the confidence of the one presuming — because she is unable to run equally with the giant, to contend in sweetness with honey, in gentleness with the lamb, in whiteness with the lily, in brightness with the sun, in charity with him who is charity? No. For even if the creature loves less, because she is less; yet if she loves with her whole self, nothing is lacking where the whole is present. Therefore, as I have said, to love thus is to have been wedded: because she cannot love thus and have been loved too little, so that in the consent of the two the marriage may stand whole and perfect. Unless anyone doubts that the soul is loved by the Word both first and more. She is altogether anticipated in loving, and surpassed. Happy is she who has merited to be anticipated in the blessing of such great sweetness! Happy is she to whom it has been granted to experience the embrace of such great delight! Which is nothing other than a love holy and chaste, a love sweet and delightful; a love of as much serenity as sincerity; a love mutual, intimate, and strong, which joins two not in one flesh, but plainly in one spirit, making two no longer two, but one, as Paul says: "He who clings to God is one spirit" (1 Cor 6:17). But now let us rather hear her herself on these matters, whom the anointing, itself a teacher, and frequent experience have easily made a teacher of all things. Unless perhaps we better reserve this for the beginning of another sermon, lest we compress a good thing within the constraints of this one now nearly coming to an end. And if you approve, I will make an end even before the end, so that, hungry, we may come together in timely fashion tomorrow to the delights of the holy soul, with which she merits to enjoy blessedly with the Word and from the Word, her Bridegroom indeed, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“That the Soul Seeking God Has Been Anticipated by Him: and What That Seeking Is, in Which It Has Already Been Anticipated by Him. 1. "In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves" (Song 3:1). It is a great good to seek God. I consider this second to none among the goods of the soul. It is first among gifts, last among advances. It is added to by no virtue, and it yields to none. To which would it be added, when none precedes it? To which would it yield, which is rather the consummation of all? For what virtue can be ascribed to one not seeking God, or what limit to one seeking God? "Seek his face always," it says (Ps 104:4). I think that not even when he has been found will there be a ceasing from seeking. God is sought not by steps of the feet, but by desires. And assuredly a blessed finding does not extinguish holy desire, but extends it. Surely the consummation of joy is not the consumption of desire? It is rather oil to it: for desire itself is the flame. So it is. Joy will be fulfilled; but of desire there will be no end, and therefore neither of seeking. But consider, if you can, this zeal of seeking without want, and desire without anxiety. Assuredly presence excludes the one, and abundance the other. 2. Now see why I have said these things first. It is so that every soul among you that seeks God, lest it twist a great good into a great evil for itself, may know that it has been anticipated in this, and was sought before it was seeking. For thus from great goods not the least evils are accustomed to arise, when, made distinguished by the good things of the Lord, we use his gifts as if they were not given, and do not give glory to God. So indeed those who seemed greatest on account of the grace received are reckoned least before God on account of the glory not rendered back. But I spare you. I have used more modest words, "greatest" and "least"; but what I feel I have not expressed. I wrapped the distinction; I myself will lay it bare: I ought to have said "best" and "worst." For truly and without doubt, each one is worst to the degree that he is best, if he ascribes to himself that very thing by which he is best. This indeed is the worst thing. But if someone should say: "Far be it! I acknowledge, by the grace of God I am what I am" (1 Cor 15:10); yet strives to capture petty glory for the grace he has received; is he not a thief and a robber? Let him who is of this sort hear: "Out of your own mouth I judge you, wicked servant" (Lk 19:22). What is more wicked than a servant usurping for himself the glory of his lord? 3. "In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves." The soul seeks the Word, but one that was first sought by the Word. Otherwise, once having gone forth or been cast out from the face of the Word, its eye will not return to see good things, unless it is sought again by the Word. As if indeed our soul were anything other than a spirit going and not returning, if it were left to itself. Hear the fugitive and the wanderer, what she laments and what she asks: "I have gone astray," she says, "like a sheep that has perished: seek your servant" (Ps 118:176). O man, you wish to return? But if the matter rests in the will, why do you cry for help? Why do you beg from elsewhere for what you have in abundance yourself? It is plain that she wills, and cannot: she is a spirit going and not returning, even if that one is further gone who does not even will. Although I would not say that the soul which desires to return and asks to be sought is altogether abandoned or forsaken. For whence does this will come to her? From this, unless I am mistaken: that she has already been visited and sought by the Word. Nor was this seeking idle, which produced the will without which there could be no return. But it does not suffice to be sought once: so great is the languor of the soul, and so great the difficulty in returning. For what if she wills? The will lies prostrate where the ability does not support it. For: "To will is present with me," he says, "but how to perform what is good I do not find" (Rom 7:18). What then does the one whom we brought in from the psalm seek? Nothing other, plainly, than to be sought: which he would not seek unless he had been sought; and again he would not seek if he had been sought sufficiently. And this too he asks: "Seek," he says, "your servant"; that he who gave the willing may also give the performing according to good will. 4. Yet to me it does not seem that the present passage can apply to a soul of this kind, which has not yet received the second grace, willing indeed, but not able to approach him whom her soul loves. For how can what follows there apply to her, to rise and go about the city, and through the streets and squares to seek the beloved (Song 3:2), she who herself needs to be sought? Let her do this who can: only let her remember that she was sought first, just as she was also loved first; and that from this comes both what she seeks and what she loves. Let us also pray, dearest brothers, that these mercies may quickly anticipate us, because we have been made exceedingly poor: which I do not say of all of you. For I know that very many of you walk in the love with which Christ loved us, and in simplicity of heart seek him. But there are some, which I say with sadness, who have given us no sign yet in themselves of this so salutary anticipation, and therefore neither of their own salvation: men loving themselves, not the Lord; and seeking the things that are their own, not the things that are the Lord's. 5. "I sought," she says, "him whom my soul loves." Indeed the kindness of him who anticipates provokes you to this, who both sought you first and loved you first. You would by no means seek unless first sought, just as you would not love unless first loved. Not in one blessing only, but in two have you been anticipated: in love and in seeking. The love is the cause of the seeking; the seeking is the fruit of the love and its assurance. You have been loved, lest you should suspect that you were sought rather for punishment; you have been sought, lest you should complain that you were loved in vain. Each of these two sweet discoveries, so gracious, both gave boldness and drove away shame and persuaded the return and moved the affection. Hence the zeal, hence this ardor of seeking him whom your soul loves; because indeed you could not seek unless first sought, nor can you now, being sought, fail to seek. 6. But do not forget whence you have come here. And so that I may rather transfigure to myself the things that are said (for this is safer): are you not, O my soul, the one who, having left your former husband, with whom it had been well for you, made your first faith void, going after your lovers? And now, having fornicated with them as long as it pleased, and perhaps also being despised by them, do you dare, shameless and brazen-faced, to wish to return to him whom you proudly spurned? What? Worthy of hiding-places, you seek the light, and you run to the bridegroom, more worthy of blows than of kisses? It would be a wonder if instead of a bridegroom you do not meet a judge. Happy is the one who shall hear his soul responding to these things: I do not fear, because I love; which, if I were not loved at all, I would by no means do. Therefore I am also loved. Let the beloved fear nothing. Let those who do not love tremble. Why should they not constantly suspect hostility? But I, loving, cannot doubt that I am loved, no more than I can doubt that I love. Nor can I fear the face of one whose affection I have felt. In what? In this, that he not only sought such a one as me, but also moved my affections, and thereby made me certain of his seeking. Why should I not respond in the seeking, when I respond in the affection? Will he who is sought be angry, he who even when spurned kept silence? Rather, he will not repel the one seeking him, who even seeks the one spurning him. The spirit of the Word is gracious, and brings me gracious tidings, intimating and persuading concerning the zeal and desire of the Word, which assuredly cannot be hidden from that spirit. It searches the deep things of God, being aware of the thoughts that he thinks, thoughts of peace and not of affliction. Why should I not be encouraged to seek, having experienced clemency and being persuaded of peace? 7. Brothers, to be persuaded of this is to be sought by the Word; to be fully persuaded is to be found. But not all receive this word. What shall we do for our little ones? I mean those who are still beginners among us, yet not foolish, since they hold the beginning of wisdom, being subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Whence, I say, do we give them assurance that these things are so with the bride, when they themselves have not yet perceived such things taking place within them? But I send them to one whom they ought not to disbelieve. Let them read in the book what they do not discern in another's heart, and therefore do not believe. It is written in the prophets: "If a man puts away his wife, and she, departing, takes another man, shall he return to her again? Shall not that woman be polluted and contaminated? But you have fornicated with many lovers: yet return to me, says the Lord, and I will receive you" (Jer 3:1). These are the words of the Lord: it is not lawful to withhold belief. Let them believe what they do not experience, so that by the merit of faith they may sometime attain the fruit of experience. I think it has been sufficiently declared what it means to be sought by the Word, and what this necessity is, not for the Word, but for the soul; except that she who has experienced it knows these things both more fully and more happily. It remains that in the following discourse we should teach thirsty souls to seek him by whom they have been sought, or rather that we should learn this from her who is here presented seeking him whom her soul loves, the Bridegroom of the soul, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“God Is to Be Sought at the Due Time, in the Due Manner, and in the Due Place. And That Now Is the Acceptable Time, in Which Each One Can Find God for Himself through Good Works, and Work Out His Own Salvation. 1. "In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves" (Song 3:1). The Bridegroom has not returned at the voice and wish of her who called him back. Why? So that desire might grow, so that affection might be tested, so that the business of love might be exercised. It is therefore indeed a dissimulation, not an indignation. But it remains that he must be sought, if perchance the one sought may be found, who did not come when called, since the Lord says: "Everyone who seeks, finds" (Mt 7:8). Moreover the word of recall is this: "Return; be like, my beloved, a gazelle or a young stag" (Song 2:17). When he did not return at this voice, certainly for those reasons which have been stated, then she who loves, having been made more eager, soon gave herself over with all avidity to seeking him. And first indeed she seeks him in the bed, but by no means finds him. She rises from there, goes about the city, goes and returns through the streets and lanes, and he does not appear nor show himself. Those who happen to be encountered are asked, and nothing certain is reported. Nor is this a search and a frustration of one time only or one night only, since she says that "I sought by nights." What desire and ardor is this, that rising by night she does not blush at the public way, runs through the city, inquires openly and everywhere about the beloved, and can be turned from tracking his paths by no reasoning, impeded by no difficulty, held back neither by love of timely rest, nor by a bride's modesty, nor even by fear of the night? And yet in all these things she has been frustrated up to this point from her desire. Ask what this pertinacious and prolonged defrauding means -- this nurse of weariness, fuel of suspicions, torch of impatience, stepmother of love, mother of desperation. If this is still dissimulation, it is excessively burdensome. 2. Granted that the dissimulation was piously and usefully maintained for a time, as long as the matter was still only one of calling or calling back. But now when he is sought, and sought so earnestly, what further can dissimulation accomplish? If the question is about carnal bridegrooms and shameful loves, as the literal surface seems to have prefigured -- and if such things can happen among them -- it is not my concern; let them see to it themselves. But if it is fitting for me to respond and satisfy, according to whatever small ability I have, the minds and affections of souls seeking the Lord, then something vital must surely be drawn forth from Holy Scripture, in which they trust that they have life -- something vital, and indeed spiritual -- so that the poor may eat and be satisfied, and their hearts may live. And what is so much the life of hearts as my Lord Jesus Christ, of whom he who lived by him said: "When Christ, your life, shall appear, then you also shall appear with him in glory" (Col 3:4)? Let him therefore come into our midst, so that it may be truly said to us as well: "But in the midst of you stands one whom you do not know" (Jn 1:26). Although I do not know how the Bridegroom, who is Spirit, would not be known by spiritual persons, who have indeed so advanced in the spirit that they can say with the prophet: "Christ the Lord is a Spirit before our face" (Lam 4:20); and with the Apostle: "And if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer" (2 Cor 5:16). Is this not the one whom the bride was seeking? He truly is the Bridegroom, both loving and lovable. He, I say, is truly the Bridegroom; just as his flesh is truly food, and his blood is truly drink (Jn 6:56): and everything that is of him truly is, since he himself is nothing other, assuredly, than Truth itself. 3. But this Bridegroom -- why is he not found when sought, since he is sought so diligently and tirelessly, now indeed in the bed, now in the city, or even in the streets and lanes; while he himself says: "Seek, and you shall find," and "He who seeks, finds" (Mt 7:7-8)? Let the prophet also speak to him: "You are good, O Lord, to the soul that seeks you" (Lam 3:25); and likewise the holy Isaiah: "Seek the Lord while he can be found" (Isa 55:6). How then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled? For the one who is here introduced as seeking is not one of those to whom he says: "You will seek me, and you will not find me" (Jn 7:34). But observe that there are three causes which meanwhile present themselves and are accustomed to frustrate those who seek: namely, when they seek not at the right time, or not as they ought, or not where they ought. For if every time is suitable for seeking, why then does the prophet say, as I already recalled: "Seek the Lord while he can be found"? Without doubt there will be a time when he cannot be found; and therefore he adds that he should be called upon while he is near, because in the future he will no longer be near. For by whom will he not then be sought? "To me," he says, "every knee shall bow" (Isa 45:24), etc. Yet he will not be found by the impious, whom avenging angels will certainly drive away and remove so that they may not see the glory of God. The foolish virgins also will cry out in vain; by no means at all will he come out to them now, the door being shut (Mt 25:10). Let those therefore consider it said to them: "You will seek me, and you will not find me." 4. But now is the acceptable time, now are the days of salvation (2 Cor 6:2); a time plainly both for seeking and for calling upon him, when very often, even before he is called upon, he is felt to be present. Hear, then, what he promises. "Before you call upon me," he says, "I will say: Behold, I am here" (Isa 65:24). Nor was this benignity and easiness of the present time hidden from him who speaks in the psalm: "The Lord has heard the desire of the poor; the preparation of their heart, your ear has heard" (Ps 9:17). But if God is sought through good works, then while we have time, let us do good to all (Gal 6:10): especially because the Lord openly forewarns that the night is coming, when no one can work (Jn 9:4). Do you think you will find for yourself some other time for seeking God, for working what is good, in the ages to come, beyond this one which God has appointed for you, in which he may be mindful of you? And therefore these are days of salvation, because in them God himself, our king before the ages, has worked salvation in the midst of the earth (Ps 73:12). 5. Go then, you, and in the midst of Gehenna await the salvation which has already been accomplished in the midst of the earth. What opportunity for meriting pardon do you dream will come to you amid everlasting fires, when the time for showing mercy has already passed? No sacrifice for sins remains for you who have died in your sins. The Son of God is not crucified again; he died once, he dies no more (Rom 6:9). The blood which was poured out upon the earth does not descend to the underworld. All the sinners of the earth have drunk of it: there is nothing from it that the demons can claim for themselves to extinguish their fires; nor can the men who are companions of demons. Once he descended there -- not the blood, but the soul -- and this was the portion of those who were in prison. That one visitation which was then made through the presence of the soul, while the lifeless body hung upon the earth. The blood watered the dry land, the blood soaked the earth and made it drunk; the blood pacified the things that are on earth and the things that are in heaven, but not also those in the underworld -- except that once, as I said, his soul went down there and wrought a partial redemption, lest even at that moment it should be idle from the work of charity; but beyond that it will not go again. Therefore now is the acceptable time, fit for seeking, in which plainly he who seeks finds -- if, however, he seeks where and as he ought. And this is one cause that can prevent the Bridegroom from being found by those seeking him: when they do not seek at the opportune time. But that cause does not hinder the bride, who is plainly calling and seeking at the opportune time. Nor indeed does she seek him tepidly or negligently or perfunctorily: for she seeks with a burning heart and with altogether untiring effort, plainly as is fitting. 6. It remains for us to consider the third cause, namely whether she seeks where it is not fitting. "In my bed I sought him whom my soul loves." Is it perhaps the case that he was not to be sought in a small bed, but in a great bed -- he for whom the world is too narrow? But I do not shrink from the small bed, I who know the little one. For "a little one has been born for us" (Isa 9:6). Exult and praise, O habitation of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel (Isa 12:6). But the same Lord who is great in Zion was found to be little among us, weak among us; from the one he has the condition of lying down, and from the other of lying down even in a small bed. Is not the tomb a small bed? Is not the manger a small bed? Is not the womb of the Virgin a small bed? For the womb of the great Father is not a small bed, but a great bed, of which it is said to the Son: "From the womb, before the morning star, I begot you" (Ps 109:3). Although perhaps not even a bed should properly be considered a fitting designation for that womb, which is the place of one who rules, rather than of one who lies down. For remaining in the Father, he rules all things with the Father. Indeed, it is not to lie down but to sit at the right hand of the Father that undoubted faith attributes to the Son; and he himself declares that heaven is his seat, not his bed (Isa 66:1): so that you may know that he has in his own domain -- that is, in the heavens -- not the comforts of weakness, but the insignia of power. 7. Rightly, therefore, the bride, in naming a small bed, calls it her own, because everything that is weak in God manifestly belongs to him not from his own nature, but from ours. From us he assumed what he endured for us: to be born, to be nursed, to die, to be buried. Mine is the mortality of the one born, mine the weakness of the little one, mine the last breath of the one crucified, mine the sleep of the one buried. These earlier things have passed away, and behold all things are new. "In my bed I sought by nights him whom my soul loves." What? Were you seeking in your bed him who had already taken himself back to his own domain? Had you not seen the Son of Man ascending where he was before? Already he has exchanged the tomb and the stable for heaven, and you still seek him in your small bed? "He has risen, he is not here." Why do you seek in a small bed the strong one, in a small bed the great one, the one glorified in a stable? He has entered into the powers of the Lord, he has put on beauty and strength: and behold he sits upon the cherubim, who lay beneath a stone. From now on he no longer lies down, but sits; and you prepare aids for him as though he were lying down? Or, that the truth may be more plainly stated, he either sits judging, or stands helping. 8. So you, O good women, for whom, I ask, do you keep watch? For whom do you procure spices, prepare ointments? If you knew how great he is, and how free among the dead is this dead man whom you proceed to anoint, you perhaps would have asked rather to be anointed by him. Is not this the one whom his God anointed with the oil of gladness beyond his companions? (Ps 44:8). Blessed will you be if you can glory as you return, and say: "From his fullness we also have received" (Jn 1:16). And indeed it was so. For in truth they return anointed who had come to anoint. Why would they not be anointed by so joyful a message of the new and fragrant resurrection? "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good tidings of peace, who bring good tidings of good things!" (Rom 10:15). Sent by the angel, they do the work of evangelists; and made apostles of the apostles, while they hasten to announce the mercy of the Lord in the morning, they say: "In the fragrance of your ointments we run." From that time on, therefore, and henceforth, the Bridegroom was sought in vain in the small bed; because even if the Church had known him according to the flesh, that is, according to the weakness of the flesh, yet now she knows him so no longer. Indeed he was afterward sought by Peter and John likewise in the tomb, but was by no means found. Consider for yourself whether each of these could then aptly and fittingly have said: "In my bed I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, and I did not find him." For the flesh that was going to the Father -- the flesh that was not from the Father -- first through the glory of the resurrection put off all that was weak in it, girded itself with power, clothed itself with light as with a garment: in such glory and adornment, assuredly, it was fitting for it to be presented to the eyes of the Father. 9. Beautifully indeed the bride says: Not "him whom I love," but "him whom my soul loves": because that love truly and properly belongs to the soul alone by which something is loved spiritually -- for example, God, an angel, a soul. But also to love justice, truth, piety, wisdom, and other virtues is of this kind. For when the soul loves, or rather desires, something according to the flesh -- for example, food, clothing, dominion, and whatever things of this sort are corporeal or earthly -- it ought to be called love of the flesh rather than of the soul. And this is said on account of the fact that the bride, in an unusual but no less proper manner, says that her soul loves the Bridegroom, thereby showing that the Bridegroom is spirit, and that he is loved by her not with carnal but with spiritual love. And rightly she says that she sought him "by nights." For if according to Paul, those who sleep, sleep by night, and those who are drunk, are drunk by night (1 Thess 5:7), so not absurdly, as I think, it can be said that those who are ignorant, are ignorant by night; and through this, those who seek, seek by night. For who would seek what he plainly has? Moreover, the day makes plain what the night hides, so that you may find by day what you had sought in the night. It is night, therefore, as long as the Bridegroom is sought; since if it were day, he would be in the open and would by no means be sought. And enough about this -- unless perhaps this multiplicity of nights signifies something still to be investigated, since she said not "night" but "nights." 10. And it seems to me, if you have nothing better, that the following explanation can be given. This world has its nights, and not a few. What am I saying, that the world has nights, when it is almost entirely night itself, and always revolves in darkness? The Jewish perfidy is a night, the ignorance of the pagans is a night, heretical depravity is a night, and also the carnal or animal manner of life of Catholics is a night. Is it not night where the things that are of the Spirit of God are not perceived? But also among heretics and schismatics, as many sects, so many nights. In vain through these nights do you seek the sun of justice and the light of truth, that is, the Bridegroom; because there is no fellowship of light with darkness. But someone says that the bride is not so foolish, nor so blind, as to seek the light in darkness, to seek the beloved among the ignorant and those who do not love him. As if she were saying that she is now seeking through nights, and not rather that she had sought -- she does not say "I seek," but "I sought by nights him whom my soul loves." And the meaning is that when she was little, she had understanding as a little one, and she thought as a little one, and she was seeking the truth where it was not, erring and not finding, according to that verse in the psalm: "I have gone astray like a sheep that is lost" (Ps 118:176). Indeed she recalls that she was then still in her bed, as one feeble in age and little in understanding. 11. If however you construe it thus: "In my bed" -- supply "being" or "lying" -- "I sought him whom my soul loves"; not "I sought in the bed," but "being in the bed I sought" -- that is: While I was still weak and feeble, and altogether insufficiently fit to follow the Bridegroom wherever he went, to follow to the steep and lofty heights of his sublimity, I fell in with many who, recognizing my desire, said to me: "Behold, here is Christ, behold, there he is" (Mk 13:21): and he was neither here nor there. But I fell in with them, and not to my folly. For the closer I drew near and the more diligently I investigated, the more swiftly and certainly I recognized that the truth was by no means among them. For I sought and did not find; and I detected that those who pretended to be days were in fact nights.”

“On the Seven Necessities on Account of Which the Soul Seeks the Word: Which Soul, at Last Reformed, Approaches to Contemplate and Enjoy His Sweetness. 1. "In my bed I sought him whom my soul loves" (Song 3:1). To what end? It has been said, and to repeat it would be superfluous: yet on account of certain ones who were not present when it was treated, I say something briefly, and what perhaps not even those who were present will be wearied to hear. For not everything could be said then. The soul seeks the Word, to whom it may consent for correction, by whom it may be illuminated for knowledge, upon whom it may lean for virtue, by whom it may be reformed to wisdom, to whom it may be conformed for beauty, to whom it may be married for fruitfulness, whom it may enjoy for delight. On account of all these causes the soul seeks the Word. I do not doubt that there are also very many others: but these occur to me in the meantime. Anyone, if it be to his heart, will be able easily to notice others and yet others in himself. For many are our turnings away, and many and infinite are the necessities of the soul, and of its anxieties there is no number. But the Word more richly and more fully superabounds in good things, inasmuch as it is Wisdom conquering malice, conquering evils with good things. And now receive the explanation of these which I have set forth. And first, what is first: see how the soul consents to correction. We read the Word speaking in the Gospels: "Be consenting," he says, "to your adversary while you are with him on the way, lest perchance he hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the torturer" (Mt 5:25). What could be more prudent? It is the counsel of the Word, unless I am mistaken, declaring itself an adversary, because it is opposed to our carnal desires, when it says: "Always they err in heart" (Ps 94:10). You therefore who hear these things, if trembling you begin to wish to flee from the wrath to come, I believe you will be anxious how you may consent to this adversary, who seems to threaten that wrath against you so terribly. But this is impossible unless you dissent from yourself, unless you oppose yourself, unless in grave and vigilant struggle you yourself fight against yourself indefatigably; lastly, unless you bid farewell to ingrained habit and inborn inclination. This indeed is hard. If you attempt it by your own powers, it will be as if you try to stop the rush of a torrent with one of your fingers, or to turn the Jordan itself back again. What will you do? Seek the Word to whom you may consent, with the Word itself causing you to consent. Flee to him who is your adversary, through whom you may become such that he is no longer your adversary, so that he who was threatening may become gentle, and infused grace may be more effective for changing you than intense wrath. 2. This is the first necessity, as I think, on account of which the soul begins to seek the Word. But if you do not know what he wills to whom you already consent in will, will it not also be said of you that you have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge? (Rom 10:2). And lest you think this a light matter, remember that it is written: "He who is ignorant will be ignored" (1 Cor 14:38). Do you wish to know what I advise also in this necessity? What I advised in the first. By my counsel you will go now also to the Word, and it will teach you its ways, lest not indeed by willing, but by being ignorant of the good, while you run, it happen that you run off course and wander in the pathless waste, and not on the way. For the Word is light. Indeed "the declaration of words gives light and gives understanding to the little ones." Blessed are you, if you too say: "Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my paths" (Ps 118:130, 105). Not a little has your soul progressed, whose will has been changed, whose reason has been illuminated, so that it both wills the good and knows it. In the one it received life, in the other sight. For by willing evil it was dead, and by being ignorant of the good it was blind. 3. Now it lives, now it sees, now it stands in the good, but by the help and the work of the Word. It stands, raised up by the hand of the Word, as if upon two feet: devotion and recognition. It stands, I say, but let it think it was told: "Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall" (1 Cor 10:12). Do you think it can stand by itself, when it could not rise by itself? I think not. For what? "By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established" (Ps 32:6), and shall the earth stand without the Word? Why then, if it could stand by itself, was a man of earth praying: "Confirm me," he said, "in your words"? (Ps 118:28). Indeed he had also proved it. That very voice was his: "I was pushed and overturned so as to fall, and the Lord sustained me" (Ps 117:13). You ask who that pusher is? There is not just one. The devil is a pusher, the world is a pusher, man is a pusher. Who this man is, you ask? Each one of himself. Do not marvel. To such a degree is man a pusher of himself, and his own hurler-down, that there is nothing you need fear from another pusher, if you yourself restrain your own hands from yourself. "For who," he says, "will be able to harm you, if you are zealous emulators of the good?" (1 Pet 3:13). Your hand is your consent. If, when the devil suggests or the world persuades what is not fitting, you hold back your assent, and do not give your members as weapons of iniquity, nor permit sin to reign in your mortal body, you have proved yourself a good emulator, whom malice has utterly not harmed: see whether it has not rather profited you. For it is written: "Do good, and you will have praise from it" (Rom 13:3). "Confounded are those who sought your soul," but you will sing: "If my own have not had dominion over me, then I shall be undefiled" (Ps 18:14). You have given a plainly good sign of a zealous emulator, if by the counsel of the Wise Man you have mercy on your soul (Sir 30:24), if with all watchfulness you keep your heart (Prov 4:23), if according to the Apostle you keep yourself pure (1 Tim 5:22). Otherwise, even if you gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of your soul, we do not at all consider you a good emulator, since neither does the Savior (Mt 16:26). 4. Since therefore there are three things threatening one who stands, of these the devil pushes by the spite of malice, the world by the wind of vanity, man pushes himself by the weight of his own corruption. The devil pushes, but does not overthrow, provided you deny him your help and your assent. Indeed you have: "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" (Jas 4:7). This is he who, envious, pushed those standing in paradise and overthrew them, but those consenting, not those resisting. This is he who, proud, hurled himself from heaven with no one pushing: so that you may know that man far more threatens his own fall, whom the weight of his own substance weighs down. The world too is a pusher, because it is set in wickedness. It pushes all, but overthrows only its friends, that is, those who agree with it. I do not wish to be a friend of the world, lest I fall. For "whoever wishes to be a friend of this world is made an enemy of God" (Jas 4:4), than which assuredly there is no more grave fall. From all of which it is sufficiently clear how man is the chief pusher of himself, who can fall by his own push without another's, but cannot fall by another's push without his own. Which of these must chiefly be resisted? Surely this one, who is the more troublesome as he is the more interior, and alone suffices to cast down, since without him the others can do nothing. Not without reason did the Wise Man prefer to the conqueror of cities the man who rules his own spirit (Prov 16:32). This matters greatly to you: you have need of virtue, and not just any virtue, but one with which you may be clothed from on high. For this virtue, if it be perfect, easily makes the spirit a conqueror of itself, and thus renders it unconquered against all things. For it is a vigor of spirit that knows not how to yield in defending reason. Or, if you prefer: a vigor of spirit standing immovably with reason or for the sake of reason. Or thus: a vigor of spirit compelling or directing all things, so far as is in itself, toward reason. 5. "Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord?" To the summit of this mountain, that is, to the perfection of virtue, whoever undertakes to strive, will know indeed how arduous the ascent is, and how vain the effort without the help of the Word. Happy the soul which, with the angels beholding, furnished both joy and wonder at itself, so that it might hear them speaking of it: "Who is this who ascends from the desert, abounding in delights, leaning upon her beloved?" (Song 8:5). Otherwise one strives in vain, if one does not lean upon him. Indeed even leaning against herself she will grow strong, and made stronger than herself she will compel all things for the sake of reason: anger, fear, desire, and joy, as if a certain chariot of the soul, the good charioteer will govern; and will bring into captivity every carnal affection and carnal sense, at the nod of reason, into the obedience of virtue. Why should not all things be possible for one who leans upon him who can do all things? How confident is the voice: "I can do all things in him who strengthens me!" (Phil 4:13). Nothing makes the omnipotence of the Word more clear than this, that it makes all who hope in it omnipotent. Indeed "all things are possible for the one who believes" (Mk 9:22). Is not the one to whom all things are possible omnipotent? So the soul, if it does not presume of itself, but is strengthened by the Word, will be able indeed to have dominion over itself, so that no injustice may have dominion over it. So, I say, leaning upon the Word, and clothed with virtue from on high, no force, no fraud, no allurement will any longer be able either to cast down the one who stands or to subjugate the one who rules. 6. Do you wish not to fear the pusher? "Let not the foot of pride come upon you, and the hand of the one who pushes will not move you. There they fell, those who work iniquity" (Ps 35:13). There the devil and his angels fell, who, although not pushed from without, were nevertheless expelled and could not stand. Indeed "he did not stand in the truth" who did not lean upon the Word, who trusted in his own virtue. And therefore perhaps he wished to sit, because he was not able to stand. For he was saying: "I will sit upon the mountain of the covenant" (Isa 14:13). But, with God judging otherwise, he neither stood nor sat, but fell, the Lord saying: "I saw Satan falling from heaven like lightning" (Lk 10:18). Therefore let him who stands, if he does not wish to fall, not trust in himself, but lean upon the Word. The Word speaks: "Without me you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). So it is: neither to rise to the good nor to stand in the good can we do without the Word. You therefore who stand, give glory to the Word, and say: "He set my feet upon a rock, and directed my steps" (Ps 39:3). By whose hand you are raised up, by his virtue you must needs be held. This I say in support of what I said, that we have need of the Word, upon whom we may lean for virtue. 7. Now we must consider what I also mentioned, namely that we are no less reformed to wisdom through the Word. The Word is virtue, the Word is wisdom. Let the soul therefore take virtue from virtue, and wisdom from wisdom, and ascribe both gifts to the one Word. Otherwise, if it should claim either both or one of the two from some other source for itself, let it deny also that a stream comes from a spring, or wine from a vine, or light arises from light. It is a faithful saying: "If anyone," it says, "lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all abundantly and does not reproach; and it shall be given to him" (Jas 1:5). So says he. But I would think no differently about virtue. Virtue is akin to wisdom. Virtue is a gift of God, to be reckoned among the best gifts, descending also itself from above, from the Father of the Word. And if anyone should think that it is in every respect the same as wisdom, I do not deny it, but in the Word, not in the soul. For those things which in the Word, on account of its singular simplicity of divine nature, are one, do not have one effect in the soul, but accommodate themselves to be participated in, as it were diverse, for its various and different necessities. According to which reckoning, indeed, it is one thing for the soul to be driven by virtue, and another to be governed by wisdom; one thing to have dominion in virtue, and another to take delight in sweetness. For although wisdom is powerful and virtue is sweet, yet so that we may render to each its proper signification by its proper terms: vigor demonstrates virtue, and a placidity of soul with a certain spiritual sweetness demonstrates wisdom. I think this was designated by the Apostle, where after many exhortations pertaining to virtue, he added what belongs to wisdom: "In sweetness, in the Holy Spirit" (2 Cor 6:6). Therefore to stand, to resist, to repel force with force, which are indeed reckoned in the domain of virtue, are indeed an honor, but also a labor. For it is not the same thing to defend your honor laboriously and to possess it in quiet. It is not the same to be driven by virtue and to enjoy virtue. Whatever virtue elaborates, wisdom enjoys; and what wisdom orders, deliberates, and moderates, virtue carries out. 8. "Write wisdom in leisure," says the Wise Man (Sir 38:25). Therefore the leisure hours of wisdom are its business, and the more at leisure wisdom is, the more active it is in its own kind. On the other hand, virtue exercised is more illustrious, and the more proven, the more active in duty. And if someone should define wisdom as the love of virtue, he does not seem to me to deviate from the truth. But where there is love, there is no labor, but savor. And perhaps wisdom is named from savor, because, approaching virtue, it renders savory, as if by a certain seasoning, what by itself was in a certain way felt to be insipid and harsh. Nor would I think one should be blamed who defines wisdom as the savor of good. We lost this savor from almost the very beginning of our race. From the moment the poison of the ancient serpent infected the palate of the heart, with the sense of the flesh prevailing, the good began not to be savory to the soul, and a noxious savor to steal in. Indeed "the senses and thoughts of man are prone to evil from youth" (Gen 8:21), that is, from the folly of the first woman. So the folly of the woman excluded the savor of good, because the malice of the serpent circumvented the folly of the woman. But from where malice was seen to have conquered for a time, from there it grieves to have been conquered for eternity. For behold, wisdom has again filled the heart and body of a woman, so that we who were deformed into folly through a woman might be reformed to wisdom through a woman. And now wisdom continually conquers malice in the minds into which it has entered, exterminating the savor of evil which malice introduced with a better savor. Wisdom, entering in, while it makes foolish the sense of the flesh, purifies the understanding, heals and repairs the palate of the heart. With the palate healed, the good is now savory, wisdom itself is savory, than which among good things there is nothing better. 9. How many good things are done which are not savory to those who do them! Since they are driven to them not by a savor of good, but either by reason, or by some chance, or by necessity: and on the other hand, many evil things which people do are not savory as evil to them, but they are led to these either by fear or by desire for some thing rather than by a savor of evil. But those who have passed over into the affection of the heart are either wise, and are delighted by the very savor of good; or they are wicked, and take pleasure in malice itself, even when no hope of another advantage flatters them. But what is malice except the savor of evil? Blessed the mind which the savor of good has wholly claimed for itself, together with the hatred of evil. This is to be reformed to wisdom, this is to experience happily the victory of wisdom. For in what is wisdom more clearly proved to conquer malice than when, with the savor of evil excluded — which is nothing other than malice itself — a certain intimate savor of good is felt to occupy the inmost parts of the mind with all sweetness? And so it belongs to virtue to endure tribulations bravely: to wisdom, to rejoice in tribulations. "Strengthen your heart, and wait for the Lord" is of virtue; "taste and see that the Lord is sweet" is of wisdom. And that the good of each may become clearer from the good of its own proper nature: modesty of soul proves the wise, constancy shows the man of virtue. And well does wisdom come after virtue, because virtue is, as it were, a certain stable foundation upon which wisdom builds its house for itself. But it was necessary that knowledge of the good precede, because there is no fellowship between the light of wisdom and the darkness of ignorance. It was also necessary that there be a good will, because "into a malevolent soul wisdom will not enter" (Wis 1:4). 10. Now, if in the change of will the life of the soul was recognized as restored, in instruction its health, in virtue its stability, and in wisdom at last its maturity, it remains that we find beauty for it, without which it cannot please him who is "beautiful in form beyond the sons of men." Indeed it hears: "The king will desire your beauty" (Ps 44:3, 12). How many good things of the soul we have enumerated — gifts of the Word — good will, knowledge, virtue, wisdom, and the Word, the King, is not read to desire any of these, but only: "The king will desire," it says, "your beauty." The Prophet says: "The Lord has reigned, he has clothed himself with beauty" (Ps 92:1). Why should he not desire a similar garment for his image and likewise his bride? All the more dear to him will she be, the more similar she will be to him. In what, then, does the beauty of the soul consist? Is it perhaps in what is called "the honorable"? Let us hold this for the time being, if nothing better occurs. But concerning the honorable, let outward conduct be questioned: not that the honorable proceeds from it, but through it. For in the conscience is both its dwelling and its origin. Since indeed its brightness is "the testimony of the conscience." Nothing is brighter than this light, nothing more glorious than this testimony, when truth shines in the mind and the mind sees itself in the truth. But sees itself as what? Pure, modest, fearful, circumspect, admitting absolutely nothing that would empty the glory of the attesting conscience: conscious of nothing in itself at which it would blush at the presence of truth, at which it would be forced to turn away its face as if confused and repelled by the light of God. This plainly, this is that beauty which above all the good things of the soul delights the divine gaze; and we name it and define it as "the honorable." 11. But when the love of this beauty has more abundantly filled the inmost parts of the heart, it must come forth outward, like a lamp hidden under a bushel, or rather a light shining in the darkness, that knows not how to be hidden. Thereupon the body receives the image of the mind, shining forth and bursting out as if with certain rays of its own, and diffuses it through the limbs and senses, so that every action thence shines back: speech, gaze, gait, laughter (if indeed laughter), mixed with gravity and full of the honorable. When the movements, gestures, and uses of these and other members and senses appear serious, pure, modest, wholly free from insolence and wantonness, alien both to levity and to sloth, but suited to equity and dutiful to piety: then the beauty of the soul will be manifest, if only there be no guile in its spirit. For it can happen that all these things are feigned, and not moved thus from the abundance of the heart. And that this beauty of the soul may appear more clearly, let us define, if you please, the honorable itself, in which we have judged this beauty should be located: an ingenuousness of mind, careful to preserve the integrity of its reputation together with a good conscience. Or, according to the Apostle: "To provide for good things, not only before God, but also before men" (2 Cor 8:21). Blessed the mind which has clothed itself in this beauty of purity, and in a certain white garment, as it were, of heavenly innocence, by which it may claim for itself a glorious conformity, not to the world, but to the Word, of whom we read that he is "the brightness of eternal life" (Wis 7:26), "the splendor and figure of the substance of God" (Heb 1:3). 12. From this step now, the soul that is of this kind dares to think of marriage. Why should it not dare, seeing itself marriageable inasmuch as similar? The loftiness does not terrify her whom likeness unites, love reconciles, and profession weds. The form of the profession is this: "I have sworn and resolved to keep the judgments of your justice" (Ps 118:106). Following this, the apostles were saying: "Behold, we have left all things and followed you" (Mt 19:27). Similar is that which, said indeed of carnal marriage, signified the spiritual marriage of Christ and the Church: "For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be two in one flesh" (Eph 5:31-32); and with the Prophet, the glorying of the married one: "But for me, to cleave to God is good, to place in the Lord God my hope" (Ps 72:28). Therefore when you see a soul that, having left all things, cleaves to the Word with all its vows, lives by the Word, governs itself by the Word, conceives from the Word what it may bring forth to the Word; which can say: "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Phil 1:21): consider her a spouse, and married to the Word. "The heart of her husband trusts in her," knowing her to be faithful, who has despised all things in comparison with him, and "counts all things as dung, that she may gain him for herself." He knew such a one, of whom he was saying: "This man is to me a vessel of election" (Acts 9:15). Truly a devoted mother and faithful to her husband was the soul of Paul, when he said: "My little children, whom I bring forth again in labor, until Christ be formed in you" (Gal 4:19). 13. But observe that in spiritual marriage there are two kinds of bringing forth, and from this also diverse offspring, but not contrary: when holy mothers bring forth either souls by preaching, or spiritual understandings by meditating. In this last kind one sometimes goes out of oneself, and withdraws even from bodily senses, so that she who perceives the Word does not perceive herself. This happens when the mind, enticed by the ineffable sweetness of the Word, in a certain way steals itself from itself, or rather is snatched and slips away from itself, so that it may enjoy the Word. Surely the mind is affected one way when bearing fruit for the Word, and another way when enjoying the Word. In the former, the necessity of the neighbor urges; in the latter, the sweetness of the Word invites. And indeed a mother is joyful in her offspring; but a bride is more joyful in her embraces. Dear are the pledges of children; but kisses delight more. It is good to save many; but to go out of oneself and to be with the Word is far more delightful. But when does this happen, or for how long? Sweet commerce, but a brief moment, and a rare experience. This is what I remember having said above among other things, that the soul seeks the Word in order that it may enjoy him for delight. 14. Someone may perhaps go on to ask me also what it is to enjoy the Word. I answer: let him rather find someone who has experienced it, from whom to ask this. Or if it were given even to me to experience it, do you think I could express what is ineffable? Hear one who has experienced it: "Whether," he says, "we are out of our mind, it is for God; or whether we are sober, it is for you" (2 Cor 5:13). That is: one thing is mine with God, with God alone as witness; another thing is mine with you. That was permitted to be experienced, but by no means to be spoken: so this I condescend to you in such a way that both I may be able to say it and you to grasp it. O whoever you are who are curious to know what this is, to enjoy the Word: prepare for it not an ear, but a mind. This is not taught by the tongue, but taught by grace. It is hidden from the wise and the prudent, and revealed to little ones. Great, brothers, great and sublime is the virtue of humility, which merits what is not taught, which is worthy to attain what it is not able to learn, worthy to conceive from the Word and about the Word what it cannot explain in its own words. Why is this? Not because such is the merit, but because such is the good pleasure before the Father of the Word, the Bridegroom of the soul, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“On the Caution and Modesty of the Bride Seeking the Word; and on the Commendation of Modesty. 1. There is no reason why it should now be asked of me why the soul seeks the Word: this has been sufficiently and more than sufficiently made known above. Come, let us pursue the remaining matters of the present chapter, at least those which pertain to morals. Here first observe the modesty of the bride, than which I know not whether anything more pleasing can be observed in the morals of men. This I wish first of all to take up in a certain way in our hands, and as it were to pluck a certain beautiful flower from this place, and set it before our young men. Not because it should not also be retained with all zeal in a more advanced age, for it is certainly the ornament of all ages; but because the grace of tender modesty shines forth more fully and more beautifully in a more tender age. What is more lovable than a modest youth? How beautiful is this, and how splendid a gem of morals in the life and countenance of a youth! How true and by no means doubtful a messenger of good hope, an indicator of good disposition! It is a rod of discipline for him, which, hanging over shameful affections, restrains the motions of a slippery age and checks its frivolous acts and curbs its insolent ones. What is so much a fugitive from foul speech, and from all baseness thereafter? It is the sister of continence. No sign is equally manifest of dove-like simplicity: and therefore also a witness of innocence. It is a lamp of the chaste mind, shining perpetually, so that nothing base or unbecoming may attempt to remain in it which it does not immediately expose. Thus, an expunger of evils and a champion of innate purity, it is the special glory of conscience, the guardian of reputation, the adornment of life, the seat of virtue, the first-fruits of the virtues, the praise of nature, and the badge of all that is honorable. That very blush of the cheeks, which perhaps shame has brought on, how much grace and beauty it is accustomed to bring to a suffused countenance! 2. To such a degree is modesty a natural good of the soul, that even those who do not fear to act wickedly are nevertheless ashamed to be seen doing so, as the Lord says: "Everyone who does evil hates the light" (Jn 3:20). But also those who sleep, sleep by night; and those who are drunk, are drunk by night (1 Thess 5:7): hiding in darkness the works of darkness, works indeed worthy of hiding places. There is a difference, however, in that the hidden things of disgrace, which the modesty of these men blushes not to have but to expose, the modesty of the bride does not at all cover, but spits out, but drives away. Therefore the Wise Man says: "There is a shame that brings sin, and there is a shame that brings glory" (Sir 4:25). The bride seeks the Word modestly indeed, because in bed, because by night; but this modesty has glory, not sin. She seeks this for the purification of conscience, she seeks it for testimony, so that she may say: "This is my glory, the testimony of my conscience" (2 Cor 1:12). "In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves" (Song 3:1). Modesty, if you observe, is marked for you both by place and by time. What is so friendly to a modest soul as secrecy? Moreover, both the night and the bed hold secrecy. Finally, those wishing to pray are commanded to enter their chamber (Mt 6:6), certainly for the sake of secrecy. This indeed is for caution, lest before those who are praying human praise steal the fruit of prayer and frustrate its effect. But you are taught modesty no less by this saying. What is so proper to modesty as to avoid one's own praises, to avoid boasting? It is clear that with purpose the Son and master of modesty enjoined upon those praying to seek secrecy. What is so unbecoming, especially for a youth, as a display of holiness? And yet from this age above all a fitting and timely beginning of religion is rightly taken, as Jeremiah says: "It is good for a man if he has borne the yoke from his youth" (Lam 3:27). A good commendation of the prayer that is to follow, if you send modesty ahead, saying: "I am young and despised; I have not forgotten your justifications" (Ps 119:141). 3. Not only must one observe the place, but also the time, he who wishes to pray for himself. A time of rest is more convenient and apt; but especially when nocturnal slumber imposes a deep silence, then plainly prayer goes forth more free and more pure. "Rise up in the night," it says, "at the beginning of your watches, and pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord your God" (Lam 2:19). How securely does prayer ascend by night, with God alone as witness, and the holy angel who receives it to present it at the heavenly altar! How pleasing and luminous, colored with the blush of modesty! How serene and peaceful, disturbed by no clamor or noise! How clean, finally, and sincere, sprinkled with no dust of earthly anxiety, tempted by no praise or flattery of an onlooker! For this reason therefore the bride, no less modestly than cautiously, sought both the secrecy of the bed and of the night, wishing to pray, that is, to seek the Word. For it is one and the same thing. Otherwise, you do not pray rightly, if in praying you seek something other than the Word, or something which you do not seek on account of the Word, since in him are all things. In him are the remedies of wounds, in him the supplies of necessities, in him the mending of defects, in him the abundance of advances, in him, finally, whatever it is expedient for men to receive or to have, whatever is fitting, whatever is needful. Without reason therefore is anything else sought from the Word, since he himself is all things. For even if we seem to ask for these temporal things when it is necessary, if the Word is the cause, as indeed is worthy, we are certainly not seeking those things but rather this, on whose account we ask for the others. Those know this who have been accustomed to direct every use of these things toward meriting the Word. 4. Let it not be tedious, however, to scrutinize still further the secrets of this bed and this time, in case perhaps something spiritual may lie hidden in them which it may profit to bring to light. And if it pleases to understand by the name of bed the figuring of human infirmity, and by the nocturnal darkness the equally human ignorance; the consequence is fitting and sufficiently congruent, that the Word, the power of God and the wisdom of God, should be sought more urgently against both of these original evils. For what is more fitting than that strength should be opposed to infirmity, wisdom to ignorance? And lest any doubt concerning this interpretation remain in the hearts of the simpler ones, let them hear what the holy Prophet says concerning these matters: "The Lord will bring him help upon his bed of pain; you have turned all his bedding in his infirmity" (Ps 41:3). And that indeed concerning the bed. Now concerning the night of ignorance, what is more manifest than what he says likewise in another psalm: "They knew not, neither did they understand; they walk in darkness" (Ps 82:5), assuredly expressing that very ignorance of the entire human race in which they were born. This is, as I think, that darkness from which the blessed Apostle both confesses himself to have been born and glories in having been rescued, saying: "Who has delivered us from the power of darkness" (Col 1:13). Whence also he used to say: "We are not children of the night nor of darkness" (1 Thess 5:5); and likewise to all the elect: "Walk," he says, "as children of light" (Eph 5:8).”

“And I said: "I will rise and go about the city; through the lanes and streets I will seek him whom my soul loves." Observe even now that she is lying down who says: "I will rise." This is entirely fitting. Why would she not rise, having learned of the resurrection of the beloved? Moreover, O blessed one, if you have risen with Christ, you ought to have understanding of the things that are above; and you must seek Christ not below but above, where he sits at the right hand of the Father (Col 3:1-2). But "I will go about," you say, "the city." To what end? "The impious walk in a circle." Leave that to the Jews, for whom their own prophet prophesied this, that "they will suffer hunger like dogs, and will go about the city" (Ps 58:7). And if you enter the city, according to another prophet, "behold, those wasted with hunger" (Jer 14:18): which certainly would not be the case if the bread of life were in it. He rose from the heart of the earth, but he did not remain upon the earth. He ascended to where he was before. For he who descended is the same one who ascended, the living bread which came down from heaven, the very Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“"Through the streets and squares I will seek him whom my soul loves" (Song 3:2). Still she understands as a little one. I think she supposed that he, having gone forth from the tomb, would have immediately gone into public, so that as usual he might teach the peoples, and heal the sick, and manifest his glory in Israel, if perhaps they would receive him rising from the dead, who had promised they would receive him descending from the cross. But he had completed the work which the Father had given him to do: which indeed she ought to have understood from the voice of him hanging on the cross, that voice, namely, by which, about to expire forthwith, he said: "It is finished" (Jn 19:30). There was no reason now that he should again entrust himself to the crowds, who were not even so perhaps going to believe in him. And he was hastening to the Father, who would say to him: "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool" (Ps 110:1). For more powerfully and more divinely, when he shall have been lifted up from the earth, he will draw all things to himself. But she thought he was to be sought through the streets and squares, eager for enjoyment but ignorant of the mystery. Again therefore, frustrated, she returns saying: "I sought him, and I did not find him"; so that the word which he spoke might be fulfilled: "Because I go to the Father, and you will no longer see me" (Jn 16:16). Perhaps she says: How then will they believe in him whom they will not see? As if faith were from sight, and not rather from hearing. What great thing is it to believe what you have seen? And not to deny the trust of your own eyes, what praise does it merit? But if what we do not see we hope for, we await it through patience; and patience is merit. "Blessed, indeed, are those who have not seen, and have believed" (Jn 20:29). Therefore, so that the merit of faith may not be emptied, let him withdraw himself from sight, giving place to virtue. Moreover, it is time that he now betake himself into his own. You ask, into what that is his own? Into the right hand of the Father. For he will not consider it robbery to be equal with God, since he is in the form of God (Phil 2:6). Therefore let this be the place of the Only-Begotten; in which all his injury may be seen to be repelled. Let him sit alongside, not below, so that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. In this the equality of majesty will appear, if you look up to him as neither inferior to the Father nor posterior. But she meanwhile notices none of these things: but as if drunk with love, running here and there, she seeks with her eyes him whom the eye no longer touches, but faith. For she does not think that Christ must enter into his glory in any other way, unless first, with the glory of the resurrection becoming publicly known to the world, impiety is confounded, the faithful exult, the disciples glory, the peoples are converted, and at last he himself is glorified by all, since from the presence of him rising the truth of him who had foretold these things would have become clear to all. You are mistaken, O bride. Indeed these things must come to pass, but in their own time. But now, in the meantime, see whether perhaps it is more worthy and more consonant with heavenly justice: if what is holy is not given to dogs, and pearls to swine; if rather, according to the Scripture, the ungodly is taken away so that he may not see the glory of God (Isa 26:10); if faith is not defrauded of its merit, which is then indeed known to be more proven when what is not seen is believed; if that which is hidden from the unworthy is kept in the possession of faith for those who are worthy, so that those who are in filth may be filthy still, and the just may be justified yet more (Rev 22:11), if they do not slumber from weariness. Let the heavens and the heavens of heavens waste away and be confounded from their expectation, if the Father almighty himself is not any longer frustrated of the desire of his heart; if the Only-Begotten is not, beyond this, in any way delayed from entering into his glory, which thing alone is most unworthy. How greatly do you think the glory of mortals, however great, is to be esteemed, that it should hold him back even for a little from that glory which has been prepared for him by his Father from eternity? Add to this that by no reason is it fitting that the petition of the Son himself be drawn out any longer. You ask what petition I mean? That one, namely, in which he says: "Father, glorify your Son." Which, however, I sense he asked not as a suppliant, but as one with foreknowledge. Freely is that asked for which is in the power of the one asking to receive. Therefore the petition of the Son is dispensatory, not necessary, since he grants together with the Father whatever he has received from the Father. Here also this must be said, that not only does the Father glorify the Son, but the Son also glorifies the Father: lest anyone should say the Son is less than the Father, as one who is glorified by the Father, since he himself also glorifies the Father, the Son saying: "Father, glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you." But perhaps you still think the Son should be considered subordinate, because he seems, as if without glory, to receive glory from the Father, which he then pours back upon the Father. Hear that it is not so: "Glorify me," he says, "Father, with the glory which I had, before the world was made, with you" (Jn 17:1, 5). If therefore the glory of the Son is not posterior, inasmuch as it is from eternity, the Father and the Son glorify each other on equal terms. And if this is so, where is the primacy of the Father? Equality indeed exists where coeternity exists. And equality to such a degree that the glory of both is one, just as they themselves are one. Whence it seems to me that in saying again: "Father, glorify your name," he is asking nothing other than that he himself be glorified, in whom and through whom the name of the Father would without doubt be glorified: and he received the response from the Father: "I have both glorified it, and I will glorify it again" (Jn 12:28). Which response of the Father was itself no small glorification of the Son. For the rest, he is known to have been glorified more abundantly at the streams of the Jordan, and more augustly, both by the testimony of John, and by the designation of the dove, and by the voice of the Father saying: "This is my beloved Son" (Mt 3:14, 16, 17). But also on the mountain before three disciples he was no less most magnificently glorified, both by that same voice again descending upon him from heaven, and by that wondrous and surpassing transfiguration of his body, and also by the attestation of the two prophets who appeared there speaking with him (Mt 17:2, 5). It remains therefore that, according to the promise of the Father, he be glorified once more, and that will be the fullness of glory, to which nothing more can be added. But where will that blessing be given? Not, as she suspected, in the squares or streets, unless perhaps in those of which it is said: "Your streets, O Jerusalem, shall be paved with pure gold, and through all your lanes alleluia shall be sung" (Tob 13:22). In these the Son truly received from the Father that glory, to which no equal can be found, not even in the heavenly places. For to which of the angels was it ever said: "Sit at my right hand"? (Heb 1:13.) Not only, moreover, from among the angels, but not even from among the other higher orders of the blessed was anyone at all found fit for attaining this surpassingly excellent glory. To absolutely none of them was that singular voice of glory uttered, to none was it given to experience within himself the efficacy of that voice. Whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, they indeed desire to look upon him, but they do not presume to compare themselves to him. Therefore to my Lord singularly by the Lord it was both said and given to sit at the right hand of his glory, inasmuch as in coequal glory, in consubstantial essence, by like generation, in majesty not unequal, in eternity not posterior. There, there, he who seeks him will find him, and will see his glory: not a glory as of one among the rest, but plainly the glory as of the Only-Begotten from the Father (Jn 1:14). What will you do, O bride? Do you think you can follow him there? Or do you dare or are you able to thrust yourself into so holy a mystery and so mysterious a sanctuary, that you might behold the Son in the Father and the Father in the Son? Not at all. Where he is, you cannot come now, but you will come afterward. Go on, nevertheless, follow, seek; and let not that inaccessible glory or sublimity deter you from seeking or cause you to despair of finding. If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes (Mk 9:22). "The word is near, in your mouth and in your heart" (Rom 10:8). Believe, and you have found. For to believe is to have found. The faithful know that Christ dwells through faith in their hearts (Eph 3:17). What is nearer than that? Seek therefore in confidence, seek devoutly. "The Lord is good to the soul that seeks him" (Lam 3:25). Seek by desires, follow by deeds, find by faith. What does faith not find? It reaches things inaccessible, discovers things unknown, comprehends things immeasurable, apprehends things most remote; indeed it in a certain way encloses eternity itself within its own most vast embrace. I will say confidently: the eternal and blessed Trinity, which I do not comprehend, I believe; and by faith I hold what I do not grasp with my mind.”

“But someone says: How will she believe without a preacher, since faith is from hearing, and hearing through the word of preaching? (Rom 10:14, 17.) God will provide for this. And behold, already at hand are those who may instruct and form the new bride, who is to be wed to the heavenly Bridegroom, in what is fitting, and teach her the faith, and hand on to her the pattern of piety and religion. For hear what she adds: "The watchmen who guard the city found me." For who are these watchmen? Those, surely, whom the Savior in the Gospel pronounces blessed, if, when he comes, he finds them watching (Lk 12:37). How good are these watchmen, who while we sleep keep vigil for us, as those who will render an account for our souls! How good are these guardians, who, watchful in spirit and spending the night in prayers, shrewdly scout out the ambushes of the enemy, anticipate the counsels of the wicked, detect their snares, elude their traps, scatter their nets, frustrate their machinations! These are lovers of the brethren and of the Christian people, who pray much for the people and for the whole holy city. These are they who, greatly solicitous for the Lord's sheep committed to them, give their heart to watching from early morning for the Lord who made them, and pray in the sight of the Most High. And they watch, and they pray, knowing their own insufficiency in guarding the city, and that unless the Lord guards the city, in vain does he watch who guards it (Ps 127:1). Moreover, since the Lord so commands: "Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation" (Mk 14:38); it is clear that without this twofold exercise of the faithful, and the zeal of the watchmen, neither the city, nor the bride, nor the sheep can be secure. You ask for the difference among these? They are one. The city on account of its gathering together, the bride on account of her love, the sheep on account of their meekness. Do you wish to know that the bride is the same as the city? "I saw," he says, "the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband" (Rev 21:2). Likewise this will clearly appear to you also regarding the sheep, if you recall how that first guardian (I speak of Peter), when the sheep were first committed to him, was at the same time attentively admonished regarding love. Which a wise creditor would by no means have done with so great care, unless he felt himself to be the bridegroom, his own inmost conscience testifying this to him. Hear these things, friends of the bridegroom, if indeed you are friends. But I have said too little, friends: they must be the closest of friends, who are endowed with the privilege of so great a familiarity. Not idly was it repeated so many times: "Peter, do you love me?" (Jn 21:15-17), in the commissioning of the sheep. And indeed I think it was signified in the same way as if Jesus had said to him: Unless your conscience bears testimony to you that you love me, and greatly and perfectly love me, that is, more than your possessions, more than your own, more even than yourself, so that this number of my repeated questioning may be fulfilled, by no means take up this charge, nor involve yourself with my sheep, for whom assuredly my blood was shed. A terrible word, and one that could shake even the fearless hearts of any tyrants. Therefore attend to yourselves, all of you who have been allotted the work of this ministry; attend, I say, to yourselves, and to the precious deposit which has been entrusted to you. It is a city: be vigilant for its custody and concord. It is a bride: attend to her adornment. They are sheep: see to their pasture. And these three will perhaps not unfittingly be said to pertain to that threefold questioning of the Lord. Moreover, the custody of the city, to be sufficient, will be threefold: from the violence of tyrants, from the fraud of heretics, from the temptations of demons. The adornment of the bride consists in good works, and morals, and orders. But the pasture of the sheep is commonly in the meadows of the Scriptures, as in the inheritance of the Lord; but there is a distinction among them. For there are commandments, which are imposed upon hard and carnal souls from the law of life and discipline: and there are the herbs of dispensations, which are set before the weak and fainthearted out of regard for mercy: and there are the solid and strong things of counsels, which are proposed from the depths of wisdom to the sound, and to those who have their senses trained for the discernment of good and evil. For to the little ones, as to little lambs, the milk of exhortation is given as drink, not as food. For these purposes good and solicitous pastors do not cease to fatten the flock with good and joyful examples, and their own rather than those of others. For if with others' examples and not their own, it is a disgrace to them, and the flock does not so profit. For if, for example, I who seem among you to bear the care of a pastor, should set before you the meekness of Moses, the patience of Job, the mercy of Samuel, the holiness of David, and whatever such examples of good men there be, being myself harsh and impatient, and unmerciful and not at all holy: the word, as I fear, will turn out less savory, and you will receive it less eagerly. But this I leave to heavenly goodness, that what is lacking to you from us, it may itself supply; and what is amiss, it may itself correct. Now a good pastor will also take care of this, that according to the Gospel he may be found to have salt in himself (Mk 9:49); knowing that a word seasoned with salt will profit for salvation as much as it pleases for grace. Let these things in the meantime be said concerning the custody of the city, and the adornment of the bride, and also the pasture of the sheep. I wish, however, to designate these same things yet a little more expressly, on account of those who, while they gape too eagerly after honors, too little prudently place themselves under heavy burdens and expose themselves to dangers: that they may know for what purpose they came, as it is written: "Friend, for what purpose have you come?" (Mt 26:50). Unless I am mistaken, for the custody of the city alone, so that it may be provided for sufficiently, there is need of a man who is strong, spiritual, and faithful: strong for repelling injuries, spiritual for detecting ambushes, faithful in that he does not seek his own interests. Furthermore, for the honoring or correcting of morals, which indeed pertains to the adornment of the bride, who does not clearly recognize that the discipline of censure will be absolutely necessary, with much diligence indeed? Therefore everyone upon whom this work falls must burn with that zeal by which, being inflamed, that foremost champion of the bride of the Lord used to say: "I am jealous for you with a divine jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ" (2 Cor 11:2). Now how will an ignorant pastor lead the Lord's flocks out into the pastures of divine eloquence? But even if he is learned indeed, yet is not good, there is reason to fear lest he may not so much nourish with abundant teaching as he harms with a barren life. And so this burden, too, is scarcely taken up in this regard without knowledge as well as a praiseworthy life. But behold, what we do not praise: an end is imposed where there was no end. We are called away into another matter, and one to which it is unworthy that this should yield. I am distressed on every side, and which I should bear more painfully I do not know: to be torn from this, or to be stretched out into that—except that either one of the two is more troublesome than both together. O servitude! O necessity! Not what I will, this do I do, but what I hate, that I do. Mark, however, where we leave off, so that as soon as it is free to return to this, we may forthwith begin from there, in the name of the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“Come now, we are free! We said in yesterday's sermon what sort of guides we would wish to have on this way in which we walk, not what sort we have. We find them far dissimilar. Not all are friends of the bridegroom whom you see today standing on this side and that beside the bride, and who, as the common saying goes, seem to escort her, as it were. Very few there are who do not seek the things that are their own, out of all her dear ones. They love gifts, and cannot at the same time love Christ; because they have given their hand to mammon. Behold how they go about sleek and adorned, clothed round about with variety, as a bride coming forth from her chamber. Would you not, if you should suddenly catch sight of one of them coming from afar, think it was the bride rather than the bride's guardian? But whence do you think this overflowing abundance of possessions, this splendor of garments, this luxury of tables, this heaping up of silver and golden vessels flows to them, if not from the goods of the bride? Hence it is that she is left poor, and destitute, and naked, with a countenance pitiable, unkempt, rough, and bloodless. On this account it is not in this time to adorn the bride, but to despoil her; not to guard her, but to destroy her; not to defend her, but to expose her; not to instruct her, but to prostitute her; not to feed the flock, but to slaughter and devour it, the Lord saying of them: "Who devour my people as the food of bread" (Ps 53:4); and: "Because they have eaten up Jacob and laid waste his place" (Ps 79:7); and in another prophet: "They shall eat the sins of my people" (Hos 4:8); as if he were to say: They exact the wages of sins, and do not expend upon sinners the solicitude that is owed. Which one will you give me from among the number of prelates, who does not watch over emptying the purses of his subjects more than over extirpating their vices? Where is he who by praying bends the wrath; who preaches the acceptable year of the Lord? We speak of lighter matters; a more grievous judgment awaits the more grievous. Without cause, however, do we linger over either these or those, because they do not hear us. But even if these things which we say should perchance be committed to writing, they will disdain to read them; or if by chance they do read them, they will be indignant at me, although more rightly they should do this to themselves. Therefore let us leave these men, not finders of the bride but sellers; and let us rather seek out those by whom the bride says she was found. And indeed these men of ours have obtained the place of those men's ministry, but not the zeal. All desire to be successors, few to be imitators. O would that they were found as vigilant for the care as they run eagerly to the chair! They would indeed be vigilant, carefully keeping her who was found by those men and entrusted to themselves. Nay rather, they would be watchful for their own sakes, and would not suffer it to be said of them: "My friends and my neighbors drew near against me and stood" (Ps 38:11). A just complaint altogether, and one to be applied to no age more justly than to our own. It is a small thing for our watchmen that they do not guard us, unless they also destroy us. For sunk in a deep sleep of forgetfulness, at no thunder of the Lord's threatening do they awake, so as to tremble even at their own danger. Hence it is that they do not spare their own, who do not spare themselves, destroying and perishing alike. But indeed who are those watchmen by whom the bride declares herself to have been found? The apostles, surely, and apostolic men. Truly these are they who guard the city, that is, the very Church which they found, and the more vigilantly, because they now perceive her to be in more grievous danger at this time, from an evil that is indeed domestic and intestine, as it is written: "And the enemies of a man are those of his own household" (Mic 7:6). For they do not leave destitute of their patronage her for whom they resisted even unto blood, but they protect and guard her day and night, that is, in their life and in their death. And if precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints (Ps 116:15), I do not doubt that in death they accomplish this even so much the more powerfully, as in death itself their principality has been the more strengthened (Ps 139:17). You assert these things, says someone, as if you had seen them with your own eyes; but they are hidden from human sight. To whom I say: If you consider the testimony of your own eyes to be trustworthy, the testimony of God is greater. For he says: "Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen: all the day and all the night, they shall never be silent" (Isa 62:6). But of angels, you say, that was spoken. I do not deny it: they are all ministering spirits (Heb 1:14). But who forbids me to think the same also of these men, who in power are now by no means unequal to the very angels, but in affection and mercy are perhaps more closely akin to us, inasmuch as they are more closely joined to us by nature? Add also the endurance of those same sufferings and miseries in which we for the present time still live. Will it work nothing more of compassion or solicitude for us in the minds of the saints, that they without doubt remember having themselves passed through these things? Is not that their very voice: "We have passed through fire and water, and you have brought us out into a place of refreshment" (Ps 66:12)? What? They themselves have passed through, and will they abandon us in the midst of fires and floods, and not deign even to extend a hand to their children in peril? It is not so. It goes well with you, O mother Church, it goes well with you in the place of your pilgrimage: from heaven and from earth comes help to you. Those who guard you neither slumber nor sleep. Your guardians are the holy angels, your watchmen are the spirits and souls of the just. Those who have perceived you to be found by both kinds of spirits are not mistaken, and that you are equally guarded by both. And there is for each its own reason for this solicitude: for these indeed, because without you they are not made perfect; for those, because except from you they are in no way restored to their own fullness. For who does not know that when Satan fell from heaven along with his accomplices, the number of the heavenly multitude was diminished by no small part? From you, therefore, all await their completion, some of their number, others of their desire. Acknowledge accordingly the voice in the psalm: "The just wait for me, until you reward me" (Ps 142:7). And it should be noted that it is not she who is said to have found them, but rather they who found her, and as I suspect, appointed to this very task by design. For how shall they preach unless they are sent? And so you have him speaking in the Gospels: "Go, behold I send you" (Lk 10:3); and: "Go, preach the Gospel to every creature" (Mk 16:15). So it is. She was seeking the bridegroom, and it did not escape the bridegroom. For he it was who to this very end had roused her to seek him, and had given her a heart for his precepts, and the law of life and discipline, provided there should be someone to instruct and teach the way of prudence. And he sent to meet her planters and waterers, who would nourish her and confirm her in all certainty of truth, that is, who would declare to her and make certain to her concerning the beloved; because truth is what she seeks, and what the soul of her truly loves. And indeed what is a faithful and true love of the soul, if not assuredly that by which truth is loved? I am possessed of reason, I am capable of truth; but would that I were not, if the love of the true be wanting. For of these branches this is the fruit, and I am the root. I am not safe from the axe, if I am found without it. In that gift of nature, without doubt, that notable mark of the divine image shines forth, by which the soul excels above all other living creatures. Hence it is that my soul dares to rise up to the sweet and chaste embraces of truth, and so to rest in the love of it with all security and sweetness, if only she finds grace in the eyes of so great a bridegroom, that he may deem her worthy to attain to this glory; nay rather, that he himself may present her to himself not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. How great a peril do you think it is, and what punishment is it worthy of, to hold so great a gift of God idle? But of this at another time. Now, however, the bride by no means found him whom she was seeking; and those whom she was not seeking, by them she was found. Let those hear this, who do not fear to enter upon the ways of life without a guide and teacher; being to themselves in the spiritual art both disciples and masters at the same time. This is not enough: they even heap up disciples for themselves, blind guides of the blind. How many have been discovered to have strayed most perilously from the right path on account of this! Assuredly, being ignorant of the wiles of Satan and his designs, it has come to pass that those who had begun in the spirit were completed in the flesh, led away shamefully, fallen damnably. Let those therefore who are of such a kind see to it how carefully they walk, and take their example from the bride, who was in no way able to arrive at him whom she desired, before there came to meet her those whose instruction she would use for knowing about the beloved, or at least for learning the fear of the Lord. He gives his hand to the seducer, who refuses to give it to a teacher. And he who sends his sheep into the pasture without a guardian is a shepherd not of sheep, but of wolves. Now let us see about the bride, how she says she was found. For it seems to me that she has used the word of finding quite unusually. For she says this as if the Church came from one place. But she comes from the East and the West, according to the word of the Lord (Mt 8:11), and from all the ends of the earth. Nor was she ever gathered together in one place, where she would be found by the apostles or by the angels, to be led or directed to him whom her soul loves. Was she found before she was gathered? No; because she did not yet exist. Wherefore, if she had said that she was gathered, or congregated, or certainly, what better suits the term "Church," convoked by the preachers, I would have passed over it simply, in no way hesitating. For they are fellow workers of God, whom they also heard speaking: "He who does not gather with me, scatters" (Mt 12:30). But neither will this seem to me beside the point, if someone should say she was founded or built by them. For they did this together with him who speaks in the Gospels: "And upon this rock I will build my Church" (Mt 16:18); and: "Because it was founded upon a firm rock" (Mt 7:25). But now, saying none of these things, but declaring beyond her custom that she was found, she makes us hesitate somewhat, and brings us into the suspicion that something lies hidden in this place which should be more diligently examined. I wished, I confess, to pass over this and to withdraw myself from this scrutiny, for which I did not feel myself sufficient. But remembering in how many equally doubtful and obscure matters, while you indeed lifted your hearts on high, I have felt myself aided even beyond my hope, I am ashamed of my diffidence: and rebuking my fear, I undertake, not indeed rashly, what I was timidly fleeing from. The accustomed help will be at hand, as I trust: and if it should be less, yet among well-disposed hearers what I have willed shall not be without profit. But this the following sermon will have as its beginning; for the present one we close here. And may he himself grant you not only to hold in memory what has been said, but also to love it ardently, and to fulfill it effectually: the bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“That the Bride, That Is the Church of the Elect, Was Predestined by God Before the Ages, and Prevented by Him So That She Might Seek Him and Be Converted. 1. At the word "finding," if I remember rightly, we stopped there and lingered, hearing somewhat scrupulously that the bride said she had been found by her preachers. Moreover the causes of our hesitation and doubt were expressed by us, and it seemed that something needed to be inquired into; but it could not be explained at the close of the sermon, by which we were already being pressed. What remains, except that we now pay the debt? In the explanation of a great mystery — I speak of that which the Doctor of the nations interpreted as being in Christ and in the Church, the holy and chaste marriage (Eph 5:32) — that itself is the work of our salvation: in it, I say, three cooperate with one another; God, angel, man. And God indeed, why should he not work and have care for the nuptials of his beloved Son? He himself truly does so, and with his whole will. And assuredly he would suffice by himself alone, even without the assistance of these others; but they without him can do nothing. Therefore what he enlisted from them into the work of this ministry, he did not seek as a solace for himself, but sought their advancement. For to men indeed he placed merits in the work, according to that saying: "The laborer is worthy of his hire" (Lk 10:7); and because "each shall receive according to his own labor" (1 Cor 3:8), whether he who plants in faith, or he who waters what has been planted. But when he uses the ministry of angels for the salvation of the human race, does he not cause that angels be loved by men? For that men are loved by angels can be most especially perceived from this, that the angels are not ignorant that the ancient losses of their city are to be repaired from among men. Nor indeed was it fitting that the kingdom of charity be governed by any other laws than the pious and mutual loves of those who are to reign together, and their pure affections toward one another and toward God. 2. But there is much difference in the manner of working, according, of course, to the dignity of each worker. God indeed does what he wills by the sole facility of willing itself, without exertion, without motion, without regard to place or time, or cause, or person. For he is the Lord of hosts, who "judges all things with tranquility" (Wis 12:18). He is also Wisdom "disposing all things sweetly" (Wis 8:1). Moreover the angel does not work without motion, both local and temporal, yet without exertion. But man is free from neither the exertion of spirit nor the motion of body and soul in working. In short, he is commanded to work out his own salvation "with fear and trembling" (Phil 2:12), and to eat his bread "in the sweat of his face" (Gen 3:19). 3. These things having been thus explained, consider now with me that in this so magnificent work of our salvation there are three certain things which God the author claims for himself, and in which he prevents all his helpers and co-workers: predestination, creation, inspiration. Of these, predestination — I do not say from the beginning of the Church, but not even from the beginning of the world — had its beginning, not indeed from this or that time: it is before time. Moreover creation is with time; inspiration already happens in time, where and when God wills. Indeed, according to predestination the Church of the elect was never not with God. If an unbeliever marvels at this, let him hear what he may marvel at more: she never was not pleasing, never was not beloved. Why should I not boldly speak the secret which that ready reporter of heavenly counsels opened to me from the heart of God? I speak of Paul, who, as with many other things, so also this secret from the riches of his goodness was not afraid to divulge: "He blessed us," he says, "with every spiritual blessing, in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless in his sight in love"; and he adds: "Who predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ in himself, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, in which he made us accepted in the beloved Son" (Eph 1:3-6). Nor is there any doubt that these things are said in the voice of all the elect: and they themselves are the Church. In that therefore so profound bosom of eternity, before she came forth into the light and work of this creation, who among even the blessed spirits would have been able in any way to find her, unless eternity itself, which is God, had willed to reveal her? 4. But even when she seemed already to have emerged at the nod of the Creator into these fabricated and visible species and forms, she was nevertheless not immediately found by any man or angel, because she was not recognized, shadowed as she was by the image of the earthly man, and covered by the darkness of death. Without which veil indeed of universal confusion no one of the sons of men entered this life, with one assuredly excepted, who enters without stain. Emmanuel he is, who nevertheless himself also, being from us, for our sakes clothed himself in the likeness, not the reality, of our curse and our sin. For thus you have it, that "he appeared in the likeness of sinful flesh, so that from sin he might condemn sin in the flesh" (Rom 8:3). For the rest, the entrance is one for all in all respects, for the elect, I say, and the reprobate. For there is no distinction. All have sinned, and all wear the hood of their shame. On account of this therefore, even though the Church already existed as created among created things, not even so could she be found or recognized by any creature, meanwhile lying hidden in a wondrous twofold manner, both within the bosom of blessed predestination and within the mass of wretched damnation. 5. But her whom predestining Wisdom had concealed from eternity, and creating Power had likewise by no means brought forth from the beginning, visiting grace in its own time revealed, according to the operation which I therefore called inspiration above, because something from the spirit of the Bridegroom was infused into human spirits in the preparation of the Gospel of peace, that is, to prepare the way for the Lord, and for the Gospel of his glory, to the hearts of all, as many as were predestined to life. In vain would the watchmen have labored in preaching, if this grace had not preceded. But now truly, seeing the word run swiftly, and the peoples of the nations turn to the Lord with all facility, tribes and tongues running together into the unity of the faith, and the ends of the earth being gathered into one catholic mother, they recognized from the riches of grace, which from the ages had been held hidden in the secret of eternal predestination, and they rejoiced that they had found her whom before the ages the Lord had chosen as a bride for himself. 6. From this, as I think, it becomes clear that it is not idle that the bride testified she was found by them; but because she recognized that she was gathered by them, not chosen; discovered, not converted. For the conversion of each must be ascribed to him to whom all must of necessity say that word from the psalm: "Convert us, O God of our salvation" (Ps 85:4). But perhaps I should not so fittingly apply the word of finding to him, as that of conversion. Indeed it is so. It is not for the Lord to find, but to prevent, and prevention excludes finding. For what can he find, who never did not know? "The Lord knows who are his," says a certain one (2 Tim 2:19). But what does he himself say? "I know," he says, "whom I have chosen from the beginning" (Jn 13:18). Plainly, her whom he foreknew from eternity, whom he chose, whom he loved, whom he created, it was not reasonable for her to be declared found by the same one. Yet that she was prepared by him so that she might be found, I will say confidently. For he who saw bore witness, "and we know that his testimony is true" (Jn 19:35). "I saw," he says, "the holy city, the new Jerusalem, descending from heaven, prepared by God as a bride adorned for her husband" (Rev 21:2): and he was one of the watchmen who guard the city. But hear her preparer himself, as it were pointing her out with his finger to the watchmen, but under another figure. "Lift up your eyes," he says, "and see the fields, that they are white already," that is, prepared, "for harvest" (Jn 4:35). From this the householder invites laborers to the work, when he has now perceived that all things are so prepared that without much labor of their own they can glory and say, "we are God's co-workers" (1 Cor 3:9). For what are they going to do? Namely, seek the bride, and announce to her whom they have found concerning the beloved. For they will not seek their own glory, but the glory of the bridegroom, since they are friends of the bridegroom. And for this they will not labor much with her: she is at hand, and already with all devotion she seeks him; so greatly has her will been prepared by the Lord. 7. For when they had not yet spoken anything, she asks about the beloved, and she prevents her preachers, being herself prevented, inquiring and saying: "Have you seen him whom my soul loves?" (Song 3:3). Rightly therefore she declared that she was found by those who guard the city, she who already knew herself to have been foreknown and prevented by the Lord of the city, so that they might find her such, not make her such. Thus Cornelius was found by Peter, and Paul by Ananias, for both had been prevented and prepared by the Lord. What was readier than Saul, who with a suppliant mind and voice had already cried out: "Lord, what do you wish me to do?" (Acts 9:6). Nor was Cornelius any less ready, who by his almsgiving and his prayers, the Lord indeed inspiring them in him, merited to attain to faith (Acts 10:4). Philip also found Nathanael; but the Lord had first already seen him when he was under the fig tree: and was that seeing by the Lord not a preparation? And Andrew is likewise reported to have found Simon his brother, but one equally foreseen and foreknown by the Lord, so that he would be called Cephas, as it were strong in faith (Jn 1:45, 48, 41, 42). 8. We read of Mary that "she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit" (Mt 1:18). But I think the bride of the Lord has something similar in this respect to his mother. For unless she also had been found as having from the Holy Spirit, she would by no means have so familiarly inquired from those who found her concerning him whose Spirit that is. She did not wait for them to declare for what purpose they had come; she herself spoke, and indeed from the abundance of the heart: "Have you seen him whom my soul loves?" She knew that blessed were the eyes that had seen, and marveling at those who had seen, she was saying: Are you those to whom it was given to see him whom so many kings and prophets wished to see and did not see? Are you those who merited to behold Wisdom in the flesh, Truth in a body, God in a man? Many say, "Behold, he is here," and "Behold, he is there"; but I think it safer to give credence to you, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. And let this be said concerning what the bride asked of the watchmen. If anything is lacking, it will be supplied in another sermon. But now from this it is especially clear that she was prevented by the Holy Spirit; but by those who guard the city she was found and discovered, because she truly is the one whom God foreknew and predestined before the ages, and prepared for his beloved Son as eternal delights unto everlasting ages, that she might be holy and blameless in his sight, budding like a lily and flowering forever before the Lord, the Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom of the Church, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“1. "Have you seen him whom my soul loves?" O love headlong, vehement, burning, impetuous, who does not allow anything to be thought of besides yourself, who disdains all other things, who despises everything besides yourself, content with yourself! You confound all order, you disregard custom, you know no measure; everything that seems to belong to propriety, to reason, to modesty, to counsel or judgment, you triumph over in yourself, and you bring into captivity. Behold, everything that this one thinks, and that she speaks, sounds of you, smells of you, and of nothing else: so thoroughly have you claimed for yourself both her heart and her tongue. She says: "Have you seen him whom my soul loves?" As if indeed these men should know what she herself is thinking. You ask about him whom your soul loves? And does he not have a name? And indeed who are you, and who is he? And these things I have said thus on account of the singularity of the speech, and the remarkable carelessness of the words, by which the present Scripture appears quite unlike the rest. Whence in this epithalamium the words are not to be weighed, but the affections. Why is this so, unless because holy love, which is established to be the one subject of this whole volume, is not to be judged by word or tongue, but by work and truth? Love speaks everywhere: and if anyone desires to gain knowledge of these things which are read, let him love. Otherwise, he who does not love approaches in vain to hear or read the song of love: since a cold heart can in no way grasp the fiery speech. For just as one who does not know Greek does not understand one speaking Greek, nor one who is not Latin one speaking Latin, and so with the rest; so the tongue of love will be barbarous to one who does not love, and it will be as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal (1 Cor 13:1). But these men (I speak of the watchmen), since they too have received from the Spirit that they might love, know what the Spirit speaks, and since the voices of love are perfectly well known to them, they have ready at hand to respond in a like tongue, that is, in the pursuits of love and the offices of devotion.”

“2. And so they send her forth, thus briefly instructed concerning that which she seeks, so that she says: "A little while after I had passed beyond them, I found him whom my soul loves." Well does she say "a little while," because they made a shortened word for her, handing on the symbol of faith. And what follows is of this nature. It was necessary indeed that the bride pass through them, through whom she might come to know the truth; but yet also to pass beyond them. For unless she had passed beyond even them, she would not have found him whom she was seeking. And do not doubt that she was persuaded of this by them. For they did not preach themselves, but their Lord Jesus, who without doubt is both above them and beyond them. Whence he also says: "Pass over to me, all you who desire me" (Sir 24:26). Nor was it sufficient to pass through, but she is taught also to pass beyond. For he whom she was tracking had passed beyond. For he had not only passed from death to life, but had passed beyond to glory. Why should it not have been necessary for her likewise to pass beyond? Otherwise she could not have laid hold of one whom she was not following by the same footsteps wherever he had gone. 3. And that what I say may be clearer: if my Lord Jesus had indeed risen from the dead, but had by no means ascended to the heavens, it could not be said of him that he had passed beyond, but only that he had passed through; and accordingly it would only be necessary for the bride seeking him to pass through, not to pass beyond. But now, since by rising he had already passed through, and had added to pass beyond, namely by ascending; rightly did she too declare that she had not merely passed through, but had passed beyond, she who had followed him by faith and devotion even to the heavens. Therefore, to believe the resurrection is to pass through; to believe also the ascension is to pass beyond. And perhaps (what I remember having said on one of these days when I was treating the subject) she knew the former, but did not know the latter. Therefore, instructed by them concerning what she lacked, namely that he who had risen had also ascended, she too ascended likewise, that is, she passed beyond, and she found. Why should she not have found, reaching with the mind to where he is in body? "A little while after I had passed beyond them." And well does she say "them": for both them and all other members of his which are upon the earth, our head has preceded and transcended by two steps, by the resurrection, as we have already said, and by the ascension. For Christ is the firstfruits. But if he has preceded, so has our faith. For where would it not follow him? If he ascends into heaven, it is there; if he descends into hell, it is present; and if he takes his wings at dawn, and dwells in the uttermost parts of the sea, "there," it says, "your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me" (Ps 139:8-10). Has not finally, according to this, the almighty and supremely good Father of the bridegroom raised us up together and made us sit together at his right hand in the heavenly places? And this for what the Church said, that she had passed beyond them; since she also passed beyond herself, standing by faith where she has not yet arrived in reality. I consider it also plain why she preferred to say that she had passed beyond, rather than that she had passed through. And let us pass on to what follows. 4. "I held him, nor will I let him go, until I bring him into the house of my mother, and into the chamber of her who bore me." So it is: from that time forward the Christian race does not fail, nor faith from the earth, nor charity from the Church. The floods came, the winds blew, and they beat upon it, and it did not fall, because it was founded upon the rock (Mt 7:25). But the rock is Christ. And so neither by the wordiness of philosophers, nor by the cavils of heretics, nor by the swords of persecutors has she been able, or will she ever be able, to be separated from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:39): so firmly does she hold him whom her soul loves, so good it is for her to cling to God. "The gluing is good," says Isaiah (Isa 41:7). What is more tenacious than this glue, which is neither washed away by waters, nor dissolved by winds, nor cut apart by swords? And indeed, "many waters cannot extinguish love" (Song 8:7). "I held him, nor will I let him go." And the holy patriarch says: "I will not let you go," he says, "unless you bless me" (Gen 32:26). So this one does not wish to let him go, and perhaps more so than the patriarch she does not wish it, because not even for a blessing: since he, having received the blessing, let him go, but she does not do so. I do not want, she says, your blessing, but you. "For what is there for me in heaven, and what have I desired upon earth besides you?" (Ps 73:25) I will not let you go, not even if you bless me. 5. "I held him, nor will I let him go." Nor does he perhaps wish any less to be held, since he testifies, saying: "My delights are to be with the sons of men" (Prov 8:31); and as he promises, saying: "Behold, I am with you all days even to the consummation of the age" (Mt 28:20). What is stronger than this bond, which is made firm by so vehement a will of the two? "I held him," she says. But no less is she herself in turn held by him whom she holds, to whom she says elsewhere: "You have held my right hand" (Ps 73:23). She who is held and holds, how can she now fall? She holds by the firmness of faith, she holds by the affection of devotion. But she would by no means hold for long, if she were not held. She is held, moreover, by the power and mercy of the Lord. "I held him, nor will I let him go, until I bring him into the house of my mother, and into the chamber of her who bore me." Great is the love of the Church, which does not begrudge even to its rival, the Synagogue, its own delights. What is more generous than that she should be prepared to share him whom her soul loves even with an enemy? Nor is this surprising, however, since "salvation is from the Jews" (Jn 4:22). To the place from which he had gone forth, let the Savior return, that the remnant of Israel may be saved. Let not the branches be ungrateful to the root, nor the sons to the mother. Let not the branches begrudge the root that which they drew from it: let not the sons begrudge the mother that which they sucked from her breasts. Let the Church therefore firmly hold the salvation which Judea lost and she herself has seized, until the fullness of the Gentiles should enter in, and so all Israel should be saved. Let her will that the common salvation come to the common good, which is so received by all that nothing is diminished for each. Certainly she does this, and more. What more? That she wishes for her also the name of bride, and the grace. This is truly beyond salvation. 6. Incredible love, if the word which she herself has spoken had not produced belief. For she said, if you noticed, that she wished to bring him whom she held not only into the house of her mother, but also into the chamber, which is a sign of special privilege. It would have sufficed for salvation if he entered the house: but the secret of the chamber signifies grace. "Today," he says, "salvation has been made for this house" (Lk 19:9). Why should there not be salvation for the household, when the Savior has entered the house? But she who deserves to receive him into the chamber has her own secret apart. Salvation is given to the house; delights are stored up in the bridal chamber. "I will bring him into the house of my mother," she says. Into what house, unless that of which he had once foretold to the Jews: "Behold, your house is left to you desolate"? (Lk 13:35) He did what he said, as you have testimony of this also from him in the prophet: "I have forsaken my house, I have abandoned my inheritance" (Jer 12:7): and now she promises to lead him back, and to restore the lost salvation of the house of her mother. And if this seems too little, hear what good she adds: "And into the chamber of her who bore me." He who enters the bridal chamber is the bridegroom. Great is the power of love! The Savior had gone out indignant from his house and his inheritance: and now, softened by her grace, he is bent so as to return not only as Savior, but also as bridegroom. Blessed are you by the Lord, O daughter, who both quench his indignation and restore his inheritance. Blessed are you to your mother, by whose good office wrath is turned away, salvation returns, and he returns who may say to her: "I am your salvation" (Ps 35:3). This does not suffice; let him add also and say: "I will betroth you to me in faith, I will betroth you to me in judgment and justice, I will betroth you to me in mercy and compassions" (Hos 2:19-20). But remember that she who arranges these friendships is the bride. How then does she yield the bridegroom, and this bridegroom, to another, not to say, desire to do so? It is not so. The good daughter desires him indeed for her mother, yet not so as to yield him to her, but to share him. One suffices for both, except that they are no longer two, but one in him. For he himself is our peace, who makes both one, that there may be one bride, and one bridegroom, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“Joined therefore as you are in songs of praise with heaven's own singers, since you too are citizens like all the saints, and part of God's household, sing wisely. As food is sweet to the palate, so does a psalm delight the heart. But the soul that is sincere and wise will not fail to chew the psalm with the teeth as it were of the mind, because if he swallows it in a lump, without proper mastication, the palate will be cheated of the delicious flavor, sweeter even than honey that drips from the comb. Let us with the Apostles offer a honey-comb at the table of the Lord in the heavenly banquet. As honey flows from the comb so should devotion flow from the words; otherwise if one attempts to assimilate them without the condiment of the Spirit "the written letters bring death." But if like St. Paul you sing praises not only with the spirit but with the mind as well, you too will experience the truth of Jesus' statement: "The words I have spoken to you are spirit, and they are life;" the truth too of the words of Wisdom: "My spirit is sweet above honey." Doing this your soul shall be delighted in fatness, you will find your holocaust acceptable; you will conciliate the king, give pleasure to his princes and win the favor of the whole assembly above. And when they smell this sweet fragrance in the heavens, they will surely say of you too: "What is this coming up from the desert like a column of smoke, breathing of myrrh and frankincense and every perfume the merchant knows?" "The princes of Judah," the Psalmist exclaimed, "are their leaders, the princes of Zebulun, the princes of Naphtali;" the angelic princes are the leaders of those whose work is the praise of God; who live lives of continence, lives of contemplation. Our angelic princes know how pleasing to their King are the praises of psalmody, the fortitude of chaste souls, the singleness of purpose of contemplatives; and they are eager to discover in us these and other first-fruits of the Spirit, which are none other than the first and purest fruits of wisdom. You are not unaware that in Hebrew the word Judah means one who praises or makes acknowledgment, the word Zebulun, a fortified dwelling, and Naphtali, a swift hind, whose powers of agile leaping signify the ecstatic ardors of the contemplative mind. As the hind penetrates the wood's dark avenues, so does the contemplative spirit penetrate the obscure meanings of things. And finally we have God's own words: "Whoever offers praise, his sacrifice honors me."”

“There is a place between fear and security, as between the left and the right, namely the middle place of hope, in which the mind and conscience, with the soft bedding of charity laid beneath, rests most sweetly. And perhaps in what follows in this very canticle, this place will have been designated, where in the description of the litter of Solomon among other things you have: "The middle he spread with charity on account of the daughters of Jerusalem" (Song 3:10). For he who feels himself singularly established in hope no longer serves in fear, but rests in charity.”

“That is reserved for you at the end of all things, when I shall take you, all glorious, to myself, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. Do you not know that as long as you live in the body you are exiled from the light? With your beauty still incomplete how can you consider yourself fit to gaze on beauty in its totality? And why should you want to see me in my splendor, while you still do not know yourself? Because if you had a better knowledge of yourself you would know that, burdened with a perishable body, you cannot possibly lift up your eyes and fix them on this radiant light that the angels long to contemplate. The time will come when I shall reveal myself, and your beauty will be complete, just as my beauty is complete; you will be so like me that you will see me as I am. Then you will be told: "You are all fair my love, there is no flaw in you." But for now, though there is some resemblance, there is also some want of resemblance, and you must be content with an imperfect knowledge. Be aware of what you are, do not hanker after truths that are too high for you, nor for experiences beyond your power to bear. Otherwise, you do not know yourself, O beautiful among women — for ever I give you the title beautiful, but beautiful among women, with a beauty that is imperfect. When the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.”

“Virginity is a flower, martyrdom is a flower, a good work is a flower. Virginity in the garden, martyrdom in the field, good work in the bridal chamber. And well is virginity in the garden, to which modesty is familiar, shunning the public, rejoicing in hiding places, enduring discipline. For the flower is enclosed in a garden, which in the field is exposed and in the bridal chamber is scattered. And you have: "A garden enclosed, a fountain sealed" (Song 4:12). Which indeed signifies the enclosure of modesty in the virgin, and the guarding of inviolate sanctity: if nevertheless she be such a one as is holy both in body and in spirit.”

“Living in the Spirit of the Son, let such a soul recognize herself as a daughter of the Father, a bride or even a sister of the Son, for you will find that the soul who enjoys this privilege is called by either of these names. Nor will it cost me much to prove it, the proof is ready to hand. They are the names by which the Bridegroom addresses her: "I come into my garden, my sister, my bride." She is his sister because they have the one Father; his bride because joined in the one Spirit. For if marriage according to the flesh constitutes two in one body, why should not a spiritual union be even more efficacious in joining two in one spirit? And hence anyone who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.”

“There is a place with the bridegroom from which he decrees his judgments and arranges his counsels, he who is the governor of the universe, establishing laws for every creature, weight and measure and number. And this place is high and secret, but by no means quiet. For even though he, as far as he is concerned, disposes all things sweetly, he nevertheless disposes; and he does not permit the one contemplating, who may perhaps have reached that place, to be at rest; but wondrously, though delightfully, he wearies the one who searches and marvels, and renders him restless. Beautifully the bride expresses both these things in what follows, namely the delight of this kind of contemplation and the restlessness, where she confesses both that she sleeps and that her heart watches (Song 5:2). For in the sleep of most sweet amazement and placid wonder she signifies that she feels rest; but in the wakefulness of no less restless curiosity and laborious exercise she signifies that she suffers weariness. Hence blessed Job: "If I sleep," he says, "I say, When shall I rise? and again I await the evening" (Job 7:4). Do you perceive in these words a holy soul wishing at times to decline, in a certain way, a burdensome sweetness, and again to desire the same sweet burden? For he would not have said, "When shall I rise?" if the repose of his contemplation had altogether pleased him: but also if it had altogether displeased him, he would not again have awaited the hour of rest, that is, the evening.”

“But is he still black? Far from it! Your beloved is radiant and ruddy. Beautiful indeed is he whom the flowers of roses and the lilies of the valleys surround; that is, the choirs of martyrs and of virgins: and I who sit in the midst am in harmony with both choirs, a virgin and a martyr. For how am I not in accord with the bright choirs of virgins, I a virgin, the son of a Virgin, and the bridegroom of a virgin? How am I not in accord with the rosy choirs of martyrs, I who am the cause, the power, the fruit, and the pattern of martyrdom? Touch me, such a one, in such a way, and say: My beloved is radiant and ruddy, chosen out of thousands (Song 5:10). Thousands upon thousands are with the beloved, and ten hundred thousands around the beloved, and none is equal to the beloved. Will you need to fear lest perhaps by some mistake you fall upon one of the multitude, when seeking him whom you love? You will not at all be in doubt whom to choose. Easily will the one chosen out of thousands meet you, more distinguished than all, and you will say: This one is beautiful in his robe, striding in the multitude of his strength (Isa 63:1).”

“But those spiritual feet of God, which the penitent must first kiss spiritually, I ought not to pass over. I know your curiosity, which allows nothing to pass by altogether uninvestigated of its own accord. Nor indeed should it be held in contempt to know with what feet Scripture so frequently commemorates that God now stands, as there: We will worship in the place where his feet have stood (Ps 131:7); now walks, as there: And I will dwell in them, and I will walk among them (Lev 26:12; 2 Cor 6:16); now even runs, according to that: He exulted as a giant to run his course (Ps 18:6). If the Apostle rightly judged it fitting to refer the head of Christ to the Divinity (1 Cor 11:3), I think it may also not unfittingly seem to us that the feet pertain to the humanity; of which let us name the one mercy, and the other judgment. These two words are known to you; and from many places of Scripture both together, if you reflect, come to mind. That God indeed took up the foot of mercy in the flesh to which he united himself, the Epistle to the Hebrews teaches, declaring that Christ was tempted in all things according to our likeness without sin, that he might become merciful (Heb 4:15). What of that other one, which has been called judgment? Does not God the man himself openly signify that it too pertains equally to the humanity he assumed, where he declares that power to execute judgment has been given to him by the Father, because he is the Son of Man? (Jn 5:27) With these two feet, then, fittingly coming together under the one head of the divinity, born of a woman, made under the law, the invisible Emmanuel was seen on earth and conversed with men (Bar 3:38). With these certainly he passes through even now, doing good and healing all who are oppressed by the devil, but spiritually, but invisibly. With these feet, I say, he walks through devout minds, unceasingly examining and searching the hearts and inward parts of the faithful. But see whether perhaps these are those legs of the Bridegroom which the Bride so magnificently commends in what follows, comparing them, if I am not mistaken, to marble columns set upon bases of gold (Song 5:15). Most beautifully indeed; since in the incarnate Wisdom of God, which is designated by gold, mercy and truth have met together (Ps 84:11); for all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth (Ps 24:10).”

“Moreover, the Bride has spoken more rightly, and not putting forward merit but setting forth the benefit first, and confessing that she has been preceded by the grace of the beloved. Rightly indeed. For "who has first given to him, and it shall be recompensed to him?" (Rom 11:35.) Finally, hear John, what he perceived in his Epistle on this matter. "In this is love," he says, "not as though we have loved God, but that he first loved us" (1 Jn 4:10). The Prophet, however, even if he was silent about the anticipation of grace, did not deny the following thereof: plainly he was not silent. But receive in another place his more certain confession concerning this matter. "And your mercy," he says (he was speaking to the Lord), "will follow me all the days of my life" (Ps 22:6). Hear also concerning the anticipation, his no less certain and manifest knowledge. "My God," he says, "his mercy will anticipate me" (Ps 58:11); likewise to the Lord: "Quickly," he says, "let your mercies anticipate us, for we have become exceedingly poor" (Ps 78:8). Beautifully the Bride later, if I am not mistaken, places these same words not in the same order, but she too follows the order of the Prophet, speaking in this manner: "I to my beloved, and my beloved to me." Why so? Surely so that she may then prove herself the more full of grace, when she shall have given all to grace, and ascribed to it, of course, both the first and the last parts. Otherwise, how full of grace, if she has anything that is not from grace? There is no place for grace to enter where merit has already occupied. Therefore the full confession of grace marks the fullness of grace itself in the soul of the one confessing. For if anything of one's own is present, to that extent grace must yield to it. Whatever you assign to merits is lacking to grace. I do not want the merit that excludes grace. I shudder at whatever is of my own, insofar as it makes me my own, except that perhaps that is more mine which makes me mine. Grace returns me to myself, justified freely, and so freed from the servitude of sin. For where the Spirit is, there is liberty. She who is truly the Bride recognizes these things and confesses both graces: first indeed, that which is first, by which she was also anticipated; and afterward, the subsequent one as well. And so she says now: "My beloved to me, and I to him"; assigning the beginning to the beloved. In what follows: "I," she says, "to my beloved, and my beloved to me"; granting the consummation to him equally.”

“Contemplate what a glory is hers who compares herself to heaven, even to that heaven who is so much more glorious as he is divine. This is no rashness, taking her comparison from whence her origin comes. For if she compares herself to the tents of Kedar because of her body drawn from the earth, why should she not glory in her likeness to heaven because of the heavenly origin of her soul, especially since her life bears witness to her origin and to the dignity of her nature and her homeland? She adores and worships one God, just like the angels; she loves Christ above all things, just like the angels; she is chaste, just like the angels, and that in the flesh of a fallen race, in a frail body that the angels do not have. But she seeks and savors the things that they enjoy, not the things that are on the earth. What can be a clearer sign of her heavenly origin than that she retains a natural likeness to it in the land of unlikeness, than that as an exile on earth she enjoys the glory of the celibate life, than that she lives like an angel in an animal body? These gifts reveal a power that is more of heaven than of earth. They clearly indicate that a soul thus endowed is truly from heaven. But Scripture is clearer still: "I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice from the throne saying: 'Behold the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell among them.'" But why? In order to win a bride for himself from among men. How wonderful this? He came to seek a bride, but did not come without one. He sought a bride, but she was with him. Had he then two brides? Certainly not. "My dove is only one," he says. Just as he wished to form one flock of the scattered flocks of sheep, that there might be one flock and one shepherd, so, although from the beginning he had for bride the multitude of angels, it pleased him to summon the Church from among men and unite it with the one from heaven, that there might be but the one bride and one Bridegroom. The one from heaven perfects the earthly one; it does not make two. Hence he says: "My perfect one is only one." Their likeness makes them one, one now in their similar purpose, one hereafter in the same glory.”

“When therefore the soul perceives in itself so great a distance of things, how should it not cry out, placed as it is between hope and despair: "Lord, who is like you?" It is drawn toward despair on account of so great an evil; but it is called back to hope by so great a good. Hence it is that the more it displeases itself in the evil which it sees in itself, the more ardently it draws itself toward the good which it equally perceives in itself, and desires to become what it was made to be: simple and upright, and fearing God, and departing from evil. Why should it not be able to recede from that to which it was able to approach? Why should it not be able to approach that from which it was able to recede? Which two things, however, I would say must be presumed from grace, not from nature, nor indeed even from industry. For "wisdom overcomes malice" (Wis 7:30), not industry or nature. Nor is the occasion for presuming lacking: its conversion is toward the Word. The noble kinship of the soul with the Word is not idle, about which we have been treating now for three days, and the persevering likeness is the witness of that kinship. The Word graciously admits into the fellowship of the Spirit one who is like in nature. And certainly by the reason of nature, like seeks like. The voice of the one seeking: "Return, O Shulamite; return, that we may behold you" (Song 6:12). He will behold the like one, he who was not beholding the unlike one; but he will also present himself to be beheld. "We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 Jn 3:2). Think therefore that that question, "Lord, who is like you?", comes more from the difficulty than from the impossibility. Or, if you prefer this more, it is the voice of one marveling. Truly to be marveled at and wondered at is that likeness which accompanies the vision of God, or rather which is the vision of God; but I say it consists in charity. That charity is the vision, that is the likeness. Who would not be astonished at the charity of God who was spurned and yet calls back? Rightly is that wicked one reproved, who was introduced above, usurping for himself the likeness of God, when, by loving iniquity, he can neither love himself nor God: for thus you have it: "He who loves iniquity hates his own soul" (Ps 10:6). When therefore iniquity is removed from the midst, which causes the unlikeness that is partial, there will be a union of spirit, there will be a mutual vision and a mutual love. Indeed, when that which is perfect comes, that which is partial will be done away with; and there will be between them a chaste and consummated love, a full recognition, a manifest vision, a firm conjunction, an undivided fellowship, a perfect likeness. Then the soul will know, even as it is known (1 Cor 13:10, 12); then it will love, even as it is loved; and the Bridegroom will rejoice over the bride, knowing and known, loving and loved, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.”

“"Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord?" To the summit of this mountain, that is, to the perfection of virtue, whoever undertakes to strive, will know indeed how arduous the ascent is, and how vain the effort without the help of the Word. Happy the soul which, with the angels beholding, furnished both joy and wonder at itself, so that it might hear them speaking of it: "Who is this who ascends from the desert, abounding in delights, leaning upon her beloved?" (Song 8:5). Otherwise one strives in vain, if one does not lean upon him. Indeed even leaning against herself she will grow strong, and made stronger than herself she will compel all things for the sake of reason: anger, fear, desire, and joy, as if a certain chariot of the soul, the good charioteer will govern; and will bring into captivity every carnal affection and carnal sense, at the nod of reason, into the obedience of virtue. Why should not all things be possible for one who leans upon him who can do all things? How confident is the voice: "I can do all things in him who strengthens me!" (Phil 4:13). Nothing makes the omnipotence of the Word more clear than this, that it makes all who hope in it omnipotent. Indeed "all things are possible for the one who believes" (Mk 9:22). Is not the one to whom all things are possible omnipotent? So the soul, if it does not presume of itself, but is strengthened by the Word, will be able indeed to have dominion over itself, so that no injustice may have dominion over it. So, I say, leaning upon the Word, and clothed with virtue from on high, no force, no fraud, no allurement will any longer be able either to cast down the one who stands or to subjugate the one who rules. Do you wish not to fear the pusher? "Let not the foot of pride come upon you, and the hand of the one who pushes will not move you. There they fell, those who work iniquity" (Ps 35:13). There the devil and his angels fell, who, although not pushed from without, were nevertheless expelled and could not stand. Indeed "he did not stand in the truth" who did not lean upon the Word, who trusted in his own virtue. And therefore perhaps he wished to sit, because he was not able to stand. For he was saying: "I will sit upon the mountain of the covenant" (Isa 14:13). But, with God judging otherwise, he neither stood nor sat, but fell, the Lord saying: "I saw Satan falling from heaven like lightning" (Lk 10:18). Therefore let him who stands, if he does not wish to fall, not trust in himself, but lean upon the Word. The Word speaks: "Without me you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). So it is: neither to rise to the good nor to stand in the good can we do without the Word. You therefore who stand, give glory to the Word, and say: "He set my feet upon a rock, and directed my steps" (Ps 39:3). By whose hand you are raised up, by his virtue you must needs be held. This I say in support of what I said, that we have need of the Word, upon whom we may lean for virtue.”

“Hidden as in a vase, in this name of Jesus, you, my soul, possess a salutary remedy against which no spiritual illness will be proof. Carry it always close to your heart, always in your hand, and so ensure that all your affections, all your actions, are directed to Jesus. You are even invited to do this: "Set me as a seal," he says, "upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm." Here is a theme we shall treat of again. For the moment you have this ready medicine for heart and hand. The name of Jesus furnishes the power to correct your evil actions; to supply what is wanting to imperfect ones; in this name your affections find a guard against corruption, or if corrupted, a power that will make them whole again.”

“Christian, learn from Christ how you ought to love Christ. Learn a love that is tender, wise, strong; love with tenderness, not passion, wisdom, not foolishness, and strength, lest you become weary and turn away from the love of the Lord. As it is written: "For love is strong as death, jealousy is bitter as hell." Your affection for your Lord Jesus should be both tender and intimate, to oppose the sweet enticements of sensual life. Sweetness conquers sweetness as one nail drives out another.”

“Both meditated iniquity, affecting height: the one, of power; the other, of knowledge. For the foolish woman believed him who promised, but who was deceiving: "You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Had he not already first deceived himself, he who had persuaded himself that he would be like the Most High? For he who thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, deceives himself. Therefore the devil was judged in fury, because his iniquity was found to be unto hatred; but man's unto wrath, and therefore he is chastised in wrath. Thus every height has been crushed, both that which puffs up and that which casts down, the Father indeed being zealous for the Son. For in both cases there is an injury to the Son: both from the usurped power against the power of God, which he himself is; and from the knowledge presumed from elsewhere than from the wisdom of God, which he no less is.”

“Why does he not know, unless because, bending himself down to these lowest and earthly things, he heaps up earth for himself? Assuredly he does not know, concerning those things which he commits to the earth, for whom he gathers them: whether for the moth that destroys, or for the thief that digs through; for the enemy that plunders, or for the fire that devours. And thence that lamentable voice from the psalm belongs to the wretched man bending himself down and brooding over the things that are upon the earth: "I am made wretched and bowed down utterly; all the day long I went about in sadness." In himself indeed he experiences the truth of that sentence of the Wise Man: "God made man upright, but he has entangled himself in many sorrows." And immediately the voice of mockery comes to him: "Bow down, that we may pass over."”

“All things which are good, even those of which man is the agent, really come from God rather than man. "It is the spirit," we are told, "that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer." Hence there is a curse on the man who puts his trust in man, for although our whole hope rightly depends on God made man, it is not because he is man but because he is God.”

“Even though he took a body, his love was never sensual, but always in the wisdom of the Spirit. "A Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord," jealous of us but with the jealousy of God, not man, and certainly not like that of the first man, Adam, for Eve. So those whom he sought after in a body, he loved in the spirit and redeemed in power.”

“Perhaps this was also true of the Prophet who said: "A Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord." When he adds: "Under his shadow we will live among the heathens," he seems to me to speak on behalf of the beginners, in order that they may at least rest in the shade since they know they are not strong enough to bear the heat of the sun. They may be nourished by the sweetness of his humanity since they are not yet able to perceive the things which are of the Spirit of God. The shade of Christ, I suggest, is his flesh which overshadowed Mary and tempered for her the bright splendor of the Spirit. Therefore in this human devotion there is in the meantime consolation for whomever does not as yet have the Spirit which gives life, at least who do not have him in the same way as those who say: "A Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord," and again: "If we once knew Christ in the flesh we know him thus no longer." For there is no love of Christ at all without the Holy Spirit, even if this love is in the flesh, and without its fullness.”

“I do not say, however, that knowledge of letters is to be despised or neglected, which adorns the soul and instructs it, and makes it able to instruct others also. But those two things ought and are expedient to come first, in which the preceding argument declared the sum of salvation to consist. And see whether he was not contemplating and teaching this order who said: Sow for yourselves unto justice, reap the hope of life; and then at last, he says, illuminate for yourselves the light of knowledge. He placed knowledge last, as a painting, which cannot stand upon an empty surface; and therefore he set those two things before it and placed them beneath it, as if he were laying something solid beneath a painting. I shall now attend to knowledge in safety, if first through the benefit of hope I shall have received security of life. You therefore have sown for yourself unto justice, if from true knowledge of yourself you have been awakened to fear God, have humbled yourself, have poured forth tears, have lavished alms, and have given yourself over to other works of piety, if you have afflicted your body with fasts and vigils, if you have wearied your breast with beatings and heaven with cries. For this indeed is to sow unto justice.”

“And if I may speak of those who have undertaken the direction of souls, how many there are today who reveal their lack of the requisite qualities! Only with a feeling of pain can I speak of this subject at all -- how they melt down in the furnace of their covetousness the insults endured by Christ, the spittle, the scourging, the nails, the lance, the cross, his death itself, and squander them in the pursuit of shameful gain. The very price of the world's redemption is bundled into their purses; and only in this do they differ from Judas Iscariot, that he reckoned the total value of these things at a paltry sum of money, while they, with a more ravening greed, demand riches beyond counting. They display an insatiable passion for gains that they constantly fear to lose, and bewail after they have lost. In this love of money they find their rest, provided they are ever free from the anxiety of securing, or even further increasing, what they have acquired. Neither the peril of souls nor their salvation gives them any concern. They are certainly devoid of the maternal instinct. Grown fat, gross, bloated to excess on the heritage of the crucified Christ, "about the ruin of Joseph they do not care at all."”

“Consider therefore now with me how great the care and solicitude with which we ought to repel from ourselves both these ignorances, of which the one begets the beginning of every sin, the other the consummation; just as of the two kinds of knowledge on the other side, the one begets the beginning of wisdom, the other the perfection: the one the fear of the Lord, the other love. But this concerning the two kinds of knowledge was shown above. Now see concerning the ignorances. For just as the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, so the beginning of all sin is pride; and just as the love of God claims for itself the perfection of wisdom, so despair claims for itself the full consummation of all wickedness. And just as from knowledge of yourself the fear of God comes into you, and from knowledge of God the love of God likewise; so on the contrary, from ignorance of yourself comes pride, and from ignorance of God comes despair.”

“Consider therefore now with me how great the care and solicitude with which we ought to repel from ourselves both these ignorances, of which the one begets the beginning of every sin, the other the consummation; just as of the two kinds of knowledge on the other side, the one begets the beginning of wisdom, the other the perfection: the one the fear of the Lord, the other love. But this concerning the two kinds of knowledge was shown above. Now see concerning the ignorances. For just as the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, so the beginning of all sin is pride; and just as the love of God claims for itself the perfection of wisdom, so despair claims for itself the full consummation of all wickedness. And just as from knowledge of yourself the fear of God comes into you, and from knowledge of God the love of God likewise; so on the contrary, from ignorance of yourself comes pride, and from ignorance of God comes despair.”

“Peter, who had been corrected, later when the sad prophecy was repeated, no longer objected to death but promised he would die with him. But he could not fulfill this promise because he had not yet reached that third degree where he would love with all his strength. Taught to love with his whole soul, Peter was still weak. He was well instructed but not well prepared, aware of the mystery but afraid of bearing witness to it. Obviously that love was not as strong as death which still yielded before it. Later, robed with strength from on high according to the promise of Jesus Christ, Peter began to love with such strength that when forbidden by the Council to proclaim the holy Name, he boldly answered those who gave the order: "We must obey God rather than men." Then finally he attained the fullness of love, when for love's sake he would not spare even his own life.”

“But let us take a look at those who may rightly boast of possessing an abundance of it. "They left the presence of the Sanhedrin glad to have had the honor of suffering humiliation for the sake of the name of Jesus." They whose gentleness remained unshaken in the face both of reproaches and blows, had surely been filled from the overflowing richness of the Spirit. For they were rich in the charity that no amount of self-giving can exhaust; out of its resources they easily found what sufficed to offer up "fat holocausts." Those drenched hearts of theirs poured out at random a holy unction, with which they were more fully imbued, when they proclaimed in various languages, according as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech, the marvels of God. And surely we must believe that an abundance of these same ointments was lavished on those of whom St Paul says: "I never stop thanking God for all the graces you have received through Jesus Christ. I thank him that you have been enriched in so many ways, in all speech and in all knowledge; the witness to Christ has indeed been strong among you, so that you will not be without any of the gifts of the Spirit." How I wish that I were able to offer thanks for similar graces on your behalf, that I might see you men rich in virtue, prompt to sing God's praises, overflowing with an increasing wealth of this spiritual anointing in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

“"I fear none of these things," he says, "nor do I make my soul more precious than myself" (Acts 20:24). An excellent appraiser of things, who judges that nothing of his own should be preferred to himself. How many have preferred a small and worthless sum of money to their own salvation! Paul did not even prefer his soul. "I do not," he says, "make it more precious than myself." Therefore you make a distinction between yourself and your soul? Prudently indeed you are of more worth to yourself than anything that is yours. But how is your soul not you? I judge that because Paul already at that time walked in the spirit, and in his mind consented to the law of God because it is good (Rom 7:16); for this reason he deemed this very mind of his, as a certain principal and supreme part of himself, worthy to be designated rather by the name of himself than of any possession of his; but the remainder, which is established to be of an inferior nature and therefore to cling to the inferior and cheaper essence, which is the body; not only by the office of vivifying and giving sensation, but also by the desire of nourishing and cherishing: this, I say, being sensual and carnal, the spiritual man, judging it unworthy of the appellation of himself, reckoned it should rather be counted among his possessions than that he should be personally expressed through it.”

“Woe also to those who are of Adam, who, born children of wrath, by diabolical obstinacy turn for themselves wrath into fury, the rod into a staff, nay into a hammer. For indeed they treasure up wrath for themselves in the day of wrath. But wrath accumulated—what is it but fury? They have sinned the sin of the devil, and they are struck down by the sentence of the devil.”

“There is a charity in act, and there is one in affection. And concerning that which is of work, I think the law was given to men and a commandment was formed: for who so possesses it in affection as it is commanded? Therefore the one is commanded for merit, the other is given as a reward. We do not deny that divine grace can grant its beginning indeed, and its progress, to be experienced even in the present life; but its consummation we firmly reserve for future happiness. How then was it right to command what was in no way to be fulfilled? Or if it pleases you more that the commandment was given concerning affectual charity, I do not contend about that, provided that you too agree with me that it could in no way be fulfilled in this life by any man, or could have been. For who would dare arrogate to himself that which Paul himself confesses he has not comprehended? (Phil 3:13.) Nor was the weight of the precept, exceeding the powers of men, hidden from the teacher; but he judged it useful that they be reminded of their own insufficiency from this very thing, and that they might know clearly toward what end of righteousness they ought to strive with their powers. Therefore by commanding impossible things he did not make men transgressors, but humble, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be made subject to God; because by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified before him (Rom 3:19-20). For receiving the commandment, and feeling our transgression, we shall cry out to heaven, and God will have mercy on us: and we shall know in that day, that not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us (Titus 3:5).”

“When therefore this twofold knowledge has gone before in us, knowledge that may perhaps have grown up afterward does not at all puff up, since it can bring nothing of earthly advantage or honor that is not indeed inferior to the hope conceived, and to the joy of hope already more deeply rooted in the soul. But hope does not put to shame, because the love of God has been poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Therefore that hope does not put to shame, because this love pours in certainty. For through this love the Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit that we are children of God. What then could come to us from our knowledge, however great, that would not be less than this glory, by which we are numbered among the children of God? I have said too little: not even the world itself and its fullness can be regarded in comparison with it, even if the whole of it should fall to any one of us as a possession.”

“Furthermore, this revelation which is made through the Holy Spirit, not only conveys the light of knowledge but also lights the fire of love, as St Paul again testifies: "The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given us." And that is perhaps the reason why, in the case of those who, knowing God, yet refused to honor him as God, we do not read that they knew by a revelation of the Holy Spirit; for even though they possessed knowledge they did not love. As St Paul states: "God has shown himself to them," but he does not add: "through the Holy Spirit," lest those impious minds should usurp to themselves the kiss of the bride. They were content with the knowledge that gives self-importance, but ignorant of the love that makes the building grow.”

“When the bride received the gift poured into her, they at once perceived the fragrance—they who could by no means be far from the mother; and filled with that sweetness they say: "The love of God has been poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." Therefore the bride, commending their devotion, says: "This, O bridegroom, is the fruit of your poured-forth name, that therefore the young maidens have loved you." For they perceive it as poured forth, since they could not grasp it whole; therefore they have loved you. For the pouring forth makes the name graspable, the grasping makes it lovable—but only for the young maidens. Those who are more capacious rejoice in it whole, and have no need of the pouring forth.”

“He was not returning love but freely offering it. For who had given him anything first, that it should be returned to him? "Not that we had loved him, but that he first loved us." He loved us even before we existed, and in addition he loved us when we resisted him. According to the witness of St Paul: "Even when we were still his enemies we were reconciled to God through the blood of his Son." If he had not loved his enemies, he could not have had any friends, just as he would have had no one to love if he had not loved those who were not.”

“Nor do I say this so that we should be without affection, and with a dry heart move only our hands to works. I have read among the other great and grievous evils of men which the Apostle writes, this also numbered: namely to be without affection (Rom 1:31). But there is an affection which the flesh begets; and there is one which reason rules; and there is one which wisdom seasons. The first is that which the Apostle says is not subject to the law of God, nor can it be (Rom 8:7); the second is that which he affirms on the other hand to be consenting to the law of God, because it is good (Rom 7:16); nor is there any doubt that the contentious and the consenting differ from each other. But the third is far distant from both, which both tastes and savors that the Lord is sweet (Ps 34:8), eliminating the first and rewarding the second. For the first indeed is sweet, but base; the second is dry, but strong; the last is rich, and sweet.”

“"When I say 'me,'" he says, "understand that which is more excellent in me, in which I also stand by the grace of God, that is, the mind and reason. When I speak of 'my soul,' take it in the lower sense, that which you see accommodated to animating the flesh, and even joined to it in concupiscence. That I was this, but now am no longer, I acknowledge, because I no longer walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit" (Rom 8:4). "I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20). According to the mind, I; according to the flesh, not I. For what if the soul even now desires carnally? "It is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me" (Rom 7:17). And therefore I would call what in me savors carnally not indeed myself, but nevertheless mine, and that nothing other than the soul itself. For truly the carnal affection of the soul is a portion of it, and the life which it administers to the body.”

“Without which veil indeed of universal confusion no one of the sons of men entered this life, with one assuredly excepted, who enters without stain. Emmanuel he is, who nevertheless himself also, being from us, for our sakes clothed himself in the likeness, not the reality, of our curse and our sin. For thus you have it, that "he appeared in the likeness of sinful flesh, so that from sin he might condemn sin in the flesh" (Rom 8:3). For the rest, the entrance is one for all in all respects, for the elect, I say, and the reprobate. For there is no distinction. All have sinned, and all wear the hood of their shame. On account of this therefore, even though the Church already existed as created among created things, not even so could she be found or recognized by any creature, meanwhile lying hidden in a wondrous twofold manner, both within the bosom of blessed predestination and within the mass of wretched damnation.”

“"Flesh and blood have surely revealed this wisdom to you, not the Spirit of the Father"; for this is "the wisdom of the flesh." But hear what our physicians think of it. "The wisdom of the flesh," they say, "is death"; likewise: "The wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God" (Rom 8:6-7). Ought I to have set before you the opinion of Hippocrates or Galen, or surely from the school of Epicurus? I am a disciple of Christ; I speak to disciples of Christ: if I introduce a foreign doctrine, I myself have sinned. Epicurus and Hippocrates, the one puts forward the pleasure of the body, the other good physical condition; my Master preaches contempt for both. The life of the soul in the body, which the one with utmost zeal inquires whence to sustain, the other whence even to delight, and teaches others to inquire, the Savior counsels even to lose. For what else sounded to you from the lecture hall of Christ, when just a little while ago it was proclaimed: "He who loves his soul shall lose it"? (Jn 12:25.) "He shall lose it," he said, whether by laying it down as a martyr, or by afflicting it as a penitent. Although it is a kind of martyrdom to mortify the deeds of the flesh by the spirit; milder indeed in horror than that in which the limbs are cut by the sword, but more troublesome by reason of its duration. Do you see that by this judgment of my Master the wisdom of the flesh is condemned, through which either one flows away into the excess of pleasure, or even a good state of bodily health is desired beyond what is fitting?”

“"Flesh and blood have surely revealed this wisdom to you, not the Spirit of the Father"; for this is "the wisdom of the flesh." But hear what our physicians think of it. "The wisdom of the flesh," they say, "is death"; likewise: "The wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God" (Rom 8:6-7). Ought I to have set before you the opinion of Hippocrates or Galen, or surely from the school of Epicurus? I am a disciple of Christ; I speak to disciples of Christ: if I introduce a foreign doctrine, I myself have sinned. Epicurus and Hippocrates, the one puts forward the pleasure of the body, the other good physical condition; my Master preaches contempt for both.”

“Nor do I say this so that we should be without affection, and with a dry heart move only our hands to works. I have read among the other great and grievous evils of men which the Apostle writes, this also numbered: namely to be without affection (Rom 1:31). But there is an affection which the flesh begets; and there is one which reason rules; and there is one which wisdom seasons. The first is that which the Apostle says is not subject to the law of God, nor can it be (Rom 8:7); the second is that which he affirms on the other hand to be consenting to the law of God, because it is good (Rom 7:16); nor is there any doubt that the contentious and the consenting differ from each other. But the third is far distant from both, which both tastes and savors that the Lord is sweet (Ps 34:8), eliminating the first and rewarding the second. For the first indeed is sweet, but base; the second is dry, but strong; the last is rich, and sweet.”

“When therefore this twofold knowledge has gone before in us, knowledge that may perhaps have grown up afterward does not at all puff up, since it can bring nothing of earthly advantage or honor that is not indeed inferior to the hope conceived, and to the joy of hope already more deeply rooted in the soul. But hope does not put to shame, because the love of God has been poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Therefore that hope does not put to shame, because this love pours in certainty. For through this love the Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit that we are children of God. What then could come to us from our knowledge, however great, that would not be less than this glory, by which we are numbered among the children of God? I have said too little: not even the world itself and its fullness can be regarded in comparison with it, even if the whole of it should fall to any one of us as a possession.”

“But if many are groaning, what does the mention of one signify? "The voice of the turtledove," it says. Why not "of turtledoves"? Perhaps the Apostle resolves this, where he says that "the Spirit himself intercedes for the saints with unutterable groanings" (Rom 8:26). So it is. He himself is introduced as groaning, who makes others groan. And however many they be whom you hear groaning thus, the voice of one sounds through the lips of all. Why not his, who forms that very voice in the mouth of each according to the needs of each? Finally, "to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for profit" (1 Cor 12:7). His own voice makes each one manifest and indicates his presence. And hear from the Gospel, that the Holy Spirit has a voice. "The Spirit," he says, "breathes where he wills, and you hear his voice; and you do not know whence he comes or where he goes" (Jn 3:8). Even if that one did not know, who, a dead teacher, was teaching the dead the letter that kills; let us know, who, having been translated from death to life through the life-giving Spirit, prove by certain and daily experience, with him illuminating us, that our prayers and groanings come from him, and go to him, and there find mercy in the eyes of God. For when would God make void the voice of his own Spirit? But he himself knows what the Spirit desires, because he intercedes according to God for the saints.”

“What would instruction do without love? It would puff up. What would love do without instruction? It would go astray. Indeed they were going astray, those of whom it was said: "I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge." It does not befit the Bride of the Word to be foolish; moreover, the Father does not tolerate one who is puffed up. For the Father loves the Son, and every height that exalts itself against the knowledge of the Word, he always has at hand to cast down and to destroy.”

“God is Wisdom, and he wills to be loved not only sweetly but also wisely. Whence the Apostle says: "Let your worship be rational." Otherwise the spirit of error will most easily deceive your zeal, if you neglect knowledge; nor does the cunning enemy have a more effective device for removing love from the heart than if he can bring it about that one walks in it carelessly and not with reason.”

“But shall the hope of so great a joy be without joy? Rejoicing in hope, says the Apostle. And David said not that he would rejoice but that he had rejoiced, because he hoped he would go into the house of the Lord. He did not yet hold life, but he had assuredly reaped the hope of life; and he was experiencing in himself the truth of the Scripture that testifies that not only the reward but the very expectation of the just is joy.”

“The mouth of Paul is a mighty and unfailing fountain, ever open to us all; and as I have often done before, so now too I draw from its resources in my attempt to interpret the breasts of the bride. "Rejoice," he said, "with those who rejoice, and be sad with those who sorrow." In these few words we find the description of a mother's affections, because she shares both health and sickness with her children. She cannot avoid being conformed to them in the depths of her being in these experiences. Therefore, following Paul's guidance, I shall assign these two affective movements to the bride's two breasts, compassion to one, joyful sympathy to the other. For if she were not prompt to rejoice with those who rejoice, and ready to be sad with those who sorrow, her breasts would still be undeveloped; she would be no more than a girl too immature to marry. Should a person devoid of these affective qualities be confided with the direction of souls, or the work of preaching, he will do no good to others and great harm to himself.”

“But that this rather pertains to actual charity seems to appear most especially from this: that when the Lord had said, "Love your enemies," he at once adds concerning works: "Do good to those who hate you" (Lk 6:27). Likewise Scripture: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he thirsts, give him drink" (Rom 12:20). And here you have what concerns act, not affection.”

“No one is saved without knowledge of himself, from which indeed the mother of salvation, humility, arises, and the fear of the Lord, which itself, just as it is the beginning of wisdom, so also is the beginning of salvation. No one, I say, is saved without that knowledge, who yet has the age and faculty of knowing. This I say on account of little children and the mentally deficient, whose case is different. What if you are ignorant of God? Can there be hope of salvation with ignorance of God? Not even this. For you can neither love one whom you do not know, nor possess one whom you have not loved. Know yourself therefore, that you may fear God; know him, that you may likewise appease him. In the one you are initiated into wisdom, in the other you are also brought to perfection, because the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and the fullness of the law is love. Both ignorances therefore must be guarded against by you, just as without the fear and love of God salvation cannot exist. The rest are indifferent, having neither salvation if they are known, nor damnation if they are not known.”

“Of course this devotion to the humanity of Christ is a gift, a great gift of the Spirit. I have called it carnal with comparison to that other love which does not know the Word as flesh so much as the Word as wisdom, as justice, truth, holiness, loyalty, strength, and whatever else could be said in this manner. Christ is truly all these things. "He became for us the wisdom of God, and justice, and sanctification and redemption." Take as an example two men: one of them feels a share in Christ's sufferings, is affected and easily moved at the thought of all that he suffered; he is nourished and strengthened by the sweetness of this devotion to good and honest and worthy actions. But the other is always aflame with zeal for justice, eager for the truth and for wisdom. His life, his habits are saintly, ashamed of boasting, avoiding criticism, never knowing envy, hating pride. He not only flees all human glory but shrinks from it and avoids it, every stain of impurity both in body and soul he loathes and eradicates; finally he spurns every evil as if naturally, and embraces what is good. If you would compare the feelings of these two men would it not appear how the latter was superior in respect to the former, whose love was somehow more carnal?”

“All of these indeed could say with felicity and truth: "It is the only Son who is in the Father's bosom who has made it known to us." And this revelation -- what can you call it but a kiss? But it was the kiss of the kiss, not of the mouth. Listen if you will know what the kiss of the mouth is: "The Father and I are one;" and again: "I am in the Father and the Father is in me." This is a kiss from mouth to mouth, beyond the claim of any creature. It is a kiss of love and of peace, but of the love which is beyond all knowledge and that peace which is so much greater than we can understand. The truth is that the things that no eye has seen, and no ear has heard, things beyond the mind of man, were revealed to Paul by God through his Spirit, that is, through him who is the kiss of his mouth. That the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son signifies the kiss of the mouth. But the kiss of the kiss we discover when we read: "Instead of the spirit of the world, we have received the Spirit that comes from God, to teach us to understand the gifts that he has given us."”

“Living in the Spirit of the Son, let such a soul recognize herself as a daughter of the Father, a bride or even a sister of the Son, for you will find that the soul who enjoys this privilege is called by either of these names. Nor will it cost me much to prove it, the proof is ready to hand. They are the names by which the Bridegroom addresses her: "I come into my garden, my sister, my bride." She is his sister because they have the one Father; his bride because joined in the one Spirit. For if marriage according to the flesh constitutes two in one body, why should not a spiritual union be even more efficacious in joining two in one spirit? And hence anyone who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.”

“You see that even majesty yields to love? So it is, brothers; love looks up to no one, but neither does it look down on anyone. It regards all equally, who love one another perfectly, and in itself it tempers together the lofty and the lowly; not only making them equals, but one. Perhaps you still think that God is excepted from this rule of love; but "he who clings to God is one spirit" (1 Cor 6:17). Why do you marvel at this? He himself was made as one of us. I have said too little: not as one, but one. It is a small thing to be equal to men: he is man. Thence he claims our land for himself, but as a homeland, not as a possession. Why should he not claim it? Thence comes his bride, thence the substance of his body; thence the Bridegroom himself; thence "two in one flesh." If one flesh, why not also one homeland?”

“St Paul says: "God is the head of Christ," so in speaking of Christ we may understand the head as referring to his divinity, and it is beyond doubt that he who offers thanks anoints the head, because he makes contact with God, not man. I do not mean that he who is God is not also man, for the one Christ is both God and man; I mean that all things which are good, even those of which man is the agent, really come from God rather than man.”

“This is brought forth in the soul of the one who has sown for himself unto justice: the presumed pardon of sins, if indeed the pardon itself is attested by the efficacy of grace received for living more holily henceforth. Everyone among you who feels these things being worked within himself knows what the Spirit speaks, whose voice and working never disagree with one another. Therefore he understands the things that are said, because what he hears outwardly he feels inwardly. For he who speaks in us and works in you is one and the same Spirit, dividing to each as he wills: to some indeed to speak, to others to work what is good.”

“For actual charity prefers inferior things, affectual prefers superior things. For indeed in a well-affected mind there is no doubt, for example, that the love of God is set before the love of man; and among men themselves, the more perfect before the weaker, heaven before earth, eternity before time, the soul before the flesh. Yet in a well-ordered action, the opposite order is often, or even always, found. For concerning care for our neighbor we are both more urgently pressed and more frequently occupied; and we attend to weaker brethren with more diligent care; and to the peace of earth rather than the glory of heaven we attend by the right of humanity and by necessity itself; and by the restlessness of temporal cares we are scarcely permitted to perceive anything of eternal things; and to the ailments of our body, with care of the soul set aside, we attend almost continuously; and indeed to our very weaker members we assign the more abundant honor, according to the judgment of the Apostle (1 Cor 12:23): by this in a certain way fulfilling the word of the Lord, concerning which you have: "The last shall be first, and the first last" (Mt 20:16). Finally, who doubts that one who prays speaks with God? Yet how often are we thence led away and torn away at the command of charity, on account of those who are in need of our work or word? How often does pious quiet piously yield to the tumult of business? How often is a book put down with good conscience, so that one may sweat at the work of the hands? How often, for the sake of administering earthly things, do we most justly abstain from celebrating the very solemnities of the Mass? The order is reversed: but necessity has no law. Actual charity therefore follows its own order according to the command of the head of the household, beginning from the last (Mt 20:8). Surely it is pious and just, for it is no respecter of persons; nor does it consider the value of things, but the necessities of men.”

“"If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus, let him be anathema." Truly, I ought to love the one through whom I have my being, my life, my understanding. If I am ungrateful, I am unworthy too. Lord Jesus, whoever refuses to live for you is clearly worthy of death, and is in fact dead already. Whoever does not know you is a fool. And whoever wants to become something without you, without doubt that man is considered nothing and is just that. For what is man, unless you take notice of him? You have made all things for yourself, O God, and whoever wants to live for himself and not for you, in all that he does, is nothing.”

“The love of God begets the love of the soul, and his preceding intention makes the soul intent, and his solicitude makes it solicitous. For I know not by what closeness of nature, once the soul shall have been able to behold the glory of God with face unveiled, it is necessary that it soon be conformed to it and transformed into the same image. Therefore, as you shall have prepared yourself for God, so it is necessary that God appear to you.”

“Afterwards he showed them a higher degree of love when he said, "It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing." I think Paul had reached this level when he said: "Even if we once knew Christ in the body, we know him thus no longer." Therefore in this human devotion there is in the meantime consolation for whomever does not as yet have the Spirit which gives life, at least who do not have him in the same way as those who say: "A Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord," and again: "If we once knew Christ in the flesh we know him thus no longer." For there is no love of Christ at all without the Holy Spirit, even if this love is in the flesh, and without its fullness.”

“For the Father loves the Son, and every height that exalts itself against the knowledge of the Word, he always has at hand to cast down and to destroy, whether by sending zeal or by directing it: of which the former is of mercy, the latter of judgment. Therefore the devil was judged in fury, because his iniquity was found to be unto hatred; but man's unto wrath, and therefore he is chastised in wrath. Thus every height has been crushed, both that which puffs up and that which casts down, the Father indeed being zealous for the Son. For in both cases there is an injury to the Son: both from the usurped power against the power of God, which he himself is; and from the knowledge presumed from elsewhere than from the wisdom of God, which he no less is. Does not charity atone? And powerfully so. I have read that it covers a multitude of sins. But I say: Is it not fit and sufficient for casting down and humbling every exaltation of the eyes and of the heart? Most especially: for it is not exalted, it is not puffed up.”

“You had received a good spirit; but you do not use it well. I fear that in place of this one you may receive another, who under the appearance of good may trip you up; and you who began by the spirit may be brought to completion by the flesh. Or do you not know that the angel of Satan often disguises himself as an angel of light? God is Wisdom, and he wills to be loved not only sweetly but also wisely.”

“I judge that because Paul already at that time walked in the spirit, and in his mind consented to the law of God because it is good (Rom 7:16); for this reason he deemed this very mind of his, as a certain principal and supreme part of himself, worthy to be designated rather by the name of himself than of any possession of his; but the remainder, which is established to be of an inferior nature and therefore to cling to the inferior and cheaper essence, which is the body; not only by the office of vivifying and giving sensation, but also by the desire of nourishing and cherishing: this, I say, being sensual and carnal, the spiritual man, judging it unworthy of the appellation of himself, reckoned it should rather be counted among his possessions than that he should be personally expressed through it. "When I say 'me,'" he says, "understand that which is more excellent in me, in which I also stand by the grace of God, that is, the mind and reason. When I speak of 'my soul,' take it in the lower sense, that which you see accommodated to animating the flesh, and even joined to it in concupiscence. That I was this, but now am no longer, I acknowledge, because I no longer walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit" (Rom 8:4). "I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20). According to the mind, I; according to the flesh, not I. For what if the soul even now desires carnally? "It is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me" (Rom 7:17). And therefore I would call what in me savors carnally not indeed myself, but nevertheless mine, and that nothing other than the soul itself. For truly the carnal affection of the soul is a portion of it, and the life which it administers to the body. This soul, therefore, Paul despised in comparison with himself, prepared for the Lord's sake not only to be bound but also to die in Jerusalem, and so to lose his soul according to the Lord's counsel.”

“Felicitous, however, is this kiss of participation that enables us not only to know God but to love the Father, who is never fully known until he is perfectly loved. Are there not surely some among you who at certain times perceive deep within their hearts the Spirit of the Son exclaiming: "Abba, Father"? Let that man who feels that he is moved by the same Spirit as the Son, let him know that he too is loved by the Father. Whoever he be let him be of good heart, let his confidence never waver. Living in the Spirit of the Son, let such a soul recognize herself as a daughter of the Father, a bride or even a sister of the Son, for you will find that the soul who enjoys this privilege is called by either of these names.”

“In this so magnificent work of our salvation there are three certain things which God the author claims for himself, and in which he prevents all his helpers and co-workers: predestination, creation, inspiration. Of these, predestination — I do not say from the beginning of the Church, but not even from the beginning of the world — had its beginning, not indeed from this or that time: it is before time. Moreover creation is with time; inspiration already happens in time, where and when God wills. Indeed, according to predestination the Church of the elect was never not with God. If an unbeliever marvels at this, let him hear what he may marvel at more: she never was not pleasing, never was not beloved. Why should I not boldly speak the secret which that ready reporter of heavenly counsels opened to me from the heart of God? I speak of Paul, who, as with many other things, so also this secret from the riches of his goodness was not afraid to divulge: "He blessed us," he says, "with every spiritual blessing, in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless in his sight in love"; and he adds: "Who predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ in himself, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, in which he made us accepted in the beloved Son" (Eph 1:3-6). Nor is there any doubt that these things are said in the voice of all the elect: and they themselves are the Church. In that therefore so profound bosom of eternity, before she came forth into the light and work of this creation, who among even the blessed spirits would have been able in any way to find her, unless eternity itself, which is God, had willed to reveal her?”

“In this so magnificent work of our salvation there are three certain things which God the author claims for himself, and in which he prevents all his helpers and co-workers: predestination, creation, inspiration. Of these, predestination — I do not say from the beginning of the Church, but not even from the beginning of the world — had its beginning, not indeed from this or that time: it is before time. Moreover creation is with time; inspiration already happens in time, where and when God wills. Indeed, according to predestination the Church of the elect was never not with God. If an unbeliever marvels at this, let him hear what he may marvel at more: she never was not pleasing, never was not beloved. Why should I not boldly speak the secret which that ready reporter of heavenly counsels opened to me from the heart of God? I speak of Paul, who, as with many other things, so also this secret from the riches of his goodness was not afraid to divulge: "He blessed us," he says, "with every spiritual blessing, in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless in his sight in love"; and he adds: "Who predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ in himself, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, in which he made us accepted in the beloved Son" (Eph 1:3-6). Nor is there any doubt that these things are said in the voice of all the elect: and they themselves are the Church. In that therefore so profound bosom of eternity, before she came forth into the light and work of this creation, who among even the blessed spirits would have been able in any way to find her, unless eternity itself, which is God, had willed to reveal her?”

“But both heights were cast down, yet in man more gently, since he who does all things in weight and measure so judged it. For with the angel punished—nay, damned—in fury, man felt only wrath and not fury. For when he was wrathful, he remembered mercy. On this account his seed are children of wrath, and not of fury, to this present day. If I were not born a child of wrath, there would be no need to be born again; if I were born a child of fury, it would either not have happened or not have profited to be born again.”

“"Lord, who is like you?" Who, if not the brightness and figure of your substance? Who, if not your image? He alone in your form, he alone did not consider it robbery to be equal to you, the Most High Son of the Most High. How is he not equal? Indeed you and he are one. His seat is at your right hand, not beneath your feet. How does anyone dare to invade the place of your Only-begotten? Let him be cast down. He sets his seat on high; let the seat of pestilence be overturned.”

“You have indeed concerning him who is the image, that "being in the form of God, he did not consider it robbery to be equal with God." Where certainly both his rectitude in the form of God, and his majesty in the equality, are indicated to you: so that when rectitude is compared to rectitude, and greatness to greatness, that which is to the image and the image may appear to correspond to each other harmoniously on both sides; just as the image also no less corresponds in both respects to him whose image it is. For he is the one of whom you have heard holy David singing in the psalms, now indeed: "Great is our Lord, and great is his power"; and now: "The Lord our God is upright, and there is no iniquity in him." From this upright and great God, his image has it that it too is upright and great: the soul has it, which is to the image.”

“There is a charity in act, and there is one in affection. And concerning that which is of work, I think the law was given to men and a commandment was formed: for who so possesses it in affection as it is commanded? Therefore the one is commanded for merit, the other is given as a reward. We do not deny that divine grace can grant its beginning indeed, and its progress, to be experienced even in the present life; but its consummation we firmly reserve for future happiness. How then was it right to command what was in no way to be fulfilled? Or if it pleases you more that the commandment was given concerning affectual charity, I do not contend about that, provided that you too agree with me that it could in no way be fulfilled in this life by any man, or could have been. For who would dare arrogate to himself that which Paul himself confesses he has not comprehended? (Phil 3:13.) Nor was the weight of the precept, exceeding the powers of men, hidden from the teacher; but he judged it useful that they be reminded of their own insufficiency from this very thing, and that they might know clearly toward what end of righteousness they ought to strive with their powers. Therefore by commanding impossible things he did not make men transgressors, but humble, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be made subject to God; because by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified before him (Rom 3:19-20). For receiving the commandment, and feeling our transgression, we shall cry out to heaven, and God will have mercy on us: and we shall know in that day, that not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us (Titus 3:5).”

“In vain do certain ones flatter themselves with the example of Paul, who urged his disciple not to drink water but to use a little wine on account of his stomach and his frequent infirmities (1 Tim 5:23). They ought to attend first indeed that the Apostle by no means urged a thing of this kind upon himself, nor did the disciple equally demand it for himself. Then that this was intimated not to a monk, but to a bishop, whose life was absolutely necessary to the still tender and newborn Church. This was Timothy. Give me another Timothy; and I will feed him, if you wish, even with gold, and give him balsam to drink. But you dispense to yourself, having pity on yourself. Your own dispensation toward yourself is suspect to me, I confess; and I fear that you are being deceived under the cover and name of discretion by the prudence of the flesh. I want you at least to be advised of this, that if the authority of the Apostle so pleases you regarding drinking wine, do not omit the "little" which he added.”

“There is a charity in act, and there is one in affection. And concerning that which is of work, I think the law was given to men and a commandment was formed: for who so possesses it in affection as it is commanded? Therefore the one is commanded for merit, the other is given as a reward. We do not deny that divine grace can grant its beginning indeed, and its progress, to be experienced even in the present life; but its consummation we firmly reserve for future happiness. How then was it right to command what was in no way to be fulfilled? Or if it pleases you more that the commandment was given concerning affectual charity, I do not contend about that, provided that you too agree with me that it could in no way be fulfilled in this life by any man, or could have been. For who would dare arrogate to himself that which Paul himself confesses he has not comprehended? (Phil 3:13.) Nor was the weight of the precept, exceeding the powers of men, hidden from the teacher; but he judged it useful that they be reminded of their own insufficiency from this very thing, and that they might know clearly toward what end of righteousness they ought to strive with their powers. Therefore by commanding impossible things he did not make men transgressors, but humble, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be made subject to God; because by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified before him (Rom 3:19-20). For receiving the commandment, and feeling our transgression, we shall cry out to heaven, and God will have mercy on us: and we shall know in that day, that not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us (Titus 3:5).”

“The angelic creature gazes with the unreflected keenness of mind upon the great abyss of the divine judgments, and, blessed with the ineffable delight of their supreme equity, glories moreover that these are committed to execution through its ministry and made manifest; and therefore it rightly loves the Lord Christ. "Are they not all," he says, "ministering spirits, sent for ministry on behalf of those who receive the inheritance of salvation?" Furthermore, the archangels (that we may attribute to them something more distinctive than to those who are simply angels) are, I believe, wonderfully delighted that they too are admitted more intimately to the counsels of the eternal Wisdom, and that through them those same counsels are dispensed each to its proper place and time with supreme governance. And this is the reason that they too love the Lord Christ.”

“The spices of this second ointment, on the contrary, are not produced on our earth at all, we seek to gain them for ourselves from afar. I mean that all that is good, everything that is perfect, is given us from above; it comes down from the Father of all light. For this ointment is made from the gifts of God bestowed on the human race. Happy the man who makes it his business to gather these carefully for himself and keep them in mind with due thanksgiving. When they shall have been pounded and refined in the heart's receptacle with the pestle of frequent meditation, all of them fused together in the fire of holy desire, and finally enriched with the oil of gladness, you will have an ointment more excellent than the former, and far more precious.”

“Therefore I shall go for myself to the place of refuge from the face of the fury of the Lord, to that zeal of piety sweetly burning and efficaciously atoning. Does not charity atone? And powerfully so. I have read that it covers a multitude of sins. But I say: Is it not fit and sufficient for casting down and humbling every exaltation of the eyes and of the heart? Most especially: for it is not exalted, it is not puffed up.”

“Therefore through the second, works are done, and in it charity resides -- not that affectual charity, which, seasoned with the salt of wisdom, growing rich, brings to the mind a great multitude of the sweetness of the Lord; but rather a certain actual charity, which even if it does not yet sweetly refresh with that sweet love, nevertheless vehemently inflames with a love of that very love. "Let us not love," he says, "in word, nor in tongue, but in deed and in truth" (1 Jn 3:18). Do you see how he carefully proceeds in the middle between vicious and affectionate love, distinguishing from each equally this actual and salutary charity? He receives in this love neither the pretense of a lying tongue, nor in turn does he demand the taste of affecting wisdom. "Let us love," he says, "in deed and in truth": namely that we be moved to good works more by a certain impulse of living truth than by the affection of that savory charity.”

“Good Jesus, the chalice you drank, the price of our redemption, makes me love you more than all the rest. This alone would be enough to claim our love. This, I say, is what wins our love so sweetly, justly demands it, firmly binds it, deeply affects it. Our Savior had to toil so hard in this, in fact in making the whole world the Creator did not labor so much. Then he spoke and they were made; he commanded and they were created. But in saving us he had to endure men who contradicted his words, criticized his actions, ridiculed his sufferings, and mocked his death. See how much he loved us. Add to this the fact that he was not returning love but freely offering it. For who had given him anything first, that it should be returned to him? As St John said: "Not that we had loved him, but that he first loved us." He loved us even before we existed, and in addition he loved us when we resisted him. If he had not loved his enemies, he could not have had any friends, just as he would have had no one to love if he had not loved those who were not.”

“Plainly, her whom he foreknew from eternity, whom he chose, whom he loved, whom he created, it was not reasonable for her to be declared found by the same one. Yet that she was prepared by him so that she might be found, I will say confidently. For he who saw bore witness, "and we know that his testimony is true" (Jn 19:35). "I saw," he says, "the holy city, the new Jerusalem, descending from heaven, prepared by God as a bride adorned for her husband" (Rev 21:2): and he was one of the watchmen who guard the city.”