Cornelius a Lapide

The Voice of the Bride. Verse 15. Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, and comely. Our couch is flowery.

BEHOLD, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL, MY BELOVED, AND COMELY. — The Chaldee: How beautiful is the majesty of your holiness: for at the time when you dwell among us, it willingly receives our prayers.

The First, Full Sense: Concerning Christ and the Church.

This is, as it were, an amoebean song, in which praise is exchanged and returned in turn, such as passes between lovers. The bridegroom had praised the beauty of the bride; now she, modestly, bashfully, and reverently, turns and reflects all the praise back upon the bridegroom, and professes that she has received from him all her beauty — that is, the remission of sins, righteousness, grace, purity, and the power to do good and to merit — as if to say, so Hortolanus puts it: I hear my exceptional praises from you, O bridegroom, with a blush; but I judge you alone to be most worthy of them: for whatever beauty and righteousness there is in me (which I sense to be exceedingly small) is a free gift, and has been drawn down and conferred upon me from your unfailing fountain of beauty and righteousness and goodness. For you alone are beautiful through yourself, and now, especially with your immortal body resumed, are comely and outstanding; nay rather, you yourself are beauty itself, set beyond the uncertain lot of all beautiful things, the shining forth of the Father's glory and the express form of his substance, by participation in which whatever things are beautiful seem rather to be called like the beautiful than beautiful themselves. So too St. Gregory, Cassiodorus, Bede, Justus, Anselm, and Rupert, who say that Christ is beautiful in his divinity, comely in his humanity. And St. Bernard, sermon 45, says that the same one is beautiful in nature, comely in grace: «How beautiful you are to your angels, he says, Lord Jesus, in the form of God, in the day of your eternity, begotten before the daystar amid the splendors of the saints, the brightness and the express figure of the Father's substance, and indeed the everlasting and in no way counterfeited brightness of eternal life! How comely you are to me, my Lord, in this very setting of your comeliness! For where you emptied yourself, where you put off the unfailing light of your natural rays, there piety shone forth the more, there charity blazed the more, there grace radiated the more abundantly. How brightly you rise for me as a star out of Jacob, Num. 24:17, how brightly you come forth as a flower from the root of Jesse, Isai. 11:10, how pleasant a light you visited me in darkness, rising from on high! How admirable and astonishing too in your heavenly virtues — in your conception of the Spirit, in your birth of the Virgin, in the innocence of your life, in the streams of your teaching, in the flashes of your miracles, in the revelations of the sacraments! How radiant, finally, after your setting do you rise again, O Sun of justice, from the heart of the earth; how handsome in your robe do you at last, O King of glory, withdraw into the heights of the heavens! How, for all these things, shall not all my bones say: Lord, who is like unto you?»

Excellently does St. Augustine, in the Preface on Psalm 44, say: «Let the beautiful bridegroom, he says, meet us everywhere, we who now believe. Beautiful is God the Word with God, beautiful in the womb of the virgin, where he did not lose his divinity and took on humanity. Beautiful was the Word born an infant, for even when he was an infant, when he was nursing, when he was carried in hands, the heavens spoke, angels uttered praises, a star directed the Magi, he was adored in the manger, the food of the meek. Beautiful, then, in heaven, beautiful on earth, beautiful in the womb, beautiful in the hands of his parents, beautiful in miracles, beautiful under the scourges, beautiful inviting to life, beautiful not heeding death, beautiful laying down his soul, beautiful taking it up again, beautiful on the wood, beautiful in the tomb, beautiful in heaven, beautiful in the understanding.»

Finally, Christ was most beautiful both in soul and in body, inasmuch as he was formed by the Holy Spirit, according to that saying: «Beautiful in form above the sons of men,» Psalm 44:3. Hence something starlike — nay, the majesty of his divinity — radiated in the face of Christ, as St. Jerome teaches on Matthew, chapter 9. Wisely does Tertullian, in the book On the Apparel of Women, chapter 2, say: «Comeliness, he says, is not to be blamed, being as it were the happiness of the body, an accession of the divine molding, a kind of polished garment for the soul.» Hence also Gregory of Nyssa, in the Catechetical Oration, chapter 6, says that man was created by God handsome in face and appearance, as an image of the exemplary beauty, namely of God, the most beautiful. But true beauty consists far more in the soul than in the body. For, as St. Augustine says, Tractate 32 on John: «As the soul produces comeliness in the body, so does God in the soul.» And shortly after: «The comeliness of the body, then, is the soul; the comeliness of the soul is God.» Ennodius, in the Life of St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Pavia: «Comeliness, he says, in the very light of the body, was an index of the soul.» And shortly after he adds that a priest ought to be such: «that the brightness should surpass the light of the limbs.» Indeed Seneca too, Epistle 60: «Virtue, he says, is a great comeliness, and consecrates its own body.»

The Second, Partial Sense: Concerning Christ and the Holy Soul.

St. Gregory of Nyssa explains it thus, as if the bride should say: «Behold, you are beautiful, my cousin, and comely. For since this, nothing else appears to me beautiful, but I have turned away from all the things that before were reckoned among beautiful goods; my judgment about the good no longer strays, so that I should reckon anything else besides you to be good and beautiful — not any human honor, not glory, not worldly splendor, not power: for these things, to those who look to sense, are indeed smeared over with the appearance of good, but they are not what they are thought to be. For how could that be beautiful which stands firm in no way at all? For that which is honored in this world has its essence only in the estimation of those who suppose it to be something. But you are truly beautiful, not only beautiful, but the very essence of the beautiful, you are always such, wholly what you are, neither flowering in time nor again in time casting off your flower, but together with the eternity of life extending your beauty and comeliness, whose name has been kindness and love toward men.»

And St. Bernard, sermon 45, teaches that here is described how the Word of God, that is, Christ, and the soul converse together spiritually in the mind and exchange sweetness with one another: «And the tongue of the Word, he says, is the favor of his condescension; but of the soul, the fervor of devotion, etc. For the Word, then, to say to the soul: You are beautiful, and to call her friend, is to pour into her the source from which she may both love and presume herself to be loved. But for the Word himself in turn to name her beloved, and to confess himself beautiful; to ascribe to him, without pretense and deceit, both what he loves and what is loved; and to marvel at his condescension, and to be amazed at his grace. For indeed his beauty is his love; and it is the greater because it comes first. Accordingly, from the marrow of the heart and the utterances of its inmost affections, she cries out the more abundantly and ardently that he is to be loved by her, the more she, loving, perceived this before being loved. And so the speech of the Word is the infusion of a gift; the answer of the soul, with the giving of thanks, is admiration. And therefore she loves the more, because she feels herself conquered in loving; and therefore she marvels the more, because she recognizes that she was anticipated. Hence she is not content to say beautiful once, unless she also repeats comely, marking by that repetition the eminence of his comeliness.»

The Third, Principal Sense: Concerning Christ and the Blessed Virgin.

The Blessed Virgin, as she above all others marked the mystery of the divinity and of the incarnation of the Word accomplished in herself, and so above others admired the beauty of Christ, God and man; hence Rupert brings her in exchanging sweet words thus with Christ: «He truly reveres in me that I am mother and virgin; I adore in him that he is God and man. I say, therefore: Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, and comely. You say to me: Behold, you are beautiful; and I say to you: Behold, you are beautiful. From the fact that I have been made beautiful, you, who were always beautiful, have been made more beautiful. For truly in this you increased your beauty, that though you were God, you deigned to become man. Hence you are beautiful and comely: so beautiful that you are the very substance of beauty; so comely that you are the very comeliness of humanity. Truly, then, you say to me: Behold, you are beautiful, and I say to you: Behold, you are beautiful, because you are my beauty. That I am beautiful, then, is wholly to be attributed to you. For the stem is not the beauty of the flower; rather, the flower is the beauty of the stem.»

And William Parvus, as if to say: Because you are beautiful according to divinity, comely according to humanity. You are not only man, but also God; and therefore William says: «I am not only a mother, but also a virgin; because to your eternal divinity humanity was added in time, and to my virginity fecundity did not succeed, but was added. For just as a mere man cannot have a virgin mother, so God made man cannot have a mother unless she be a virgin.»

Our couch is flowery.

A beautiful chamber and a beautiful house befit a beautiful bridegroom and a beautiful bride; she assigns both here, saying that the chamber and the bed are strewn with beautiful and fragrant herbs and flowers, and that the house is built of cedar beams and cypress paneling.

OUR COUCH IS FLOWERY — in Hebrew רעננה, raanana, that is, green, that is, covered with green herbs and flowers, and therefore verdant, flowering, and springlike. For אף, aph, that is, "also," the Septuagint seem to have read אל, el, that is, "to"; hence they render it πρὸς κλίνην ἡμῶν σύσκιον, that is, "to our shady couch," namely, "you have come," or "come." So reads the Codex Vaticanus, Nyssa, Psellus, and the three Fathers in Theodoret, as if to say: You, O Christ my bridegroom, who love the shade of herbs and flowers, come to our couch strewn with these and shady. Or: you, O Christ, who, as God, are immense light, yet as man have veiled this light with the shadow of the body, so that we might look upon it, otherwise inaccessible, as it were through a crack — nay, a shadow — and are therefore called "shady"; come to this couch, blooming and shady alike with flowers and foliage, lest the heat of the sun — that is, of persecution — discolor you outside, as it has discolored me.

But the genuine Septuagint reading seems to be that which Origen has, Homily 2 of the two, and Theodoret, and St. Ambrose on Psalm 118, sermon 4, namely: κλίνη ἡμῶν σύσκιος, that is, "our couch is shady." For so read the Hebrew and the Vulgate. St. Ambrose, however, instead of σύσκιος read with diastole, read προσκλίνη with systole; hence he renders it, "our reclining is opaque."

Silently the bride, who by wandering through the gardens and vineyards had felt the heat of the sun, and remembered herself discolored by it, invites the bridegroom into the house and chamber, so that there, in peace and quiet, removed from the crowds and persecutions, they may lead a pleasant and delightful life in mutual conversation, companionship, and intimacy, such as those lead who have chosen the lot of Magdalene and of the contemplative life. But the bridegroom soon calls the bride from this rest to the labors of preaching and the conversion of souls — that is, from contemplation to action, from peace to war, from tranquility to persecutions, from leisure to labor, from the house to the fields and plains — so as to increase her virtue, merits, and comeliness. Hence he adds: «I am the flower of the field, and the lily of the valleys.» So Bede and St. Bernard, sermon 46, who says that the bride here indicates to the bridegroom that his bridal chamber is adorned, and thus silently invites him to it.

The First, Full Sense: Concerning Christ and the Church.

You will ask what the green and flowery couch is, in which Christ and the Church rest.

Some respond, first, that it is the humanity of Christ: for in this, as in a couch — though overshadowed and veiled by flesh — both the most radiant deity of the Word and the hope of the Church come to rest. So Nyssa, the three Fathers in Theodoret, Psellus, and Alan — hear him: «The couch of Christ is called the flesh, which he assumed for two uses of a bed. In a bed a man labors in sickness, rests in health. Likewise Christ, in human flesh, labored in human infirmities before his passion, and rested in that same flesh after his resurrection. And he said elegantly: Our couch is flowery, because the flesh of Christ, which had flowered before in life, through death lost its flower, but through the resurrection flowered again. Hence it is said, Psalm 27: And my flesh has flowered again.»

Second, Theodoret takes the couch to mean Sacred Scripture, which flourishes with various sayings as if with flowers, whose seeds the holy soul, receiving them into itself, brings forth as the spirit of salvation. This bed is called shady, because it is protected by the grace of the Spirit and defended from the heat of sin; for what the pillar of cloud was to Israel, this the help of the Spirit is to us. So Theodoret.

Third, Gislerius takes the couch to mean faith formed by charity, and therefore green and flowering with good works: for through this God is in us, and we in turn rest in God. For the understanding of man seeks the truth in natural opinion, conjecture, and argumentation, as it were under a roof, but a restless, deceptive, and false one; but the understanding of a faithful man seeks the truth in divine faith, and there, as in a couch, finds the truth — nay, finds God. Faith is called a couch, in the diminutive, because the bed — that is, full knowledge, peace, and happiness — will be in the beatific vision. Hence the Septuagint call this couch shady and opaque, because faith is obscure. «For now we see through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face,» 1 Cor. 13:12.

Fourth, the couch of the Church is the whole life, and the good and pure conscience of the faithful, whose flowers are the virtues, whatever they may be: for in these, both Christ and the Church rest peacefully as in a couch, destined to rest in them more fully in eternal happiness; wherefore there the faithful and blessed souls will be a bed adorned and most delightful, with every endowment both of grace and of glory, both to themselves and to Christ. To this bears the Chaldee Version: at the time when you dwell in our beloved couch, our children are many upon the earth, and we grow and multiply like a tree that is planted beside a fountain of waters, whose leaf is beautiful, and whose fruit is abundant.

The Second, Partial Sense: Concerning Christ and the Holy Soul.

The couch of Christ and of the holy soul is a mind chaste, holy, and devoted to the pursuit of the virtues, which puts forth the flowers and fruits of all good works; wherefore it is comely through the ornaments of the virtues, and fragrant with the examples of holy deeds. This couch is shady, as the Septuagint render it, because the holy mind dwells securely under the shadow of Christ dwelling within it, lest it be scorched either by the heat of temptation, or the chill of sluggishness, or the burning of excessive fervor; wherefore it confidently says to him: «Under your shadow we shall live among the nations,» Lam. 4:20. For the holy mind alone, fixed in Christ, has true rest; because a mind given over to lusts is tossed by their surges, and driven by the thousand winds of disturbances, according to that saying: «But the wicked are like the raging sea, which cannot rest, and its waves cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace to the wicked, says the Lord,» Isai. chapter 57, verse 21: so St. Ambrose, On Isaac and the Soul, chapter 4: «For where, he says, do Christ and the Church rest, if not in the works of their people? Finally, where there is unchastity, where pride, where iniquity, there, says the Lord Jesus, the Son of man has not where to lay his head,» Matt. 8:20. The couch of Christ, therefore, is chastity, humility, patience, prayer, temperance, and above all charity: for by this Christ joins the soul to himself as a bride, and loves it, and in turn is loved by it, according to that saying of Christ: «If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our dwelling with him,» John 14:23.

Second, Origen, Homily 2 of the two, reading: Our couch is shady, takes by that the body, in which the soul rests as in a bed, so long as it is pure and chaste, and thick as a grove with the density of good work.

Third, St. Ambrose, on Psalm 118, sermon 4, reading: «Our reclining is opaque,» thinks that three things are denoted by it, namely, the grace of Christ, the cross, and the hope of future glory, which, as a shadow, protect us from the heat of temptations: «Rightly, he says, does he signify the reclining as opaque, because the power of the Most High overshadows those established in the Church. With this shadow David asked to be protected, lest the sun burn him by day, or the moon by night. This shadow spiritual grace ministers, to those fleeing the scorching and summer heats of this age and world. Opaque, therefore, is the reclining of Christ and the Church, upon which the eternal rest of God the Father breathes. In this shadow, then, let us rest, wearied by the heats of our sins. If lust has scorched any, let the cross of the Lord refresh them, on which he reclined, that he might take up our offenses; if guilt has wearied any, let Jesus receive them into his bosom, and cherish them with a gentle embrace. Hence I dare to say that the flesh of Christ is the reclining-place of the Church.»

Fourth, St. Gregory and Cassiodorus very fittingly take the couch to mean the rest and sweetness of the contemplative soul, which is free for and intent upon God alone as its bridegroom. «What, says St. Gregory, do we understand by the bride's couch, but the rest of leisure? For the mind which singularly loves Christ its bridegroom, as far as it is able, is free from all the cares of the world, and gathers within itself the virtues by which it may please its bridegroom. While it despises all things that are temporal, it makes for itself a couch with the bridegroom in the peace of victory, where the more quietly it reposes, the more flowers it finds, by which it may show itself comely to its bridegroom.»

To this St. Bernard adds, sermon 46, who takes the couch to mean the monasteries, in which religious, bidding farewell to the world, serve God alone. For most things in the Canticle properly apply to the faithful soul — not one beginning and imperfect, but one advancing and tending toward perfection, so as to unite itself wholly to God (for this is the bride of Christ): such as religious are, as I said in the Proem from St. Bernard and Bellarmine. But hear Bernard here: «In the Church, he says, I judge the bed in which one rests to be the cloisters and monasteries, in which one lives quietly, away from the cares of the world and the anxieties of life. And this bed is shown to be flowery, when, with the examples and institutes of the Fathers sprinkled as with certain sweet-smelling flowers, the conduct and life of the brethren shines forth.» He then adds that the couch in which Christ rests is obedience: «Otherwise, he says, the bridegroom will not sleep with you in one bed, especially that one which you have strewn for him, instead of the flowers of obedience, with the hemlock and nettles of disobedience.» Hence, rising up against the disobedient who presume upon their own prayers: «I greatly wonder, he says, at the impudence of some who are among us, who, though they have troubled all of us by their singularity, provoked us by their impatience, and held us in contempt by their obstinacy and rebellion, nevertheless dare, with all the urgency of their prayers, to invite the Lord of all purity to so foul a couch of their own lust.»

He finally adds the manner in which we souls ought to prepare and adorn this bed for Christ: «Indeed, he says, first you must cleanse your conscience from every defilement of anger, and contention, and murmuring, and envy, and hasten to remove from the dwelling of your heart whatever at all is known to be opposed either to the peace of the brethren or to the obedience owed to the elders. Then also surround yourself with the flowers of whatever good deeds and praiseworthy pursuits, and the perfumes of the virtues, that is, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovable, whatsoever of good report, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline; think on these things, and take care to be exercised in them. To such a couch you will safely call the bridegroom: for when you have brought him in, you too will truly be able to say, that our couch is flowery, your conscience surely breathing forth piety, but also peace, gentleness, justice, obedience, cheerfulness, humility.»

Anagogically, Philo of Carpasia, reading, our reclining in the shadow, takes by it the passage from death to immortality: «For, he says, when they incline toward death, he repays eternal life for temporal death. For henceforth you will be our shadow and protection, cries the bride, according to that saying: He will overshadow you with his shoulders, and under his wings you shall hope. And: Protect me under the shadow of your wings. For in you alone is our refuge and protection. You are our shadow, you our defense, you our sure salvation and life. Let us say with David: Though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will not fear evils; for you are with me.» Psalm 22:4.

The Third, Principal Sense: Concerning Christ and the Blessed Virgin.

The couch, in which Christ rested for nine months and, as it were, slept, was the womb of the Blessed Virgin, says William Parvus; and from it, with the seal of virginity kept safe, says Rupert, came forth that beautiful flower of which Isaiah sings, chapter 11, verses 1 and 2: «There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root: and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.»

Symbolically, Aponius takes the couch to mean the tomb of Christ, which is called flowery on account of the spices made from flowers, with which Magdalene and her companions anointed the body of Christ. William Parvus adds that the couch, that is, the tomb of Christ, is called flowery because Christ rose from it glorious on the third day: for then, as it were, the flesh of Christ bloomed again. Therefore our couch is flowery, that is, with your flesh blossoming again, O Christ, it will be verdant with the flowers of the new resurrection, according to that saying: «My flesh has flowered again: and out of my own will I will confess to him,» Psalm 27:7.

Fifth, Cassiodorus takes the couch to mean the peace and tranquility of the Church, in the enjoyment of which she is more freely at leisure for vigils, fasts, prayer, and contemplation, and so flourishes with all good works, and is therefore, for Christ and holy souls, a bed most richly adorned and most delightful with every endowment, both of grace and of glory, both to herself and to Christ. The couch of the soul, says Honorius, is a good conscience, in which, as in a bed, the soul rests securely with Christ, when it exercises itself in prayer and reading, and melts with the love of God, and is flowery when it gives to others the examples of a good life. This sense is very fitting.