Commentary on the Song of Songs (Commentarium in Canticum Canticorum)

1. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat the fruit of his apples. I have come into my garden, my sister, my spouse; I have gathered my myrrh with my spices: I have eaten the honeycomb with my honey, I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, friends, and drink, and be inebriated, dearest ones. 2. I sleep, and my heart watches: the voice of my beloved knocking:

THE VOICE OF THE BRIDE.

Verse 1. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat the fruit of his apples.

For "beloved," the Hebrew is דוד dod, which the Septuagint generally translates ἀδελφιδέος, that is, a cousin, or a nephew; the Syriac and the Arabic: a paternal cousin, or a brother's son; the Chaldean takes "garden" to mean the temple, whence he renders it: let God my beloved enter into the house of the sanctuary, and willingly receive the offerings of his people.

For "let him come," the Septuagint and the Arabic translate "let him descend," a word which denotes both the utmost humility and reverence of the bride toward the bridegroom, and equally the loftiness of the bridegroom — as if to say: May the divine majesty of Christ deign to descend from the lofty throne of his divinity to me, the Church, who am his lowest and vilest creature, and who once gravely offended him by my sins, and to visit me with his grace, to correct, polish, and perfect me; for although I am wholly the work of Christ, yet because I have cooperated in this work of his by my free will, I fear lest by some negligence, imprudence, or desire I have stained and marred this work of his; let him therefore descend, that he may cleanse away these stains of mine, and make me wholly bright and beautiful, that in all things I may please his eyes. Whence the Syriac translates: let my paternal cousin come through my garden into his garden — that is, that he may cleanse and perfect my garden, insofar as it is mine and therefore defective, and so make it his garden, that is, make it pleasing to him and conformed to him in all things. Hear Nyssen: "Because it cannot happen that we are taken up to the Most High in any other way, unless he inclines himself to humility and lowliness, since the Lord takes up the meek; therefore the bride, ascending on high, summoning the descent to be made by him who inclines himself, desires that he himself descend in his own greatness."

FIRST ADEQUATE SENSE, Concerning Christ and the Church.

Christ the bridegroom, invited by the bride the Church into the garden — that is, into herself, flourishing with every spice and virtue, to be beheld and enjoyed — accepts the invitation, indeed anticipates it, says Nyssen, saying: I have now come into my garden, that is, I have now visited you, O my Church, and in the first place I have gathered from you, and harvested, my myrrh, that is, penitence and tears, which are the beginning of conversion and of holy life; hence St. John the Baptist, Christ, and the apostles, at the beginning of their preaching, both among the Jews and among the Gentiles, all began to cry out: "Do penance: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," Matth. IV, 17: for penitence destroys the old life of concupiscence, and builds up the new life of charity. Hence he says "my myrrh," that is, suggested by me; and again "my myrrh," that is, most pleasing to me: for what is bitter to the sinning and repenting soul, this becomes sweet and delightful to Christ, according to that saying of St. Bernard, sermon on the Canticle: "The tears of penitents are the wine of angels, because in them is the fragrance of life."

...to look upon things present, but to extend hope into those things which are a little further off." And St. Chrysostom, homily 25 on Matthew: "Whoever," he says, "strikes an adamant is himself struck the more, and whoever kicks against the goad is without doubt himself pricked, and wounded by his own blows: and whoever assails those who hold fast to virtue is himself indeed undermined, and becomes the weaker in malice the longer he wars against virtue; and just as one who wraps fire in a garment does not extinguish it, but burns the garment, so too those who persecuted, seized, and often bound those established in virtue, rendered them by all this the more illustrious, but utterly destroyed themselves."

THIRD PRINCIPAL SENSE, Concerning Christ and the Blessed Virgin.

According to the former sense — the "Flee" — the south wind which made the Blessed Virgin fruitful, that she might bring forth God in his humanity, was the Holy Spirit, according to that word, Luc. I, 35: "The Holy Spirit will come upon thee, and the power of the Most High will overshadow thee;" and therefore the north wind was driven away by him, that is, Lucifer, and the south wind sent in, that is, Gabriel, who brought her the joyful message of the Word to be incarnated. Again, the south wind, that is, the fervor of the Holy Spirit, continually impelled her to unceasing love of God, and to heroic acts of virtue.

According to the latter sense, the life of the Blessed Virgin, above all the just, was mingled with north wind and south wind, that is, with adversity and prosperity, desolation and consolation, sorrow and joy, as is evident to one who weighs it well.

The bridegroom, invited by the bride into the garden, feasts there with her and her companions. After the feast, verse 2, the bride, retiring to bed by night, waking in the morning, tells her young companions her nocturnal dream, or what happened to her as she slept — namely, that she was called by the bridegroom in the night, and, being sluggish with sleep, rose too slowly to open the door to him; that he, as though offended by this sloth and discourtesy, went away elsewhere; that she therefore sought him through various dangers, and scarcely found him, who a little before had of his own accord offered himself to her at the door. Moreover, when the young companions offered themselves to the bride in seeking the bridegroom, they ask her what figure and appearance the bridegroom has, that they may be able to recognize him; to whom the bride replies, and depicts the bridegroom in vivid colors, asserting that he has a golden head, dove-like eyes, cheeks like beds of spices, lips like lilies, hands turned as on a lathe, a belly of ivory, legs of marble, a most sweet throat. Finally, she affirms that he is in every way supremely beautiful and desirable.

1. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat the fruit of his apples. I have come into my garden, my sister, my spouse; I have gathered my myrrh with my spices: I have eaten the honeycomb with my honey, I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, friends, and drink, and be inebriated, dearest ones.

2. I sleep, and my heart watches: the voice of my beloved knocking:

Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is full of dew, and my locks of the drops of the nights. 3. I have put off my garment, how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them? 4. My beloved put his hand through the opening, and my belly trembled at his touch. 5. I rose up to open to my beloved: my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers were full of the choicest myrrh. 6. I opened the bolt of my door to my beloved: but he had turned aside, and had passed on. My soul melted when he spoke: I sought him, and I found him not: I called, and he answered me not. 7. The watchmen who go about the city found me: they struck me, and wounded me: the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me. 8. I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him that I languish with love. 9. What is your beloved more than another beloved, O fairest among women? What is your beloved more than another beloved, that you have so adjured us? 10. My beloved is white and ruddy, chosen out of thousands. 11. His head is as the finest gold: his locks are as the tops of palm trees, black as a raven. 12. His eyes as doves upon the streams of waters, which are washed with milk, and rest beside the fullest streams. 13. His cheeks are as beds of aromatic spices set by perfumers. His lips are lilies dropping choice myrrh. 14. His hands are wrought of gold, turned on a lathe, full of hyacinths. His belly is of ivory, set with sapphires. 15. His legs are as pillars of marble, that are set upon bases of gold. His appearance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars. 16. His throat is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable: such is my beloved, and he is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem. 17. Where has your beloved gone, O fairest among women? Where has your beloved turned aside? And we will seek him with you.

THE VOICE OF THE BRIDE.

Verse 1. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat the fruit of his apple trees.

his own.

For "beloved" in Hebrew is דוד dod, which the Septuagint everywhere translates ἀδελφιδέος, that is, cousin's son, or nephew; the Syriac and the Arabic: paternal cousin, or son of a brother; the Chaldee takes "garden" for the temple, whence it translates: let God my beloved enter into the house of the sanctuary, and freely receive the offerings of his people.

For "let him come" the Septuagint and the Arabic translate "let him come down," a word which denotes both the great humility and reverence of the bride toward the bridegroom, and equally the loftiness of the bridegroom, as if to say: May the divine majesty of Christ deign to come down from the high throne of his divinity to me the Church, who am his lowest and vilest creature, and once gravely offended him by my sins, and to visit me with his grace, correct, polish and perfect me: for although I am wholly the work of Christ, yet because I have cooperated with this work of his through free will, I fear lest by some negligence, imprudence, or desire I have stained and marred this work of his; let him therefore come down, that he may cleanse away these my stains, and make me wholly bright and beautiful, that in all things I may please his eyes. Whence the Syriac translates: let my cousin come through my garden into his garden, that is, that he may purge and perfect my garden, insofar as it is mine and therefore defective, and thus make it his garden, that is, one pleasing and conformed to him in all things. Hear Nyssen: "Because it cannot come about that we be otherwise taken up to the Most High, unless he who is inclined stoop to humility and lowliness, since the Lord takes up the meek; therefore the bride, ascending on high, summoning the descent that must be made by him who inclines, desires that he himself come down by his own greatness."

whatever adornment and beauty is in me, I have not from my own nature, but from his gift and grace, and I ascribe it to him as received, and I offer and refer it back, to be used and enjoyed together with me: for I am wholly Christ's, wherefore to him alone I give, dedicate and restore my whole self.

For "apples" in Hebrew is מגדים megadim, which, as I said above, signifies any excellent and choice fruits, whether of soft rind or hard, such as nuts. St. Ambrose, book V, On the Sacraments, chapter III, reads "of his fruit-bearing trees" (others, "of his delights"), namely of the trees by which he understands baptized souls: "What," he says, "are these fruit-bearing trees?" and he answers: "You had become dry wood in Adam, but now through the grace of Christ you have sprouted as a fruit-bearing tree." Therefore by "apples" understand any virtues, and their exercises, progress and perfections, which Christ eats, while he feeds and delights himself upon them. The Church before Christ was a garden, not of apples, but of the thorns and briars of unbelief; and then it was a garden, or rather a thicket and briar-patch, of the devil; through Christ it was made a garden of apples, that is, of charity and virtues, and therefore the garden of Christ: for the garden and food of Jesus, that is, of the Savior, is nothing other than the salvation of men, as Nyssen teaches, and the three Anonymous authors in Theodoret.

For "apples" the Septuagint translates ἀκροδρύων, which St. Ambrose, book I, On Virgins, translates "of nuts" (others, "of apples," that is, of any fruits whatever, as I said above): "The Word of God," he says, "is invited into the garden of the nut tree, in which is the fruit of prophetic reading and the grace of the priesthood, which is bitter in temptations, hard in labors, fruitful in interior virtues. Whence also the rod of Aaron was of nut-wood, not so much by nature as by hidden virtue," Numbers 17:8. For Christ is fed on these nuts and apples, according to that word, John 4:32: "I have food to eat, which you do not know:" for so great, says Philo of Carpasia, and so admirable is the union of divine charity of the Creator toward the creature, namely of the bridegroom Christ toward the bride the Church and toward every holy soul, that now all things are held in common between them.

Moreover the Church invites Christ to her garden, that is, to herself, when now, like a garden perfected in every grace of beauty, in every variety of ranks and peoples, in every splendor of virtues, she flourished under the time of Constantine: for in this whole chapter the perfected state, and as it were the manly age, of the Church is described. The sense therefore is, as if to say: Behold I, the Church founded by Christ, having struggled and contended for three hundred years with tyrant emperors, have brought forth and produced countless companies of holy martyrs, doctors, pontiffs, virgins, priests, etc.; nay, I have subjugated to the faith and to Christ the very emperors, and above all Constantine himself, and made him Christian, at whose nod and command now everywhere basilicas, monasteries and temples are built for Christ, all peoples submit themselves to Christ equally with Constantine, the victorious cross of Christ triumphs throughout the whole world, and grace, faith, religion, charity, etc. Let him therefore come into this his garden, and taste these fruits, and water them with the spiritual visitation of his grace, and increase and perfect them.

SECOND PARTIAL SENSE, Concerning Christ and the holy soul.

The holy soul often prays that Christ may come into the garden of her mind, and may visit it both by his grace and by himself personally in the Eucharist; and again, that he may feed and delight himself on its apples, that is, on the virtues produced through his grace; and again, that he may cleanse, strip, increase and perfect the same from their defects: for in the Eucharist Christ feasts with us, and we with Christ; the same happens in every exercise of virtue, according to that word, Revelation 3:20: "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me:" see what is said there. For in the Eucharist we truly eat the flesh of Christ hidden under the appearance of bread, although we do not change it into our substance, as we change the other foods which we eat; and Christ in turn eats us, because he unites and incorporates us more to himself, that we may become co-bodied and co-blooded with Christ, nay, Christ-bearers, says St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 4, Mystagogical; hence that saying of Christ the Lord to St. Augustine: "You shall not change me into yourself (as happens in the eating of bodily foods), but you shall be changed into me:" for the Eucharist is the fruit of delights, that is, most delicate and most delightful: wherefore one who devoutly communicates puts on the manners and loves of Christ, the affections and effects of Christ, the works and pursuits of Christ. The highest communication of Christ therefore takes place in the Eucharist: for there he communicates himself by essence, elsewhere only by inspiration and grace; whence this sacrament is called synaxis and communion. Wherefore some, at the sacred synaxis, use this practice, that they mentally invite Christ and lead him into the garden of their soul; and show him her defects, and ask that he correct them, insert new virtues, and water and increase those inserted. Others bring in Christ as a physician into the hospital of their soul, and there show him all her passions and sicknesses, and ask that he deign to cure and heal them.

Hence St. Gregory teaches that the holy soul is the garden of Christ, in which he himself is fed and delighted with the lilies of chastity, the pomegranates of fraternal union, the nuts of fortitude, the cypress of faith, the nard of hope, the saffron of charity, etc.: "The beloved," he says, "comes into the garden and eats the fruit, when he visits the minds of Christ's people, and satisfies himself with the delight of good works." Bede follows Gregory according to custom, as do Justus of Urgel, St. Anselm, Richard and others. Justus of Urgel adds that Christ properly eats the fruits of mercy and of the alms which are given to the poor: for these he eats, not with his own mouth, but through the mouths of his poor, according to what he himself is to say to the almsgivers

on the day of judgment, Matthew 25:34: "Come, blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry, and you gave me to eat: I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink, etc. As long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me."

But St. Ambrose, book III, On Virgins, applies this to virgins: for virginity is the most beautiful apple, in which Christ delights; whence Lucas the abbot, continuator of Aponius, takes "the fruit of apples" for the firstfruits of virginity: for thus he says: "The bride invites Christ, that he himself may consecrate the firstfruits of the good work, the fruit of the apples of virginity, that he himself may taste it by proceeding from the virgin, that he himself may transmit the apple of the joy of penitence, received from the Church, to the angels in heaven." St. Jerome, letter 22 to the virgin Eustochium, urges that she shut herself at home, and not wander abroad: "Let the secrecy of your chamber," he says, "always guard you. You shall hear from the bridegroom: A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse: a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed. Beware lest you go out of the house, and wish to see the daughters of a foreign land. Dinah went out and was corrupted: I do not wish you to seek the bridegroom through the streets; I do not wish you to go about the corners of the city. Let foolish virgins wander abroad, you stay within with the bridegroom. Jesus is jealous, he does not wish your face to be seen by others." These things St. Jerome says in the same place, but scattered.

In like manner you may apply these things to religious: for the religious life and the monastery are the enclosed garden and paradise of Christ, which Christ instituted and founded through his vicars, in which he delights in the humility, obedience, poverty, chastity, etc. of the religious. See our Hieronymus Platus, book III, On the Good of the Religious State, chapter XIV, where from St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, St. Bernard and others he shows that the religious life is the paradise of God, not only earthly, but also heavenly: for, as Blessed Lawrence Justinian says and proves at length, On the Perfection of Monks, chapter VI: "In human affairs and in this pilgrimage, nothing so effectively bears in itself the image of the heavenly homeland as monastic conversation, and a manner of life dedicated to divine worship."

Anagogically, Bede and Hugh of St. Victor, book III, On the Ark of Morals, chapter XIV, attribute these things to the holy soul, which desires to be dissolved and to be with Christ, as if to say: "Would that the Lord might come the sooner, that he might graciously restore to us the reward of our devout devotion; and just as we have always taken care to love him and to render to him the fruit of righteousness, which he himself gave, so may he show us the most blessed recompense of his charity, by taking us to himself;" hence Theodoret also thinks the soul is asking for the same thing here as when, in the Lord's Prayer, it says, "Your kingdom come."

The Blessed Virgin invited the eternal Word at the beginning of spring, namely on the 25th of March, or on the Feast of the Annunciation, says William, into her garden, that is, first, into her womb, that in it he might eat the fruit of his apples, that is, take up the flesh prepared and organized by her, in which he might offer himself to God the Father as a holocaust for the redemption of men: so St. Athanasius in the Synopsis, Rupert and Caesarius, dialogue 3: for as soon as Christ united flesh to himself in the womb of the Virgin, namely in the first instant of his conception, he offered himself to God the Father as an expiatory victim for the salvation of the whole world, according to that word, Hebrews 10:5: "Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith: Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldst not, but a body thou hast fitted to me, etc. Then said I: Behold I come: in the head of the book it is written of me: That I should do thy will, O God;" then therefore, the Father revealing it, foreseeing all the afflictions, sorrows and torments to be inflicted on him, he freely accepted them, began to taste them, and offered them to God the Father. Second, the Blessed Virgin invites Christ into the garden of her soul, that there, by angelic purity, Michael-like humility and seraphic charity, etc., he might feed himself as it were on the virtues placed in her by him, according to that word, John 4:34: "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, that I may perfect his work;" but the will of the Father who sends is the salvation, virtue and perfection of the Blessed Virgin and of the rest of men. Third, the Blessed Virgin invites Christ, says Rupert, as if to say: "Eve invited her husband to eat an apple not her own, an apple belonging to another, a forbidden apple; I invite my beloved to his own garden," etc., that is, to myself: "let him therefore come into his garden, and by transferring me into that third heaven, into that third paradise to which he departed, where, as I watched, he ascended, let him eat the fruit of his apples, let him perfect it to the end, let him bring to completion the grace of those things which have been celebrated in me, the works of his own. From the time you departed into heaven, you frequently return into that place which you call the paradise of my emissions, and you eat of the pomegranate apples, which are the best among the firstfruits of the same emissions of mine. For you already eat so many pieces of pomegranates, that is, so many blessed souls of your martyrs and confessors, that you take up hence and transfer into that secret place of eternal life. When will you thus come into this your garden, to that which you call the fountain of gardens? When will you thus come to me, that where you are, there I too may be with you?"

You may ask why the Blessed Virgin is called a garden, not a field, not a plain: "a garden" (Rupert answers), "because something always arises there, since while other land produces something only once a year, a garden is never without fruit; whence therefore are you a garden, O beloved of the beloved, unless because in you was born something which never ceases, never withers or fails?" Add that the Blessed Virgin, like a garden, was continually watered by the streams of divine grace, that she might continually produce the most beautiful flowers and fruits of all the virtues.

THE VOICE OF THE BRIDEGROOM.

I AM COME INTO MY GARDEN, O MY SISTER, MY SPOUSE, I HAVE GATHERED MY MYRRH WITH MY SPICES.

I AM COME INTO MY GARDEN, O MY SISTER, MY SPOUSE. - The bridegroom, invited by the bride into her garden, freely accepts, nay, anticipates her invitation by saying: "I am come," in the past tense, that is, I have already entered, as the Septuagint translates, into my garden, which is none other than you yourself, my bride, whom in the preceding chapter, verse 12, I called an enclosed garden. You therefore are a garden both to yourself and to me, or both yours and mine, because what is yours is also mine, both because to bridegroom and bride all things are common; and because whatever good you have, you have this from me and from my grace; and because this same thing, offered to me by you, and given through gratitude, is nay rather restored; and finally mine, because, being exactly suited to my taste, it wonderfully feeds and delights me. In you therefore, as in my garden, I have plucked the fruits of the garden, eaten and drunk, as follows.

I have gathered my myrrh. - In Hebrew אריתי ariti, that is, I have plucked, gathered; whence ארי ari is the word for lion, because it tears its prey, and ariel, that is, strong lion, or lion of God. The Septuagint and the Arabic translate "I have vintaged," that is, I have plucked, gathered, whether by reaping, which properly applies to grain; or by vintaging, which applies to grapes; or by plucking, which applies to branches and apples; or by gathering, as the liquid flowing from incised myrrh, namely the stacte, is gathered. It is a catachresis; by a similar figure poets call the vintage of grapes a "harvest," nay even the gathering of apples, figs, honey, etc. "I have gathered myrrh," therefore, means I have gathered the myrrh-liquid dripping from the myrrh shrub, or certainly I have plucked the fragrant branches of myrrh; for both the branches and the sweet liquid of myrrh were used, for the sake of their fragrance, to strengthen the brain, and for delights at tables and banquets, especially garden banquets such as is here described.

The Chaldee, as I said a little before, takes "garden" for the temple of Solomon, in which spices, namely incense and frankincense, were burned to God.

FIRST ADEQUATE SENSE, Concerning Christ and the Church.

Christ the bridegroom, invited by the bride the Church to the garden, that is, to herself, flourishing with all spices and virtues, to be seen and enjoyed, accepts the invitation, nay anticipates it, says Nyssen, saying: I am already come into my garden, that is, I have already visited you, O my Church, and in the first place I have gathered and gleaned from you my myrrh, that is, penance and tears, which are the beginning of conversion and of the holy life; whence St. John the Baptist, Christ and the apostles at the beginning of their preaching, both among the Jews and among the Gentiles, all began to cry out: "Do penance: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," Matthew 4:17: for penance destroys the old life of concupiscence, and builds the new life of charity. Hence he says "my," that is, suggested by me; again "my," that is, most pleasing to me: for what is bitter to the sinful and penitent soul, this is sweet and pleasant to Christ, according to that saying of St. Bernard, sermon on the Canticle: "The tears of penitents are the wine of angels, because in them is the odor of life."

By myrrh therefore understand, first, penance, whether that which takes place in baptism, or that which takes place in those who relapse after baptism in the sacrament of penance, or in the act of contrition and satisfaction; whence St. Chrysostom, homily 41 from various places on Matthew, and St. Ambrose, book IX on Luke 20, understand baptism by myrrh. Christ therefore gathered myrrh, when he brought all the nations, through baptism and penance, from idols and vices to himself and to the holy life: for in baptism we die and are buried spiritually with Christ, that, our sins having been drowned and buried in him, we may emerge into newness of life, as the Apostle teaches, Romans 6:4. Therefore, as Christ, when he was buried, was embalmed with myrrh and spices by Joseph of Arimathea, so also the faithful person in baptism is embalmed with penance and the rest of the virtues.

Second, by myrrh you may understand the persecutions and tribulations of the Church, and especially the martyrdoms and martyrs, which Christ gathered and gleaned to the number of several hundred thousand in the first three hundred years of the Church, at Rome and elsewhere, before Constantine. By the spices understand the doctors and confessors of the Church in the time of Constantine and afterward: so Cassiodorus, Bede, Honorius and Nyssen, whom hear: "Paul was a tree bearing myrrh, who died daily, and gave himself the sentence of death, and by purity and the establishment of the divine life, being made fragrant, became in a certain way the odor of life to those who are saved," 2 Corinthians 2:15.

Symbolically, many Fathers refer these things to Christ, but variously. First, St. Athanasius in the Synopsis of Holy Scripture refers these things to the incarnation of Christ, in which he took up a mortal body: for myrrh is a symbol of mortality, for dead bodies are embalmed with it: wherefore, at the birth of Christ, the three Magi offered incense as to God, gold as to a king, myrrh as to one mortal and about to die for the salvation of men. Hear St. Athanasius: "Entering into his own garden, that is, of creatures, God took flesh to himself from the Virgin, and was made man. It was indeed a mortal body, yet joined with the fragrance of the most sacred Word:" so also Rupert and Lucas the abbot. Second, Philo of Carpasia, Rupert and Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 13, refer these things to the passion of Christ: for Christ, praying in the garden, poured out and gathered myrrh, when, being in agony, he sweated blood from anguish; again, when about to be crucified, he drank wine mixed with myrrh, says Cyril. Third, Justus of Urgel refers this to the burial

of Christ: for then Christ was embalmed with myrrh and spices. Fourth, Lucas the abbot says Christ gathered myrrh, when he converted Magdalene to penance in his life, and the thief on the cross.

Christ descends into the garden of the holy soul, and from it gathers the myrrh of mortification and the spices of the virtues, which he himself has placed and implanted in her: for the mortification of the passions ought to go before the holy life, that through it the soul may ascend to the rest of the virtues and to perfection: so Theodoret, Nyssen, St. Gregory, Justus, Anselm. Hear St. Gregory: "The beloved gathers myrrh with spices, when Christ, life having been brought to perfection through mortification, cutting off his chosen one from this life, brings him with holy repute into the heavenly storehouse."

Again Justus of Urgel: "The pious soul," he says, "is invited to the garden of Christ's passion," namely that she may read it, ruminate on it, meditate on it, and through mortification, both active and passive, that is, through the endurance of persecutions and tribulations, may imitate it, and represent it in her own body, according to that word of Paul: "Always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies," 2 Corinthians 4:10.

To this Richard of St. Victor adds, who explains it thus, as if to say: "O bride, you have undergone the affliction of penance, the struggle, the temptation, the labor of the correction of morals, and you have come to the harvest of the perfection of the virtues, from a laborious life to the calmer state of contemplation. I have therefore gathered in you myrrh with spices, because together with the bitterness of labors have been completed and perfected in you the spices of the virtues, and with the commandments kept wisdom has advanced: for when the carnal nature and one's own will have been mortified, then the spices of the virtues flow, and through the completion and triumph of this labor one arrives at the summit of perfection. But Christ gathers myrrh, when he brings to completion in the soul the labors already mentioned, by which she attains to the virtues and to perfection, and gently strengthens her, that she may delightfully do what before she shrank from, as is read in Job."

Morally learn here that mortification, tribulations and afflictions are the banquets and delights of Christ; the Christian soul, therefore, following the example of Christ, ought not to shrink from them, but to desire and hunger for them, and to exult and feast in them: for this is the chalice of the passion, which Christ thirsted for and ardently desired to drink, who accordingly gave this moral teaching to St. Catherine of Siena: "Embrace bitter things instead of sweet, and sweet things instead of bitter." Wherefore Honorius teaches tropologically that the soul is then invited by Christ, when she diligently imitates Christ, and keeps his precepts; that she gathers myrrh, when she mortifies her members, and crucifies herself to vices and desires; that she gathers the other spices, when she accumulates the other virtues; that she eats the honeycomb with honey, when she is gentle and mild in manners and conversation; likewise when, having attained understanding of Holy Scripture, she makes it clear to others; that she drinks wine with milk, when, nourished with the wine of wisdom and the milk of doctrine, she nourishes others; that she is inebriated with these, when she is filled not with new wine, but with the Holy Spirit. So says Honorius.

Repeat here what I said of her in the preceding half-verse, to which add that she herself and Christ in her gathered myrrh, when she stood by Christ crucified and dying, and when, keeping his sorrows and torments in her heart her whole life, she constantly ruminated on them; whence she could say with Naomi, Ruth 1:20: "Call me not Naomi, that is, beautiful: but call me Mara, that is, bitter, for the Almighty hath quite filled me with bitterness." Mary therefore was mara, that is, bitter, nay mor, that is, myrrh of death, and a sea of bitterness and sorrows; whence some give this as the etymology of her name, certainly it alludes to that name. Hear Rupert, On Christ and the Virgin, explaining these things, and noting here four chief mysteries of her life: "By descending indeed into your womb, and taking up flesh, that I, who was true God, might be born a true man, I am come into my garden; by dying and descending into hell, about to return with all my saints and elect, who awaited me from the beginning of the world, I have gathered my myrrh with my spices; by rising again, I have eaten the honeycomb with my honey; by ascending into heaven, I have drunk my wine with my milk."

I HAVE EATEN THE HONEYCOMB WITH MY HONEY, I HAVE DRUNK MY WINE WITH MY MILK.

I HAVE EATEN THE HONEYCOMB WITH MY HONEY. - In Hebrew יערי iari, that is, my honeycomb; Symmachus, "I have fed upon my forest," for יער iaar also signifies a forest; the Syriac translates "honeycomb" as "sweetness": for the honeycomb is honeyed, and therefore most sweet; the Septuagint and the Arabic translate "honeycomb" as "bread," namely a cake, or a honeyed loaf; St. Ambrose, book On Those Who Are Initiated into the Mysteries, last chapter, reads, "I have eaten my food with my honey": so Ezekiel, chapter 16, verse 13. The bridegroom says the bride has eaten fine flour and honey, that is, honeyed fine flour: for wedding feasts are wont to be seasoned with sweets and delicacies, to entice the affection of the bride. Moreover the honeycomb is said to be eaten, when the honey contained in it is sucked out: for the wax, which properly makes the honeycomb, cannot be eaten. "I have eaten therefore the honeycomb with my honey," that is, I have eaten a honeycomb not empty, but full of honey, and from it I have sucked out my honey.

"The Lord Jesus Christ himself," he says, "is both guest and banquet; he himself both eating, and he who is eaten; and Christ felt the fruit of the sacrament, namely a new actual delight of spiritual sweetness, yet not an increase of grace: for this, since it was at its highest in him, could not be increased, as St. Thomas teaches, Part III, Question 81, article 1, ad 3.

Moreover the body of Christ in the Eucharist is rightly called a honeycomb, first, because just as the honeycomb contains honey, so the body of Christ contains the soul, says Honorius, and the divinity, which is most sweet, like honey; because it is full of every good, joy, happiness, which it also communicates to creatures, especially to men devoutly receiving the sacred synaxis. Second, just as the honeycomb is made in the hive by the bees, which are virgins, from flowers: so the Blessed Virgin formed the body of Christ in her womb from her most pure blood, the Holy Spirit working within; whence the Septuagint and the Arabic translate "honeycomb" as "bread," because Christ imparts his flesh to us under the appearance of bread. Third, just as honey is exceedingly sweet to the mouth and stomach, so the Eucharist instills a wonderful consolation and spiritual delight, and, as the Syriac translates, sweetness: so Nyssen, Psellus, Philo, Rupert here, and St. Ambrose, book V, On the Sacraments, chapter III, explain this passage of the Eucharist; for reading with the Septuagint, "I have eaten bread with my honey": "Do you see," he says, "that in this bread there is no bitterness, but all sweetness? Do you see that this is the sort of gladness which is defiled by the filth of no sin? for as often as you drink, you receive remission of sins, and are inebriated in spirit. For this reason the Eucharist used to be given of old to those newly baptized; and then milk and honey, that they might represent to them the sweetness of Christ and of the Christian law, as I said above.

I HAVE DRUNK MY WINE WITH MY MILK. - that is, I have drunk with the apostles, nay I drank before them, and gave the example of devoutly drinking my blood, hidden in the Eucharist under the appearance of wine. With my milk: milk is the deity of the Word hidden beneath the blood, and its richness and sweetness, and the most sweet doctrine, grace, inspiration and consolation, by which it nourishes, fattens and gladdens the soul in the spirit: for just as milk flows from the breast of the mother, so the Word proceeds from the generative power of the Father, as it were from the breast, that he may give men milk, teach and feed them: so Clement of Alexandria, book I, The Instructor, chapter VI, who confirms this from 1 Peter 2:1, where for "rational milk" the Greek is λογικόν γάλα, by which Clement understands "verbal milk," that is, milk which is the Word itself of the eternal Father; whence he reads it thus: as newborn infants desire the verbal milk, that in it you may grow unto salvation, if you have tasted that Christ is the Lord, that is, God, as if to say: Desire to drink the blood of Christ in the Eucharist, that together with him you may drink the Word itself and his deity, as a divine milk, so it will come about that you grow in grace, which will lead you to salvation and glory; if however you taste, that is,

by the interior taste of the soul, from the very sweetness of the Eucharist, and from the falling of Christ into the soul, you have known that Christ is God. Clement adds that milk denotes the blood of Christ; for milk is nothing other than blood that has been concocted, white and sweet, most suited for nourishing. St. Augustine, however, on Psalm 33, discourse 1, teaches that the Word is the bread of angels, which in itself, pure and unmixed, feeds the angels; but this bread is seen to be changed in outward appearance into flesh, when the Word was made flesh; and the flesh into milk, when, that he might give milk to men as it were to little ones, and nourish them as milk, he put on, in the Eucharist, the white and as it were milky appearances of unleavened bread: "Just as," he says, "because an infant is less fit to be fed on bread, the mother incarnates the bread itself for him (that is, by eating it and, by the force of natural heat, digesting it, turns it into flesh), and through the moisture of the breast, and the juice of milk from that very bread, feeds the infant," namely with milk, into which she converts the bread. Moreover Christ at the last supper personally drank this wine with milk, because he himself first received the Eucharist under the appearance both of wine and of bread; but mystically he drinks the same thing daily in the faithful who devoutly communicate: for these are his members, as he himself says, Matthew 25. Wherefore what they themselves drink, this same thing Christ, who is their head, seems to drink.

Symbolically, the honeycomb with honey denotes religious devoted to prayer and contemplation (for this is to them as heavenly and most sweet honey): for these lie hidden in their cells like bees in honeycombs, and there make honey, and produce the honeyed fruits of charity, prayer, patience, etc. Wine denotes men of courage, burning with zeal for God, that they may chastise vices, and instill the love of virtue and of God in all: milk denotes men of pure, simple and innocent life, as St. Gregory teaches. Whence also Homer calls just men γαλακτοφάγους, that is, milk-eaters, says Clement, book I, The Instructor, chapter VI. This is favored by

the Chaldee, who holds that God ate the honeycomb and drank the wine, when he consumed the holocausts, which were as it were the food of God, with heavenly fire, and as it were devoured them: "I sent," he says, "fire from the heavens, which consumed the holocausts and the sacrificed victims; there was freely received before me the libation of ruddy wine and of white wine, which the priests poured out upon my altar."

Anagogically Rupert takes by myrrh the passion and death of Christ, by the honeycomb the resurrection, by the wine the ascension and the sending of the Holy Spirit, as if Christ were to say: After death I rose again, and appearing to the disciples I ate the honeycomb of honey and a part of a broiled fish. "I have drunk wine with my milk," that is, I have been gladdened with the joy of the ascension, which brought me forgetfulness of all past labors: likewise I gave to the apostles the Holy Spirit, who is one and the same as both my wine and my milk: my wine, because it is joy over present goods; my milk, because it is consolation over past evils. My wine, because it is the love

of God; my milk, because it is love of neighbor. St. Athanasius, however, in the Synopsis, takes by milk the works of Christ's humanity, as by wine the works of his divinity: "Although," he says, "the incarnate Word admitted the food of milk to his body, nevertheless he imparted to it also the wine of his own perfection: for just as he ate milk, so also he brought to perfection in it the works of his divinity."

Christ eats, in the holy soul, as in his garden and paradise, the honeycomb with honey, when he feeds and delights himself with her delights and spiritual consolations, which he sends into her, placed in prayer or in tribulation, or in martyrdom, for her solace and strength, especially in the sacred synaxis: for with these, as it were with honey, he sweetens all the bitterness of tribulation: for the delights and consolations of the saints are those of Christ, who is their head and bridegroom; hence Christ "tasted honeycombs after honey," says Tertullian, book On the Crown of the Soldier, chapter XIV, when, after the gall given to him to drink on the cross, rising gloriously, he ate the honeycomb of honey offered to him by the apostles, that by this deed he might symbolically teach and encourage martyrs and those who suffer to constancy, by considering and hoping that, just as with Christ, so they too will taste honeycombs and honey after gall.

Again Christ eats the honeycomb with honey, when he is delighted and fed with the holy works of his faithful, and especially with alms, which are as it were honeyed, and drop honey to the needy: so Nyssen, homily 10, where he adds that by milk is denoted the pure intention which is required in giving alms. So also Theodoret, the three Anonymous authors and Richard of St. Victor, whom hear: "He eats the honeycomb with my honey," that is, he is fed with the sweetness of good morals, which the soul has within; he is refreshed with honey, when someone does good works: for honey indeed is the working, which is shown outwardly. Christ also eats wine and milk in the soul, when he rejoices and delights with her twofold contemplation, namely of the divinity and of the glorified humanity, which are designated by wine and milk. Moreover the soul herself likewise eats and drinks the same things; but first she eats the honeycomb and honey, and afterward drinks the wine and milk, because it is necessary that reformed morals and worthy action precede, before the grace of contemplation be granted: for the eyes of the heart must first be cleansed, that God may be seen.

Furthermore St. Ambrose, On the Good of Death, chapter V, takes by honeycomb, wine and milk soothing, sharp and candid words, by which the conscience of a sinner is softened, pierced, and compunctioned by a superior, a preacher, or a pious man, and, as it were, inebriated with wine, according to that word, Proverbs 16:24: "A honeycomb of honey are well-ordered words: sweetness of the soul, health of the bones."

Symbolically, Cassiodorus takes by honeycomb and wine the preachers, because they instill the sweet but ardent words of Holy Scripture into others; by honey and milk, however, he takes the hearers, who receive them with a honeyed and milky heart: for by both Christ is fed and delighted; for just as the honeycomb contains honey, and wine contains warm spirits, which it breathes into the one who drinks: so Holy Scripture contains divine doctrine sweeter than honey and warmer than wine.

Anagogically St. Gregory takes these things of the saints, whom Christ as it were eats, while he enjoys them in heaven: "He eats," he says, "the honeycomb with honey, when he brings to completion the holy desire hidden in the holy works, and leads the holy soul, to be fattened by his own delight, to the banquet of the saints. And he drinks his wine with milk, when he refreshes himself both with the perfection of some, and, loving the innocence of others with loving-kindness, brings both to the eternal banquet." Cassiodorus, however, and Bede, take by wine the saints as regards the soul, enjoying the vision of God; by honeycomb, however, those who are blessed both as regards body and as regards soul, such as are the patriarchs, who rose again with Christ, and ascended gloriously into heaven: for just as the honeycomb contains honey, so the glorified body contains the glorified soul: for Christ eats both classes of saints, when he associates them to his body, that is, to the Church triumphant, exulting in heavenly glory. Finally, some assign eating to those who meditate, who by meditating, as it were by chewing, taste and savor divine things; but drinking to those who contemplate, who forthwith, by contemplating, as it were by drinking, sip and drain divine things.

Christ, in the Blessed Virgin, eats honey, and drinks wine with milk, first, when as a boy he was fed with her maternal milk and honey, according to that word, Isaiah 7:15: "He shall eat butter and honey, that he may know to refuse the evil, and to choose the good:" see what is said there. Second, when he enjoyed the most sweet company, sanctity and charity of the Blessed Virgin his mother up to his thirtieth year. Third, when he delighted himself with her interior purity, religion, faith, hope, love and the rest of her more than angelic and seraphic virtues. Fourth, when in heaven he continually enjoys, and will enjoy forever, her glorified humanity, raised above all the choirs of angels, up to the throne of the Most Holy Trinity.

EAT, O FRIENDS, AND DRINK, AND BE INEBRIATED, O DEARLY BELOVED.

Just as a friend, full of joy and as it were drunk, pours it out, as it were overflowing, into the bosom of a friend: so the bridegroom here, as it were drunk with the delights of honey and wine, invites his friends to the same.

I HAVE DRUNK MY WINE WITH MY MILK. - For "milk" the Arabic translates "honey," for honey or sugar is wont to be mixed with harsh and sour wine, that it may become sweet; but in villas and gardens, where there is abundance of milk, guests drink now milk, now wine; whence the old French proverb: Vin sur lait fait souhait: Lait sur vin, c'est venin, that is, wine after milk I desire, milk after wine is poison. It alludes to the banquets of villas and gardens, in which, toward the end of the meal, desserts and sweets are set out, namely cakes made of honey, nay whole honeycombs, likewise milk prepared in various ways and forms, whether liquid, or thickened, and formed into cheese.

Moreover it seems foreign to the sense that some rabbis, in Aben-Ezra, take by "milk" white wine; and by "wine" red wine, whom the Chaldee follows and translates: "There was freely received," he says, "before me the libation of old and ruddy wine, and of white wine": for that milk is sometimes called wine, Alexander ab Alexandro teaches, book V, Genial Days, chapter VIII: "When," he says, "in the rites of the Good Goddess wine is poured as a libation, they do not call it by its own name, but say it is milk; yet in the rites they set out an amphora of wine, wrapped up, which they called the honey-jar," whence also the saying, wine is the milk of old men. But the Hebrew, the Septuagint and the rest constantly have "milk," not "wine." Moreover Clement of Alexandria, book I, The Instructor, chapter VI, teaches that sweet wine is wont to be mixed with milk, and that this mixture is pleasant and useful: for wine adds sharpness to the sweetness of the milk, and milk nourishes exceedingly, as physicians teach and is evident in children. Hear Clement: "Milk also is mixed with sweet wine; and this sweet mixture is as it were an affection tempered unto incorruption: for milk is curdled and separated by wine; and whatever in it is adulterated is sent off as it were through an aqueduct: in the same way the fellowship of spiritual faith (especially in the Eucharist) stands toward passible man (liable to passions): for by curdling the carnal desires, it draws man toward immortality, making him immortal by divine things." "I have drunk therefore wine with my milk," that is, I have drunk wine and I have also drunk milk, or I have drunk wine with the milk which I had eaten before, that I might temper and digest the coldness of the milk with the heat of the wine.

I HAVE EATEN THE HONEYCOMB WITH MY HONEY. - Christ, after myrrh, that is, the penance and baptism of the faithful, eats the honeycomb with honey in the Eucharist, in which he left his body to us to be eaten, nay he himself first ate it with the apostles at the institution of the Eucharist, that he might give the apostles and the faithful the example of eating it and devoutly communicating, as St. Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euthymius, Bede and others on Matthew 26 teach, and St. Jerome, Question 2 to Hedibia:

BE INEBRIATED. - that is, be satisfied, and be gladdened, but within the bounds of temperance, short of the alienation of mind, which properly-called drunkenness produces: so Joseph inebriated his brothers, that is, satisfied and gladdened them with abundant wine, Genesis 43:34: so it is said of the saints, Psalm 35:9: "They shall be inebriated with the plenty of thy house: and thou shalt make them drink of the torrent of thy pleasure:" so the Apostles, having received the Holy Spirit, seemed drunk, not with new wine, but with the Holy Spirit, Acts 2:13.

DEARLY BELOVED. - For "dearly beloved" in Hebrew is דודים dodim, that is, loves, that is, the most beloved, and as it were fed at the breasts; the Septuagint translates "brothers"; Symmachus, "brotherly" or "cousins"; Aquila, "companions"; the Syriac and the Arabic, "paternal cousins"; St. Ambrose, book On Cain and Abel, chapter V, "fathers." Dodim could also be taken in the ablative, so that you would translate: Be inebriated with loves or with breasts, as if to say: Be inebriated with wine, honey and milk, which the bridegroom and the bride show forth to you with abundant and highest love: so it is said of the bride, Proverbs 5:19: "Let her breasts inebriate thee at all times;" others translate, let her loves inebriate you. And chapter 7:18: "come, let us be inebriated with the breasts (others, with the loves), and let us enjoy the desired embraces;" for dodim signifies both. See what is said there: although it seems truer to me that dodim signifies loves, and daddim breasts, as I said at chapter 1, verse 4.

First, Cassiodorus, Honorius, Bede, Sanchez and others understand by "friends" and "dearly beloved" the angels, as if Christ here invited them to rejoice with him and as it were to feast together over the progress, grace and glory of his saints, and to cooperate with him wholeheartedly, that they might, as it were, take them into their own hearts, as being their brothers and coheirs.

Second, Philo of Carpasia understands by "friends" the patriarchs and prophets, who, God revealing it, knew much concerning the passion and death of Christ, so that they seem to have drunk of his doctrine; by "dearly beloved," however, he takes the apostles, because, inebriated as it were by the spirit of Christ on the day of Pentecost, they belched forth the great things of God. To this Justus of Urgel and Anselm join themselves, who by "friends" and "dearly beloved" understand doctors and preachers, who eat sins and sinners, when they convert them to Christ: by which conversion they rejoice so greatly, and are as it were inebriated with joy, that they forget all the sorrows and labors which they endured in the conversion.

Third, more plainly and fully, St. Gregory and others by "friends" and "dearly beloved" understand any of the faithful and just, who are first invited here by Christ to the synaxis of the Holy Eucharist: for this, by its spiritual taste and sweetness, as it were inebriates the soul, so that, forgetful of all things, it thinks of and loves nothing but Christ. But before this tasting of wine and honey in the Eucharist, myrrh must be sent beforehand, that is, mortification, penance and the confession of sins, especially mortal sins, as the Council of Trent defines, session XIII, chapter VII; hence he sent it beforehand, saying, "I have gathered myrrh": so Nyssen, Philo, Rupert and others.

Hear St. Cyprian, letter 64 to Caecilius: "But the drunkenness of the Lord's cup and blood is not such as the drunkenness of worldly wine, since when the Holy Spirit said in the Psalm, Psalm 22:5: Thy inebriating cup, he added: How excellent it is, because indeed the Lord's cup so inebriates those who drink it, that it makes them sober, that it reduces the minds to spiritual wisdom: that from that worldly taste each one may return to the understanding of God; and just as by that common wine the mind is loosened, and the soul relaxed, and all sadness is put away, so, the blood of the Lord and the cup of salvation having been drunk, may the memory of the old man be put away, and there be forgetfulness of the former worldly manner of life, and may the sad and sorrowful breast, which before was pressed down with anguishing sins, be dissolved by the gladness of divine indulgence." Spiritual drunkenness, therefore, which the sacred synaxis brings about, is the alienation of the mind from the love of the flesh and of the world, from the cares and anxieties of this age, and its translation and passing over to the loving of heavenly things, that, clinging to and united with Christ alone, it may love crosses, and thirst with him to suffer much for the love of God. "This drunkenness," says St. Ambrose, book I, On Cain and Abel, chapter V, "makes sober; this drunkenness is of grace, not of intoxication; it generates gladness, not staggering;" and St. Bernard, treatise On Loving God: "That sober drunkenness," he says, "engulfing not with wine but with truth; not wet with wine, but burning with God." I have explained this drunkenness at length, Acts 2:15, on the words, "they are full of new wine," where I enumerated eight analogies of spiritual and bodily drunkenness. To this pertains the Chaldee version, which takes these things, in the Jewish manner, of the eating of the victims, which were a type of the Eucharist: "Now," he says, "come, priests who love my precepts, and eat what is left of the offerings, and delight in the good things which are prepared for you."

Hence the mystics and contemplatives refer these things to spiritual drunkenness, in which the contemplative, as our Salianus says, On the Love of God, God flowing into his heart, is so drenched with such a torrent of delight, that he cannot contain himself, but is compelled by unaccustomed movements and gestures to disclose the immense force of the interior delight: for the heart, in that prior union with God, is inflamed with so sharp a goad of divine love and desire for divine fruition, and, its pores as it were opened for receiving God, is so distended, that the breast seems to it too narrow: from which the flame of love, which there is nourished and grows strong by delight as if by oil, bursts forth violently outward after the manner of fermenting new wine, by which new flasks are burst. This seems to have happened to the apostles of old on the day of Pentecost, when the Jews thought they were drunk with new wine, whom the Spirit had filled.

Hence those songs, groans and formless sounds, applause too, and leaping and running, which we read of concerning certain holy disciples of Blessed Francis, which movements ought to be attributed to the divine spirit stirring them rather than to the natural soul. Such too were found in St. Francis himself, when he received from God the revelation of his predestination: for then, clapping his hands, stamping his feet, and dancing with his whole body, he so exulted with joy, that he was judged by the bystanders to be drunk, nay out of his mind and not master of himself.

Anagogically the saints are here invited to the banquet of heavenly glory and happiness, which is rightly called a honeycomb of honey and of wine, because in it is perceived, tasted, nay penetrated, the immense sweetness and delight of the divine essence; and this without any veil, or intermediary, so that the blessed are utterly overwhelmed by it, absorbed,

and inebriated, according to that word, Psalm 35:9: "They shall be inebriated with the plenty of thy house: and thou shalt make them drink of the torrent of thy pleasure:" so St. Bernard, sermon On the Aqueduct, on the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.

Christ invites the angels and all the saints to the garden and paradise of all delights, namely of spiritual wine, honey and milk, that is, of all consolation, grace and glory, which he planted in the soul of the Blessed Virgin, that they may feed themselves and be inebriated with these, and incorporate them, through meditation and imitation, as food, and carry them into the stomach of the mind. Those, therefore, who are devoted to the Blessed Virgin, by her intercession and imitation produce the myrrh of mortification, the spices of piety and prayer, the honeycombs of devotion and charity, the milk of honesty, the wine of fortitude for the service of God, overcoming and surpassing all things however hard and arduous.

FOURTH PART OF THE DRAMA, OR FOURTH PART OF THE BOOK, IN WHICH IS DESCRIBED THE DEFECT AND DECLINE OF THE CHURCH, THAT IS, OF THE FAITHFUL.

For just as in the first part, from chapter 1 to chapter 2, verse 8, he described the infancy of the Church; and in the second part, from chapter 2, verse 8, to chapter 3, verse 6, he described the adolescence of the Church; and thence up to chapter 5, verse 2, that is, thus far, he described, as it were in a third part, the perfection of the same, and as it were her manly age: so now, from this verse up to chapter 6, verse 3, he depicts the decline of the Church, as it were growing old, and as it were her old age. This the Church began to suffer after the time of Constantine, when, full peace having been given to the Church by him, and her right and dominion propagated throughout the whole world, the luxury and ambition of many powerful men began, which drew the Church into various heresies and schisms: whence it came about that these and the rest of the faithful sank into idleness, gluttony, luxury and the rest of the vices. The beginning of the evil was Arius, who drew most of the bishops to his opinion, so much so that in the Council of Ariminum the condemnation of the Homoousion and of the Nicene Synod was, by the deceit of Valens and Ursacius, Arian bishops, cried out together, and almost the whole world, says St. Jerome, marveled that it was Arian. The origin of the evil was the negligence, avarice and pride of certain prelates. For while men slept, the enemy (the devil) came, and oversowed cockle among the wheat, Matthew 13:25. Whence then most of the faithful, given over to pleasures, defiled the Church with their gluttony, lust and wickedness; yet the sounder part of the Church persevered in faith and holiness. So Cosmas Damianus.

THE VOICE OF THE BRIDE.

VERSE 2. I SLEEP, AND MY HEART WATCHES: THE VOICE OF MY BELOVED KNOCKING: OPEN TO ME, MY SISTER, MY LOVE, MY DOVE, MY UNDEFILED: FOR MY HEAD IS FULL OF DEW, AND MY LOCKS OF THE DROPS OF THE NIGHTS.

I SLEEP, AND MY HEART WATCHES. - The Hebrew: I sleeping, and my heart watching, that is, as an anonymous rabbi translates, I was sleeping, and my heart was watching: for it represents a past thing as it were present, as is customary to be done on the stage, as if to say: Behold I sleep, that is, I was sleeping, etc., when at once the voice of the beloved knocking sounded: for here the bride relates (as Nyssen and St. Ambrose, On Isaac and the Soul, rightly teach) to her young companions, having awoken in the morning, her nocturnal dream, or what happened to her, going to bed at night after yesterday's banquet with the bridegroom in the garden, namely that, while she was sleeping, the bridegroom came and knocked, and while she delayed and was slow to open, the bridegroom, offended by this sloth and rudeness, went away elsewhere: wherefore she paid the just penalty of her laziness, when, rising at last from her bed, she sought him long in vain, and was punished by the watchmen of the city, and deprived of her veil. Moreover our Sanchez, by hyperbaton, begins from here the sequence of the whole drama of the Canticle: for the bride, seeking, groaned, and said: "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth." Whence the things said here seem to be the same as those said at chapter 3, verse 1, and chapter 1, verse 6.

But this hyperbaton seems rather harsh, and to invert the whole sequence of the drama, as I said at the beginning.

First, R. Solomon refers "I sleep" to the bride; but "my heart watches" to the bridegroom, as if to say: While I the bride sleep, the bridegroom, who is my heart, watches and keeps watch, solicitous for my salvation: for lovers are wont to call each other "my heart," "my soul," "my life," because they love one another as their own heart, as their own life and soul; hence gather how securely the soul united and betrothed to God rests in him, and with what joys of spirit it exults, since it has placed its heart in the divine, and the divine in its own heart. But taken simply and genuinely both belong to the bride, as if to say: I indeed, after the banquet, was sleeping at night, but my heart, that is, my imagination and mind, was watching, because always my heart, that is, my fancy and mind, was burned by love, desire and the memory of the bridegroom: wherefore this sleep of mine was light, and thus, sleeping, I was not asleep, but was watching, that is, I was thinking or dreaming of the bridegroom: for those who sleep plainly and peacefully do not dream, as Aristotle teaches in the Problems, section 12, number 13; whence Climacus, step 30: "I," he says, "sleep on account of the necessity of nature, but my heart watches on account of the abundance of love." Second, St. Gregory, Philo, Lucas, and St. Ambrose, book III, On Virgins, who reads, "I have slept, and my heart watches," consider these to be the words of the bridegroom, and attribute both, namely both the sleeping and the watching, to him. Third and genuinely, Theodoret, Cassiodorus, Nyssen, Bede, Honorius and the rest consider these to be the words of the bride, and assign all to her, namely they say that she slept, but lightly, that she always thought and dreamed of the bridegroom: for sleep is broken by a dream, so that one sleeping, or dreaming, seems rather to watch than to sleep, according to that saying: "Dreams are the waking of those who sleep; but hopes are the dreams of those who wake," which Aelian, book XIII, Various History, attributes to Plato; but Laertius, book V, chapter 1, to Aristotle. The Church was sleeping, that is, enjoying full peace in the time of Constantine, but was watching in heart, that is, attending to reason, love and contemplation, dealt with God.

Honorius of Autun expresses the sense of this passage genuinely and in detail more than the others: "Thus far," he says, "the fullness of the Gentiles has entered: from here up to the entrance of the Synagogue is marked the time of the peace of the Church; the banquet of the victors being finished, therefore, the queen went to sleep, saying to the guards of the chamber: If the king seeks me, say: Because I sleep, and my heart watches, so that it may receive him. As it were, the Church had a great banquet with the victors, when the Church held the great Council with the confessors in the city of Nicaea, in which there were various courses, the diverse chapters of the Scriptures: this finished, she went to sleep, because there every heresy was condemned, persecution ceased, the quiet of peace returned, and the Church withdrew from the cares of the world, instituted the divine offices, and gave herself to divine contemplation: which now she says to imperfect men, still gaping after earthly things, by my example put aside earthly things, seek heavenly things; just as I sleep, that is, I rest from the affairs and cares of the world, and my heart watches in the meditation of Scripture, and in the contemplation of eternal life, that it may perceive the goods that are to remain. While the queen sleeps, dissension arose among the soldiers, not from enemies, but born of idleness: which increasing, the king rouses the queen, admonishes her to rise, to quell the tumult of the soldiers; that is, while the Church rests in contemplation, many vices arose among the faithful, new heresies, discords, sects, schisms and many other things. Whence Christ, through the Scriptures, warned her, that she should interrupt the quiet of contemplation, quelling the tumult of the vices by exhortation and correction."

Again, Cosmas Damianus by "sleep" understands the idleness, ease and luxury of the pastors and prelates of the Church, which was the cause why she, growing old as it were, declined from her first fervor and splendor: "The bridegroom Christ," he says, "when he departed into heaven, forbade to me, his bride the Church, that is, to the pastors of the Church, ease and luxury; he enjoined the evangelical office, and care for the poor; he commanded her to keep sober watch, and to observe carefully the hour at which he himself would return; but I, having cast off the evangelical office, now flow away in ease and luxury, defraud the household entrusted to my fidelity by my bridegroom of its due measure; nor is it now my care, that others perish, consumed by hunger and cold, that others, raging with hatred and internal wars, consume one another; that others, overspread with the darkness of ignorance, are borne headlong into heresies and the abyss of every vice, while I daily put on purple and fine linen, gleam with gold and gems, dine sumptuously, sup more sumptuously, bathe with my meal undigested, and, perfumed and anointed from the baths, betake myself to soft coverlets, and there, the door shut, not awaiting my bridegroom Christ (as of old the adulterous Synagogue, her bridegroom having been shamefully repelled and excluded, was sleeping), I am carried off into sleep, and never see the rising sun. But what else is this, than, having laid aside the evangelical garments and shoes, to sleep, and to pass one's life in luxury and sleep, after the manner of the Synagogue? But indeed the conscience, witness of my idleness and sloth, and of my luxury, perpetually watches: this accuses me strongly, condemns me, and, as it were, terrifies me with suspended nightmares. Nay above all I dread the name and power of my bridegroom, whom, knocking and calling at the door of my heart at night, I seem to hear saying to me, open to me, my sister.

To this pertains that saying of St. Gregory, Part III of the Pastoral Rule, chapter VI: "The slothful man, by thinking rightly, watches, although by doing nothing he grows torpid."

Moreover St. Gregory explains this maxim of Christ the bridegroom thus: "The bridegroom sleeps," he says, "and his heart watches, because while Christ, now glorified, rests in beatitude, whoever loves him perfectly (for this is the heart of Christ) labors that he may attain to him." Psellus, however, and Philo of Carpasia say that Christ slept in death, yet watched in his divinity, protecting his apostles and faithful, and, as Philo says, spoiling the underworld; whence morally let prelates learn that they, even when occupied with other things, and indeed even when they sleep, ought nevertheless in mind to watch and keep guard over their flock, lest some wolf or wild beast attack it.

To this pertains the Chaldee version, which explains these things of the watching rod, Jeremiah 1:11, that is, of the watching vengeance of God, that he might chastise the Jews through the Chaldeans: "After all," he says, "these words the people of the house of Israel sinned; the Lord delivered them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and led them into captivity, and they were, in captivity, like a man sleeping, who cannot wake from his sleep; and the voice of the Holy Spirit admonished them by the hands of the prophets, and roused them from the sleep of their heart."

The holy soul, mystically sleeping, watches in heart, when, free from concupiscences and worldly cares, she attends watchfully to God alone and to his love and worship: so St. Ambrose, Exhortation to Virgins, about the middle: "Let your flesh sleep," he says, "let faith watch, let the enticements of the body sleep, let the prudence of the heart watch, let your members breathe of the cross of Christ and of the odor of the sepulchre, so that sleep may infuse into them no warmth, may arouse no movements." And St. Gregory, book V, Morals, 22: "I sleep," he says, "and my heart watches, because indeed the holy mind, the more it withdraws itself from the noise of temporal desire, the more truly does it know interior things; and it watches the more eagerly toward inward things, the more it hides itself from exterior disquiet. This is well figured by Jacob sleeping on his journey, who placed a stone at his head, and fell asleep: he saw a ladder from earth reaching to heaven, God resting upon the ladder, and angels also ascending and descending," Genesis 28:12-13. And, several things interposed, explaining this watching of the sleeping soul: "The saints," he says, "are lulled to sleep from the works of the world, not by torpor, but by virtue; they sleep more laboriously than they could have watched, because in that, forsaking the actions of this world, they surpass, in a vigorous struggle they fight daily against themselves, lest the mind grow torpid through negligence, lest, subdued by idleness, it grow cold through unclean desires, lest it grow too hot in these very desires beyond what is right, lest under the appearance of discretion, sparing itself, it languish from perfection. This it does, and it withdraws itself wholly from this restless concupiscence, and forsakes the noise of earthly actions, and, through the pursuit of quiet, intent upon the virtues, sleeps while watching: for it is not lost to the contemplation of interior things, unless it studiously withdraw itself from those things which entangle it outwardly, according to that word, Psalm 45:11: Be still, and see that I am God."

Again some by "sleep" here understand ecstasy, such as was the sleep of Adam, Genesis 2:21: for those in ecstasy, their senses lulled, are as it were asleep and are wholly caught up to the contemplation of divine things: so Sotomayor. "This vital and watchful slumber illuminates the interior sense: it is truly a sleeping, which nevertheless does not lull the sense, but leads it away," says St. Bernard, sermon 52. Does not lull, that is, does not extinguish, as fire is lulled when water is poured on and extinguishes it; whence John the Carmelite explains it thus: I sleep, and my heart watches: I scarcely function with my senses for external life; but my will, gaping toward the bridegroom, watches. To the letter the sleeping soul watches, when she so fills herself by day with holy meditations, affections and loves, that at night she dreams of the same, nay sleeping repeats the same, as St. Francis Xavier used to do; for what we watchfully and studiously think about, of these things we dream while sleeping: for there recur in dreams the images of the day's thoughts, just as from the striking of a lyre there results the resonance of the ringing strings, which is heard even when the striking has ceased. Whence Claudian, On the Rape of Proserpina, book...

Wherefore it is a sign of perfect virtue, to dream of the same thing, and, as it were dreaming, to practice it; whence Aristotle, book I, Ethics, chapter XIII, says: "The visions of the modest tend to be better than those of others." And Plutarch, book On Moral Progress, among other signs of progress in virtue assigns this: "If someone at night suffers no foul or quarrelsome fantasies." Wherefore Cassian, Climacus and others teach that it is the perfect and, as it were, highest degree of chastity, if someone dreams nothing impure, but all things pure and holy. Hear Climacus, step 15: "He is chaste, who in dreams indeed feels no movement, nor any change of his condition. He is chaste, who even in dreams has always possessed complete insensibility to the appearance and variety of bodies." This rule is the end of this kind of perfect and complete chastity, that we regard animate things as inanimate, and are affected by rational bodies as by brute ones. Let Lawrence Justinian be heard, in The Tree of Life, treatise On Continence, chapter VI: "The sixth (last and highest) degree of chastity is, that one not be mocked, even sleeping, by the enticing fantasies of women: for although it is not to be believed that this delusion is guilty of sin, it is nevertheless an indication of concupiscence still lurking in the marrow." Let the plainly chaste man therefore say: "I sleep, and my heart watches," that is, my body so sleeps, that it has a guardian of its purity.

My heart watches: that virtue, which by God's gift, after many groans and petitions, I received, that which is dear to my heart, and which I love no otherwise than my own heart, watches over me, and girds me because of the terrors of the night; or my heart watches, that is, the Spirit of the Lord, by whom, as by a heart, I am given life and warmth, watches while I sleep, that in sleep I may suffer nothing unclean, but may accomplish something like what I am accustomed to do while awake. "For it is," as St. Ambrose says, book III, letter to Anisius, "the sleep of the saints, free from all bodily pleasures, from all disturbance of mind, bringing tranquillity to the mind, peacefulness to the soul, that, as it were loosed from the bond of the body, it may lift itself up, and cleave to Christ." I have said more on this matter, Deuteronomy 6:7, on the words: "You shall meditate on them, etc., sleeping and rising."

Moreover St. Augustine, treatise 57 on John, teaches that those devoted to wisdom sleep, and watch in heart: "What is it," he says, "I sleep, and my heart watches, but that I so rest, as to hear? My leisure is not spent in nourishing sloth, but in receiving wisdom. I sleep, and my heart watches, I am at leisure and I see that thou art the Lord, because I write wisdom in the time of leisure, and he who is diminished in action shall himself perceive it. I sleep, and my heart watches: I rest from busy actions, and my mind attends to divine affections: but among those things, which in this way sweetly and humbly rest, while the Church is delighted at leisure, behold he knocks, who says, Matthew 10:27: What I tell you in darkness, speak in the light: and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops."

Tropologically Theodoret: "Although," he says, "I am compelled by nature to close my eyes and take sleep, yet in mind I watch, and admit not at all the dream of sloth, since I await the coming of the bridegroom, according to the counsel of the Lord saying, Matthew 24:42: Watch, because you know not what hour your Lord will come."

Anagogically Justus of Urgel explains it thus, as if to say: "I am ready to die for Christ, but I believe that after death I shall reign with him. Therefore also I rest from temporal delights, my senses being in a manner lulled, but I desire the things to come, and seek after eternal things."

The Blessed Virgin was sleeping, and yet was watching in heart, first, mystically, because, empty of worldly cares and as it were asleep to them, she attended wholly to heavenly things. Second, because by day she was so carried away with fervor to meditate on divine things, and to continual acts of love toward God, that she repeated the same sleeping and dreaming, nay so that these frequently broke off her light sleep, and she, awakened and watching, poured herself out into these accustomed heats of love: wherefore her whole life was a continual and unbroken contemplation. Third, many probably think that the Blessed Virgin, her senses lulled during sleep, had by a singular gift of God her mind free and watchful, so that she might elicit free acts, and burst forth into ardent sighs of prayer and love: for these words, "I sleep, and my heart watches," signify this precisely, which belong properly to none of the faithful as they do to the Blessed Virgin, as Rupert rightly explains: "It has been, and is," he says, "the case of many souls, not only to sleep, according to that likeness, in holy leisure, that is, to be empty of earthly cares, and to watch in heart, through contemplation, in heavenly things: but also, in the same way as Jacob then slept, to sleep as to the body, and as to the soul to see heavenly things through sleep, according to that word, Joel 2:28: Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. But you, O heaven of God, the only seat of the Lord, in both modes of watchfulness were far more eminent than all mortals, whether earthly men, far more zealous to contemplate him, into whom the angels desire to look, and were more fitted for it." And St. Ambrose, book II, On Virgins, speaking of the Blessed Virgin: "To sleep," he says, "was for her not desire before necessity. And yet while her body rested, her mind watched, which frequently in sleep either goes over what has been read, or continues what was interrupted by sleep, or carries on what has been arranged, or announces what is to be done." And St. Bernardine, tome II, sermon 51, article 1, chapter II: "Sleep," he says, "which submerges and buries in us the acts of reason and free will, and consequently the act of meriting, I do not believe operated thus in the Virgin; but her soul freely, and meritoriously, and actually, tended toward God; whence at that time she was a more perfect contemplative than anyone else ever was, while awake. Whence she herself says, Song of Songs 5:2: I sleep, and my heart watches, namely in perfect contemplation, weakened by no action." And Denis the Carthusian here: "This," he says, "the most holy Virgin could say pre-eminently, because she led a most contemplative life, and, wholly abstaining from and lulled to exterior tumult, all inordinate noise and superfluous care, and disquiet of fault, with most watchful mind was at leisure for God, prayed for the Church, and was continually intent upon the most excellent acts of the virtues. Finally, in bodily sleep her heart was ever wakeful, from continual accustoming to attend perfectly to divine things, from most ardent and well-exercised charity, from most splendid and most abundant wisdom infused into her, and from contemplation in her wakeful hours, almost or altogether continuously, even in the time of sleep, with wakeful heart she was joined to God, and did not cease to watch for the Church committed to her."

Thus also, concerning the Blessed Virgin working and loving God in her sleep, Albert the Great, St. Antoninus and others explain these words, whom Francisco Suarez cites and follows, Part III, Question 37, article 4, disputation 18, section 2, toward the end, and he proves it, first, because Augustine teaches that this was granted to Adam and Eve, book I, Against Julian, chapter IX: "The dreams of those sleeping," he says, "were as happy as the life of those waking;" therefore much more was the Blessed Virgin as happy sleeping as waking. Second, because the angels, from the moment they were converted to God in the first instant of their creation, never ceased from the actual love of him; therefore much more can this be believed of the Blessed Virgin, queen of angels; whence St. Bonaventure, St. Bernardine and our Canisius relate that it was revealed to many saints, that the Blessed Virgin passed almost whole nights in praying and meditating. Third, because to the Blessed Virgin was given a knowledge infused of itself, by which she could act without turning to phantasms: wherefore even at night, sleeping, her fancy lulled, she could use it.

THE VOICE OF MY BELOVED KNOCKING: OPEN TO ME, MY SISTER, MY LOVE, MY DOVE, MY UNDEFILED.

As if to say: I was sleeping, but was watching in heart, that is, through a dream I was thinking and was anxious about the bridegroom, when behold I hear him knocking at the door and saying to me: Open, my sister, etc., where notice that the bridegroom knocks at the door of the bride's mind with as many blows as titles of love and obligations he suggests to her, as if to say: O bride, you are my sister, because I, by taking up flesh, deigned to become your brother; open therefore to me your brother. Again, I have gone before you in love, and have deigned you worthy of my friendship; open therefore, O friend, to one who loves you so. Moreover you are my dove, that is, you are most chastely betrothed to me alone, as a dove to her mate, who knows no other male: open therefore to me your one and only bridegroom. Finally, you are undefiled (in Hebrew תמה tamma; the Septuagint τελεία, that is, perfect); open therefore to me, who am the author, keeper and promoter of your purity and perfection: for while, by your opening, through your consent, I enter into you, I wipe away your stains with my own purity.

Now the bride the Church had opened the door of her heart to the bridegroom, and had given him her whole heart, as is clear from that, chapter 2, verse 16: "My beloved to me, and I to him;" yet the bridegroom knocks here, that the bride the Church may also, through her preachers, open with the key of preaching the closed hearts of her neighbors, says Cassiodorus. Bede, Honorius, Justus, Haymo, Richard, Anselm, Rupert and others.

Moreover already before, chapter 2, verse 10, the bridegroom had knocked at the door of the bride, but still a young girl, and had roused her to procure the salvation of the Jews in the early Church; here, however, he knocks at the door of the same, now grown up under Constantine, and stirs her to procure the conversion of all nations, and especially of heretics and the impious: for under Constantine the Church rejoiced in full peace, wherefore many prelates gave themselves to the leisure of holy quiet and contemplation; from that leisure, therefore, Christ here calls them to the business of preaching: so St. Augustine, sermon 57 on John: "I sleep," he says, "and my heart watches: I rest from busy actions, and my mind attends to divine affections; but among those things which in this way sweetly and humbly rest, while the Church is delighted at leisure, behold he knocks, who says, Matthew 10:27: What I tell you in darkness, speak in the light, and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops." And a little after: "He knocks therefore that he may shake off the quiet of the holy at leisure, and cries: Open to me by my blood, my sister; by my access, my neighbor; by my Spirit, my dove; by my word, which you have more fully learned from your leisure, my perfect one; open to me, preach me: for to those who have closed themselves against me, how shall I enter without one to open? For how shall they hear without a preacher?" Romans 10:14.

Hear Honorius, applying each of these words precisely and in detail, "these words signifying the solicitude of Christ toward the negligent and the erring, that they may be corrected through spiritual men, and the fervor of the Church toward contemplation, and her weariness toward the administration of the world. It is the voice of Christ knocking at the door of the hearts of the faithful: O Church my sister, because through me you are coheir of the kingdom; my friend, because through me you are privy to the heavenly secrets; my dove, because through me you are filled with the Holy Spirit; my undefiled one, because through me you are cleansed from sins; open to me, by exhorting, the door of the hearts of those, who have closed it with the bolt of evil works, and have become drops of the nights, that is, members of demons, and you shall be my sister, if you make those disinherited by malice, through grace my coheirs; you shall be my friend, if you make enemies through unbelief into friends through constancy of faith; you shall be my dove, if you make the double-hearted simple; and you shall be my undefiled one, if you make those stained with vices undefiled through the virtues." He then continues in this way: "Because my head is full of dew, that is, the faith of my divinity is filled with error, and my locks are full of the drops of the nights, that is, my faithful are filled with the sins of demons; because my head is God: by head is understood the faith of the divinity; by the dew which falls in the night, and withdraws at the heat of the sun, is understood the error of unbelief, which comes from the night of ignorance, but withdraws at the light of truth: the locks, that is, the hairs, are the faithful clinging by faith to the head, Christ: the drops of the nights are those who have fallen away from the faithful, as drops from the hair, into the opinions of heretics, or into the sins of demons, who are nights leading to eternal darkness. Open to me the door of their heart, that I may enter through grace, and dwell through faith in their hearts, and make for myself a dwelling in their minds through good works."

The holy soul is here called to greater holiness, that she may open to him the inmost things of her heart, and fill them with the fuller knowledge and love of him: so Nyssen and St. Ambrose, book On Isaac and the Soul, chapter VI, who says that Christ knocks and enters into the soul through the door of devotion and prayer: "Even though you sleep," he says, "if only Christ knows the devotion of your soul, he comes and knocks at her door, and says: Open to me, my sister, because the spiritual marriage is of the Word and the soul: open to me, but shut out strangers, shut out the world, and go not yourself outside to material things, nor, leaving your own light, seek another's: open your very self to me, do not be constricted, but be enlarged, and I will fill you." Hear Philo of Carpasia: "Whoever obeys God, and most diligently keeps his precepts, feels himself daily summoned and admonished at the door of the heart, to do ever better and higher works of charity, which the very titles signify." Christ therefore says: O holy soul, open to me, striving to penetrate into the inmost recesses of your soul: for as many assents as you offer, so many recesses you open to me, into which I hasten to slip; but I admonish you to open the doors, because you are my friend; whence, by the law of friendship, all the corners and recesses of your house ought to be common to me with you, because you are my sister, adopted as a daughter by my Father, and joined by the kinship of the nature I assumed: wherefore it is wrong that those whom God has joined in nature and grace be separated, and shut out by a closed door.

Again, Christ knocks at the soul now advancing and perfect, when he urges her to procure the salvation and perfection of others; whence to this end he presses her with four titles, as it were four goads. First, he says, you are my sister, for it is fitting that you be made like me, who am your brother, that just as I descended from the heavens into flesh, and living, spent myself wholly for the salvation of men, so also you spend yourself wholly with me for the same: for, as St. Dionysius says, of all works the most divine is to cooperate with God in the salvation of souls. Second, you are my friend; if therefore you love me, "feed my sheep," John 21:17: wherefore strive that others too may love me, and become my friends. Third, you are my dove (that is, my bride), fruitful, for a dove gives birth every month; do you therefore also constantly bear children to me, and nourish those born: hence St. Basil, to Juliet, letter 175, teaches that the saints ought to imitate keepers of doves, who send out a dove anointed with fragrant scents to other doves, that it may entice them by its fragrance, and lead them to its own dovecote: "Calling the holy soul his dove," he says, "God seems to say something like this: I have chosen you as my dove, and have suffused you with the fragrance of heavenly graces; it is fitting therefore that you likewise, with the fragrance of your virtues, and in the fragrance which you pour out in preaching, lead back with you into the dovecote of my wounds the flock of sinners reduced to the purity of doves."

Fourth, you are my undefiled one (pure and perfect); why then do you allow your purity, as it were, to be defiled by the crimes of your neighbors? Rather, strive to reckon them, perfect them, and make them like yourself, nay like me. Some think that here the sinful soul is called back from sin to penance, according to that word, Revelation 3:20: "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me:" so Cassiodorus, Bede, Philo and others; whence the Chaldee translates: "And the voice of the Holy Spirit admonished them by the hands of the prophets, and roused them from the sleep of their heart. The Ruler of the whole world answered: Turn to penance, open your mouth, and exult and praise me, my sister, my beloved, Synagogue of Israel, who are compared to a dove in the perfection of your works." But it is far more true that these words are said to the holy, nay the perfect, soul: for she herself is called sister, dove and undefiled.

Anagogically Cassiodorus and Bede think the holy soul is here admonished, that she at once open to Christ knocking at her departure in death, nay inviting her to the passage into heaven: "For at once," they say, "do we thus open to the Lord knocking, if we gladly receive death, and do not dread being brought before his judgment, since we remember that we pleased him whom we have always honored, in good works." Hear St. Gregory, homily 13 on the Gospels: "The Lord comes, when he hastens to judgment; but he knocks, when, through the troubles of sickness, he now signifies that death is near; to whom we at once open, if we receive this with love: for he who trembles to go out of the body does not wish to open to the judge who knocks, and dreads to see him, whom he remembers having despised; but he who is secure of his hope and his working, opens at once to him who knocks, because he gladly awaits the judge, and, when the time of approaching death has come, rejoices at the glory of the reward."

First, St. Bernard, sermon 4 on "He was sent," thinks that here the door of the will of the Mother of God is knocked upon, that she consent to St. Gabriel announcing the mystery of the incarnation: "Open, O blessed Virgin," he says, "your heart to faith, your lips to confession, your womb to the Creator: behold, he who is desired by all the nations knocks outside at the door. O if he should pass by while you delay, and again you should begin, sorrowing, to seek him whom your soul loves, rise, run, open: rise through faith, run through devotion, open through confession." Second, more fittingly to the literal sense assigned at the beginning concerning the Church, Rupert thinks the Blessed Virgin is here roused, that after the resurrection of Christ, she may preach his faith to all, especially to women: for she above all is the sister of Christ, nay his mother, friend, dove, undefiled and perfect one. Hear Rupert: "But you, O heaven of God, the only seat of the Lord, surpassed all others: and you desired indeed, your son having died, to fly like a dove and rest in contemplation, and, fleeing, to be removed further off, further off than the Baptist, more secluded than Elijah, where only the holy angels might know and serve you; but you add that your son, ah! loving us too much, did not wish this, when you say: The voice of my beloved, etc.; you show your beloved standing outside beneath the open sky, as it were lacking a house: for the synagogue of the Jews had shut him out, the Gentiles had not yet received him; therefore he asked: Open to me your mouth, speak the things that are fitting for the confirming of the gospel, and endure this loss of the quiet you desired, that for my sake you break the welcome silence of your singular chastity."

BECAUSE MY HEAD IS FULL OF DEW, AND MY LOCKS OF THE DROPS OF THE NIGHTS.

DROPS OF THE NIGHTS. - Aquila and Symmachus, "nocturnal"; the Arabic, "which drip by night": he says, in other words, in the latter half-verse, the same thing as he said in the former, for the head contains the locks, or hairs of the head: the drops of the nights are dew, for dew is vapor condensed by the cold of night and resolved into drops which drip onto the grasses and plants. Locks, properly, Festus says, are curled hairs, or curled and crisped with a curling-iron, but hence, in an extended sense, they denote any hair: for in Hebrew it is קוצתי kevutsetai, which some derive from קוץ kets, that is, thorn, because the hairs are fine and sharp like a thorn. Others, and better, from קצץ kasats, that is, he cut off, because kevutsot, that is, the extreme ends of hair, which curl into a lock, are wont to be cut and trimmed off. Others from קבץ kavats, that is, he gathered, because the multitude of hairs is gathered into one lock of hair, or even into one maxim, that is, a plait and a lock, as women still gather it.

Young men, fervent with love, when seeking a bride, are wont to go about the door of the bride at night, and watch for access to her, and therefore to stay awake outdoors for many hours: wherefore they are tormented by the cold and the drops of the nights; this they do out of carnal love, but the bridegroom here does it out of spiritual love: wherefore he asks the bride to open the door to him, that in the house he may be free from dew and rain, and dry the drops of dew and rain, which he contracted at night out of love for the bride.

The head of Christ is his divinity; the locks or hairs which veil the head, are his humanity and his members, which veil the divinity; likewise his saints and beloved: the dew and the drops of the nights are the blasphemies and injuries of the heretics and of other sins, which they inflict on Christ: so St. Gregory, Bede, Philo, Justus, Anselm and St. Augustine, treatise 57 on John, whom hear: "Open to me, my sister, my neighbor, my dove, my perfect one, because my head is filled with dew, and my hair with the drops of the night; as if he were to say: You are idle, and against me the door is closed; you devote yourself to the leisure of a few, and, iniquity abounding, the charity of many grows cold: for night is iniquity, and its dew and drops, these are they who grow cold and fall, and make the head of Christ grow cold, that is, that God be not loved, for the head of Christ is God; but they are borne in the hair, that is, they are tolerated in the visible sacraments, but by no means do they attain the inward things of feeling. He knocks therefore that he may shake off the quiet of the holy at leisure, and cries: Open to me by my blood, my sister; by my access, my neighbor; by my spirit, my dove; by my word, which you have more fully learned from your leisure, my perfect one, open to me, preach me. For to those who have shut themselves against me, how shall I enter without one to open? For how shall they hear without a preacher?" Romans 10:14. Thus the head, that is, the divinity of Christ, was attacked in the time of Constantine by Arius, saying that Christ is a creature, and consequently is not the Creator and God. And by Macedonius, taking from Christ the breathing forth of the Holy Spirit, that is, asserting that the Holy Spirit is not God. And by Sabellius, denying the Most Holy Trinity, and consequently denying the Father and the Son, asserting that God is one in person, just as he is one in essence. Hence Christ appeared to St. Peter, bishop and martyr of Alexandria, with his garment torn, saying: "Arius has torn my garment, which is the Church," as Eusebius, book VII, Bede and others attest. But Mani, and his followers the Manicheans, blasphemed the humanity of Christ, teaching that Christ took up flesh not real, but only apparent and phantom-like, as demons often assume shadowy bodies, namely masks and specters; and Nestorius, denying the hypostatic union of the humanity of Christ with the person of the Word, for he said that in Christ there are two persons, just as there are two natures, and therefore that the person of the man is one thing, that of the Word another; and Eutyches, teaching that in Christ there is one nature, mixed from humanity and deity, just as there is one person; and Apollinaris, taking away from Christ a human mind, and substituting the divine for it; and Polychronius, taking from Christ a human will; and Valentinus, taking away also his earthly body, for he said that Christ brought a heavenly body from heaven, and therefore passed through the Blessed Virgin, not as through a mother, but only as through a channel.

Again wicked Christians, by their depraved morals, as it were by casting dew upon it, contaminate the head of Christ, and drive him from themselves, while they repel his holy inspirations, and thus compel Christ, cast off by them, as it were to remain outdoors at night, and by their torpor, and by their desires, as it were with the frost and the icy drops of a winter's night, defile his locks, that is, the thoughts sent into them by Christ. Hear St. Gregory: "The head of Christ," he says, "is full of dew, because many, placed in the Church, both believe him to be God, and yet, remaining cold, are not kindled to the ardor of charity; by the locks, moreover, we understand the same peoples, whom we know to hang and to weigh, as it were, on the faith of the divinity, as on the head of Christ; but the locks are said to be full of the drops of the nights, because, while they suspend themselves in the torpor of this dark temporality, they flow more and more with the drippings of iniquities. To kindle these the bride is roused, when any spiritual man, for the warming of many, is called from leisure to the prelacy of the Church." So too Cassiodorus and Bede, who nevertheless by the locks understand the pious and holy, who, like locks, gather themselves within the guard of their mind, and cling more closely to the love of their Creator; these, they say, are full of the drops of the nights, while the impious oppress them with the cold of harsh and blind persecution. Justus, however, and Anselm by the head of Christ understand the prelates, full of the dew of ignorance; by the locks, however, the clergy and the faithful, who are infected by the drops of the nights, that is, by works of darkness, for example gluttony and luxury. Thomas of Cantimpré relates a memorable example, book II, On Bees, chapter I, part XIII, namely that the Lord Jesus, in the appearance of a most elegant boy, appeared in Brabant to a certain Cistercian religious, sitting alone in the cold of the snow, and, from the cold, gave forth a great wailing and lamentation. And when the religious asked him the cause, he, trembling, said: "Woe is me! Woe is me! Why should I not weep? Why should I not wail? Behold you see that I sit, needy, alone, and in the cold, and there is none to gather me in, and provide lodging." Wherefore the religious took him up onto his horse, but the boy, leaping suddenly from the arm of the one holding him, disappeared, fixing a great goad of sorrow and love in his heart: for who among men could hear without tears such and so great a lamentation, that the only Son of the Father God, existing as God, seeks lodging on earth, lacks food, is shrunk with cold, and, while charity grows cold in many because of the abundance of iniquity, there is none to receive him with the lodging of the heart, refresh him with the Father's good pleasure,

turn it over in beneficent will, cherish him in the bosom of devotion, cover him with the garment of charity."

To this, in half measure, Richard of St. Victor comes near, who takes the dew filling the head of Christ as the abundance of God's mercy; by the drops, however, of the nights upon the locks, he takes the sins and miseries of men, as if Christ were to say to the devout soul: "Because I have bestowed so much upon you, you too respond to my benefits, and exercise toward my members the grace with which you are especially endowed: for from the fact that I am God, I abound in mercy and the dew of grace, and those who cling to me in faith are filled with the drops of sins and blindness."

Furthermore other Fathers take the dew and the drops of the nights in a good sense, namely by the dew of the head they understand the doctrine and grace, which distills from Christ as from the head onto the faithful; by the drops of the nights, however, the doctrine of the prophets and apostles (Philo adds, and of the angels) which flows from them, as it were from the locks of Christ, to Christians: so Nyssen, homily 11, Philo, Richard, the three Anonymous authors in Theodoret, and St. Ambrose, book III, On Virgins, about the middle: "Just as the dew of heaven," he says, "removes the dryness of the night, so the dew of our Lord Jesus Christ has distilled the moisture of eternal life into the darkness of the night and of the world. This is the head, which did not know how to dry up under the heat of the world. This head rains dew upon others, abounds for itself." St. Paulinus, however, letter 4 to Severus, taking by the head Christ God, by the locks the saints of Christ, by the dew and drops the works of the saints, by which they refresh their soul in the thirst of dryness: "Therefore," he says, "your head, Christ, rejoices, filled with such dew, and is the illuminator of our nights; yet he rejoices that his locks are drenched with the drops of our night, because his refreshment and repast is that working of the faithful, by which either brothers are helped, or the needy are comforted."

Anagogically Philo, by the head of Christ full of dew, understands the resurrection of Christ, which took place in the morning, when the dew descends onto the earth; by the locks, however, he understands the peoples converted to the faith of Christ; as though the Church were bidden by Christ to instruct, polish and perfect these further in the faith.

The dew of the head and the drops of the locks denote the tribulations and afflictions of Christ and of the saints: wherefore Christ here invites the rest of the faithful, that they may have compassion on them, and lighten or mitigate them: so St. Ambrose, On Isaac and the Soul, chapter VI, and on Psalm 118, sermon 12: "Consider," he says, "when the Word your God knocks at the door, when he is filled with his nocturnal dew: for he deigns to visit those placed in tribulation and temptations, lest anyone perhaps succumb, overcome by hardships. His head, therefore, is filled with dew, or with drops, when his body labors; then, therefore, one must watch, lest, when the bridegroom comes, he depart, shut out. Whence the Chaldee translates: "Because the hairs of my head are full of tears."

they would strike, but they walked barefoot with the upper foot; wherefore, about to dine or go to bed, they washed their feet, lest with dusty or muddy feet they should stain the coverlets. So Abraham, preparing a banquet for the angels appearing in human form, first washed their feet, Genesis 18:4: Lot did the same for the same, Genesis 19:2: and Joseph for his brothers before the meal, Genesis 43:24. Hence Magdalene, at the banquet of Simon, washed the feet of Christ with her tears, and Christ himself washed those of his disciples at the last supper before the sacred synaxis: Athenaeus, book XII, chapter V, and book XV, chapter XV, teaches that the Gentiles did the same.

Hence Nyssen symbolically teaches that the feet of the mind of the pious soul must be made bare, that without the shoes of earthly affections she may freely go forward to God: for shoes, since they are made from the skins of dead animals, are symbols of sins, and this he proves, first, by the example of Moses, who, about to approach God in the bush, is commanded by him to take off his shoes, Exodus 3:5; second, from the fact that we read nothing prescribed by God concerning the shoes of the priests, as we do of their other garments; the priests seem therefore to have ministered and sacrificed barefoot; third, because Christ forbade shoes to the apostles as they went through the world, Luke 10:5.

Rupert teaches that Christ here speaks to the Blessed Virgin, and exhorts her, that she preach to the Jews the faith of Christ, and assert the reason that the Jews infect his head, that is, his divinity, with dew, denying that he is the Son of God; and with the drops of the nights, that is, with darkened senses pervert the sacred Scriptures, which cling like locks to the head of Christ as of the Word of God: "Just as," he says, "in that night (of my passion) they spat upon my face, so now they persistently hurl blasphemies at my head, and defile my locks, being themselves like the falling dew, or the falling drops of the nights, because they have fallen from the grace of God, while they blaspheme and deny me to be God the Son of God, and pervert with a contrary sense the Scriptures which bear witness of me. Open therefore, with my other witnesses, your mouth; and cause that in whatever places I may have a place, where I may lay my head."

Rupert adds that at the beginning of the Church women, equally with men, instituted the religious life, and had all things in common, but soon there arose a murmuring of the Greeks against the Hebrews, because in the distribution of food their widows were passed over; wherefore the Blessed Virgin, by the command of Christ, quieted this murmuring, reconciled peace among the widows, and kindled others to the pursuit of poverty and evangelical perfection.

VERSE 3. I HAVE STRIPPED OFF MY TUNIC, HOW SHALL I PUT IT ON? I HAVE WASHED MY FEET, HOW SHALL I DEFILE THEM?

The Septuagint: I have put off my tunic, how shall I put it on? The bride, lying sweetly in her little bed, refuses to rise and open to the bridegroom knocking, or at least she spins out delays, as those half-asleep and half-drowsy are wont to do: wherefore she puts forward an excuse for this drowsiness and torpor of hers, saying, not so much to the bridegroom (for that would have been too discourteous) as to herself: I have put off my tunic, it is hard for me to rise and put on my tunic; I have washed my feet lest I should soil the bedclothes; it is troublesome for me to lift my feet from the bed, to tread the ground, to soil them with the dust of the earth: I will remain, then, in my little bed: for in former times they walked with bare feet, or at least only a sandal covered the sole of the foot, lest it onto the rocks

Note here that the tears of the pious fill the head and hair of God, because He Himself feels them as if they were His own: wherefore He grieves with them, consoles them, strengthens them, and in His own time delivers them, according to that word, Zech. 2:8: "He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of my eye."

having put off, in baptism, the old tunic of guilt, and having put on the new tunic of innocence, she fears lest she put on the old one again, if she involve herself in the conversion of sinners, lest, while she thinks to convert them, she be perverted by them and rolled back into the ancient mire of crimes: so Nyssen, Philo, Psellus, and the three Anonymous writers in Theodoret. Hence some press the word "exspoliavi" ["I have stripped off"], as if to say: I have stripped myself of the filthy garment of sins, as of a hostile one, and rendered it as spoil to its own master, namely the devil; wherefore to take it back is unlawful for me. Hear St. Ambrose, Bk. 3, On Virgins: "See what the soul devoted to God says: she thus puts off from herself bodily deeds and earthly ways, so that she does not know how, even if she wished, she could put them on again: How shall I put it on? that is, with what shame? with what modesty? with what memory afterward? For the habit of good has lost the use of the old depravity." And a little after: "I have washed my feet, she does not say: How shall I wash them again? but how shall I defile them again? as one forgetful of the old stain, forgetful of the contagion. Therefore, once you have washed your feet in the stream of the eternal fountain, and cleansed them in the sacrament of the mystery, beware again of the filth of bodily desire, lest the acts of the mire defile them with their filthiness." Hence learn how a relapse into sin is to be guarded against by the penitent, and therefore its former occasions and enticements are to be avoided.

Thirdly, St. Augustine, Epistle 57, and from him Delrio, understand by the tunic the ancient holy doctors, who had clothed the Church as with a tunic, but who by martyrdom had already died; and by the feet, the younger doctors still surviving — as if to say: You bid me, O Christ, that the hearts of mortals, harder than rock, be softened and opened by me for you; I, the Church, would wish it, but fitting workmen are lacking; indeed I have not yet sufficiently perceived what they can bear, what they refuse. My former workmen, whom I knew to be fit, and whom I boldly sent into the battle, a hostile whirlwind has swept them all away, especially of late — scarcely past is the most cruel persecution of Maximian, Maxentius, Diocletian, and the almost continuous one of Licinius: those warriors, most closely joined to me, hemmed me in, protected me, and veiled me after the manner of an inner tunic; while, about to show you my wonted obedience, I do not spare my own, and so I have remained almost naked and despoiled. Those who remain, part are broken by age and labors, part by wounds and the rack: the rest, the younger ones, whose vigor drives me to run about the world with diligence as if with feet, being newly washed are still tender; I rightly fear lest they grow weary under the burden, or at least lest they be defiled again, and thus I myself be again befouled in my feet. This sense is indeed piously and quite fittingly applied, but it seems not so much literal as symbolic and anagogical, as, for instance, that of Philo, who refers these words to the resurrection of Christ, in which Christ put off the mortal tunic of the human body, and put on the immortal one: "For Christ, rising from the dead, dieth now no more; death shall no more have dominion over him," Rom. 6:9; but these are the words of the bride, the Church, not of the bridegroom, Christ.

Fourthly, and genuinely, St. Gregory, Cassiodorus, Bede, Philo, Anselm, Richard, Honorius, and others understand by the tunic temporal occupations, with which, as with garments, they necessarily entangle themselves who take up the care of their neighbors, and thereby defile their feet, that is, their affections. The Church, then — that is, the prelates of the Church in the time of Constantine — indulging in peace, leisure, prayer, a quiet and, as it were, contemplative life, and therefore shrinking from the labor of preaching, of refuting the Arians and other heretics and unbelievers, and of converting wicked Christians (to which they were called by office from Christ), put forward this excuse for their sloth and torpor: that, since they were dedicated to God, they were unwilling to occupy themselves with temporal matters, by which occupation it is necessary to contract defects and the stains of sins, according to that word of St. Leo: "It is necessary that even religious hearts be defiled by the dust of earth." Hear Honorius: "She does not say this by way of disobeying, but by shrinking from secular care: for he who is set over secular affairs is cast down in spiritual ones; for as the body is clothed with a tunic, so the mind is entangled with secular care, which, once put off, spiritual men are unwilling to put on again, but wish to be free for God alone in spiritual things. But those called by God set aside their own will, and unwillingly take up the burden of governance for the sake of their neighbors; whence, groaning, they say: I have washed my feet," etc. He then explains these feet mystically, adding: "The feet of the soul are its affections, by which it is carried to various desires, just as the body walks by its feet — which are desire, fear, joy, sorrow; for it desires earthly things, fears lest it fail to obtain what it desires, rejoices over what it has obtained, grieves over what it has lost; these feet she has washed, while she washes away earthly desires with the tears of penance; these she fears to defile again, because he who is placed in the governance of secular affairs can scarcely, or not at all, avoid the stains of sin."

But these are mistaken, both because these light specks of dust

You will ask, what is the tunic of which the Church stripped herself, and which she fears to put on again? First, our own Sanchez: The bride, he says, had laid aside the nuptial garment — that is, she had relaxed somewhat in her love for the bridegroom, while she loves her own softness and sleep more than enough. Now Gregory, in Homily 38 on the Gospels, teaches that the nuptial tunic is charity. That tunic, then, to take up — that is, to love the bridegroom more than herself — seemed hard, while she indulges her own inclination rather than the will of the bridegroom. To this purpose serves the Chaldee version, though after the Jewish manner: "The assembly of Israel answered before the prophets: Behold, I have already taken from myself the yoke of his precepts, and I have served the idols of the peoples; how then shall I have the face to be converted to him? The Ruler of the world answered them by the hand of the prophets: I also have taken away my majesty from your midst; how shall I be converted? But you have done evil works. I have sanctified my feet from your uncleannesses; but how shall I defile them among you by your evil works?"

Secondly, others, on the contrary, understand by the tunic the old man, namely the old manner of living in lusts and sins: thus the Apostle, Eph. 4:21, bids "to put off the old man, who is corrupted according to the desires of error;" and presently, v. 24, he adds: "Put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth." The bride, therefore

Many, too much given to a quiet and contemplative life, although endowed with the grace of preaching, when called by Christ through their superiors to win souls for God, shrink from the labor, lest they be torn away from their sweet quiet, and lest, amid the crowd of men, they fall into the dangers of sinning: for he who is eager to win sinners must, so far as is lawful, accommodate himself to them, as Christ ate with sinners and publicans, and Paul "became all things to all, that he might save all," 1 Cor. 9:22: easily some small dust of venial sins clings to the feet of such men, and, as St. Jerome says, in his letter to Damasus on the first vision of Isaiah: "It is easy for one treading the earth to have some earth stick to him; if the preaching succeeds happily, there is danger of vainglory; if we are reproved, disturbance; if we are praised, a swelling of pride is to be feared."

But these are mistaken, both because these light specks of dust are easily wiped away, and therefore such useful labors are not to be avoided; and because in these labors there is great spiritual consolation, according to that word: "There shall be joy in heaven over one sinner doing penance," etc., Luke 15:7; and because the just are not so much defiled by winning sinners, as they are purified, by hearing and receiving them, in the affection of devotion. Whence St. Ambrose, on Psalm 118, sermon 13, on those words, How sweet are thy words to my palate, above honey and the honeycomb to my mouth!: "It is a good drunkenness," he says, "which produces a certain excess of mind toward better and pleasant things, so that our soul, forgetful of its cares, is made cheerful by the wine of gladness: a good table is spiritual drunkenness"; whence St. Gregory teaches that friends drink — that is, ordinary believers read and keep the words of God — but the dearest, that is, the perfect, are plainly made drunk by them: "There are others," he says, "who hear or read the divine Scripture with such eagerness that, having straightway renounced all earthly works, they aspire only to heavenly things; they cast aside parents, wives, homes, even children, and all transitory things; they long only to follow Christ, and to embrace him. They afflict themselves with fastings out of desire for him, they afflict themselves with tears, they exercise themselves in divine meditations, they think only of the things that are eternal, they are free for contemplation, laboring to this end, that, forgetting the things that are behind, they may stretch forth more and more to the things that are before. What indeed do these do, but, drinking, become drunk, so that, while by desire they forget all earthly things, they rightly deserve to be called by the heavenly bridegroom not only friends, but also dearest?

through hearing, he impresses upon her memory the mystery of his passion, by which means, having gone forth from the glory of the heavenly kingdom, he underwent the labors of this exile, and preached penance and the kingdom of heaven to his enemies with such labor and peril, that, moved by this example, she may shake off her torpor, and not fear to lay down her soul for her neighbors.

m understands schism, for thus he brings in the Church, the bride, speaking: The bridegroom, vehemently offended at the shamelessness of my idle and luxurious life, having brought about a huge schism — as it were a house broken through — with three doubtful pontiffs thrust in, the matter of so great a schism being, as it were, a hand thrust in through a hole dug in our house, terrified me, while, secure of all things and lulled asleep by delights, I lay reclining: kings and princes throughout the whole world conspiring and confederating against me alone, a great fear struck and utterly terrified my mind, just as of old the army of the Chaldeans — that heavy hand of God — through the breached wall of Jerusalem, dismayed King Zedekiah together with the whole Synagogue, 4 Kings 25:7, and Jer. 39:6. The same author, then, in a fuller commentary, at length bewails the defects and vices of the Church — that is, of not a few prelates and of the faithful — such as ambition, avarice, cupidities, schisms, wars both internal and external; just as St. Bernard also does, in his De Consideratione to Eugenius, John Gerson, Alvarus Pelagius, in his De Planctu Ecclesiæ, and Bellarmine, in his De Gemitu Columbæ.

Christ sends his hand through the hole of the soul, when by a hidden but powerful working of grace he impels it to heroic works of virtue; whence Cassiodorus: "The beloved," he says, "sends his hand through the hole, and touches the belly, when the inward Founder visits the heart by inspiration, and kindles it to the advancement of virtues." Hear what Rupert here relates of himself as though of another, when, keeping watch by night, he experienced, with wondrous delight of his soul, this hand of Christ sensibly stroking his breast and signing it with the sign of the cross: "The beloved, visible in a vision of the night, cast his hand in a wondrous manner upon his breast, as it were through a hole, and grasped his heart from within, and held it for some time, pressing it most sweetly, and that heart rejoiced with ineffable joy, leaping and dancing within that hand." Again St. Gregory: "The beloved," he says, "sends his hand through the hole to the bride, that she may rise, when by a subtle understanding he makes manifest, by inspiring her, how great is the power of the divine working: namely, that it can save even amid dangers; that likewise in peace, apart from him, no one is safe; that in the tumult of the conflict he does not abandon those who hope in him. At his touch the belly of the bride trembled, because the holy soul, the more it feels the divine power present through an inward visitation, the more strictly it judges whatever it finds carnal in itself. For the greater the charity with which it burns toward God, whom it desires in the mind,

-tinus, Fulgentius, Gregory, and many others; but all these at length obeyed Christ, calling them to the governance of souls and promising his aid, and they submitted their shoulders to the pastoral burden; and they generously resisted so many Arian bishops, and their followers the emperors Constantius, Julian, Valens, etc., and gloriously triumphed over them.

Hear Richard of St. Victor: "While the pious soul trembles at being entangled in the affairs of the world, if it should take up the burden of care for its neighbors, and give itself to procuring their salvation, the beloved, who had roused it to that office, consoles it, and visits its heart, penetrating it with an ampler grace. This visitation of grace the bride calls the sending of the hand through the hole: because Christ pours in grace as it were through a chink, since he does not flood the whole soul, but visits it with a certain measure of grace, and, thus visiting it only in part, does not fully illumine it. The hand of the beloved, then, may be understood as this working and gift of grace; but the belly is the mind itself, in which thoughts are concocted, as food is in the belly." St. Anselm has similar things: for, as Philo Carpathius says, God sets before the eyes of the soul the certainty of his providence and grace, which knows how to preserve sweet-smelling roses among thorns and wheat among tares, lest they be harmed, inasmuch as it has never forsaken anyone who hoped in it. Hence the three Anonymous writers in Theodoret understand by the hand the Holy Spirit: "My beloved," they say, "sent forth from the Father the Spirit proceeding from him, consubstantial with him, by whose hand, as it were, he accomplishes the divine gifts of graces, through my mind as through a kind of hole, and, as I bring forth the beginning of wisdom, the fear of my beloved, as of a judge, the vice of gluttony and of the belly is checked, whence every kind of intemperance is born."

Symbolically, Nyssen teaches that the hole through which God instills into us his knowledge, fear, and love, is the creatures — that is, the works created by God, from which, by reasoning, we come to know the greatness, omnipotence, goodness, and wisdom of God the creator: wherefore our belly trembles, while, admiring and marveling at them, we praise, love, and venerate as suppliants their maker. Whence Theodotion translates: and my belly was culefactus; so too Theodoretus, who understands by the hole a sense — for instance, the eye — in which the aforesaid hand of God operates; so too St. Ambrose, Bk. On Isaac and the Soul, ch. 6.

More properly, Honorius understands by the hand the work of Christ's obedience: for when the soul is slow to open to Christ calling, because it dreads to undertake the governance of its neighbors, the bridegroom sets before its eyes the work of his own most perfect obedience, that, being struck with fear, it may do for its neighbors what God did for his enemies. The hand of the bridegroom is the work of his obedience, and by the hand the work of the hands is expressed. The hole of the chamber is the ear of the body, which is the chamber of the soul: he sends his hand through the hole, when

are, and are most easily wiped away — nay, they are overwhelmed by so many acts and labors of charity, which they continually pour out for the salvation of others; and further because labor undertaken out of obedience carries with it the grace and guardianship of God, so that it does not smear filth upon the feet, but rather renders the feet clean and beautiful, as is evident in the apostles, whom God continually confirmed in grace, according to that word of Paul from Isaiah, Rom. 10:15: "How beautiful are the feet of them that preach peace, of them that preach good things!" So today in our Society we experience the wondrous help of God in the chastity and purity of our companions, in so many occasions in which it is necessary to deal with sinners, Indians, women, princes, etc., for things to be guarded and preserved, especially since they themselves do not neglect the remedies which religion suggests to them, such as daily prayer, meditation, examen, confession, communion, custody of the eyes, and mortification of the senses, etc.: for by these they continually wash the feet of their affections and keep them bright.

Rupert brings in the Blessed Virgin, most devoted to contemplation, responding thus reverently, but ardently, to Christ inviting her to the care of widows: "I speak to my beloved knocking, and I repeat known things to him, because I, alone above all, have put off my tunic; in mind and in act, or in habit, I have left all things; and thus I have washed my feet, the Holy Spirit cleansing my conscience or my intention, so that of the aforesaid dust there remains nothing at all. How shall I now put on the tunic, that, having left all that is mine, I should take care of what belongs to others, being solicitous for others, and, made a mother of a family for the widows who daily come, or for the virgins who are to come? How shall I defile the feet I have washed, that is, incline my eyes, or my other senses or thoughts, to any earthly things? For although your guardianship is always with me, yet true humility is always solicitous, and my soul most of all, which is singularly full of your love, esteems as dust, reckons as filth, whatever it ever says or thinks apart from you through any necessity, however lawful it may be, however not idle, nay, however in some measure it may seem useful."

VERSE 4. MY BELOVED PUT HIS HAND THROUGH THE HOLE, AND MY BELLY TREMBLED AT HIS TOUCH.

MY BELOVED PUT HIS HAND THROUGH THE HOLE (the Arabic has, "through the opening"), and my belly trembled (Genebrardus wishes it read, "roared," for this is what the Hebrew הכן hamu signifies) at his touch. — Since the bride, lingering in bed, delays to rise and open the door, the bridegroom himself, to chastise her delay, having put his hand through the hole, opens the door

he says, when the pain of death touches a man; but the belly trembles at his touch, because it is afraid on account of the least sins which it committed through the frailty of the flesh; yet it rises so that it may open to him, because it longs for the vision of him who is above; the hands drip myrrh, because they represent the works for which one has here been mortified to Christ, that for these one may receive eternal rewards.» These are the words of Honorius. Thus also Philo understands by the hand in the hole the divine power, which brought back the soul of Christ and of the saints into the dead body, and will bring it back, that it may rise again living and glorious.

Tropologically, Guilielmus: «The belly of the soul, he says, is the memory; for in it we store up the things which in their time we may, through thought, ruminate upon as though they were clean animals. At this touch of the beloved our memory, growing numb, is struck with fear: because, regarding so great a divine condescension toward us, it recalls nothing in itself worthy of it.»

Symbolically, Philo Carpathius refers this to St. Thomas the apostle, who, unbelieving, putting his hand into the side of Christ, believed that he had truly risen, and, suffused with sacred dread and love, trembled — indeed, roared — saying: «My Lord, and my God,» John 20:28.

Nyssenus teaches that the omnipotent and immense Word of God contracted itself, as it were, into a narrow space, when it sent its hand — that is, its power and operation, indeed itself — into the hole, namely into the frail human body distinguished by its senses and organs, when it assumed that body in the womb of the Blessed Virgin; and that therefore the hearts of all angels and men adore and admire that mystery with trembling. The hand in the hole, then, is the omnipotence of the Word working wonders and miracles in the humanity.

The Beloved, he says, puts his hand through the hole, when he calls us back to the memory of his works, that we may consider that, though he was God, he deigned to become man for us, that, taking on our earthly nature, he might make us heavenly, and, by dying for us, might grant us eternal life. When this happens, the belly trembles, because when we begin to think on such things, the secret places of our heart are shaken, while we begin to be astonished at how great a condescension the Maker deigned to act for us.» Hear Honorius: «My Beloved, God, whom I have chosen above all, sent his hand, his Son, into the world, through the hole, through me (says the Mother of God), who was made for him, coming to men, a hole narrow through humility, luminous through chastity, and therefore passable to him alone; and my belly trembled, was struck with astonishment at his touch, at his entrance.»

Vers. 5 and 6. I rose up, to open to my beloved: my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers were full of the most tried myrrh. I opened the bolt of my door to my beloved: but he had turned aside, and passed on. My soul melted when he spoke: I sought him, and found him not: I called, and he did not answer me.

My hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers were full of the most tried myrrh. I opened the bolt of my door to my beloved, but he had turned aside, and passed on. — Aquila has, he turned aside, he passed by; Symmachus, returning he passed by: instead of "full of most tried myrrh," the Hebrew is, full of myrrh passing through the hands, that is, most tried myrrh, which, being such, is rubbed by everyone's hands, and so is tested and made famous: the Masoretes so punctuate it that they refer the word "bolt" to the myrrh, not to "I opened"; and so too the Septuagint, who accordingly translate, my fingers (dropped) myrrh full (that is, perfect and abundant) upon the hands of the bolt, as if to say: My fingers dropped myrrh so abundantly that they even moistened the bolt, and it could easily be moved and opened by that moisture: so too the Syriac and the Arabic: My fingers, they say, distilled myrrh upon the bar; the Arabic adds, before my hand a key, I opened, but he had already gone away. He speaks in the likeness of a dainty bride, whose hands are anointed with the ointment of myrrh so abundantly that it flows down from her hands and fingers in drops, when she has begun to stretch them out to open the door, or to do some other work; for brides, when they rise in the morning, adorn and polish themselves, and anoint themselves with ointments, that they may breathe out a sweet odor, especially with the bridegroom present, as he was here present. Some add that the bride had taken a vessel of myrrh-ointment, which is warm and drying, that she might pour it over the head of the bridegroom, wet as he was with the dew and the drops, and thereby warm and dry him. Moreover myrrh, by its fragrance and bitterness, strengthens the brain, and disperses the vapors that fill and stupefy it: wherefore the bride anoints herself with it, that she may shake off sleep and sluggishness, and rise quickly and eagerly to open the door to the bridegroom at once, but he had already turned aside. For these are, among lovers, the sportings of love: You wish it, I do not; you do not wish it, I do; you seek me, I go away; you go away — I follow you.

The Church, as soon as she perceived the hand — that is, the grace and the impulse of Christ efficaciously rousing her to the labor of preaching and the conversion of souls — blushing with shame, shook off her slowness, and began, through her bishops and doctors, to set herself against the Arians, to convert unbelievers, to strengthen the faithful in faith and piety, so that Christ, coming to dwell in their neighbors with hearts thrown open, might find an entrance, says St. Gregory. Wherefore then her hands and fingers dropped the most tried myrrh: both because by the labor of preaching, even to exhaus— [text lost at page break]

...wherefore the bride was confused and troubled, so much so that her belly trembled at his touch, namely, when the bridegroom was touching the bolt and opening the door; whence the Hebrew has, and my inward parts hamu, that is, they roared, resounded, gave forth tumult and noise over him, namely, the bridegroom; the Septuagint, my belly was troubled over him; Symmachus, my inward parts were troubled; the Syriac, my inward parts were moved with pity toward him, as if to say, From my inmost inward parts I had pity on the bridegroom, when I perceived him struggling and laboring, amid the nighttime cold and the drops, to open the door: wherefore I at once rose from my bed, and unbarred the door to him; whence Theodoret translates, my belly grew warm, with love of the bridegroom, as well as with grief and shame, that I delayed to open to him. Theodoret seems to have read, for המו hamu, חמו chammu.

By the hole, R. Abraham understands the chink of the door, through which the bridegroom might insert a finger or a small blade, so as to raise or roll back the bolt, to open the door; others generally take "hole" properly, namely a little window, as Nyssen says, which is commonly made in doors for drawing back the bolt, or unlatching the bar. Wherefore Rupert, Honorius, and certain others less truly and less chastely refer the "hole" to the belly of the bride, whereas it is agreed from the Hebrew, the Septuagint, and others that it must be referred to the door. It is added that the bride was in bed; but a bed is not set up against the door, otherwise it would block the entrance for those coming in, but against the wall facing the door.

Christ sent his hand through the hole, when, to great men, teachers and prelates of the Church, professing the monastic life in the time of Constantine, or shrinking from the episcopate out of fear and dread of sinning, he took away this fear, and put courage into them to take up nobly the governance of souls, namely to resist the Arians and the rest of the impious, and to preach, and to feed the Lord's flock.

The hole of the soul is the intellect and the will;

for into both of these Christ, secretly and hiddenly, as it were through a hole, put his hand, that is, grace and strength, to accomplish this: for to the intellect he showed the excellence of the pastoral office, its merit, its ease through divine help, etc.; upon the will he sent love and boldness to love and undertake it: thus at first St. Athanasius shuddered at and shrank from the episcopate, to whom Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, dying, said, and, as it were a prophet, foretold: "You flee, Athanasius, but you will not escape — the hand of God will lay hold of you, and will make you a bishop, indeed a champion and an adamant of the faith, and the unconquerable scourge of the Arians;" likewise Ss. Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augus-

...may seem to flee from them, just as, to those sailing, mountains and forests seem to flee, when they sail alongside them.

...bolice Philo Carpathius applies this to the Apostle Thomas: "Then," he says, "his hands dropped myrrh, etc., when, at that command of the Lord, John 20:25: Put your hand into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believing, he touched the side of Jesus with his own hands, and put his fingers into the places of the nails. Now he distilled myrrh for the Gentiles, when he also preached to them what, for the profit of others, he had touched while doubting. He had before closed the door of his heart to the Lord his brother rising again; soon he opened it, and his hands touched Christ himself, who had said: Tell my brothers, that they go into Galilee, there they will see me," Matt. 28, verse 10.

Third principal sense, concerning Christ and the Blessed Virgin.

First, you may refer this to the continual mortification of the Blessed Virgin, by which she opened the door of her mind to Christ, so as to grow daily in every virtue and holiness; secondly, she rose, when, the Word having been conceived in her womb, she went into the hill country, and by her greeting sanctified John the Baptist and Elizabeth. Hear St. Ambrose, book On Isaac and the Soul, chap. 6: "After the soul conceived in the womb, and conceived the desire of seeing God, she rose, that she might see him nearer; and she rose by vigor and by virtue: for by the presence of the Word the soul drew in strength, just as the presence of Mary, when she was heavy with child in the womb, instructed John, set in the womb, to exult, recognizing the presence of the Lord."

Thirdly, you may refer this to the zeal and eagerness that she herself had, that through the apostles and others she might convert the Jews and all the nations; whence Rupert: "I opened the bolt," that is, he says, I broke my silence, I opened my mouth, that I might instruct others: and he adds, first, that the hands drop the myrrh of mortification; secondly, that the fingers are full of the most tried myrrh of testing and discernment; thirdly, that the bolt, that is, the mouth, is opened for preaching: for this is the fitting order, that preaching may be effective and convert many.

Fourthly, you may refer the phrase "but he had turned aside" to the loss of the twelve-year-old boy Jesus, when, seeking him late — that is, in the evening — his mother did not find him, and, seeking him for three days with great labor and grief, at last found him in the temple among the teachers: again, you may refer it anagogically, with Philo Carpathius and Rupert, to the ascension of Christ departing into heaven.

Fifthly, the Blessed Virgin dropped myrrh, when she saw Christ suffering on the cross, and suffered with him in inmost grief and love: for the mother suffered in her son; whence the Second Council of Seville, chap. 13, attributes these words concomitantly and as it were correlatively to Christ, although it is agreed that they are said properly and precisely of the Blessed Virgin: "Solomon," it says, "in the Song of...

...is, with the prelates and princes either sleeping, or favoring heresy; but God at last opposed to them St. Joannicius, St. Plato, St. Boniface. About the year 900, the sect of the Nicolaitans grew strong, and gluttony and luxury flooded everywhere, inasmuch as men freely promoted it; but God at last opposed to them St. Romuald and the Camaldolese, men of holy and austere life, and Berno, Count of Burgundy, founder of the Cluniacs, and St. Bruno, who instituted the Carthusians in the year of the Lord 1084, and St. Bernard, who was the founder of the Cistercians about the year of the Lord 1100. Again about the year of the Lord 1200, the heresy of the Waldensians having arisen, and the world having fallen into every kind of wickedness, God at last raised up St. Dominic and St. Francis, who, through the religious of their orders, might chastise vices, and restore the former faith and virtue. Two hundred years later the Hussites burst forth from hell into the world, against whom God sent St. Bernardine of Siena and St. Vincent Ferrer. Finally, in the last century, Luther, Calvin, and Menno boiled up out of Tartarus, who renewed all the monsters of the old heresies, against whom God set St. Ignatius with the Society of Jesus, and other men outstanding in doctrine and religion. See Thomas Bosius, On the Signs of the Church, book 9, chap. 4 and following, where he shows that through religious, in every nation, the orthodox faith has been spread, and the morals of the faithful reformed in every age.

Further, the Chaldee paraphrase, in its own way, applies this to the Jews and the Synagogue, from whom, on account of their slowness to believe, God took away himself and his faith and worship. Whence it renders: "When the plague of the strength of the Lord prevailed against me, I was astonished on account of my works, and the priests offered oblations, and burned the incense of spices, and it was not accepted with good pleasure, because the Ruler of the age closed the gates of power before my sight. The Christ of Israel said: I wished to seek doctrine from the face of the Lord, but he took away his majesty from the midst of me."

Now what has been said of the Church, say, with the name changed, of the devout soul: for the soul, called by Christ to greater perfection and to the conversion of souls, while she obeys fearfully and slowly, at last offers, as the penalty of her sluggishness, myrrh, that is, mortification and penance, to Christ, by which she may chastise her own sloth; but he passes by, and denies that former heroic grace, which, when offered, she had refused, and gives a lesser one. Again he denies her spiritual joys and consolations, and the fruit of souls, which she would have gathered, if she had at once obeyed Christ calling her. Moreover he gives her helps that are slow and difficult, and this he does for just causes, as Titelmann rightly notes: first indeed to punish our past slowness and disobedience, by which we long neglected him as he knocked, and allowed him to stand outside, whom we ought deservedly to have let in with both hands at the very first knock, and received with open arms: for this slowness of the bride cannot be better punished, than that the bridegroom in turn compel her to wait, so that, just as when the bridegroom wished to enter, she did not at once consent nor run to meet him, so in turn, when the bride wishes to be joined to the bridegroom, and to bring him in to herself, the bridegroom does not at once comply with her desire in this; and just as she drew out useless delays, and pretended unjust occasions, so as not at once to receive the bridegroom: so, for just reasons, he does not at once show himself when sought, and puts off that bride's desires for the embraces of the beloved for whom she ardently sighs, so that she is now compelled to seek with grief and labor him who before seemed of his own accord to offer himself before the door. Secondly, he does this, lest the presence and grace of Christ the bridegroom become cheap to the soul, but rather be held great by her, inasmuch as she sees that she has recovered it with such difficulty, wherefore she may guard it, once recovered, diligently and carefully, lest, having lost it, she seek it in vain.

Let, then, her hands and fingers, that is, all her works, drop myrrh, that is, the mortification of the flesh and penance, which is the one way to recover the grace of God, especially the heroic grace. Let such a soul, then, give herself to fastings, vigils, groanings, disciplines, hairshirts, almsgivings, etc., that she may call back the bridegroom. Moreover the myrrh ought to be most tried, that is, undertaken for the honor of God alone, for the rooting out of sloth and vices, for the increase of fervor and virtues, for the conversion of souls, not undertaken for the sake of any temporal profit or advantage: thus through it she will bring the bridegroom back again into the lodging of her heart, as well as of her neighbors; whence Nyssen: "The devout soul," he says, "rose to the pursuit of mortification, that through that door she might open to God:" so Cassiodorus, Bede, Anselm, Rupert, Justus, Richard, and St. Gregory, whom hear: "But the fingers are said to be full of the most tried myrrh, because in everything that is done it is always necessary that the mortification of carnal desire be maintained; which is then rightly said to be most tried, when, in every suggestion that is brought in by the enemy, carnal pleasure is unceasingly guarded against, lest it be admitted; and when this is done, all hardness of mind is dissolved, and an entrance is prepared for the bridegroom to come into the heart." The bridegroom, then, departs from the holy soul by the withholding of greater grace, of spiritual joys and consolations; yet he is still present to the soul through justice and the ordinary helps of grace: thus Christ is often present to devout souls by his grace, but absent in sweetness and consolation.

See how dearly this delay cost the bride; whence Theodoret: "How much harm laziness brings forth," he says, "and how much labor sloth entails, let us learn from this: for while the bride excuses herself, and does not wish at once to open the door to the bridegroom, she is compelled, a little later, not only to go as far as the door, but to run through the city, and go about the streets, and fall in with the watchmen, from whom she even received wounds, and scarcely finds the bridegroom as she wished. But if she had at once obeyed him calling, she would have avoided all these troubles." Hence angels are painted with wings and bare feet, to signify their swiftness in obeying God: hear St. Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, chap. 15: "Theology fashions the feet of the holy spirits as winged: for by wings is signified a swiftness rising on high." And immediately: "The lightness of the wings," he says, "indicates this in the holy angels, that, free of the burden of an earthly body, whole and without any admixture or weight, they are borne to the heights; but that they are described as bare and unshod signifies that they are free, and unbound, and unencumbered, and pure of every stain of outward debasement, and, as far as their powers allow, tend toward the likeness of the divine simplicity." This is the penalty which Christ threatens to the lukewarm and slow angel, that is, the bishop of Laodicea, Apoc. 3:16: "Because," he says, "you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit you out of my mouth." For what is there — namely, that that bishop, like lukewarm water raising nausea, is vomited out — is the very same thing here, that the delaying bride is passed by, who, while she weaves delays and drags out time, turns her bridegroom's stomach. But this she at last recognizes, when she has opened to the bridegroom, what before, while she lived in delights and abused riches, she did not know: that she herself (as is often objected to the aforementioned bishop) was then most wretched, pitiable and poor, blind and naked, when to you she seemed rich, wealthy, and in need of nothing [Lapide's text reads "tibi," second person, carrying over the direct address of Apoc. 3:17 to the bishop of Laodicea]. Further, Richard of St. Victor, by the bolt or bar, understands small and light faults: "The bar," he says, "though it be small and narrow, nevertheless closes the width of the door, so that unless it is drawn back, the door cannot stand open: so these smallest faults, unless they are cut away, the beloved does not deign to come to the soul in such a way as to enter into her perfectly, and fill her with perfect grace: for small negligences darken the soul, and make an obstacle to greater grace."

Tropologically, the same Richard teaches that God purposely withdraws himself from the holy soul, to arouse in her a greater desire for himself: "When the soul," he says, "has shown herself worthier of the reception of God, God does not offer himself to her as she desires, but turns away from her, that he may keep her in humility, and arouse her desire the more, and fulfill it more perfectly. For when, from his turning away, she has been humbled and become more fervent, from this her merit also grows, and she becomes worthier to receive him more fully. He is then said to turn away, when he does not let her feel his presence, although he is nevertheless present to her." But St. Gregory and Nyssen teach that God hides himself from the contemplative, because the higher they ascend toward God by contemplation, the higher a God they apprehend by their contemplation, so that God may seem...

...and I delighted in his fiery speech, so that my mind seemed to go out from itself, to melt, to be stripped of its powers, and to faint in spirit. Wherefore, repenting late of my slowness, I sought him, but did not find him; I called, and he did not answer me. This very thing Wisdom threatened, Proverbs 1:24, saying: "Because I called, and you refused: I stretched out my hand, and there was no one who looked. I also will laugh in your destruction, and will mock, when that which you feared comes upon you. When sudden calamity rushes in, and destruction comes on like a tempest: then they will call upon me, and I will not hear: they will rise up early, and will not find me." The Chaldee renders: "And my soul desired the voice of his words, I sought the majesty of his glory, and did not find it; I prayed before him, and he overshadowed the heavens with clouds, and did not receive my prayer."

The soul of the prelates of the Church melted with love and grief, when they heard the voice of Christ complaining of the so many and so great blasphemies and injuries of the Arians, Mahometans, Lutherans, Calvinists, etc., and of impious Christians, done against himself and God: wherefore they began to set themselves strenuously against them; but because at the beginning they were slow to do this, and by their slowness the heresies and vices were more widely propagated and rooted, hence they were not able to root them out at once. Wherefore they then sought Christ in many places and persons and did not find him, as I said a little before: here that saying is true: "You were unwilling, when you could; you will not be able, then, when you will:" for this is God's just judgment, and the just vengeance of slowness. It is added that many Catholics, even princes and prelates, favored and defended the Arians and other heretics, and betrayed to them their churches and dominions, so that they themselves became Arians and heretics, indeed the standard-bearers of heretics: wherefore it is treachery and monstrous wickedness, and almost inexpiable, on account of which God permitted heresies to dominate in their dominions, and still permits it, because, namely, the shepherds of the sheep became their wolves and betrayers, and devoted and handed them over to the devil: for the sheep followed their shepherds of their own accord, on account of the licentiousness of life and of the flesh, which they taught them by word and example.

The devout soul, feeling the inward and fiery voice of Christ speaking in the mind, melts as it were with love and desire of him, because love is, as it were, a heat, which dissolves and melts the heart; therefore, just as fire by its heat melts wax, so Christ by love melts the mind, and all its powers and faculties: thus...

...cis Canticorum, foretelling the suffering of Christ's flesh, says: My hands dropped myrrh, and my fingers a drop; where it is specially shown that in the hands and fingers alone the flesh of Christ was fixed to the wood, as in the Psalm: Pierce my flesh with the nails of your fear, Psalm 118:120.

Scato, the Blessed Virgin poured forth myrrh, when she anointed with myrrh, through Nicodemus, the dead body of her Christ for burial; whence St. Ambrose, book 3, On Virgins: "What myrrh," he says, "do the hands drop, but that which the just Nicodemus offered, a teacher in Israel, who deserved to hear first the mystery of the washing, who brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds, and put it upon the body of Jesus? He surely brought a perfect fragrance. This fragrance the soul breathes, which begins to open to Christ, that she may receive the first fragrance of the Lord's burial, and believe that his flesh did not see corruption."

Finally St. Ambrose, on Psalm 118, sermon 12, takes "he had turned aside" to mean "he had penetrated into the inmost parts of the mind": for so he says: "It can indeed also be taken thus: My brother passed by, just as we read that he penetrated the inmost marrow of the beloved, and just as it was said to Mary, Luke 2:35: And a sword has pierced your own soul, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed." Further, Honorius attributes the door and the bolt to the Blessed Virgin thus: "The sacred Virgin," he says, "was the door, through which Christ entered into the world, and the bolt was the mass of men's sins, which he says was therefore opened by her, because, preserved by the Holy Spirit, she is not believed to have been conceived in sin as the rest were, and moreover, by living holily, she turned aside from sins; and so entrance lay open to the beloved, because through her mercy came into the Church. Daily also she removes the bolt of sins, and through her the entrance of Christ's grace comes to us:" these are Honorius's words in the Sigillum.

My soul melted, when (my beloved) spoke: I sought him, and did not find him: I called, and he did not answer me.

I called, and he did not answer (the Arabic: did not obey) me. — The Hebrew: my soul went forth at his speech: so too the Arabic. It is a metalepsis: for just as wax, melted by fire, seems as it were to go out from itself, that is, to flow away and dissolve, so too the soul, kindled with love by the heat of the Word of God, seems as it were to melt, to be dissolved and to flow away, so that it seems to go out from itself, and to pass over and flow into the bridegroom whom it loves. These are the words of the bride repenting and grieving over her sleep and slowness, that she had not at once opened to the bridegroom knocking at the door, as if to say: Wretched me, that I did not at once open to the bridegroom, the bridegroom, I say, who, exposing himself out of love for me to the cold and the night dew, called to me, that I might open, so kindly and gently, saying and beseeching: "Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled one, for my head is full of dew:" wherefore, by his sweet, loving...

Cassiodorus, Bede, and St. Gregory, whom hear: "Hear the word of the bride: she says she is melted, because, while Christ pours himself, through his Spirit, into the desiring soul, he soon dissolves all the hardness of the heart, and sometimes melts the mind into such tears, that she can scarcely grasp this, which she exults within herself to grasp, and inwardly wonders what it was, and suddenly sees what has happened to herself. While she feels this melting, she longs to apprehend it more perfectly; and sometimes, while she thinks on this very thing, what she was just now feeling she no longer feels; whence she is stirred up to seek, that she may find this same thing again; but sometimes, even though she is wearied for a long time, she does not find what she had just now held so present."

The same, book

4 of the Morals, chap. 30: "Had she not," he says, "found herself wearied by her own strength, who said: My soul melted, etc., because, to be sure, while the mind, in the state of its strength, is touched by the breathing of a hidden speech, it is melted by the very desire by which it is absorbed; hence she finds herself wearied in her own eyes, whence she sees that the strength which she has climbed to is beyond herself; hence the Prophet, when he said that he had seen a vision of God, adds: I fainted, and was sick for many days," Dan. 8:27. "Melting," says St. Thomas, I-II, Question 28, article 3, "implies a certain softening, by which the heart shows itself apt, that the beloved may enter into it:" for, as St. Augustine says, tract. 2 on the epistle of St. John: The love which affects a man changes him into that toward which, by loving, he is carried: such, he says, is each one as his love is; you love earth, you will be earth; you love God, what shall I say? will you be god? I do not dare to say it of myself, let us hear Scripture: I have said, You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High," Psalm 81:6. Hence let him know that he is being mocked by the demon, who is affected, inwardly or outwardly, by the word of God, if the hardness of his heart does not melt, so as to change his ways for the better; whence John the Carmelite explains it thus, as if to say: When the bridegroom, knocking, spoke to me, his fire having been conceived...

Mystics, or contemplatives, hold that this melting takes place in the soul through the vehemence of contemplation and divine love, which Richard of St. Victor explains thus, in his treatise On the Degrees of Violent Charity: "The third degree of love is, when the mind of man is caught up into that abyss of the divine light, so that the human soul, in this state, forgetful of all outward things, is utterly unaware of itself, and passes wholly into its God, and does what is written, Psalm 67:19: For those who do not believe, that the Lord God dwells among them. In this state, then, the crowd of carnal desires is fully restrained and deeply lulled to sleep, and there is silence in heaven as it were for half an hour; and whatever trouble there is, is absorbed by glory. In this state, while the mind is alienated from itself, while it is caught up into that inner chamber of the divine mystery, while it is surrounded on every side by that fire of divine love, penetrated inwardly, set aflame throughout, it puts off itself entirely, and puts on a certain divine affection, and, shaped to the beauty it beholds, passes wholly into another glory." He brings the example of iron, which, cold and black of itself, by the force of fire gradually grows warm, then glows white, and at last catches fire outright, "so that it is wholly melted, and completely fails from itself, and passes entirely into another quality: so, then, so the soul, absorbed by the pyre of divine ardor and the fire of inmost love, hedged about on every side by the fiery balls of eternal desires, first grows warm, then glows, and at last melts entirely, and completely fails from its former state." Dionysius the Carthusian adds, treatise On the Fountain of Light, 18: "While the mind is intent on mystical contemplation, with love inflamed and, as it were, stirred up and provoked, love itself begins in a certain way to boil over and seethe, and by its sacred violence to shake the whole body. But that which seethes, by a certain violence of its heat and desire, is cast outside itself, and is lifted above itself, as if it were there de-

...liquata sum: my soul indeed, as it were with spiritual pores loosened, obeyed him entirely: for by cold the body is constricted and compressed; by heat it is relaxed, and the pores are opened. So the soul is pressed and contracted by the wintry rigor of sin; but by the divine heat of charity it grows porous, and gapes open wholly, as it were with its pores opened, that she may receive the bridegroom as a kind of sponge.

Again, Philo Carpathius, Cassiodorus, Justus, Richard, and others teach, from this passage, that the devout soul desires to live quietly for God alone, and to enjoy his consolations; but that God, from time to time, does not hear her, and denies these to her: "The bride," says Philo, "seeks peace amid the troubles by which she is afflicted in this vale of tears, and finds it not in the body, or in the perishable nature of things. She calls, and is not heard, when, by praying and meditating, she longs to be satisfied with the sweetness of that divine presence, and what she longs for is not given to her. For she would wish to enjoy that inward sweetness continually, but, hindered by the corruptible mass of the body, she often falls away [Latin here corrupt: saepe sonata decidit]."

...tore apart by heresy, and took away from her the glory of her chastity and integrity (which the mantle denotes). Theodoret adds that tyrants took away the mantle from the martyrs, that is, the body, when, by killing them, they stripped them of the body; Justus, however, by the mantle understands the temples which they tore down, and the Holy Scripture which they burned. Finally, by the mantle can also be understood the illustrious teachers, bishops, and martyrs, whom Hunneric and men like him either killed, or drove into exile: for these adorned and defended the Church as a mantle: see Victor, On the Vandal Persecution. Yet the Church escaped safe from the hands of these suitors of Penelope, and, through sincere bishops and courageous teachers, did not cease to teach and spread the integrity of faith and morals. For this reason Christ, with his tunic torn, appeared to St. Peter, bishop and martyr of Alexandria, saying: Arius has torn my tunic, as his Life records.

To this may be added the Chaldee, which, in Jewish fashion, takes this of the Chaldeans laying waste Jerusalem: for these were a type of the tyrants laying waste the Church: "The Chaldeans," it says, "seized me, who guarded the roads, and besieged the city of Jerusalem round about; some of my people they killed with the sword, and some of my people they led into captivity. They took the royal chain from the neck of Zedekiah, king of Judah, from his neck, and led him to Riblah, and the people of Babylon, who besieged the city and guarded the walls, blinded his eyes."

Symbolically, Abbot Lucas, by the watchmen, understands the demons, who wound souls with their temptations, and strip them of the mantle of baptismal purity.

Souls eager for virtue and perfection sometimes fall in with false and depraved teachers, counselors, confessors, companions, etc., who wound them with pernicious doctrines, counsels, and suggestions, so that they scarcely escape the loss of their purity and innocence, leaving behind their mantle, like Joseph, wherefore devout souls should carefully strive to discern such hypocrites, and, once recognized, flee them as plagues: for these are not faithful shepherds, but treacherous lions, who offer innocent and pure souls, devoted to God, to be ravished by Venus and the demon through the utmost wickedness, indeed sacrifice and immolate them, and this through the flattering allurements of words and writings, which, under counterfeit honey, conceal the most bitter gall and deadly poison.

Tropologically, St. Jerome, epistle 22 to Eustochium, proves from this passage that a virgin ought to keep herself at home, lest, if she go out of doors, she fall in with those who lie in wait for her chastity, who would take from her the mantle of chastity.

Theodoret, Cassiodorus, Bede, Justus, Anselm; Theodoret, Honorius, and Rupert take them as less holy souls, or novices; Philo, Psellus, and Abbot Lucas take them as angels and blessed men. More fully, you may take all of these together with St. Gregory and Haymo: for the Church, languishing and wounded with love of Christ, entreats all the saints, angels as well as men, whether living or departed this life, to announce this her languor to Christ, that he may heal it, namely by sending apostolic men who may convert the heretics, unbelievers, and wicked Christians, who, injurious to Christ, have grievously afflicted the Church, so that they too may love and worship Christ: wherefore she does not complain of the injury and violence done to her and her teachers and martyrs, but covers it in silence, wishing them mercy and salvation, not her own vengeance upon them, saying with Christ on the cross, Luke 23:34: "Father, forgive them: for they do not know what they do;" and with St. Stephen, Acts 7:59: "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." The bride, therefore, longing for the beloved with her whole soul, applies every effort, both her own and that of others; she calls, then, to her aid, for her desires, even outside prayers, because, these being joined, the combined strength assails the divine breast, and thereby storms it the more vehemently: so Delrio, Sanchez, and others.

The devout soul entreats all the holy angels and men, to intercede for her with Christ the bridegroom, and to announce to him her burning desire to love him more, and to please and serve him more, that he himself may fulfill it, especially in the zeal for souls, by which she languishes, that he may convert very many, indeed all, to himself. Hear Nyssen, homily on verse 13: "Because the glorious bridegroom of souls has proved his love to us, by which he did not disdain to die for his enemies; therefore the bride, in turn, inflamed with love toward him, by whom she had been anticipated, shows, in these words, the weapon of love lying hidden in her inmost breast, namely, the communication of his very divinity: for God is love, which penetrates the heart through the point of living faith. But the name of the weapon (as St. Paul witnesses) is faith declaring itself effectively through love." Such souls say with St. Paul, 2 Corinthians 11:2: "I am jealous over you with the jealousy of God. For I have betrothed you to one man, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ:" "so, not fainting, languish, so grow up with me in love of the bridegroom," says William. This languor, then, and failing, "is not the end of love, but its increase," says St. Ambrose on Psalm 118, octonary 11, 1.

William applies this to the scribes and Pharisees, who, by blaspheming and wounding Christ, likewise blasphemed and wounded his mother: "Le ipso," he says, "by which they so cruelly tore apart the fame of my beloved with the sword of their tongue, they wounded together the maternal affection in me with the inflicted wounds of griefs. Besides, as far as they were able, they stripped me of the robe of my glory, the mantle of praise, with which I was covered, when it was said, Luke 2:27: Blessed is the womb that bore the good Teacher, and the breasts which he deigned to suck: stripping me of this glory, as far as they could, they clothed me with the cloak of confusion, defaming me as the mother of a most pestilent seducer; but I escaped the hands of all these, nor did my son suffer them to rage against me any further."

VERSE 8. I ADJURE YOU, DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM, IF YOU FIND MY BELOVED, THAT YOU TELL HIM THAT I LANGUISH WITH LOVE.

The Hebrew מה חולה, that is, I am weak; the Septuagint: I have adjured you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and forces of the field, if you find my brother (the Complutensian has "nephew," in Greek ἀδελφιδόν, of which I have spoken above), what will you announce to him? for I am wounded of charity (or, with charity); the Arabic, more forcefully: for I am a wounded love. What does wounded love not do, what does it not suffer? A like adjuration and languishing of love in the bride, but as a young girl, we heard in chapter 2, verses 4 and 5 (see what is said there); but here, in a woman of full and settled age, the languishing is greater. "I languish with love," therefore, is the same as "I fail and waste away with love," both in body and in mind, on account of the absence of the beloved, from excessive desire of him. This languishing is most pleasing to God; hence the bride bids nothing else be announced to the bridegroom than "I languish with love": for in this are contained all her desires, which the bridegroom will understand from this abundantly, and more than abundantly. Love, therefore, is a languishing; love exhausts the spirit and the strength, love makes men weak and sick, but at the same time makes those who endure such weakness from love powerful and strong. Wherefore Hugh of St. Victor, in the Cloister of the Soul, chapter 12, speaks thus of sick brothers: "They confess that they fulfill nothing of the Rule, but unless I am mistaken, they fulfill the whole of it: they are hemmed in by the cloister of infirmity, disciplined by the rods of anxieties, and by the thorns of pains they fast, keep vigil, labor, because infirmity denies them food, sleep, and rest."

dus; waking, I was delighted; and what shall I say? my soul has melted away, my soul has failed unto the Lord, it was almost poured out from the body." From this, indeed, he affirms that he was so suffused with such great joy, that unless that flood of holy delight had quickly restrained itself, it would have swiftly drawn his soul from his body.

The Virgin languished with love of Christ and zeal for souls, and with desire of enjoying Christ after his ascension into heaven. Hear Rupert: "O daughters of Jerusalem, who are truly daughters of Abraham, seed of Judah, daughters also of David according to faith, by believing in him who is king of the heavenly Jerusalem, and who was made son of David according to the flesh — I adjure you by this very faith by which you have been made daughters of Jerusalem — if you find, before me, as often happens that disciples, going out of the body before their mistress, are admitted to his sight, that you announce to him that I languish with love, from the great desire of seeing his face, that I suffer weariness of life and scarcely endure the delays of this present exile. To what end does she adjure here? Did not the beloved know all things, and in these the love of the loving bride, etc. To what end, then, does this adjuration tend? Is it not that, being struck, she may strike; that, being wounded, she may wound; that the daughters, hearing of so great a desire of the future life in the mother — a desire which is not seen — may perceive it in their mind, and themselves feel the beloved to be such, that rightly, on his account, each of them may disdain this present age, and now, amid the delays of the present life, may more and more desire to know him, at least through a mirror, at least in an enigma?"

Hear Sophronius, in his sermon On the Assumption of the Mother of God: "I think," he says, "that whatever belongs to the heart, whatever to the mind, whatever to human strength, even if you apply the whole of it, would not suffice for you to be able to conceive with what unceasing ardor of pious love she was ever burning, with what incitements of heavenly secrets, filled with the Holy Spirit, she was moved; because although she loved Christ with her whole heart, and with her whole soul, and with her whole strength, yet, though absent from his presence, she was inflamed daily anew with fresh affections of desires; all the more powerfully, indeed, the more she was illumined within by divine visitations, she whom the grace of the Holy Spirit had wholly filled, whom the divine love had made wholly aglow, so that in her there was nothing worldly to violate her affections, but a continual ardor and an inebriation of love poured forth: for Christ, indeed, ought to be loved by all with the whole heart, and with the whole soul, and sought with the whole strength; yet most of all, and more ardently, by her whose Lord and Son he was."

THE VOICE OF THE DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM.

VERSE 9. WHAT IS YOUR BELOVED BEYOND ANOTHER BELOVED, O MOST BEAUTIFUL OF WOMEN? WHAT IS YOUR BELOVED BEYOND ANOTHER BELOVED, THAT YOU HAVE SO ADJURED US?

BELOVED BEYOND A BELOVED. — In Hebrew, דוד מדוד dod middod, which you should clearly render "beloved beyond any beloved whatsoever" — that is, whom you love beyond any beloved persons whatsoever; whence the Syriac and the Arabic translate it, "beyond the beloved ones"; the Septuagint, ἀδελφιδός ἀπὸ ἀδελφιδοῦ, that is, "one who is brotherly, from one who is brotherly," or "a cousin from a cousin," or "a nephew from a nephew"; or, precisely, Christ is called "beloved beyond a beloved" because, as God, he was begotten of God the Father, most beloved to him as a son; but as man, he was born of David, who was uniquely beloved by God, indeed "a man according to God's own heart," 1 Kings 13:14: so Nyssen, Philo, Anselm, and Gilbert, sermon 47.

He calls the Church "the most beautiful of women," because she is more beautiful than all the assemblies of the gentiles, the synagogues of the Jews, the academies of the philosophers, the dens of the atheists, the caves of the heretics: for these are the harlots of the demon, but she is the virgin and bride of Christ: thus the Blessed Virgin is "the mother of mothers and the virgin of virgins," says William. The daughters of Jerusalem, that is, the holy souls of angels and of men, having been asked by the Church to find the Beloved whom she sought in vain among the beasts of the impious, in turn ask what her Beloved is like, for whose love she languishes — not because they do not know this, but so that they may sharpen and kindle her desire for him, and so that they themselves may furnish her the occasion of praising him most abundantly, and of vividly depicting his form, his gifts, and his beauty from head to foot: and this is the remedy for her languishing, for one who desires to revive those who languish with love can offer nothing more fitting than to converse with them about the one they love; hence St. Dominic, burning and languishing with the love of God, could think and speak of nothing but God.

Tropologically we are taught here, by frequent meditation, prayer, and reading, to ponder who, and of what kind, and how great the bridegroom of our soul is — namely Christ, our God and redeemer — so that from a greater knowledge of his goodness, his greatness, his wisdom, his holiness, etc., we may rise to a greater admiration, veneration, and love of him: so Philo. Hence the daughters of Jerusalem repeat, What is your beloved beyond another beloved, because the more ardently they love, says St. Gregory, the more sweetly do they repeat words about him, so that through the repetition of their love the greatest love may be shown.

THE VOICE OF THE BRIDE.

VERSE 10. MY BELOVED IS WHITE AND RUDDY, CHOSEN OUT OF THOUSANDS.

The Septuagint and the Arabic have "out of myriads"; the Hebrew, מרבבת merebuba, that is, "beyond a myriad," that is, "beyond ten thousand." The bride, struck by the question of verse 9, pours out every fold of her love and every sound of tongue and voice in praise of the bridegroom: for one who loves cannot think, speak, or praise anything but the beloved.

For "white," the Hebrew is צח tsach, that is, white, bright, clear, cloudless, serene, pure, like the midday sun; Symmachus has λαμπρός, that is, shining: for an excessive whiteness, such as that of snow, especially when struck by the rays of the sun, gleams and, as it were, flashes forth.

For "ruddy," the Hebrew is אדם adom, that is, red, such as Esau was, who for this reason was called Edom; hence also our first-formed man was called Adam, because he was fashioned by God out of red earth, Genesis 2:12; the Septuagint has πυρρός, that is, tawny, fiery, whether in face or in eyes, glowing red.

to them, ruddy, red.

For "chosen," the Hebrew is דגול dagul, that is, standing out, an excellent chief, and prominent above the rest like a standard; thus Saul is called "chosen" and "good," that is, comely: "And there was not a man among the children of Israel better (that is, more comely) than he: from the shoulders and upward he was taller than all the people," 1 Kings 9:2: for dagul is said from דגל deghel, that is, a standard; daghel, therefore, word for word, is the same as if you were to say bannered, magnified, distinguished. Marinus translates it as marked with the standard of a myriad, or of ten thousand; another, standard-bearer among ten thousand, who carries the standard before ten thousand; the Tigurine version, having under his standards an army of ten thousand; R. Salomon, attended by many armies; Vatablus, bannered among ten thousand, that is, he says, "bearing the standard (of the cross) among all Christians."

Beauty, says Plato, consists in two things: first, in the pleasingness of color; second, in the fitting harmony of the limbs. The bride, therefore, begins her praises of the bridegroom's beauty from the color of his face, and teaches that he is most beautiful, namely white, mixed with a red mouth and flushed, that is, rosy, such as the poets give to the most beautiful Adonis; whence Statius, book I of the Achilleid:

...In a snowy face
swims a purple fire.

And another:

dorico, I, epistle 2: "A milk-white skin, which when looked at closely is suffused with a youthful blush; for that color is produced in him often not by anger, but by modesty." Plutarch, On Alexander: "In painting Alexander holding a thunderbolt, Apelles did not represent his true color, but rendered it darker and more sordid than it was, though he was, as they say, white; and this color grew purple chiefly in his breast and face;" and Galen teaches that this white-red coloring is "the best temperament"; while Aristotle calls it a mark "of a good nature and of one gifted in ability"; "and one keen and quick in taking up studies," says Polemon; "it made him self-controlled, grave, modest, magnanimous

and ruddy, bearing in himself the image of Christ," in whom, namely, innocence was made purple and slain, and for this reason Christ was not only in himself white and shining, but also made purple and white with his own blood all those who believe in him, and reconciled them to his Father, while he washed them in baptism and penance from all sins by his grace, and made them pure and holy, indeed martyrs, and rejoicing and glorying amid whatever slanders and adversities, according to that saying of Paul, Romans chapter 5, verse 3: "We glory in tribulations;" to him that saying of Ecclesiastes belongs, chapter 7, verse 29: "I have found one man among a thousand," who is himself the only Son of God, chosen and beloved by him, in whom he was well pleased with himself, Matthew chapter 3, verse 17. For this reason Esdras thus depicts him crowning the saints: "And in the midst of them," he says, "there was a young man of lofty stature, more eminent than all of them, and he was placing crowns on the heads of each one of them, and he was being exalted the more," 4 Esdras 2:43; and when he who was seeing the vision asked the angel: "Who is that young man, who places crowns on them, and delivers palms into their hands?" he received this answer from the angel: "He is the Son of God, whom they confessed in the world:" so say Cassiodorus, St. Gregory, Philo, Bede, Anselm, Richard, Rupert. Thus St. Agnes, when the son of the Roman prefect was courting her to be his bride, set against him the far greater beauty, dignity, and excellence of Christ her bridegroom, and said: "Depart from me, kindling of sin, food of death, for I have already been forestalled by another lover, who, far nobler than you, has pledged me with the ring of his faith: whose nobility is loftier, whose power is stronger, whose countenance is fairer, whose love is sweeter, and who is more elegant in every grace;" and a little after: "Whose mother is a virgin, whose father knows no woman: whom angels serve, whose beauty the sun and moon admire, at whose fragrance the dead come back to life, at whose touch the sick are healed, whose riches never fail: to him alone do I keep faith, to him do I commit myself with all devotion: whom when I have loved I am chaste, when I have touched I am clean, when I have received I am a virgin:" so St. Ambrose, epistle 34. St. Bernard adds, sermon 28, that Christ is said to be chosen out of thousands, because thousands of thousands are for the beloved, and ten hundred thousand are around the beloved, and no one is to be compared to the beloved.

Alexander," says Plutarch. These things our own Pineda, book VI, On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter 11. Such was the color of Christ, according to Nicephorus, book I, last chapter; whence the Psalmist, Psalm 44:3: "Beautiful in form," he says, "above the sons of men;" again Gregory of Nyssa, homily 13: "Christ," he says, "is called white on account of his most white flesh, ruddy on account of his blood."

Symbolically, first, Christ is white on account of the most pure and most splendid deity which he has from eternity; ruddy on account of the humanity with red blood, which he took on in time from Adam, who was created from adama, that is, from red earth, and from David, who was ruddy: so say Theodoret, Justus, and Gilbert, who, continuing his discourses here, brings the exposition of St. Bernard to a close, and St. Ambrose, book I, On Virgins, and Anastasius of Sinai, book IV of the Hexaemeron, where he calls Christ the most pure and most radiant sun of the world: for he himself is uncreated light of light, God of God, as the Nicene Creed has it. For he himself is "the brightness of eternal light, and the spotless mirror of the majesty of God, and the image of his goodness," Wisdom 7:26: he himself is "the brightness of glory, and the figure of his substance," Hebrews 1:3. Second, and more fittingly, Christ was white and shining on account of the purity of his innocence and the splendor of his holiness, in which, born of the most pure Virgin, he stood forth most holy; ruddy on account of the passion, by which he was made purple with his own blood, according to that saying: "Who is this that comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bosra? this beautiful one in his robe, marching in the greatness of his strength. Why then is your garment red, and your clothing like theirs that tread in the winepress?" Isaiah 63:1: so say Cassiodorus, St. Gregory, Philo, Anselm, Rupert, St. Jerome on chapter 53 of Isaiah, who also, in book I, Against Jovinian, adds: Christ, he says, is called white in his virginity, ruddy in his passion.

The ruddy color, therefore, mixed with white, denotes that Christ, though he suffered and was made bloody, remained white, that is, pure, innocent, and incapable of sin; indeed, that on account of his innocence and the innocent truth by which he taught that he was the Christ, he suffered death and martyrdom, which is the highest beauty and glory to be imitated by Christians, indeed to be sought after: for it is a disgrace of guilt for an innocent person to suffer, but for an innocent person to suffer is the glory of holiness and of holy patience. For then can one truly be called chosen out of thousands, such as Christ was, who, as leader and standard-bearer of patience and martyrdom, carried his standard before all nations and ages, which they followed eagerly, and so many thousands of martyrs, virgins, and confessors follow it day by day, who out of love and the example of Christ have borne and overcome, with brave spirit, slanders, reproaches, scourges, temptations, and any hardships whatsoever, and overcome them day by day; so much so that Christ can be called the standard-bearer of patience and of the patient. This is the image of Christ, says St. Ambrose, On the Death of the Emperor Valentinian: "Valentinian," he says, "my white one

white in the resurrection, and therefore chosen out of thousands, because he is the firstborn from the dead."

The holy soul is white through faith, ruddy through charity, and, as Philo says, through the Holy Spirit. Again, it is white through innocence, ruddy through patience, and therefore chosen out of thousands: for scarcely one man in a thousand (if you were to count all who are in the world) rises to true holiness and the perfection of patience; whence three Anonymous writers in Theodoret: "Christ," they say, "is white to those who have been cleansed from every defilement of sins; but ruddy to those who have been proved by temptations, like the fiery brightness of gold.

"

Finally, because here is described the perfect, indeed the aging, age of the Church, when after Constantine almost the whole world fought under the labarum and standard of the cross of Christ, you may very fittingly explain it thus: Christ is white in virgins and confessors, ruddy in martyrs, and therefore chosen out of thousands, that is, as you would render it in Hebrew, the standard-bearer and leader of myriads, that is, of the countless faithful who are in the whole world, fighting under the standard of the cross of Christ; because, as St. Jerome says in the Epitaph of Paula, he grants the same rewards to those who conquer both in peace and in battle: "Be assured, Eustochium," he says, "you have been enriched with a great inheritance: your portion is the Lord, and, that you may rejoice the more, your mother has been crowned with a long martyrdom: for not only is the shedding of blood in confession accounted as martyrdom, but the devout and unspotted servitude of the mind is also a daily martyrdom: that crown is of roses, this one of lilies: whence also it is written in the Song of Songs, Canticle 5:10: My kinsman is white, and ruddy, granting the same rewards in peace and in war to those who conquer." And St. Bernard, sermon 28 on the Song of Songs: "Christ," he says, "is called white and ruddy, whom the flowers of roses and the lilies of the valleys surround, that is, the choirs of martyrs and virgins, and he who sits in their midst is by no means at odds with virgin and martyr."

Christ shares his gifts and praises with his mother: therefore the Blessed Virgin was white in virginity, ruddy in charity and in the martyrdom which she underwent in Christ and with Christ: wherefore she herself was chosen out of thousands, that she might be the Virgin Mother of God, the mother of Christ, the standard-bearer of virgins, the leader of martyrs, the standard-bearer of confessors. Hear Gregory of Nyssa concerning Christ: "Among all the myriads of men from the time they began to exist, and until they shall be born, he alone came forth into this light with a new manner of birth, for whom nature did not cooperate in his being born, but served him; whose birth did not arise from the union of two, a birth in no way defiled, a labor free from pain; the bridal chamber, the power of the Most High, as it were a certain cloud overshadowing virginity itself; the marriage torch, the splendor of the Holy Spirit; the marriage-bed, free from vices; the condition, the marriage itself; incorrupt purity did not begin to exist through pleasure, nor did it come forth into the light with pain. It was fitting for the mother of death (Eve), because of sin, to conceive and give birth in pain: both were unbecoming for the mother of life (Mary), who was full of grace. Thus he is called Chosen, on account of a birth free from all pain: he, the firstborn of all creation, begotten of the Father without pain: he, the firstborn of regeneration, reborn through the water of baptism without pain: he, the firstborn of the resurrection from the dead, born from the tomb without pain: thus in all his generations, a birth free from pain. And so he is most fittingly called: Chosen out of thousands."

VERSE 11. HIS HEAD IS THE FINEST GOLD: HIS LOCKS ARE LIKE THE ELATAE OF THE PALMS, BLACK AS A RAVEN.

HIS HEAD IS THE FINEST GOLD. — For "optimum" ["finest"], in Hebrew it is פז paz, which by aphaeresis is the same as ophaz, that is, gold brought from the region of Ophaz (in the Septuagint one now reads cephaz, but they themselves seem once to have translated it ophaz: for so the Hebrew has it), or ophir, which was the finest; others translate the gold paz as gold of solidity: for פזז pazaz is to solidify, to strengthen, and gold is most solid; others, with our Pineda, translate the gold paz as ductile gold, for the finest gold is that which is pliable and can be drawn out into thin leaves. See what is said, Jeremiah x, 9.

These words can be expounded in three ways: First, that you take "head" for the crown of the head, that is, the hair and locks of the bridegroom — namely of Solomon and of Christ — was golden, or sprinkled with gold filings: for Josephus attests that Solomon's young men did this, book VIII of the Antiquities, chapter vii: "Upon Solomon's finest horses, he says, sat horsemen who were the flower of youth, of tall stature and conspicuous for long hair; besides this they sprinkled their hair daily with filings of gold, so that at the touch of the sun's rays a gleam might be reflected from their heads." Lampridius, Spartianus, and Trebellius teach, in their Life, that the emperors Commodus, Lucius Verus, and Gallicinus were wont to do the same. But concerning the hair of the bridegroom he presently adds here: "His locks are like the elatae of the palms"; wherefore this gold seems rather to be attributed to the head itself than to the hair. Second, that is, the bridegroom's head was gold not in reality, but by likeness, that is, it was like the finest gold, namely bright, pure, and beautiful as gold. Third, that is, the bridegroom's head was crowned with a diadem or crown wrought of the finest gold: for the Hebrew כתם ketem signifies not so much gold as a golden ornament, namely a diadem or a necklace. That this is so is clear, first, from that verse, Psalm xliv, 10: "The queen stood at thy right hand in gilded clothing," in Hebrew בכתם אופיר beketem Ophir, which Saint Jerome, as well as Theodotion, translates "in a golden diadem." Second, because the fifth edition, according to the testimony of Theodotion, translates, "his head marked out with gold," and so too Theodotion; but Aquila and Symmachus, "his head of the stone of gold"; the Syriac, "his head the rock of gold," that is, a mass of gold, or rather a gem of gold, that is, his head was clothed with precious stones, or with gems interwoven into a golden diadem. Vatablus, "his head is crowned with refined gold."

Third, because the bridegroom here is King Solomon, and the mark and glory of a royal head is a golden diadem; whence in Canticles iii, 11, he said: "See, daughters of Zion, king Solomon in the diadem wherewith his mother crowned him on the day of his espousals, and on the day of the gladness of his heart"; and Psalm xx, 4: "Thou hast set upon his head a crown of precious stone."

Grammatically, there seems here to be described the comely form and figure of Solomon, and of his antitype the Lord Christ: for Christ seems to have been very like Solomon; thus each was of a rosy color, that is, fair and ruddy; each had a head crowned with gold, hair as abundant as the palm and black as the raven, dove-like eyes, bright and milky, cheeks rosy and fragrant like little beds of spices, lips purple like lilies; hands and fingers turned smooth, that is, elegant and delicate, clad with golden rings set with hyacinths; a belly strong and firm like ivory and shining like sapphire; legs sturdy like marble columns: so Pineda, book

VI, On the Things of Solomon, chapter iv.

Parabolically, the head of Christ the man is the divinity, according to that saying, 1 Corinthians xi, 3: "The head of Christ is God"; the sense therefore is, that the humanity of Christ is crowned with the golden diadem, as it were, of the deity as its head: so Saint Gregory, Cassiodorus, Theodoret, Bede, Philo, Anselm, Rupert, Richard, and others everywhere; whence John the Carmelite explains it thus: "The divine hypostasis of the nature assumed by the bridegroom, as the head presiding over the body and imparting divine motion, is gold, because it has a royal majesty marked with gold. It is the finest gold, or refined gold, that is, lacking all admixture: for although the hypostasis of the Word is intimately united to human nature, it is nevertheless in no way mixed with it." For the first and proper bride of the Word is the humanity assumed by him, whose nuptials Solomon sings in this epithalamium of the Canticle, as I said in the Proem, chapter ii.

Further, the deity of Christ is rightly compared to gold paz, that is, solid and ductile, and therefore the finest, first, because as gold surpasses all metals, so God infinitely surpasses all created things; what gold is therefore among metals, this God is among creatures.

Again, gold is most bright; what is more splendid than the deity? so Bede, Philo, Justus, Cassiodorus, and Saint Gregory, whom hear: "The bridegroom's head is called gold, because his humanity rules over us from the brightness of his divinity." Second, because, as Philo says, in the book Who Is the Heir of Divine Things: "Among the many praises of gold two chief ones are recounted: one, that it does not feel the injury of rust; the other, that it is drawn out into the thinnest leaves without tearing; rightly, therefore, it signifies the greater nature, which, diffused and extended everywhere, is wholly full through the whole, most fittingly interweaving all other things." The deity, therefore, is like gold, both because it feels no rust of corruption and change, but remains ever the same, and forever impassible and immutable from eternity; and because, just as gold, the better it is, the thinner are the leaves into which it is drawn, which cover, adorn, and gladden whatever they touch, and then shine and gleam the more: so God communicates his gifts to all creatures, especially to angels and men, most of all when he makes those who are foul with sin comely and bright with his grace, just as vile wood, polished by the sculptor's art, is clothed with gold, and shines far and wide; in which matter the beneficence, magnificence, and glory of the deity shine forth most greatly. Accordingly Christ teaches that this gold is to be sought by us with all diligence, Apocalypse iii, 18: "I counsel thee," he says, "to buy from me gold refined by fire and proven, that thou mayest be made rich"; see what is said there: so Theodoret, Anselm, Rupert, Richard, and others. Third, the deity in Christ communicated these its gifts to the humanity assumed by him: wherefore that humanity far surpasses in dignity all the created natures of men and angels; it is itself solid and incapable of sin; it communicates itself through grace to all men; "because in him (Christ the man, that is, in the humanity of Christ) dwells all the fullness of the divinity bodily," Colossians ii, 9: so Nyssen.

The holy soul, through grace, partakes of the golden deity of Christ. Hear Saint Paulinus, epistle 1 to Severus: "Of whom (namely Christ) it is said, Canticles v, 11: His head as gold paz, that is, pure; for this gold is the form of the saints, who in the head of the body shine like lights, and are gold tried by fire for God, because indeed he found them, having been smelted through the trials of their sufferings in the furnace of this world, worthy of himself, as it is written, and in these he struck the sacred coinage of his image, imprinting on their hearts and tongues the word of his truth, and appointing these same men money-changers, that according to his own form they might strike coins approved to the Lord, and, the image of Caesar having been abolished from us, might stamp the living coin of the eternal King, so that, inscribed with the spirit of redemption, with the neck now [from] the yoke

— that is, because she conceived, bore, and nourished God: and the Fathers often assert that the whole honor of the mother is referred to the son. Third, because among men the same disposition which inclines one to adore a king also inclines one to honor the king's mother as such; but this adoration is not absolute, which is owed to God alone, but diminished, participated, and relative, for it regards the dignity and divinity of the son, on account of which the mother of God as such is honored: wherefore this honor does not rest in the mother, but through her tends toward the son, nor is the mother adored in herself so much as the son in the mother.

...siæ, he says, are patriarchs and doctors, who, refined like gold of wisdom in the furnace of tribulation, shone forth, and especially Saint Peter, who after Christ was the head of the Church; whence he himself was called Cephas, that is, the rock of the Church, just as the Septuagint here translates, gold Cephaz: for here Christ is described as the head, leader, and ruler of the Church spread through the whole world, in which office in Christ's place was Saint Peter, and his successors the Roman pontiffs, and especially in the time of Constantine, Saint Sylvester,

HIS LOCKS (OF THE HEAD) ARE LIKE THE ELATAE OF THE PALMS, BLACK AS A RAVEN.

HIS LOCKS (OF THE HEAD) ARE LIKE THE ELATAE OF THE PALMS. — For "like the elatae of the palms," in Hebrew it is תלתלים taltallim, that is, mounds, heaps, piles; the Septuagint translates elatai, which our Latin retained, translating it "elata," and added "of the palms"; the Complutensian translates "ductile"; the Syriac translates, "his locks extended"; the Arabic is silent here; Vatablus, "thick"; Clarius, "compact"; Agathius, "heaped up"; Pagninus, "curly," whence some translate, "the ends of his hair raised up like a mound," that is, curly; the Tigurine version, "his curls like a linden tree"; Nyssen, "like a fir," for elatai also signifies a fir tree; whence Saint Ambrose, book II, On the Holy Spirit, reading "his hair [is like] firs," well says that the saints, sprung from Christ the head of the Church, are fittingly compared to the fir, since from fir wood are made the ships of Tarshish, which float upon the waves of the world, and afford safe passage to salvation.

You may ask, what are the elatae of the palms? First, Rupert says: "The elatae of the palms," he says, "are called the erect and raised branches of the palms" (for the Hebrew תלתלים taltallim is derived from תלל talal, that is, to raise, to suspend), so that they may be distinguished from those which are drooping and bent down; they are called "elatae," as it were raised upward: so Rupert. Second, others better judge that "thalal" is a Greek word, and signifies the new shoot of the palm, which is of a pleasing color, and evergreen: so Galen, book VIII, On Simples, Hesychius, Genebrard; whence also Pliny, book XIII, chapter iv, calls the new shoots which sprout upright from the top "coma" [foliage]: "The foliage," he says, "of this tree is at its top": for the palm from the root up to the top has no branches, but rises and thickens with a knotted trunk up to the summit, where it puts forth its many and dense branches, which are always green and endure in that form and arrangement, so that they plainly present the appearance of hair: so much so that the palm with its branches seems to be a man crowned with his own hair. Thus by "elatae" — the branches of the palm which, like hair, cover and adorn its crown — Cassiodorus, Philo Carpathius, Bede, Rupert, and others understand it. Note that Hesychius, Galen, and the ancient Greeks write thalai, with the accent on the penultimate syllable: for this signifies palms, or the shoots of palms, or firs: for "thatal," with the accent on the last syllable, properly signifies "ductile," but the branches of palms are also ductile, and therefore "thatai."

...and so, thatai.

Third, and properly, "elata" is the wrapping, or little sheath, of the fruits of the flowering palm, from which, once split open, numerous flowers come forth, hanging by long and moderately dense filaments, which present the appearance of hairs and locks; the flowers then end in fruits, namely in dates: so Dioscorides, book IV, chapter cxxvi, where Matthiolus presents an image of the palm's elata to be viewed in a picture. The same Aethius, Oribasius, and Rembert Dodoens, On Plants, Pemptad 6, book III, chapter xxvii. Hear Prosper Alpinus, book On the Plants of Egypt, on the palm: "In the month of March the sheaths, bound to their own wings, open, from which a ball of countless threads springs forth, and flowers are seen hanging by these threads or filaments, from which small green dates, resembling clusters of grapes, are produced."

In this passage you may take "elatae" to mean both the branches of the palm and the sheaths of the tufts, flowers, and dates already mentioned: for the branches present the appearance of hair, while the sheaths, which hang down beyond the branches, give the appearance of the curling of knots; of gems, of necklaces, which, hanging here and there from the end of the hair, adorn it: and these are called in Hebrew taltallim, that is, mounds, because the abundant hair, at its end — namely about the neck or shoulders — is gathered into mounds and heaps.

The bridegroom's hair and locks, therefore, are compared to the elatae, that is, to the branches and fruits of the palms, first, because they are long and abundant after their likeness; second, because they flow down from the head onto the shoulders, and are abundant there; third, because they are round in a circle, and thus combed and arranged; fourth, because they are gathered as it were into mounds and heaps; fifth, because they are curled there; being curled, therefore, they have the appearance of the flowers of the palm, for these are like little curling ringlets: and so the bridegroom's head was first adorned by comely hair and locks; and his locks were adorned by the golden crown placed upon them, of which I spoke a little before.

BLACK AS A RAVEN. — The Arabic: "his curls black like the blackness of a raven," because in hot regions black hair and beard are most esteemed, says Vatablus, especially in Syria and Judea, as the Maronite inhabitants of Mount Lebanon assured me at Rome. Again, blackness, as well as the fullness and curl of the hair, indicates good bodily health, strength of heat, youth, and virility (for the black hair of the young is far removed from the gray hair of the old), as Galen and the physicians teach; whence Martial, book V, Elegy.

And Horace, book 1, Ode 32:

And Lycus, comely with black eyes and black hair.

The same, in the Art of Poetry:

-tica:

To be gazed upon, with black eyes

Grammatically, to the letter, Christ wore his hair long, abundant, and round, flowing down from the head onto the shoulders, and curling there like a Nazirite, as I said, Numbers vi, 9. Hear Nicephorus, book I of the History, the last chapter, depicting the form of Christ: "He had a striking and lively countenance, of bodily stature about seven palms; his hair was of a light yellow color (such as is the color of dates), and not very thick, inclining gently, as it were, to curls"; and presently: "The hair of his beard was yellow, and not very long; moreover he wore the hair of his head rather long: for no razor ever came upon his head, nor any man's hand, except only his mother's, in his tender age."

Further, long hair or locks are an ornament to a man: hear Saint Ambrose, book V of the Hexameron: "Even hair is venerable in old men, venerable in priests, terrible in warriors, becoming in youths, well-arranged in women, sweet in boys."

Parabolically, these hairs of Christ denote his holy and divine counsels, thoughts, and affections: because, just as hairs arise from the head, so thoughts arise from the mind; but the head of Christ is God: wherefore his mind was divine, and from God he drew divine thoughts, affections, loves, and ardors, which, like hairs, were long, abundant, rightly arranged, connected among themselves, and, through their curling, as it were turned back into themselves, and produced not the flowers and fruits of dates, but of holy and divine works, so that every word, thought, and action of Christ was heavenly and divine. These same were black like the raven, both because they were strong and manly, and because they burned with the heat of charity, and were, as it were, scorched and blackened: for just as hairs come from the head, so benefits from God and Christ, most long, most dense, most abundant and greatest, flow forth upon men. For God and Christ is himself uncreated, burning, and immense charity and beneficence.

Mystically, Theodoret: The hairs, he says, are graces of every kind, which flow from Christ into the faithful; but three anonymous authors, cited by him, say: The hairs of God are his various attributes, such as omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, justice, etc., which adorn the deity as hairs adorn the head, and which, men imitating the same, are made divine and, as it were, gods. Lucas the Abbot, however, says: The hairs of God are the countless angels, who surround God as hairs surround the head, and, like palms, are ever green, and strive toward the heights. Finally, Rupert: The hairs of Christ, he says, are all the truths of the sacred Scriptures, which declare and adorn him: all these are black, because obscure and at times impossible to search out: so Theodoret, Rupert, and others. Finally, Bede: "Saint Magdalene," he says, "pouring the alabaster jar of spikenard ointment upon the head of Christ, made his hairs, in the mystery of great devotion, like the elatae of the palms, that is, like aromatic trees."

These same were black like the raven, both because they were strong and manly, and because they burned with the heat of charity, and were, as it were, scorched and blackened: for just as hairs come from the head, so benefits from God and Christ, most long, most dense, most abundant and greatest, flow forth upon men. For God and Christ is himself uncreated, burning, and immense charity and beneficence.

...striving, not a little increase the bridegroom's comeliness, stirred by the breath of the Holy Spirit. Paulinus adds, epistle 4 to Severus: "Because in the Church, that is, on the mountain of God, they stand out by the summits of their merits, as firs on their mountains; and just as those are fit for the building of ships, so these princes of the people, from the mountain of the law, as cut down from Lebanon, wove the threshing-floor of the Lord, or the ship — that is, the Church that was to sail through the floods of this world — out of the peoples hewn by the word of God, and joined together in the framework of charity by the binding of faith, taught it to cut the waves of this world without decay." He then adds further: "But even now, souls instructed in the apostolic faith are firs, black and good; black now, indeed, not I think from sin, but rather still from their dwelling in the body, or from the dust, as it were, of internal exercise, that is, of warfare, or from dusty sweat, and so blackened; good, nevertheless, because of their spiritual converse even in the nights of their bodies: so too the ships which float upon the waves of the world, and are armed as with oars by faith in the truth and just works, on the right hand (as it is written) and on the left, are steered by the word of God as by a rudder, and to the breath of the Holy Spirit spread the bosoms of their senses, and bind the sail of their heart, as with ropes, to the yard of the cross, with the bonds of charity."

I have said more about these hairs, chapter IV, verse 2.

The hairs of Christ are holy men, especially religious and apostolic men: these are like the elatae of the palms, because, like the palm, they do not succumb to the burden of temptation, but overcome all things, and raise themselves higher toward heaven by praying and meditating; they are black as the raven, because they reckon themselves vile and sinners, and are therefore the more exalted by God: so Justus of Urgell, Bede, Nyssen, Cassiodorus, Saint Gregory, and Richard of Saint Victor, whom hear: "The elatae of the palms are the spatulae, that is, the more beautiful branches, ever tending toward the heights. The palm below is rough and wrapped in rather tight bark, above it is beautiful both to sight and in its fruit: so the just below act harshly and suffer adversities, and above are beautiful and fruitful in the eyes; for through the hardships of the body they purify themselves, and advance toward beauty: in their lowest parts, their life is, as it were, wrapped in many barks, while it is straitened by countless tribulations; but in their highest parts, as it were with the leaves of a beautiful greenness, it is enlarged by the breadth of reward, and they taste the sweetness of the supernal delight (which the dates of the palms represent)," says Cassiodorus; hence Psellus says that the hair of Christ is Saints Peter and Paul, understanding this together with their followers.

To this Nyssen adds, who, reading "his hair like firs," understands by these the apostles, because, he says, made lofty like firs, and toward heaven

I have spoken of the hair of the Blessed Virgin, both literal and mystical, at chapter IV, verse 2; the hair of the Mother of God, therefore, according to Albert and Constantine the physician, was moderately black: since the most perfect disposition of the human body, with which the Mother of God was endowed, requires a brain warm and dry: for from heat arises quickness of apprehension, and from dryness firmness of retention; and from such a disposition of the brain arises black color in the hair and in the eyes: moreover black eyes are clearer for seeing, and therefore nobler on account of their usefulness to the senses. See Saint Antoninus, part IV, title xv, chapter xi, where he discourses at length on the beauty of the hair, skin, and eyes of the Blessed Virgin.

VERSE 12. HIS EYES ARE LIKE DOVES UPON THE STREAMS OF WATERS, WHICH ARE WASHED WITH MILK, AND SIT BESIDE THE FULLEST STREAMS.

HIS EYES ARE LIKE DOVES UPON THE STREAMS OF WATERS. — The word columbæ is not a genitive singular, but a nominative plural, as is clear from the Hebrew

יונים ionim, and Greek; whence it is also added "which are washed" in the plural, not "which is washed": the two eyes of the bridegroom are therefore compared to two doves, which sit upon the streams of waters and the fullest currents, both because doves delight in waters, so that in them they may behold themselves as in a mirror, and so that they may wash themselves in them: for they are most fond of cleanliness; and also so that in them they may see the shadow of the hawk, and so escape its talons by flying away; and also because the eye, sitting and swimming in its own orb and moist cavity, is like a dove sitting and swimming in the waters: for from this orb of the eyes tears drip, as waters from a spring. Whence the Hebrew עין aiin signifies both eye and spring, for what a spring is in the earth, this the eye is in man: the one drips water, the other tears; the one is circular, the other round: he says therefore that the eyes of the bridegroom fulfill the meaning of their name aiin, because they are like a spring; for they swim in their own orb or cavity, as waters in a spring, and from it the waters of tears flow forth; whence Ovid, Fasti VI:

...And spirit and eyes were swimming.

And Virgil, Aeneid 5:

He loosed his swimming eyes.

...they give, that they may show compassion, that they may come to aid.

Again, the [phrase] to super rivulos aquarum notes that the eyes of the bridegroom are grey-blue, that is, of a watery and marine color, and therefore glassy, crystalline, and heavenly. Hence cæsius is said as if cælius, and cæruleus as if cæluleus: for the color cæsius has the appearance of the sky, whence some think certain Cæsars were so named. Grey-blue eyes are a symbol of the sense of prudence and wisdom; whence Minerva or Pallas, the goddess of wisdom, is called by Homer and by Cicero, Book I, On the Nature of the Gods, γλαυκῶπις, that is, having gleaming or grey-blue eyes, such as cats have. This bears on the fact that Christ was white and fair, as I said at verse 10; and fair-skinned men for the most part have grey-blue eyes, says Aristotle in the Problems, section 10, number 13, and he adds the reason: "Since the eyes," he says, "are distinguished by a threefold kind of color, black, goat-colored, and grey-blue, the color of the eyes also follows the color of the whole body, and so it is not without reason that it is grey-blue."

AND THEY SIT BESIDE THE FULLEST STREAMS. — The Hebrew has, sitting upon fullness. R. Salomon, Aben-Ezra, and other rabbis take "fullness" to mean the hollow, the bezel, and the socket, in which gems are set, for example diamonds in the bezel of a ring; this in Hebrew is called fullness, because it is filled by the gem, as is clear from Exodus 28:11, where for "set in gold," the Hebrew has, the stones shall be in their fullnesses, that is, in their bezels; they give therefore this sense, as if to say: the eyes of the bridegroom gleamed and shone in their sockets, like diamonds in their bezels; thus there is here a twofold likeness: the first, by which the eyes of the bridegroom are compared to doves upon the streams of waters; the second, by which the same are compared to gems shining in gold. But the Septuagint, our version, and others here assign only the first likeness: for in the Hebrew there is no to gemmæ, or diamonds; whence the Syriac, instead of "beside the streams," translates, "upon rest," as if to say: which sit most quietly and most peacefully in their place, for example beside the waters. The sense therefore is, as if to say: the eyes of the bridegroom are like doves, which sit beside the streams of waters, or beside the fullest currents, that is, which sit beside full and pure springs, that is to say, they are grey-blue, bright, limpid, gleaming, and shining; likewise calm and steady, not wandering, roving, and wild, such as were the eyes of Julian the Apostate, on the testimony of Nazianzen; but placid, gentle, kindly, which represent gentleness of mind and uprightness.

Furthermore, our Pineda, Book VI, On the Things of Solomon, chapter 5, § 8: "The bridegroom Solomon," he says, "and his antitype Christ, had eyes according to their fullness, that is, filling their orb with a fitting and suitable measure, so that they neither protruded overly swollen, nor receded inward, sunken and hollow: of which the former belongs to the dull and shameless; the latter to the sad, the timid, and the wicked, such as were the eyes of Caligula; not very large, which belong to the sluggish and to those abounding in phlegm and moisture, such as in Domitian; not very small, which belong to the foxlike and the fainthearted: therefore moderate according to their fullness, corresponding in due proportion to the overall size of the whole body; which are of the best constitution. These same eyes resembled two equal doves, for they were by no means unequal, the mark of dull or wicked men, but equal, the mark of those who love equality, fairness, and justice.

not very black, which belong to the timid and the deceitful: not red and flaming, such as belong to the wrathful, when "their eyes blaze with ruddy flames:" for one who does not bear injuries, but avenges them fiercely, we call a man of bloodshot eye: not fiery, which belong to the shameless and the impudent, such as a dog: but moderately tawny, which belong to the magnanimous, such as the eyes of Caesar according to Suetonius, such also as the eyes of doves, such as those of Constantine, whose eyes were lion-like according to Cedrenus."

Finally, Nicephorus, Book I, chapter 40: "From [Christ's] somewhat tawny eyes," he says, "a wonderful grace shone forth; they were keen, and his nose was rather long."

WHICH ARE WASHED WITH MILK, — that is, which are most pure and most white, just as if, washed with milk, they had absorbed a milky color and whiteness: milk denotes whiteness not so much of colors as of morals, for in the eyes, just as one part is white, yet the other and more important part, in which the pupil and the power of seeing reside, is black: wherefore just as he praises the white part of the eye for its milky whiteness, so he leaves the other part of it to be grounded in blackness, says Genebrardus. Pineda adds, Book VI, On the Things of Solomon, chapter 4, § 8: the eyes of Solomon and of Christ resembled doves washed with milk, because they were not bloodshot, which belong to the drunken and the wanton;

on account of a perpetual attentiveness in learning divine things, although by this a way is likewise suggested by which we too may attain to beauty of the eyes, namely by always sitting beside abundances of water, not beside the streams of Babylon, and by seeking the things that are of God, not those that are of the world.

t version of the Chaldee, though Jewish, which by "eyes" understands the providence of God toward the just people of Jerusalem, who keep his law: "His eyes," he says, "always behold Jerusalem, that he may do good to her, and bless her from the beginning of the year even to its end, like doves that stand and look toward the outflow of the waters, because of the merit of those who dwell in the council, who labor in the law, and make judgment clear, that it may be smooth as milk, and who dwell in the house of doctrine, and dispute in judgment, until they bring it to completion, so as to acquit, and so as likewise to condemn."

Limpid, grey-blue, and heavenly eyes signify the excellent, heavenly, and divine watchfulness and providence of Christ, by which, then through his bishops, pastors, prophets, teachers, etc. (such as after Constantine were the holy Basil, Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, Gregory, etc.), he most wisely governs the Church, and each of the faithful, who by milk, that is, by simplicity, are washed and made white. These sit beside the springs of Holy Scripture, that from them they may draw the purity and whiteness of doctrine and of the Christian life, which they may pour forth and transmit into their subjects; whence by "eyes," St. Gregory, Cassiodorus, Nyssen, Bede, Justin, Philo, St. Ambrose, and others understand teachers: wherefore Christ says to them, Matthew 10:16: "Be prudent as serpents, and simple as doves.

Christ therefore sees, through his teachers, what in doctrine or in morals is to be corrected or perfected in the Church; let them therefore themselves see how clean and sincere they ought to be in both respects, they whom Christ bears in his face as it were eyes, lest they disfigure and cloud it: wherefore let them sit beside the purest streams of the waters of Holy Scripture, not in the muddy marshes, nor in the turbid, stagnant waters of philosophers, heretics, politicians, etc., so that they may wear away at the sacred Bible rather than at Plato, Plutarch, Machiavelli: the shadow and snares of these, therefore, as of hawks, let teachers clearly perceive and foresee in the limpid waters of Holy Scripture, that by teaching and admonishing they may drive them away from themselves and from the rest of the faithful. They are washed with milk, because they strive with all zeal to preserve the whiteness received in baptism; whence St. Ambrose, on Psalm 118, octonary 16, at verse 3: "The Lord baptizes," he says, "in milk, that is, in sincerity: and these are they who are truly baptized in milk, who believe without deceit and offer a pure faith, who put on unstained grace; therefore the white bride ascends to Christ, because she has been baptized in milk — she who is this one who ascends made white," Song of Songs 8:5, according to the Septuagint. Hear Nyssen: "These must wash away with water every rheum of vice; but the water is not one, rather there are many streams of waters; for as many as the virtues are, so many also are the cleansing waters: temperance cleanses intemperance, humility pride, etc. But if the eyes are washed at the abundances of waters, which on account of simplicity and purity are compared to a dove, they are said to be washed with milk, because in milk no image is seen, no shadow appears, and in these eyes there is nothing erroneous, but the very truth of the thing is represented without any shadowy semblance. They sit beside the abundances of waters,"

The holy soul, which is intent on God alone in praying and meditating, is an eye of Christ, which looks nowhere but upward toward heavenly and divine things with the straight eye of holy intention. See what I said about these eyes at chapter 1, verse 15, and chapter 3, verse 1.

The Blessed Virgin, says Nicephorus, Book II, chapter 23, had keen eyes, having in them pupils somewhat tawny and of a color like that of the olive.

Symbolically, the dove, on account of its purity, signifies the Holy Spirit, and his seven gifts: so Cassiodorus, Bede, Philo, Theodoret, Rupert, Richard, and others; whence the Holy Spirit descended upon Christ in the form of a dove, when he was baptized by John in the streams of the Jordan; as many, therefore, as are the graces of the Holy Spirit in a saint, so many heavenly and divine doves, as it were, sit within him; these, with their own waters, wipe away from the mind every stain and blemish, and nourish and feed them with their own heavenly milk: in these waters, therefore, in pure and chaste minds, the Holy Spirit broods, and renders them fruitful of good works, and especially so that with these same waters they may wash others from sins, and feed them as it were with milk.

Furthermore these gifts rested most abundantly upon Christ, and from him were poured into the faithful, but were infused in greater abundance into his mother. This is what Isaiah says, chapter 11, verse 1: "And a rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise from its root. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, 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 shall fill him:" hence these seven

Those of the bridegroom are rosy, that is, white and ruddy, and therefore mottled, just as little flowerbeds are mottled with various white and purple flowers.

VERSE 13. HIS CHEEKS ARE AS BEDS OF SPICES SET BY THE PERFUMERS. HIS LIPS ARE LILIES DROPPING PRIME MYRRH.

HIS CHEEKS ARE AS BEDS OF SPICES SET BY THE PERFUMERS. — For "beds," the Hebrew has ערוגה aruga, which the Septuagint renders "vials"; Aquila, "furrows," by which the beds of herbs and flowers in gardens are marked out and watered; Pagninus, "furrow-lines"; the Arabic, "a lake or pool"; the Syriac, "rows of spices"; Our version, the Tigurine, Marinus, and Vatablus, "beds," which are arranged and ordered in beautiful array: for ערך arach is "to order, to arrange"; and the letters caph, which is in ערך arach, and ghimel, which is in ערוגה aruga, are akin, and of nearly the same sound.

For "set by the perfumers," the Hebrew has מגדלות מרקחים migdelot merkachim, which the Septuagint renders "sprouting perfume-boxes"; R. David and Pagninus, "flowers of spices"; the Tigurine, "his cheeks are like towers" (that is, like turreted boxes, which seem as it were small towers) "of an apothecary's shop"; Marinus, "like towers of pigments, or of spices"; Vatablus and Hortulanus, "his cheeks are like boxes or caskets, such as are in the shops or stalls of perfumers." The Syriac and the Arabic translate as the Vulgate. Forsterus, "his cheeks are like towers of far-off places"; and he adds that there is a kind of spice which takes its name from towers, because it is fragrant from afar, as though by metathesis מרקחים merkachim, that is, "of spices," or "of perfumers," were put for מרחקים merchakim, that is, "of far-off places." Others, "thy cheeks are like confections of spices." Our version, for מרקחים merkachim, that is, "of perfumers," reads with a different pointing מרקחים merokechim, that is, "by the perfumers." Again, for מגדלות migdelot, that is, "towers," with the Septuagint it reads meguddalot, that is, "set," "growing," "sprouting."

The cheeks of the bridegroom are compared to beds of spices: first, in shape, because as the beds are raised and stand out above the rest of the ground, so too the cheeks of the youthful bridegroom are full and fleshy, and stand out and project beyond the eyes, the temples, and the chin. Second, in worth, because these beds are not of pot-herbs or plants, but of spices: so the cheeks of the bridegroom are most precious. Third, in arrangement, because these beds, skillfully composed into a roundness, present the appearance of cheeks; whence also they are often hedged about and girded round with the jawbones of sheep, oxen, or other slain animals, beautifully arranged — such as I have often seen in Belgium. Fourth, in fragrance, because they breathe forth an aromatic scent, that is, one most potent and most sweet. Fifth, in color, because the cheeks

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are called the eyes of Christ, Zach. III, 9; and Apoc. V, 6: "I saw," he says, "a Lamb having seven eyes; which are the seven Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth." See what is said in both places.

These five analogies of the beds and the cheeks are easily fitted to the letter in Christ: for his cheeks, formed most perfectly by the Holy Spirit, and set in a youthful and flourishing age, were full, precious, round, fragrant, and rosy. Alexander the Great, as Plutarch witnesses in his Life, gave off from his cheeks, his skin, and his whole body a wonderful fragrance, on account of the humors existing in his body, concocted by heat: much more fragrant was the body of Christ, inasmuch as in him there was the utmost harmony of the humors, and a heat concocting them to perfection.

The rosy cheeks in the bride, then, signify maidenly modesty and shame; but in Christ the bridegroom, they are, first, a sign of youth and flourishing age; second, of honesty; third, of cheerfulness; fourth, of ingenuousness; fifth, of gravity and majesty joined with gentleness, modesty, and an exterior piety flowing from what is within, which made him supremely lovable to the faithful and equally venerable: so Cassiodorus, Bede, Rupert, Abbot Lucas, and others. To Christ, then, much more fittingly applies what Claudius in the Panegyric attributes to the emperor Maximian, saying: "In your very countenance I beheld all the marks of the virtues: in your brow, gravity; in your eyes, gentleness; in your blush, modesty; in your speech, justice." To this may be added St. Jerome, at the end of his Commentary on Zachariah, who by the cheeks understands the speech of Christ, full of piety and majesty, which, like a most excellent spice, heals all the diseases of the soul, and is, as it were, marked out in its own beds, that is, arranged in order according to its own matters, and uttered in its own places and times without confusion or disturbance: "The bride in the Song of Songs praises her bridegroom: his cheeks are vials of spices. By the cheeks is understood speech, which, brought forth by the Lord, sends out various ointments, and there will be so great a fragrance of good odor, that the Lord will make for himself a scourge of the testimonies of the texts of Scripture, and will cast out of the temple those who sell and buy, and will say to them: It is written: My Father's house shall be called a house of prayer to all nations; but you have made it a house of merchandise," Matth. XXI, 12.

Parabolically, the two cheeks of Christ are mercy and justice, according to that of Psalm XXIV, 10: "All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth"; and Psalm C, verse 1: "Mercy and judgment I will sing to thee, O Lord"; and Psalm LXXXVIII, 15: "Mercy and truth shall go before thy face": for each is in Christ outstanding, beautiful, well-matched, fragrant, and effectual, like spices. Again

three Anonymous writers in Theodoret, by the cheeks and the beds, understand the ways of divine providence, by which God looks upon men, and makes himself both lovable and venerable, so that all may fear and worship him.

First, the cheeks of Christ are the virgins, and the modesty and prudence of virgins, as I said at chap. I, 10. Second, the cheeks of Christ are the martyrs, who did not blush to confess the name of Christ before tyrants; but for him constantly exposed their cheeks to blows, their hands to the cross, their body to scourges, their head to the sword, and with their own blood adorned and empurpled the face and cheeks of Christ: so St. Gregory. Third, the cheeks denote the doctors, say Nyssen and Anselm, who, like jaws, chew and ruminate spiritual food, that is, the senses of sacred Scripture, that they may set them before the faithful and offer them. These are as it were beds of spices, that is, as it were cultivated garden ground, bringing forth prayer, contemplation, and other heavenly virtues; set by the perfumers, that is, instructed by the apostles and prophets, who, like perfumers with the pestle of humility, pound all things down, and reduce them to contempt of self and of the world, as St. Anselm notes; whence Hortulanus, translating consitæ as "boxes," and by them understanding the prophets, says: The prophets, in whom, as it were in the cheeks and face of Christ, he showed forth things to come beforehand, being within filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit — like boxes of perfumers filled with the best ointments and most sweetly smelling — but outwardly bashful, since they are suffused with a becoming modesty, blush like boxes painted with vermilion or purple. Pertinent here is the Chaldee version, which by the two cheeks understands the two tables of the Decalogue: "The two tables of stone," it says, "which he gave to his people, were written with ten lines, like the lines of a garden

of spices, which put forth the keenest and sweetest senses, as a garden puts forth spices." Theodoret adds that the doctors are called "vials" by the Septuagint, on account of the clarity and sweetness of a teaching open and set forth to all. Finally, Philo Carpathius by the two cheeks understands Holy Scripture of both Testaments, because in them the nature of the divine bridegroom is most fully known. Fourth, Philo and Justus by the cheeks and the beds understand all the saints, fragrant with spices, that is, with virtues, set by the perfumers, that is, planted by upright preachers.

Christ poured over into his mother the beauty and fragrance of his cheeks, that is, of an honest manner of life, modesty, gravity, and piety, inasmuch as she lived with him most familiarly from his boyhood up to the thirtieth year of his age. See more, which I said concerning his cheeks, at chap. III, verse 3, and chap. I, verse 10.

HIS LIPS ARE LILIES DROPPING PRIME MYRRH.

For "prime," the Septuagint renders "full"; Aquila, "chosen"; the Hebrew עבר over, that is, "passing," namely because it passes through the hands and mouths of all, since, as first and most approved, it is praised, sought after, and bought by all; the Arabic, "dew full of myrrh"; the Syriac, "myrrh and nard"; Almonacius by "lilies" understands flowers commonly called irises, on account of their resemblance to the rainbow, that is, to the arc of heaven, as regards the variety of colors — for the ancients set Iris as the goddess of eloquence; but in truth lilies are one kind of flower, and irises another.

He compares the lips of the bridegroom to lilies: first, for their beauty, because they are elegant as lilies; whence the lily is the emblem of the kings of France, and was once dedicated to Juno, and was called the flower of Juno, as also of the Nymphs; whence Propertius:

Often did she carry silver lilies to the coaxing Nymphs.

Often did she carry silver lilies to the coaxing Nymphs.

Second, for their shape, because they are gently curved back as lilies are. Third, for their color, for outwardly they are white, inwardly red and splendid, as lilies are, because in Syria purple lilies excel the rest, as Pliny attests, book XXI, chap. V, and Dioscorides, book III, chap. XCIX. Fourth, for their fragrance, because they are fragrant as lilies, and breathe forth a most sweet breath from the mouth. Fifth, for their delicacy, because they are thin and soft as lilies, which is a mark of magnanimity and eloquence, since thick lips signify the dullness of thick-lipped men, and slowness of judgment and speech; whence Moses, Exod. VI, 12, calls himself uncircumcised in lips, that is, thick of speech and slow of speech; hence also Sidonius attributes to his Theodoric "thin lips, not enlarged by widened corners of the mouth."

...to, a lily by its own charm allures all to love of itself, so too do comely lips, which have the appearance

of lilies, possess a wondrous power of persuasion; whence Homer says that the most eloquent envoys of the Trojans had eaten lilies; and of an eloquent and smooth-tongued man it is commonly said: He speaks roses and lilies. Add, that lilies give a sweet breath to lips and mouth, and drive away poisons; the same do the lips of an eloquent and pious orator.

Christ possessed the five excellences of the lips already assigned, and hence likewise in speaking, teaching, and persuading he had a lily-like whiteness and purity, and a wondrous grace and efficacy; the sense, then, is, as if to say: The words of Christ are chaste, and inflame to every kind of purity of body and mind, and preach the mortification of the cross. The lips of Christ, therefore, distill prime myrrh, because they teach penance, continence, mortification, and austerity of life, which is diametrically opposed to concupiscence and the pleasures of the flesh: for the first word of his preaching was this, Matth. IV, 17: "Do penance"; likewise, Matth. V, 3-10, 40: "Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are they that mourn. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the clean of heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are they that suffer persecution. Love your enemies, and do good to them that hate you." To this: "I came not to send peace, but the sword. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me," Matth. X, 34 and 37: so Cassiodorus, Bede, Theodoret, Rupert, and others. On the contrary, the world and the flesh distill from their lips the honey of pleasure, according to that of Proverbs V, 3: "The lips of a harlot are a dropping honeycomb, and her throat is smoother than oil: but her end is bitter as wormwood, and sharp as a two-edged sword."

Symbolically, the lips of God the Father, resembling lilies, are the incarnate Son and the Holy Spirit: for these announced to us the will, purity, and holiness of God the Father, and instilled them through the myrrh of mortification and penance.

Again, lilies are a symbol of hope, both because lilies live though dry, and grow in hope of the heavenly sun and rain, for from these they continually draw their sap, fragrance, beauty, and increase; and because lilies, flowering exceedingly, are a foretoken of future happiness, says Themistius; whence Virgil, Aeneid VI:

You shall be Marcellus. Give lilies with full hands.

...ide Pierius, Hierogl. LV, 9: thus preachers have lily-like lips, because they preach future happiness and glory, and accordingly by the sight and hope of it incite men to lay hold of myrrh, that is, all the bitterness of this life, which is the way to glory.

Souls holy and pure as lilies are as it were the lips of Christ, because through them Christ, who dwells in their mind, speaks and works those things that pertain to salvation, namely the heavenly and the divine; whence the Chaldee paraphrase renders: "and the lips of the wise, who labor in the law, flow with sayings on every side, and the utterance of their mouth is like choice myrrh." But most of all the lips of Christ are the preachers, say St. Gregory of Nyssa, Philo, Bede, Rupert, and others: these are called lilies, both on account of the whiteness of their life, and because they preach the purity, innocence, and holiness of Christ, and likewise distill his myrrh, that is, mortification, which preserves minds from the corruption of concupiscence and sins, as myrrh does: "Because they speak of the passion of Christ," says St. Ambrose, book De Instit. Virg., chap. XIV, "and carry about his mortification in their body," II Cor. IV, 10: for prime myrrh is the passion of Christ, says Richard; whence Paul, I Cor. I, 23: "But we preach Christ crucified: unto the Jews indeed a stumbling-block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." Again, prime myrrh is patience in torments, says Philo, and martyrdom, for this is first in dignity: "because no one is so mortified as he who ends his life by martyrdom for Christ," says St. Gregory. Abbot Lucas adds that the lips of Christ are confessors, because through them Christ speaks to the heart of penitents, and instills in them the myrrh of penance and of an austere life, that they may amend their vices, and keep them amended.

Note: 70 "distilling" signifies the value of these lips and of the myrrh, namely that the lips preaching and instilling penance, mortification, tribulation, and martyrdom communicate to us the passion of Christ: for these things are so precious, that they are not poured out like water, but distill drop by drop like myrrh, and are gathered by Christ, lest even a single point of them perish. This is what St. Peter says: "Communicating in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, that in the revelation also of his glory you may rejoice with exceeding joy," I Pet. IV, 13; and Paul, II Cor. I, 5: "As the sufferings of Christ abound in us: so also by Christ doth our comfort abound."

Concerning the lips of the Blessed Virgin I have spoken at chap. III, verse 3; concerning myrrh, at chap. I, 13. Briefly Nicephorus thus depicts the lips of the Mother of God, book II, chap. XXIII: "Her lips," he says, "were flowery and full of sweetness of words."

VERSE 14. HIS HANDS ARE TURNED, GOLDEN, FULL OF HYACINTHS. HIS BELLY IS OF IVORY, SET WITH SAPPHIRES.

His hands are turned, golden. — That is, as the Septuagint has it, τορνευταί, that is, turned, that is to say, skillfully wrought, and therefore round, polished, neat, elegant: in Hebrew it is גלילי זהב galile zahab, that is, revolutions, roundnesses, or circles of gold; the Tigurine version, his hands are golden circles (Vatablus, rings), having a hyacinth enclosed within; Marinus, his hands are, or rather have, golden rings, on the fingers, in the sockets of which hyacinths were enclosed: for married men and kings wear golden rings as a mark of beauty, wisdom, and majesty, such as the bridegroom is here. But because it does not say fingers, but hands, hence it seems that not only the bridegroom's fingers, but the hands themselves are called turned and golden, because they were so skillfully wrought, polished, and perfect, that they seemed to represent gold worked on a lathe: for a turned work is rounded exactly to rule and perfect, in which there is nothing that you could file down or wear away: thus by Horace verses are called "turned," that is, fully wrought and perfect, to which you could add or take away nothing. In like manner fingers are called teretes, that is, turned and round, in which there is nothing protruding, knotty, rough, or scabrous. Turned hands, then, are fleshy, full of sap, soft, full, polished, perfect, in which there is no roughness, scabrousness, leanness, knottiness, hardness, etc.

FULL OF HYACINTHS. — For "hyacinths," as Symmachus also renders it, the Hebrew is תרשיש tharsis, which signifies the sea and a gem of sea color. Our version elsewhere generally renders it "chrysolite," which is partly of gold, partly of sea color: so it renders it at Exod. 28:20, and chapter 39:13; Ezech. 10:9, and chapter 28:13: so too Aquila and the sixth edition; but the Septuagint renders tharsis in Exodus as chrysolite, but in Ezekiel as carbuncle: for indeed among the Hebrews the names of gems, trees, and animals are common to many, and signify several species of them. Nevertheless here "hyacinths" could be taken to mean chrysolites: for although the hyacinths of the ancients were sapphires, which are of a heavenly color — whence presently the bridegroom's belly is here said to be set with sapphires — yet the modern hyacinths (which, that is, are now commonly called hyacinths), since they are of a golden and honey color, are truly chrysolites, as I showed at Apoc. chapter 21, verse 20, on the hyacinth; but chrysolite is of a golden and glassy, that is, sea color: for because the golden color in it is not clouded but shines through, hence it is as it were glassy, and of the sea.

Further, the Septuagint here retains the Hebrew word tharsis and renders it "full of tharsis"; the Arabic, "full of the gold of tharsis"; the Syriac, "with stones of gold." Now the Chaldee by tharsis understands the twelve gems, marks of the twelve tribes of Israel: for thus it renders: "And the twelve tribes of Jacob his servant were arranged round about on the plate of the holy golden crown, engraved on twelve pearls with the three fathers of the world, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Reuben was engraved on the sardius stone, Simeon on the topaz stone, Levi on the sapphire, Judah on the carbuncle, Issachar on the emerald, Zebulun on the jasper, Dan on the beryl, Naphtali on the agate, Gad on the amethyst, Asher on the chrysolite, Joseph on the onyx, Benjamin on the ligure, which were like the twelve heavenly signs, bright as lamps, and polished in their workmanship like ivory, and shining like gems."

Literally it is signified that Solomon's, and still more Christ's, hands were shining, elegant, and as it were polished on a lathe, that is, delicate and soft, such as ingenious and generous men have, with somewhat longer fingers, and with the little circles, or noble joints, of the fingers spaced apart from one another; and besides this, with somewhat more extended arms, such as Alexander the Great, Artaxerxes, and Darius are recorded by Strabo and the other historians to have had, who were long-armed: so Pineda, book 6, On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter 4, number 10.

Symbolically, the hand is Christ, and his working and divine beneficence: for "hand" (manus) is said from "flowing" (manando), because it flows from the arm, and from it the fingers flow forth: thus Christ, as God, flows from the Father, and from him flows the Holy Spirit, the author of all good things; hence the hands of Christ are turned, that is, the works of Christ are on every side and in every part polished and perfect, so that you could take nothing from them or add nothing to them, according to that, Psalm 110:3: "Confession and magnificence is his work"; and that, Mark 7:37: "He hath done all things well, and hath made both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak"; for although the Pharisees continually, day and night, thought of nothing else than to slander the works of Christ, and to find some flaw in them, yet they were able to find none:

whence the Glossa Interlinearis: "The hands of Christ are turned, that is," it says, "in nothing reprehensible."

But the hands of Christ are especially called turned, that is, versatile (for גלל galal means to roll, to turn, to revolve) and agile for every good and every beneficence, says Justus of Urgel, because they were constantly turning and revolving themselves to works of mercy of every kind: for now they raised the dead, now they gave light to the blind, now they multiplied loaves, now they changed water into wine, now they gave the Eucharist, etc. Such ought the hands of Christians to be, such as were those of Blessed Theresa, who made a vow that in every work she would do that which would be better and more perfect. The hands of Christ, then, turned to every good, indicated the omnipotence and beneficence of the Godhead lying hidden in them. Cassiodorus, Bede, and Rupert add that they are called turned on account of the swiftness of working and doing good, because what is done on a lathe is done most swiftly: for "he gives twice who gives quickly."

They are golden, because full of charity, and because they flow from the Godhead, which stands out above all things, as gold above the other metals; whence St. Gregory: "The hands of Christ," he says, "are golden, because whatever he wrought outwardly was disposed inwardly in the beauty of the Godhead." They are full of hyacinths, namely the nails of the fingers in the flesh of Christ were rosy, and as it were translucent, like hyacinths in a ring; to the most beautiful hands of Christ, then, says Pineda, the nails add loveliness, after the manner of gems, or of purplish flowers, which are not livid or dark, not pale, black, or curved, such as those of the rapacious, the livid, and the malicious; but fine, more delicate, translucent, somewhat broader, and representing the blood and the brighter spirit lying hidden beneath a purple sheen.

Whence Polemon: nails, he says, that are broad, white, and reddish are marks of a good disposition; likewise of a liberal and generous spirit, such that one impoverishes oneself so as to enrich others, as Christ did, born most poor in a manger, and living in the world, that he might enrich us by his poverty, as the Apostle says, II Corinthians 8:9. This the Hebrew tharsis notes, which is derived from פשח paschach, that is, he impoverished; hence Pineda renders it, his hands (so generous, giving out everything) are full of tharsis, that is, of poverty.

Symbolically, the hands of Christ are full of hyacinths, because the works of Christ were heavenly, says Angelomus, and stirred men up to hope and love of heavenly things: for the hyacinth is of a heavenly color. Again, the hyacinths signify that the works of Christ — namely why they were done in such a place, time, manner, etc. — were full of heavenly and divine reasons, counsels, and intentions, because indeed he did all things for the glory of the Father, and that he might stir men up to seek after heavenly goods, promising them eternal life, if they should follow his teaching and life. The Psalmist sings, Psalm 110:1: "I will praise thee, O Lord, with my whole heart, in the council of the just, and in the congregation. Great are the works of the Lord: sought out according to all his wills"; and Psalm 138:14: "I will praise thee, for thou art fearfully magnified: wonderful are thy works, and my soul knoweth right well": so St. Gregory, Cassiodorus, Philo, Bede, Justus, Rupert, and others. Theodoret adds: "By 'hands,'" he says, "he calls those virtues which consist in action, which he cultivated so diligently, one by one, in all his offices, that from them, as it were, a certain harmony resulted: wherefore to John he said: Suffer it to be so now: for so it becometh us to fulfil all justice, Matthew 3:15. He calls them golden, as precious and excellent, for he set down Tharsis also on account of the excellence of gold, for thence Scripture says that sincere and pure, and approved gold, is brought."

Allegorically, Philo Carpathius applies these to the hands of the crucified Christ: "Then," he says, "the hands of Christ were made turned, when he stretched them out on the cross, when they were pierced with nails, which, on account of the divinity, purity, and power of Christ, are called golden; and they are said to be full of tharsis on account of the multitude of the Gentiles converted: for tharsis, says Philo, is interpreted 'conversion of joy'; and when Christ stretched out his hands on the cross, the Church of the Gentiles was converted with great joy." Cassiodorus adds that the hands of Christ, empurpled with blood, were like the hyacinth flower, which is of a purple color; but here hyacinth signifies a gem, not a flower. But among gems too there are reddish hyacinths, as Dioscorides witnesses, which represent the blood of Christ. Add that the Hebrew tharsis is rendered by the Septuagint in Ezekiel as carbuncle. If you should so render it in this place, you would say that the hands of Christ were full of as many carbuncles as they were marked with the stripes and welts of the cords and scourges.

The turned hands of Christ are the hands of the faithful, whence Christ says, Luke 11:20: "If I cast out devils by the finger of God, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you": by the finger of God, that is, "by the Spirit of God," as St. Matthew explains, chapter 12:28, that is to say, by the power and virtue of the Holy Spirit. Finally, the hands of the Blessed Virgin are turned, that is, versatile, agile, and ready to bestow whatever benefits, especially on men devoutly honoring and invoking her, as innumerable examples testify.

HIS BELLY IS OF IVORY, SET WITH SAPPHIRES.

The Hebrew has, his inward parts, עשת eschet, that is, sheen, whiteness, the polish of ivory (Marinus, ivory highly polished; R. Abraham, a vessel of ivory; St. Jerome, on chapter 2 of Ezekiel, an ivory tablet), covered with sapphires. "Inward parts," that is, the intestines, namely the belly, which contains the heart, the liver (jecur, hepar), etc.; the Septuagint, his belly a casket, or tablet (for πυξίον signifies both) of ivory upon a sapphire stone, or in a sapphire stone; the Arabic, his belly as an ivory tablet (the Syriac, an ivory work) in a gem of amber and pearls; Pagninus, his belly as white ivory, overlaid with sapphires; Vatablus, his inward parts as an ivory alabaster covered with sapphires. By "belly," then, understand the whole breast together with the inward parts. Sapphire is a gem of a blue or heavenly color, gleaming with golden points as if with stars, says Pliny, book 37, chapter 9. See more of what I said about the sapphire at Apoc. chapter 21, 19.

Grammatically, these things are said of Solomon, who was the type, indeed the forebear, of Christ, as our Pineda expounds, book 6, On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter 4, number 7: the breast and chest, in which are all the vital organs, white as a little casket of ivory, formed in the fittest shape for preserving the inward parts, the heart, all the vital organs; for if there were any defect in the chest, the back, the ribs, and the other parts that are around the heart, it would notably disfigure the beauty of the body and of the character; therefore, just as a little casket is not very wide, nor too narrow, nor too thick, nor too slender, so indeed the bridegroom's breast, with a somewhat looser belly, resembles the belly of a casket, while with a stricter chest it resembles the somewhat narrower upper part of the casket. Aristotle to Alexander: "Moderation of the belly and narrowness of the chest signifies loftiness of intellect and of good counsel": and so he had neither a very fleshy chest, nor was he pot-bellied, which are marks of the dull, the sluggish, and the least clever: not too slender either, but a fit dwelling-place of wisdom and of the heart; and moreover a belly disciplined toward the region of the girdle, so that it could be more tightly girded, which is a mark of the spirited and the clever, and such as Sidonius describes in his Theodoric: "In girded loins vigor reigns," etc. And again in the Panegyric of Majorian: "The belt holds up the narrow belly." And indeed what of the sapphires on the breast? Certainly, if they are referred to the ornaments of nature, there will be some moles on the white breast: not one, even the most perfect, is without a mole — standing as it were hunting-marks, the moles in the bridegroom appeared as sapphires, and those spots were lights: wherefore of him too it could be said: "There was no blemish upon that excellent body."

Again, the breast containing the belly in Christ was shining as ivory and alabaster, yet the same was beautifully sprinkled with little veins and with the livid, and as it were shining, shadows of the muscles and ribs, so that it seemed interpunctuated and set with sapphires. Others, with Lyra and Aben Ezra, understand the belly not to be bare, for to display or depict it before young maidens, to whom this discourse is addressed, seems immodest, but covered and clothed, either with an ivory girdle set with sapphires, as Aben Ezra holds, or with a similar ornament: just as the kings of the Persians interwove the middle of their purple garment with white, and as it were ivory-colored, thread, as Curtius witnesses, as our Sanchez judges; whence Gislerius: the breastplate, he says, with which the bridegroom was clothed was white like ivory, but was adorned with silken bands of a sky-blue color, so that it seemed set with sapphires; or, that is to say, the breastplate was white and shining as ivory, but was girded with a belt full of sapphires. I should rather join the two together, namely that Solomon is praised both for a white breast, sprinkled as it were with sapphires by little veins, and for a breastplate clothing the breast, likewise white, but set with sapphires: for this the young maidens could see, that is to say, such as is the garment or breastplate of the bridegroom, such likewise is his breast. Whence Pineda, book 6, On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter 5, teaches that Solomon's garments were gilded, but whitened and made lily-like by an interweaving of lilies. Enough and more than enough of this concerning the husk of the letter as regards the appearance of the belly, lest men, animal and prone to lust, should here think and conceive carnal things. Let us pass, then, to the spirit and to spiritual things.

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Again, the breast containing the belly in Christ was shining as ivory and alabaster, yet the same was beautifully sprinkled with little veins and with the livid, and as it were shining, shadows of the muscles and ribs, so that it seemed interpunctuated and set with sapphires. Others, with Lyra and Aben Ezra, understand the belly not to be bare, for to display or depict it before young maidens, to whom this discourse is addressed, seems immodest, but covered and clothed, either with an ivory girdle set with sapphires, as Aben Ezra holds, or with a similar ornament: just as the kings of the Persians interwove the middle of their purple garment with white, and as it were ivory-colored, thread, as Curtius witnesses, as our Sanchez judges; whence Gislerius: the breastplate, he says, with which the bridegroom was clothed was white like ivory, but was adorned with silken bands of a sky-blue color, so that it seemed set with sapphires; or, that is to say, the breastplate was white and shining as ivory, but was girded with a belt full of sapphires. I should rather join the two together, namely that Solomon is praised both for a white breast, sprinkled as it were with sapphires by little veins, and for a breastplate clothing the breast, likewise white, but set with sapphires: for this the young maidens could see, that is to say, such as is the garment or breastplate of the bridegroom, such likewise is his breast. Whence Pineda, book 6, On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter 5, teaches that Solomon's garments were gilded, but whitened and made lily-like by an interweaving of lilies. Enough and more than enough of this concerning the husk of the letter as regards the appearance of the belly, lest men, animal and prone to lust, should here think and conceive carnal things. Let us pass, then, to the spirit and to spiritual things.

The belly, that is, the breast and inward parts of Christ, denote that all Christ's passions and inward affections were pure and white, chaste and virginal, and equally bony and strong like ivory, indeed divine and heavenly like sapphire, so that in them there was no disorder, disturbance, conflict, or struggle, and equally no weakness or infirmity, but all were sincere, composed, constant and solid: for in the inward parts is the liver, in which the blood resides, and from it the concupiscible appetite, and its affections and desires; and the gall, in which the choler resides, and therefore the irascible appetite, and its angers and indignations; and the spleen, in which the melancholic humor resides, and from it sadness; and the heart, in which the vital spirit resides, and from it wisdom — that is to say: in the body of Christ all the inward parts, and hence all the affections, both of the concupiscible faculty and of the irascible, were pure and white, and therefore composed among themselves, peaceable, constant and firm, because the wisdom of the heart ruled them all, which he himself in his breast

amid the sufferings of the assumed humanity showed forth as it were creating signs of perpetual divinity;" hence some understand by the belly of Christ the Christian people, which is tender, coarse and unrefined like the belly; this, however, through the grace of Christ becomes white and strong like ivory, and spiritual and heavenly like sapphire: for just as by Christ's head are understood the prelates, by the hair the religious, by the lips the preachers, by the cheeks the virgins, so by the belly are understood the common faithful, especially the married, who in marriage preserve the whiteness of chastity and the fruitfulness of marriage, that they may beget and rear offspring for Christ: for the belly is the seat of generation and of the generative power. The married, then, are set with sapphires, because they think on heavenly things; yet they are divided, because they serve partly the flesh, partly God: so St. Anselm, Richard of St. Victor, and Cosmas Damian.

Anagogically, St. Gregory by the belly of Christ understands his mortality, by the ivory the immortality which he merited for himself and for us: "For ivory," he says, "is held to be a very durable bone, and is taken up into the ornaments of kings; therefore the belly of Christ is said to be of ivory, because the mortality of Christ is brought through to immortality, while through the resurrection he is placed, in eternal life, in the glory of his Father, that is, of the eternal King"; and after some words: "which is truly taken up into the ornament of kings; because whoever is proved to be king and lord of his own flesh, is adorned, by the very mortality and resurrection of Christ, with the love of knowledge and the hope of immortality; whence elsewhere it is said, I Corinthians 1:31: He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord; but the belly is declared to be set with sapphires, because, in our corruption, which he bore, he inserted heavenly works, through the miracles which he wrought, into our sufferings."

Mystically, the three Anonymous writers in Theodoret understand by the belly the wisdom of God, which, although in itself it is heavenly and divine like sapphire, is nevertheless impressed by God, and as it were inscribed, in this universe created by him, as upon a most pure and most shining ivory tablet.

The holy soul has a breast and belly of ivory, when it orders, composes, and strengthens, indeed cultivates and polishes, all the soul's appetites according to reason and the law of God: for the Hebrew עשת eschet signifies sheen and polished work, such as ivory is, for this is most shining and most polished. Holy souls, then, strive not only honestly and holily, but also elegantly and with polish, to compose all their affections in the mind, and to arrange in it all their works, so that, although they do the common things which others also do, yet in their actions there shines forth, beyond others, a certain singular elegance and grace, so that the common work in them may appear polished, singular, and outstanding, according to that, Ecclesiasticus 33:23: "In all thy works keep the pre-eminence." Thus we see in religion some who are careful and distinguished, who excel in the common life and in the observance of the rules: for they carry out each single thing with wonderful readiness, dexterity, elegance, and perfection, so that even if they do the same as others, yet they excel beyond them, and indeed seem to do something new and singular, because they do the common thing in a certain new and singular manner and with a certain grace.

exactly and fittingly, in all their actions, let clerics serve the pontiff, courtiers the emperor, servants the prince and king; what then befits you to do, who serve the divine Majesty, who is King of kings, and Lord of lords? Apelles, being asked why he painted so painstakingly and exactly, replied: I paint for eternity: so you too act, and live, for eternity; see to it, then, that your work be shining as ivory, bright as sapphire, which must shine forever before God and the angels: consider with what loveliness, with what grace the archangels, cherubim, and seraphim minister to God; with that same loveliness do thou too minister to that same God, for what the angels do in heaven, this you do on earth.

Hence Nyssen, reading from the Septuagint, "his belly an ivory tablet upon a sapphire stone," teaches that the heart of the saint is a tablet, on which the law of God is inscribed as if on ivory and sapphire, that is, in a most pure and heavenly mind. To this Theodoret comes near, who, rendering "pyxis" instead of "tablet" (for the Greek πυξίον signifies both), by it understands Sacred Scripture, which is deep like a casket on account of the hidden mysteries which it contains; and Philo Carpathius, who by the ivory casket understands the old law, and by the sapphire the new law, which excels the old as much as sapphire excels ivory. Philo adds that the belly is the mind of the just man, in which, as in a most shining ivory casket, the sayings of Sacred Scripture and of divine wisdom are stored away.

Symbolically, Justus and the abbot Lucas by the ivory belly understand the preachers, because they and many others, by all these emblems of the head, the hair, the cheeks, the lips, etc., understand the preachers, who by preaching propagate the Church. But this seems too general and broad, wherefore it is better that these things be distributed and each fittingly accommodated to its own particular state: for what has the belly in common with preachers? unless you should say that in the belly are the lungs, which, supplying breath like bellows, serve the formation of the voice and consequently preaching; or that preachers ruminate the food of the word of God in the mind, so that they may distribute it to the faithful by preaching, just as food is digested in the belly, and, once digested, is distributed through the members; whence by this fable of the belly Menenius Agrippa reconciled the plebs, at odds with the senate, to it at Rome on the Aventine hill.

Christ's belly is of ivory, set with sapphires; it bore what was royal and divine. Hence it was set with sapphires, that is, with heavenly thoughts, desires, and intentions, so that whatever he thought, said, or did, seemed to look toward heaven and God, and the glory of God and the love of men: for sapphire is a gem of heavenly color, with golden drops shining through. Wherefore Christ was not sorrowful, as Isaiah says, chapter 64:4, nor given over to laughter, but moderately joyful, not irascible, nor phlegmatic, but moderately grave, etc., and so wholly composed and heavenly, that he seemed to be not so much a man as an angel: so Nyssen, homily 14, Cassiodorus, Bede, and others.

Hence many by Christ's belly, or, as it is in Hebrew, his inward parts, understand the mercy of Christ: for the seat and symbol of this are the inward parts, whence in commiseration the inward parts are stirred. That is to say: the belly and inward parts of Christ are as it were an ivory casket of mercy, in which, against all miseries, the most effective remedies and medicines are contained, which he pours out upon any wretched persons calling upon him, indeed often not calling upon him, but careless and unthinking, that he may restore them to soundness and holiness of mind.

...is as it were an ointment-case, containing medicines, spices, and ointments of every kind, for healing whatever sicknesses of body and mind. This is what Zacharias, at the birth of John the Baptist, who was the forerunner and herald of Christ, sings concerning Christ already incarnate in the Virgin: "Through the bowels of the mercy of our God: in which the Orient from on high hath visited us," Luke 1:78.

Symbolically, first, the Son, as God, received deity from the Father, is as it were a divine casket, in which God placed all his divine attributes, according to that, Psalm 109:3: "From the womb, before the day-star, I begot thee": for the womb, or belly, of God the Father is the mind and wisdom, by which he conceived the Word, that is, begot the Son from eternity: so John the Carmelite: "The eternal Word," he says, "having the reasons of all things received in the mouth of a certain womb, is as it were a belly white, smooth, and pregnant, and in it, as it were, many sapphires, the distinct reasons of things, shine." So too Almonacirius. Secondly, the humanity of Christ, although by its own nature fleshly, earthly, dark, and weak, was nevertheless made in Christ, through the grace of the Holy Spirit and the indwelling Godhead, white as ivory through innocence and virginity, bony and strong through constancy and divine vigor, according to that, Hebrews chapter 4:15 and 7:26: "We have not a high priest, who cannot have compassion on our infirmities: but was in all things tempted in like manner as we are, without sin: for it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens": so Cassiodorus, Bede, and Rupert, who explain it thus, that is to say: "The frailty indeed of mortal substance in him was true, but this, wholly without the wantonness of mortality, shines forth rather with the splendid marks of divine works; and this belly is rightly said to be set with sapphires, because

therefore such too was the belly of the Blessed Virgin, inasmuch as from it the whole Christ, however great, came forth: wherefore all his thoughts and affections, and the actions proceeding thence, were most white, and most pure like ivory, and most bright like sapphire. Rupert adds that the belly and flesh of Christ (and consequently also of the Blessed Virgin) were cleaner than the flesh of other men, because he himself is the beauty of the human race: "Truly beautiful," he says, "and comely is the ivory belly, because, just as ivory is the whole beauty and the whole value of a great body, namely of the elephant: so this belly, that is, the humanity or flesh, which he took from the human race, is the glory and honor of the whole world, and especially of the race of Abraham, of whose seed he willed to be born. Ivory is indeed more beautiful and more precious than the flesh or the rest of the body from which it is taken; and nonetheless the flesh of this beloved one is more beautiful, cleaner, and incomparably holier than the whole mass from whose seed it was taken." He then adds that from this the Blessed Virgin was a mother untouched in conception, and unharmed and whole in childbirth and after childbirth. By the sapphires he understands the virtues and miracles of Christ, by which, although suffering in the flesh and crucified, he nevertheless showed his divinity to the world: for "while this belly," he says, "was pierced by the nails and the soldier's lance, the heaven was darkened, and there was darkness, and the veil of the temple was rent, and the earth was moved, and the rocks were split, and the tombs were opened."

VERSE 15. HIS LEGS ARE PILLARS OF MARBLE, WHICH ARE SET UPON BASES OF GOLD. HIS APPEARANCE IS LIKE LEBANON, EXCELLENT AS THE CEDARS.

HIS LEGS ARE PILLARS OF MARBLE, WHICH ARE SET UPON BASES OF GOLD. — In Hebrew, paz [פז], that is, of the gold called paz, or ophaz, which was the most excellent kind, as I said above. For "marmoreæ" [of marble], Aquila and Theodotion render "pariæ" [Parian]; for Paros is an island, one of the Cyclades, from which is quarried Parian marble, the whitest and most excellent; whence Virgil, Aeneid I:

Or Parian stone is bound about with gold.

[The bride] commends the bridegroom's legs for whiteness, straightness, just thickness, and strength, in that they are white, straight, thick, and firm, after the manner of a column of marble or Parian stone; and this the young maidens could easily see, because in old times the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans went about without breeches or leggings, with shins and knees bare, and covered only the sole of the foot with shoes, or sandals, which they called "caligæ," as I showed at Acts 12:8, on the words: "Put on thy sandals [caligas]." The bridegroom, then, had shins white and strong, so that they seemed to be two Parian columns founded upon bases of gold, that is, upon the feet, which are as it were the props and bases of the shins; feet, I say, clothed and adorned with gilded shoes, or set off with gold and gems: for that the ancients adorned their shoes with gold and gems is taught by Pliny, book 9, chapter 35, and book 37, chapter 2: thus Plutarch, in his Life, testifies that Demetrius walked about in gilded shoes; Lampridius testifies that Heliogabalus added gems to the same; Eutropius, that Diocletian did; Vopiscus, that Carinus did. [Translator's note: the Latin exemplar is defective at the start of this paragraph; the bracketed opening words are conjectural.]

[These pertain to] their gait: wherefore legs of marble, founded upon bases — that is, upon feet and gilded shoes — signify a grave, elegant, and kingly gait, such as was Solomon's, in whom, namely, there was a look of authority and a mark of gravity, as St. Ambrose says, book 1 of the Offices; for, as Ecclesiasticus says, chapter 19, verse 27: "A man's walk tells about him," and it signifies the inward gravity or levity of the mind, prudence or folly, virtue or vice. [Translator's note: the Latin exemplar is defective at the start of this paragraph; the bracketed opening words are conjectural.]

The legs are a symbol of entering in and advancing; they signify, therefore, that Christ's journeys, goings, and expeditions, by which, in his own person through Judea, and through the apostles and apostolic men through all nations, in evangelizing he went about and traveled around, were pure, straight, strong, and sound, so that no one could stop them, delay them, or hinder them: for Christ, by his own power and might, scattered all the enemies, delays, and hindrances of the Gospel, and so turned to himself even the tyrants and princes who resisted him, and made them Christians: for the bases of these feet of Christ were golden, because they rested upon his divinity (for gold represents [this divinity]) [Translator's note: the Latin exemplar reads "hono" here and is corrupt; the reading is conjectural.] and upon his divine counsels, decrees, and predestinations, eternal and unmoveable. Hence many understand by these columns the apostles and apostolic men, who as it were carried Christ, like feet, through the whole world, so strong and sturdy that they seemed to be columns of marble, founded upon bases of gold, both of Christ, Ephesians 2:20, and of charity: for charity is as it were the most solid gold, which supports these feet, and made them strong and unconquered like marble: so St. Gregory of Nyssa, Philo, and St. Ambrose, on Psalm 118, sermon 5; hence the apostles are called the pillar and foundation of the Church, Galatians 2:9; Ephesians 2:20; and by name to St. Peter (of whom Theodoret understands this) Christ promised, Matthew 16:18: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock (that is, upon thee) I will build my Church."

Symbolically, the two legs of Christ are mercy and justice: for mercy converted and blessed those who believed and were obedient to him; justice reproved and condemned unbelievers and those disobedient to him. Again, justice chastised the failings of the aging Church, that it might restore her to her former splendor and holiness (for the discussion here concerns the aged Church, as I said above); it chastised, I say, through religious and apostolic men, whom it raised up as it were reformers of the Church, such as were St. Basil, St. Augustine, St. Benedict, St. Bernard, St. Romuald, St. Francis, and St. Dominic. Hear Rupert: "His legs are his ways, namely mercy and judgment, or mercy and truth, as the Psalmist says, Psalm 24:10: All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth: for truth itself is true judgment. These legs, these ways, are columns of marble, that is, most straight and most firm, nor is there anyone who could weaken them, or justly find fault with them: for the judgments of the Lord are true, justified in themselves, Psalm 18:10. For example: at the place and time mentioned above, when this Beloved hung crucified in the midst of two thieves, he mercifully received the one of them who repented, and took him with himself into paradise, while he condemned by a just judgment the other who blasphemed." And a little further on: "The bases of gold are the counsels of divine wisdom." He then adds their example: "He could weep over the city of Jerusalem, foreseeing the overthrow and condemnation of his people, and yet he could not bring his mind to turn away from them the wrath that impended: for his unbending legs stood like columns of marble upon bases of gold, that is, he attended not to what his human will might wish, but to the reasons of divine justice."

The legs of Christ and of the Church, which sustain his faith, religion, and virtue by teaching, preaching, hearing confessions, etc., by setting out to convert heretics, the Japanese, and the Indians, etc., propagate and advance it, are religious and apostolic men: these, through constancy, stand erect like columns, so that by no hope or fear do they turn aside from the right way; through fortitude they are strong as marble, through charity they shine like gold, and at the same time by the same charity are made solid, so that they consolidate others in faith and piety: so Richard of St. Victor.

To this comes Luke the Abbot, who understands by the legs of the Church the humble: for these, he says, by humbling themselves are made of such strength that they bear up all the members to the head, as he signified through the Prophet, saying, Isaiah 66:2: "To whom shall I look, but to the poor and contrite in spirit, and who trembles at my words?" nor do they retain in themselves the likeness of that rock, of which Paul, 1 Corinthians 10:4: "And the rock was Christ." But he asserts that the golden bases of the humble are the humility of the prophets and of the ancient saints: for upon these bases the humility of their descendants and followers rests and is supported.

Finally, Justus and St. Anselm understand by the legs any and all saints, who uphold the Church by their holiness and charity; in whom, accordingly, Christ dwells and walks; whence St. Ambrose, book 3 On the Faith, 5: "The legs," he says, "are columns of marble, etc.; for Christ alone walks in souls and walks in the mind of the saints, in whom, as in bases of gold and precious foundations, the settled footsteps of the heavenly Word have taken hold."

Hence, symbolically, Nyssen, homily 14, and three anonymous authors in Theodoret, understand by the two legs the two precepts of charity, namely: Thou shalt love God with thy whole heart, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; for by these Christ walks in the soul, and advances it to the height of holiness.

Cassiodorus and Bede understand by the legs of Christ his journeys, by which he deigned to descend into the womb of the Virgin and to be made man for us; these were of marble, because straight and strong; founded upon bases of gold, because all things that were to be done through Christ, or in Christ, were foreordained from eternity by the counsel of his divinity: for gold, being the most excellent thing, signifies the counsel of God. Bede adds that, to signify this, Christ's legs were for that reason not broken on the cross, as were those of the thieves.

Again, the legs of the Blessed Virgin advanced strongly toward every good, and drove back every evil: wherefore Damascene, in his oration On the Nativity of the Blessed Mary, thus depicts her character: "Honorable in dress, fleeing all softness and luxury: a gait grave and composed, removed from all softness; character strict, yet tempered with cheerfulness. You were so disposed that no man's approach to you lay open, etc. A mind humble amid the most sublime contemplations, speech pleasant, proceeding from a gentle soul. In short, what else were you but the dwelling-place of God? Deservedly do all generations proclaim you Blessed, as the surpassing glory of the human race. You are the glory of priests, the hope of Christians, the most fruitful plant of virginity: for through you the beauty of virginity has spread most widely."

Again, if the humble, if the holy, if the apostles have feet of marble founded through fortitude upon the golden base of charity, much more does the Blessed Virgin have the same; whence her type was the pillar of fire by night, and of cloud by day, leading and protecting the Hebrews through the desert even into the Promised Land: for in like manner the Blessed Virgin leads the faithful, or her devoted ones, through the desert of this life into heaven: so the Fathers, among whom hear St. Epiphanius, sermon On the Praises of the Virgin: "Hail," he says, "full of grace, like the pillar of cloud, who hast God, who led the people through the desert." St. Jerome, on Psalm 77, at the words: "And he led them in a cloud by day," understands by the cloud, that is, the pillar of cloud, the Blessed Virgin. Andrew, bishop of Crete, Oration 2 On the Mother of God: "O life-giving pillar," he says, "leading not the carnal Israel by light, but the spiritual, who is led to the uncreated light of knowledge, illuminating with divine torches," St. Ambrose, on Psalm 118, sermon 6, near the beginning: "That pillar of cloud," he says, "in outward appearance indeed went before the children of Israel; but in mystery it signified that the Lord Jesus would come in a swift cloud, as Isaiah said, chapter 19, verse 1, that is, in the Virgin Mary." The Venerable Bede, on Exodus, chapter 13: "The pillar of fire by night," he says, "is the divinity in the flesh of the Virgin Mary." St. Bonaventure, in the Speculum, chapter 3: "Mary," he says, "is for us a pillar of cloud, because, like a cloud, she shields us even from the heat of the divine indignation, and shields us also from the heat of diabolical temptation. Mary is also a pillar of fire, illuminating us, indeed illuminating the world with the many benefits of her mercy." St. Bernard, volume 3, sermon 11, article 1, chapter 3: "The pillar of cloud," he says, "sometimes went before, sometimes followed, sometimes was borne above, that thereby might be mystically signified the many patronages of the Blessed Virgin toward the people of the elect and of all Christians." Famous is the pillar at Saragossa, on which the Blessed Virgin, while still living, appeared to St. James the Apostle, showing that she wished to be venerated in that place and that she would be the protectress of Spain.

HIS APPEARANCE IS LIKE LEBANON, EXCELLENT AS THE CEDARS.

His appearance is like Lebanon. — In Hebrew, his aspect is like Lebanon; the Septuagint, "idea," that is, his form is like Lebanon. Having recounted some of the comely members of the bridegroom, he then, so as not to be too long, sums up the comeliness of the rest in a word, saying: "Beauty," that is, his form and beauty is like Lebanon: for in Judea it was a proverb, that when they wished to signify something most beautiful, they would say: "He is fair, or it is fair, as Lebanon," because Judea has nothing more beautiful than Lebanon: for this is the highest, most pleasant, and most fruitful of all the mountains of Syria; whence it is called the mountain of mountains. "Nothing in the land of promise is loftier than Lebanon, nor more wooded and dense," says St. Jerome on Hosea, chapter 14; hence Isaiah sings of the Church, chapter 35, verse 2: "Thou shalt rejoice, glad and praising: the glory of Lebanon is given to her: the beauty of Carmel and Saron." Lebanon is so called from לבן laban, that is, white, because throughout the year it grows white with snows on its summit; or from לבונה lebona, that is, frankincense, because it abounds in frankincense, pines, firs, cedars, cypresses, and other resinous trees; the choice gum of which is called by physicians olibanum. Wherefore Lebanon is fruitful in frankincense, resin, sugar, oil, etc.; every kind of wild beast and songbird is exceedingly abundant there. The valleys of Lebanon abound in the best wheat, vineyards, orchards, gardens, and most rich pastures: whence in them were pastured the animals to be offered to God in the Temple. Finally, from Lebanon burst forth many great rivers, namely the Jordan, the Chrysorrhoas, the Eleutherus, the Leon, the Lycus, the Adonis, and the Fountain of Gardens. For Lebanon rises behind Sidon, and stretches eastward beyond Damascus for 1500 stadia, says Pliny, book 5, chapter 20, that is, 187 thousand paces, or 46½ Italian miles. See Hosea chapter 14, and Adrichomius on Lebanon.

Further, because in Lebanon the knotless, unrottable, and fragrant cedars stand out, hence he adds "excellent," that is, outstanding and surpassing, like the cedars. The Chaldean, looking to the etymology of Lebanon, renders: "And he himself is filled with compassion upon them like an old man, and he whitens the sins of the house of Israel like snow, and he is ready to win victories in war against the peoples who shall transgress his word, like a strong young man, who is stout as the cedars."

Grammatically, then, Solomon the bridegroom is here compared to Lebanon and the cedar: first, on account of the tallness of his stature, for this is worthy of command; whence Capitolinus, in his Pertinax, calls it an "imperial stature." Hence Saul "was taller from the shoulders upward than all the people," 1 Kings 9:2. Likewise the ancient heroes and kings were tall: Romulus, on the testimony of Plutarch; Priam, Hector, Ajax, on the testimony of Homer; Julius Caesar, Tiberius, and Domitian, on the testimony of Suetonius. Theodoric, says Sidonius, was shorter than the very tallest, yet taller and more prominent than the shorter; for an excessive tallness, such as was Caligula's, is usually a mark of a mind wanting, dull, and sluggish; but a moderate and just stature is clever and spirited, as being abundant in vital spirits. Hence Aristotle, Ethics, book 4, chapter 3: "Beauty," he says, "consists in a large body." And Virgil, Aeneid 8:

But Anchises walked taller than all.

Second, Solomon is compared to Lebanon in pleasantness, because he was, after its likeness, comely, pleasant, and delightful in countenance, in eyes, and in his whole body. Third, in fragrance, because, like Alexander the Great, he breathed forth from his mouth a most sweet breath, and from the rest of his body a fragrance. Fourth, in fruitfulness, since, having a thousand wives, he begot from them very many sons. Fifth, in building, because Solomon built the Temple, the wonder of the world, out of the timber of Lebanon, and hence the Temple itself is called Lebanon, as by Zechariah, chapter 11, verse 1: "Open, O Lebanon, thy gates."

Christ, equally, indeed more than Solomon, was of a comely and tall body, namely of a height of seven cubits, says Nicephorus, book 1, last chapter; likewise pleasant, delightful, fragrant, and fruitful, not of carnal but of spiritual sons. Again, the Temple, made of the timber of Lebanon, and all its vessels, were a type of Christ; whence he himself said to the Jews, John 2: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Now this he said of the temple of his body:" because, as the Temple was the head, the glory, and the Holy of Holies of the earthly Jerusalem, so Christ is the head, the glory, and the Holy One of holies of the heavenly Jerusalem, says Rupert.

Finally, Richard of St. Victor understands by Lebanon Christ, by the cedar the Blessed Virgin: "For," he says, "the cedar itself, which grew in Lebanon, that is, in Christ, and while she herself brought forth Christ, the cedar as it were produced Lebanon, and the mountain came forth from the tree, since God came forth from man: this is a new and unheard-of thing, that God has done upon the earth, that a cedar should bring forth Lebanon, a tree a mountain, a woman should encompass a man, that is, God, and that she whom the world could not contain, a virgin should enclose in her womb.

Thus the beauties of Christ are the virgins, but the Blessed Virgin is his special one, who never stained her own beauty by any mortal or venial sin; wherefore the heavenly King desired her beauty, and, taking flesh in her, adorned this beauty yet more, because he filled her with a fuller grace."

"Thus, then, the beauty of Christ is singularly hers, beautiful above all, and most like to Christ, not only having the beauty of Christ herself, but restoring it also in others." Finally he teaches that the Blessed Virgin, who together with Christ humbled herself in the highest degree, was deservedly, on account of her humility, exalted together with him in the highest degree: "This blessed one," he says, "was exalted as it were a cedar, was raised up as Christ; and if as much as Christ — Christ was least in the kingdom of heaven, that is, in the present Church — Mary was the humblest of all who were upon earth, and for this was she raised up, that she might conceive the highest of all, and conceive, and become of all. Again, the beauty of Christ, or of Lebanon, consists in the continual sprouting of flowers, herbs, frankincense, cedars, pines, and other most pleasant trees, exceedingly fragrant and wholesome: so the beauty of the Blessed Virgin consists in the constant bringing forth of virgins, martyrs, doctors, religious, and any other saints excelling in humility, patience, fragrance, mortification, and whatever other virtue.

VERSE 16. HIS THROAT IS MOST SWEET, AND HE IS ALTOGETHER DESIRABLE: SUCH IS MY BELOVED, AND HE IS MY FRIEND, O DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM.

HIS THROAT IS MOST SWEET, AND HE IS ALTOGETHER DESIRABLE. — In Hebrew, his palate or throat is sweetnesses, and he himself is wholly desires, as if to say: the Bridegroom is so comely and gracious that he is supremely lovable and desirable — indeed, that he alone seems to be not only a desire in himself, but the desires of all things: for he contains within himself eminently all that is desirable and to be sought in any thing whatsoever, and again there is nothing in him that is not supremely desirable and to be longed for; hence Christ is called by the patriarch Jacob, Genesis 49:27, the desire of the everlasting hills, and by Haggai, chapter 2, verse 8, the one desired by all nations, in Hebrew the desire of all nations; the Septuagint agrees with the Hebrew, except that instead of desires they render desire. St. Jerome, book 1 Against Jovinian, reads, his taste is sweetnesses, and he is wholly desire; Vatablus: and however great he is, the things are desirable; the Arabic: his breath is sweetness, and he is wholly desire; the Syriac: his throat is a most sweet honeycomb, and his garments are most desirable; the Chaldee: the words of his throat are sweet as honey, and all his precepts are desirable to those wise in him, above gold and silver. By throat understand both the breath, which comes forth through the throat from the lung and stomach, and also the voice and speech. The breath, then, indicates that the Bridegroom's stomach is filled with fragrant foods, well digested by a strong heat: for such foods breathe out a sweet and fragrant breath; hence at verse 13 he said: « His cheeks are as beds of aromatic spices set by the perfumers; » and at verse 14: « His belly as of ivory, set with sapphires. »

The sense, then, is this: the breath, equally with the voice, and the sound of the voice, of Solomon — and much more of Christ — is most sweet and delightful, so that it seems to pour forth honey. « So Nestor's speech was sweeter than honey, » says Homer. « His voice, therefore, » says Pineda, book 6, Of the Affairs of Solomon, chapter 4, number 14, « was not hoarse, such as is that of the lustful; not harsh and discordant, such as that of rustics; not sharp and shrill, such as that of the timid; not deep and loud, such as that of the abusive; but middling and tempered, and perhaps even somewhat slender, yet with sweetness and pleasantness, » such as Laertius and Plutarch write Aristotle and Plato to have had, when they say that it is a sign of a peaceful spirit, and of sweet and composed manners. This sweetness the Bridegroom breathed upon the Bride; hence, at chapter 4, verse 11, he says to her: « Your lips are a dripping honeycomb; » and therefore, that the Bride might drink in this sweetness of the Bridegroom's soul and spirit, she sought his kiss, saying at chapter 1, verse 1: « Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth. »

The throat, that is, the breath, of Christ denotes that his inward affections, his loves and divine ardors, were most sweet — indeed, sweetness itself — which broke forth into most sweet words; hence also his evangelical precepts and counsels are most sweet, not to the flesh, but to reason, mind, and spirit: so Cassiodorus, St. Gregory, Philo, Theodoret, Bede, and others; whence St. Gregory and Philo add that the New Testament is the most sweet throat of Christ.

Again, Christ is altogether desirable and lovable, both because he is most beautiful, and because he himself first loves all men most tenderly and most ardently; whence St. Augustine, on Psalm 44: « Beautiful, » he says, « is God the Word with God, beautiful in the womb of the virgin, where he did not lose his divinity, and took up humanity; beautiful in heaven, beautiful on earth, beautiful in the womb, beautiful in the hands of his parents, beautiful in his miracles, beautiful under the scourges, beautiful inviting to life, beautiful not regarding death, beautiful laying down all things, beautiful taking them up again, beautiful on the wood, beautiful in the tomb. There you will not see him beautiful, where you have found him unjust: if he is just everywhere, he is comely everywhere. »

« And therefore, » says Nyssen, « that great John, when asked who he was, called himself a voice; and that blessed Paul gave proof of Christ speaking within him, who had lent his own voice, out of which, to be sure, Christ might fashion words. » The explanation of Psellus favors Nyssen, who says that John the Baptist was the throat of Christ, because he was his forerunner and herald, and was, as it were, his voice. Let the preacher, then, and the holy man, be assiduous in prayer and meditation, that he may drink in the Spirit of God, which he may then breathe upon others, so that he himself, as it were the mouth and throat of Christ, may utter nothing light or vain, nothing but what is holy, heavenly, and divine, approved by Christ and suggested by him; and let him who hears reckon that he hears Christ resounding within him.

In the anagogical sense, to the blessed the voice of God is most sweet, and God, seen by them, is altogether desirable, so that beyond him they can think of, love, or desire nothing. God, says Rupert, is altogether desirable, because when he is possessed, then he is desired the more, and his vision consists in desire, and desire in vision: for the blessed are satisfied by the vision of God, but in such a way that they always desire to see him further. For although the vision endure for thousands of years, yet it produces in them no weariness, but the highest desire together with full satiety. Hear here Richard of St. Victor: « The vision of his humanity is desirable on earth, but his glorified humanity is far more desirable in heaven, desirable in countenance, which the whole company of the citizens above desires; but the contemplation of his divinity is most desirable of all, to which nothing that is desired can be compared. » And Blessed Peter Damian, Opusc. 5, chapter 4: « He is altogether, » he says, « desirable, because the mystery of his humanity kindles every desire in the minds of the elect, so that it may not only summon them by the glory of the resurrection, but also invite them, by the very ignominy of the passion, to the example of imitation. »

Christ, Psalm 44:2, « was beautiful in form above the sons of men, » beautiful in body, more beautiful in mind, most beautiful in divinity. Again, Lebanon is the same as white and whitening: what is whiter than Christ, who whitens all sinners in baptism, and makes them fragrant with grace, flourishing in virtues, and fruitful in good works? So St. Gregory, Philo, and Richard of St. Victor.

Furthermore, Theodoret understands by Lebanon frankincense, so that here a twofold nature of Christ is signified: namely the divine by the frankincense, for frankincense is burned to God; and the human by the cedar, which does not experience decay nor corruption; whence Pliny: « Eternity commends the cedar. » But Abbot Lucas: « The comeliness of Christ, » he says, « was as frankincense, because every act of his is a sacrifice acceptable to the eternal Father: for frankincense was seen to be placed by the pontiff upon the victim for sin, and upon the holocaust, which was a special sacrifice, and he himself contracted nothing of the contagion of sin by dwelling among the wicked. » Thus Wisdom, that is, Christ, is compared to the cedar, Ecclesiasticus 24:17: « As a cedar, » he says, « I was exalted in Lebanon, and as a cypress on Mount Sion. »

CHOSEN AS THE CEDARS. — First, because « as the cedar is more beautiful and taller than the other trees, so also Christ, by the grace of his divinity (add also infused grace, inasmuch as it was the grace of the Head to be derived into the other members, that is, into all the faithful), excels all the saints, » says Cassiodorus. Second, because the cedar is fragrant and incorruptible, and so is Christ; whence the Bride, chapter 1, verse 3: « We will run, » she says, « to the odor of your ointments: » so St. Gregory and Philo. Third, Abbot Lucas holds that by the cedar are noted Christ's humility and patience, which exalted him after the manner of the cedar, according to that word, Philippians 2:8: « He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. For which cause God also exalted him, and gave him a name which is above every name, » etc.

The holy soul is beautiful, like Lebanon, and lofty, fragrant and incorruptible like the cedar: because if we cleave to Christ, we are made sublime through him, says St. Gregory, heavenly and immortal; whence Rupert: Christ, he says, was chosen as the cedars, because he stood forth like all the patriarchs, adorned with the virtues of them all, and because from him all the saints come forth, as cedars from Lebanon. See the many analogies between the cedar and the just, which I have reviewed at Ecclesiasticus 24:17.

If Christ spoke most sweet and most divine things to any mortal, certainly he did so to his mother, both outwardly by voice, and rather inwardly in the mind: wherefore she, living with him for thirty years, drank in, above all men and angels, his divine feelings and heavenly sweetnesses, so that to her, above all, her Christ was altogether desirable.

Holy men, especially preachers full of divine wisdom and sweetness, when they utter forth and breathe upon others, seem to instill divine honey into them, so much so that God and Christ seem to speak through their throats, and to pour forth their own sweetness.

If, of a cake of honey or of sugar, or of some food or most savory fruit — for example, of a fig, which has no seeds, but is wholly edible and delicate — we say: this cake, this fig is appetizing, it wholly excites the appetite; if of a most delightful wine, for example Falernian, Cretan, lachryma, or moschatel, which penetrates and delights the innermost parts of the soul, we say: this wine is supremely desirable, this wine fills the mouth, the stomach, and the whole appetite of man with its sweetness — what shall we say of Christ, who not only satisfies every desire but far surpasses it, who is the nectar and ambrosia of angels and of all the saints? If you should object with Isaiah saying, chapter 53, verse 2: « We have seen him despised, and the most abject of men, wherefore we esteemed him not; » to this calumny Isaiah easily replies, saying at verse 5: « But he was wounded for our iniquities; he was bruised for our sins, and by his bruises we are healed. » When, therefore, you gaze upon Christ crucified, and his most sacred head crowned with thorns pricking him most sharply, his eyes worn out with vigils and suffused with tears mingled with blood, his cheeks bruised with blows and disfigured with filthy spittle, that most sweet mouth filled with most bitter gall, his hands, the workers of so many miracles, pierced with nails, his shoulders worn by the weight of the cross, his back torn open by scourges, his feet also transfixed with nails, and his whole body livid and bloody with wounds, you would rightly say that Christ, even hanging on the cross, is altogether desirable; since all those members, afflicted with so many torments, were most efficacious remedies of our salvation, and the means and instruments of our happiness. Christ, therefore, is altogether desirable: so Almonacirius; whence St. Peter said to Christ, John 6:69: « Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. »

This sweetness God and Christ breathe upon the soul, when, speaking to it inwardly, he inspires heavenly thoughts, divine impulses, most sweet consolations and loves — inexplicable, therefore, and known only to one who has experienced them; whence David, Psalm 30:20: « How great, » he says, « is the abundance of your sweetness, O Lord, which you have hidden for those who fear you! » and Psalm 118:103: « How sweet are your words to my throat, above honey to my mouth! » hence Samuel, eager for this, 1 Kings 3:10: « Speak, » he says, « O Lord, for your servant hears. » So St. Anselm, Richard, Rupert, and others.

Again, in the apostles and the other saints many things are desirable, but not all; for they labored under concupiscence and venial sins; but the Blessed Virgin is altogether desirable, because she is free from all concupiscence and sin, and full of grace and every virtue; whence Damascene, sermon On the Nativity of the Blessed Mary, exclaims: « O desirable, and thrice-blessed woman! O divine image, for which God was found the maker, having a mind divinely governed, and given to God alone,

but with all desire intent upon that alone which is to be sought and loved, and with anger only against sin, and enduring it. » Then he demonstrates this point by point, through an induction of the individual members of the body and of her virtue: « Your eyes, » he says, « always looking upon the Lord, the everlasting and unapproachable light; your ears hear the divine word, and are delighted as by the harp of the spirit, through which the Word about to assume flesh made his entrance; your nostrils are soothed by the fragrance of the Bridegroom's ointments, which divine ointment indeed was poured out of its own accord, anointing his own humanity: for ointment poured out is your name, says Holy Scripture (Canticle 1:2). Further, your lips are ones that praise the Lord, and cling to his lips. Your tongue and throat discern the words of God, and enjoy the divine sweetness even to satiety. A heart pure, and free of stain, beholding God, who lacks all uncleanness, and burning with desire for him. A womb in which he dwelt who can be contained in no place; breasts of milk, which nourished God the child Jesus. » And, a few things being interjected: « Hands that bore God, and knees (a throne loftier than the cherubim), by whose help and aid weak hands and feeble knees gained strength. Feet led by the law of God as by a lamp, and hastening after it with unswerving course, until they drew the beloved to the one who loved him. You are wholly the bridal chamber of the spirit, a sea of graces: wholly beautiful, wholly close to God: for she, surpassing the cherubim, and raised above the seraphim, stood close to God. O miracle, the newest of all miracles! »

SUCH IS MY BELOVED, AND HE IS MY FRIEND, O DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM.

The Chaldee: this is the praise of my beloved, and this is the strength of the might of the Lord my beloved, by the prophet who prophesy in Jerusalem. The Bride concludes the praises of the Bridegroom with this, as it were, an epiphonema, as if to say: You, O daughters of Jerusalem, whom I adjured, chapter 5, verse 8, since you seek the Bridegroom who withdrew himself from me, asked for the endowments and marks of the Bridegroom, by which you might be able to recognize him when sought, saying: « What is your beloved more than another beloved, etc., that you have thus adjured us? » I have answered: I have described his endowments to you thus far; know, then, that such, and so beautiful and excellent, is my beloved, whom I seek through blows and wounds, at whose absence I grieve, and with whose love I languish.

...mouth I languish.

Cassiodorus notes that Christ is called beloved, insofar as he inspires in the Church and the holy soul the charity by which she loves him, and is in turn loved by him; but friend, insofar as he communicates his secrets to her, according to that word of Christ, John 15:15: « But I have called you friends: because all things whatsoever I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you. »

THE VOICE OF THE DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM.

VERSE 9. WHAT IS YOUR BELOVED MORE THAN ANOTHER BELOVED, O MOST BEAUTIFUL AMONG WOMEN? WHAT IS YOUR BELOVED MORE THAN ANOTHER BELOVED, THAT YOU HAVE THUS ADJURED US?

WHERE HAS YOUR BELOVED GONE, O MOST BEAUTIFUL AMONG WOMEN? WHERE HAS YOUR BELOVED TURNED ASIDE (in Hebrew פנה pana, that is, he looked back, so the Septuagint; the Arabic, he departed)? AND WE WILL SEEK HIM WITH YOU. — The young maidens, or daughters of Jerusalem, having heard from the Bride the marks and tokens of the Bridegroom, by which they might recognize him, press further, and ask by which way she suspects the Bridegroom to have gone when he withdrew himself, so that they, accompanying her, might seek him in that same place.

Christ, as I said at verse 2, withdrew himself, as it were, from the Church, when, on account of the negligence or wickedness of the prelates, he allowed heresies and scandals to run rampant, and faith and piety in certain provinces to be trampled down and ruined, as happened in the East after Constantine, when the Arian heresy was rampant, to such a degree that most of the eastern bishops became Arians: for then Christ departed into the West, and transferred the orthodox faith and worship of his Homoousion into Italy, Gaul, and Germany; whence the western, or Latin, orthodox bishops constantly opposed themselves to the eastern, or Greek, Arians.

So Christ departed from Africa into Spain, when that land was laid waste, and infected with heresy, by the Goths, Alans, and Vandals; so, in the succeeding ages, he withdrew successively from various provinces, and in this our age, on account of heresy, he has departed from Denmark, Sweden, England, Scotland, Saxony, etc., to the Indies, and there founded the Christian faith and piety. Then, therefore, the daughters of Jerusalem, that is, holy souls, especially of the learned and of preachers, grieving with the Church over this withdrawal of Christ from Christian provinces, ask of her, that is, of her prelates, whither Christ has gone, that is, whither he has transferred his faith, worship, and grace, so that they may partly establish it there, and partly recall and lead it back from there to their own people.

Whence St. Gregory, Cosmas Damianus, and others take these words of the conversion of the Synagogue, that is, of the Jews (for these are properly the sons and daughters of Jerusalem), at the end of the world; for then the Church's last old age will come, in which she will soon be reformed by Elijah, Enoch, and their followers, and will be renewed through the faith, fervor, and zeal of the Jews and of all nations; whence then Christ will be found and will feed among the lilies of the virgins, for then there will be 144,000 virgins, who will resist the lust and impiety of Antichrist even unto death, Apocalypse 14:1 and following, see what is said there. St. Gregory and Cosmas hold, then, that these are the words of the Synagogue, having heard the preaching of the gospel, wishing to be converted to Christ at the end of the world, and therefore asking the Church where the Messiah, or Christ the Bridegroom of the Church, may be: to whom the Church answers, that is, the doctors of the Church (

« My beloved has gone down into his garden, » etc.

The Jews began to do this soon after the death of Christ, when the Holy Spirit was sent at Pentecost; at the preaching of St. Peter they were immediately pierced with compunction, and Jews were converted to Christ, first to the number of three thousand, then five thousand, Acts 2:41, and 4:4. To this Almonacirius adds his view, holding that by this image of Christ is described the fourfold age and state of the Church of Christ, just as in the statue of Nebuchadnezzar is described the successive age and succession of the four monarchies of the world, Daniel 2:31: for Christ and the Church stand to one another as head and members, as bridegroom and bride; wherefore what is said of Christ applies also to the Church, according to the rule of Tichonius. Therefore, by the golden head of Christ he understands the first age of the Church, which flowed from Christ down to Constantine; for this was the most happy and golden age, under the apostles and their disciples, Saints Dionysius, Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, Quadratus, Irenaeus, etc.; these had the eyes of doves, that is, clear eyes, resting upon the streams of Holy Scripture, and tawny hair, because, living religiously, they led a heavenly life on earth. To this succeeded the second, ivory age of the Church, from Constantine down to St. Gregory, who flourished in the year of the Lord 600, in which age the Church was wonderfully propagated through all nations, even barbarous ones; this age is represented by the breast, arms, belly, and thighs — the belly, I say, not golden as the head, but of ivory: for that brightness of most ardent charity began to be somewhat dimmed, although the purity of doctrine and wisdom flourished greatly, which is best expressed by ivory; moreover that age retained much of that pristine and apostolic integrity of morals; whence the breast, arms, hands, belly, and thighs were adorned with gold, gems, jacinths, and sapphires: for in that age, which even in its ivory was blessed enough, there were Saints Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Cyril, and many others, the most splendid ornaments of the Church. To this second age succeeded a third, no longer golden nor of ivory, but stony, like marble indeed, signified by the legs — constant in faith, but colder through failing charity: this is from St. Gregory down to the times of Antichrist, an age much degenerated from the fervor of the two preceding. The fourth and last will be in the time of Antichrist, at the end of the world, when Elijah and Enoch will convert the Jews and the nations, and will instill into them their own fervor and zeal: whence this is noted by the golden feet. Wherefore, as the Church had a golden head under the apostles, so also she will end in golden feet under Elijah and Enoch, who will restore the primitive fervor and spirit of the early Church, both to Jews and to Gentiles: so he holds.

Almonacirius, who holds that by this image of Christ is described the fourfold age and state of the Church of Christ, just as in the statue of Nebuchadnezzar is described the successive age and succession of the four monarchies of the world, Daniel 2:31: for Christ and the Church stand to one another as head and members, as bridegroom and bride; wherefore what is said of Christ applies also to the Church, according to the rule of Tichonius. Therefore, by the golden head of Christ he understands the first age of the Church, which flowed from Christ down to Constantine; for this was the most happy and golden age, under the apostles and their disciples, Saints Dionysius, Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, Quadratus, Irenaeus, etc.; these had the eyes of doves, that is, clear eyes, resting upon the streams of Holy Scripture, and tawny hair, because, living religiously, they led a heavenly life on earth. To this succeeded the second, ivory age of the Church, from Constantine down to St. Gregory, who flourished in the year of the Lord 600, in which age the Church was wonderfully propagated through all nations, even barbarous ones; this age is represented by the breast, arms, belly, and thighs — the belly, I say, not golden as the head, but of ivory: for that brightness of most ardent charity began to be somewhat dimmed, although the purity of doctrine and wisdom flourished greatly, which is best expressed by ivory; moreover that age retained much of that pristine and apostolic integrity of morals; whence the breast, arms, hands, belly, and thighs were adorned with gold, gems, jacinths, and sapphires: for in that age, which even in its ivory was blessed enough, there were Saints Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Cyril, and many others, the most splendid ornaments of the Church. To this second age succeeded a third, no longer golden nor of ivory, but stony, like marble indeed, signified by the legs — constant in faith, but colder through failing charity: this is from St. Gregory down to the times of Antichrist, an age much degenerated from the fervor of the two preceding. The fourth and last will be in the time of Antichrist, at the end of the world, when Elijah and Enoch will convert the Jews and the nations, and will instill into them their own fervor and zeal: whence this is noted by the golden feet. Wherefore, as the Church had a golden head under the apostles, so also she will end in golden feet under Elijah and Enoch, who will restore the primitive fervor and spirit of the early Church, both to Jews and to Gentiles: so he holds.

To this also applies the version of the Chaldee: « The prophets answered, when they heard the praises of the Lord from the mouth of the assembly of Israel, and said thus: On account of what sin has the majesty of the Lord been taken away from your midst,

O you who are beautiful in your works above all nations! And to what place has your beloved turned aside, when he was taken up from your sanctuary? The assembly of Israel said: On account of the sins and rebellions and treachery that have been found in me; and the prophets said: Now turn to repentance, and let us arise, you and we, and let us pray before him, and let us seek mercy with you. » Bede notes the τὸ tecum, when they say: « We will seek him with you; » for he who seeks Christ without the Church, he says, can wander and grow weary, but cannot find him.

The penitent, or pious soul, knowing how great is the beauty and grace of Christ, seeks him in every way, so that day by day she may be united to him more and more, and at last intimately, that she may continually dwell with him, meditate assiduously upon him, etc.; whence she invokes the daughters of Jerusalem, that is, the angels and the saints, both those already blessed in the heavenly Jerusalem, and those still fighting in the earthly one. These, being invoked, ask whither the Bridegroom has gone, not because they are ignorant of it, but so that they may show the soul that seeks him, that she should reconsider where the place of the Bridegroom is, in which he is to be found, and that if she seeks him there, they will help her with every effort: for if she were to seek him where he is not — for instance, in pleasures, honors, riches, etc. — the angels and saints would in no way help her; but if she track him in chastity, humility, poverty, mortification, contempt of the world, where he is and is found, then indeed all will readily run to assist her in seeking and finding him. So did Magdalene do, both when, still penitent, she sought Christ in the house of Simon, and there, washing and bedewing his feet, received the full remission of all her sins; and also when, now converted, after the resurrection of Christ she sought him at the tomb, and therefore first found him appearing to her in the guise of a gardener, speaking with her and consoling her.

Cassiodorus notes, first, that Christ sometimes withdraws himself from the soul, or rather hides himself in her mind, in order to test, sharpen, and perfect her virtue; second, that the upright soul seeks the company of the saints, in whose soul Christ rests, so that she may find Christ in them, and become a partaker of him: for the saints, by conversing, breathe upon and inspire into their hearers the Christ whom they carry in mind and mouth.

How the Blessed Virgin sought Christ when he was lost, and found him in the temple, and many other things pertaining to this matter, I have said at chapter 3, verse 1 and following, chapter 5, verse 6 and following.