Sermons on the Song of Songs

“Stay me up with flowers, compass me about with apples, because I languish with love.” These words, my brethren, may be accordingly understood as addressed to the young maidens by the Spouse in the absence of the Beloved, in order to admonish them of the necessity of advancing in faith and good works “until He come.” For she was well aware that by doing so they would be fulfilling the good pleasure of her Bridegroom, securing their own salvation, and bringing consolation to herself. I remember to have explained this verse more fully and in a different sense in my book “On the Love of God”; but whether better or worse than now, I leave him to decide who may wish to compare the two expositions. But surely no person of prudence will find fault with me for giving various interpretations of the same text, provided nothing is said anywhere contrary to truth. For charity, which every part of Holy Scripture is intended to subserve, will be able to accomplish its work of edification all the more efficaciously, in proportion to the number of apt expositions discoverable for each passage. Why should we condemn in scriptural exegesis what we are constantly doing in the use of other things? Take water, for example. How many are the purposes for which it is employed in relation to our bodies! In the same way, there should be no objection to the practice of drawing out from any single text of Scripture a variety of apt significations, suited to the necessity or the use of different souls.

But the Spouse continues, “His Left Hand is under my head, and His Right Hand shall embrace me.” These words also, as I recollect, have been discussed at length in the above-mentioned treatise. But let me explain the sequence of the discourse. The Bridegroom has evidently returned. He came back, as it seems to me, in order to console by His presence His languishing Spouse. And surely she must have recovered her spirits in the society of Him Whose absence had filled her with sadness. He, on His side, has been unable to endure the sight of His dear one in sorrow. So He has come back to comfort her. How could He delay, when invoked with such ardent desires? And seeing that during His absence she has been faithful in the performance of good works and diligent in the pursuit of spiritual profit, inasmuch as she has bidden her daughters, the young maidens, to compass her about with the fruits and flowers of virtue, therefore is He now returned to her with a more generous largess of graces than on any former occasion. For with one of His arms He supports her drooping head, and is preparing to encircle her with the other and to clasp her to His Bosom. Happy the soul that rests on the Bosom of Christ and reposes in the arms of the Word! “His Left Hand is under my head, and His Right Hand embrace me.” Observe how she does not say, “His Right Hand embraces me,” but “His Right Hand shall embrace me.” By this we are given to understand that, far from showing herself ungrateful for the first grace received, she even anticipates the second with her thanksgiving.

Learn from the Spouse, my brethren, to be neither slow nor slack in expressing your gratitude; learn to render thanks for every favour bestowed. “Consider diligently what is set before your face,” so that none of the gifts of God, the ordinary no more than the extraordinary, the least no more than the greatest, may fail to be duly and gratefully acknowledged. Remember that we are ordered to “gather up the fragments, lest they be lost.” That is to say, we are required to return thanks for even the very smallest of God’s favours. For we always lose the benefit of divine graces when we neglect to requite them with thanksgiving. Ingratitude is the enemy of the soul, the extinguisher of merits, the destroyer of virtues, the waster of benefits. Ingratitude is a burning wind that dries up the fountains of piety, and the dews of mercy, and the springs of grace. Therefore it is that the Spouse hastens to give thanks as soon as she experiences the grace of the Left Hand, without waiting for the plenitude which belongs to the Right. For after mentioning that her Bridegroom’s Left Hand is under her head, she does not say, in the present, that she is, but in the future, that she shall be embraced with His Right Hand.

But, my brethren, what are we to understand by the Right Hand and the Left Hand of the heavenly Bridegroom, of the Word of God? Surely even of that which is called the word of man we would not say that it is divided in itself into such a variety of corporeal parts, or that it possesses a plurality of material members distinct from each other and distinguishing the whole into right side and left. Much less, therefore, does the Word of God, Itself very God, admit any diversity of what kind soever; for It is what is, as simple in Its nature to the exclusion of parts, as It is in essence unique to the exclusion of number. For the Word is that Wisdom of God of Which it is written, “And of His Wisdom there is no number.” Now that which excludes from itself all variety and distinction is necessarily incomprehensible, and by consequence ineffable. Where, then, I ask, shall we find words with which we may worthily describe that awful Majesty, speak of It with propriety, or define It accurately? However, I shall express as well as I can whatever little of that infinite Object I am enabled dimly to apprehend by the light of the Holy Spirit. We are taught by the example of the holy fathers, and by the custom of the inspired authors, that it is permissible to borrow suitable images from the things we know, wherewith to represent to ourselves the perfections of God; and instead of coining new words, to weave from the old a proper and becoming vesture for the ideas thus acquired. Otherwise we should commit the absurdity of attempting to explain the unknown by the unknown.

Therefore, since by right and left are wont to be designated prosperity and adversity, it seems to me that the Left Hand of the Word may be understood here as signifying His threatenings of chastisement, and His Right as representing the promise of the kingdom. There are times, my brethren, when the servile fear of punishment weighs heavy upon the soul. Whilst this is the case, the Left Hand of the Beloved should be described rather as over than as under her head; for so long as she is thus affected she certainly cannot say with truth, “His Left Hand is under my head.” But if she mounts higher, and exchanges the spirit of servitude for the more worthy disposition which makes obedience spontaneous, so that she is now more drawn by the hope of heaven than driven by the terror of hell, or, better still, makes the love of the good for its own sake the motive of her actions, then without doubt she will be able to say, “His Left Hand is under my head.” For she has now lifted her head above the slavish fear of chastisement, which is in the Left Hand, and has attained to a better and nobler disposition of mind. Nay, by the force of her worthy desires, she is even drawing near to the Right Hand, which holds the promises, as the Psalmist says, speaking to the Lord, “At Thy Right Hand are delights even to the end.” Therefore she has conceived an assured hope which she expresses in the confident anticipation, “And His Right Hand shall embrace me.”