Sermons on the Song of Songs

Here is another interpretation. Already the “day of sanctification hath shone” for the holy angels, breathing and wafting to them, by the constant flux of a perpetual motion, the mellifluous secrets of the Eternal Godhead. For, as the Psalmist says, “The stream of the river maketh the city of God joyful.” He refers to that city which in another place he thus addresses, “The dwelling in thee is, as it were, of all rejoicing.” But when the same “day of sanctification” shall also breathe upon us who dwell here below and shall expand its bosom, so to speak, in order to admit the children of earth, may it not then be described not only as breathing but even as breathing with labour, that is to say, as gasping or aspiring? Or again, to begin at a higher point and with a wider scope, we may consider that the inspiring day was made for us when, having “formed man of the slime of the earth,” the Creator “breathed (inspiravit) into his face the breath of life.” But alas! the devil, as an envious night, invaded with a simulated brightness that first day of inspiration and innocence; and promising a more resplendent light of knowledge, dimmed on a sudden the light of God with the darkness of evil counsel, and overcast the very dawn of our existence with the black cloud of woful prevarication. Alas for our first parents! “They have not known nor understood; they walked in darkness,” says the Psalmist, “and put darkness for light and light for darkness,” adds the Prophet Isaias. For the woman ate of the fruit, which the serpent offered her but which God hath forbidden her; she also gave it to her husband. Then a new day, as it were, began to dawn upon them, and immediately “the eyes of them both were opened.” Thus was formed the conspiring day, bringing to a close the inspiring day, and introducing in its place the expiring day. For the serpent’s craft and the woman’s persuasiveness and her husband’s weakness met and conspired together “against the Lord and against His Christ.” Hence They, viz., the Father and the Son, said to Each Other, “Behold Adam is become as one of Us,” because to the injury of Them Both he had consented to the sinners that flattered him. It is in this conspiring day, my brethren, that we have all been born. For we all bear branded upon our souls the impress of that primeval conspiracy. Eve is still living in our flesh; and by means of the concupiscence inherited from her, the serpent, with tireless solicitude, endeavours to make us participants in his own rebellion. It is because of this that holy men have cursed the conspiring day (as I have already mentioned), praying that it would be short and be quickly changed into darkness; because it is a day of contention and contradiction, during which “the flesh lusteth (unceasingly) against the spirit,” and the “law of our members” is found “contradicting the law of our minds” with a constant and unwearying opposition. Thus the conspiring day has become an expiring day. From that time forward it could be asked, “Who is the man that shall live and not see death?” Others may think that this universality of death is exclusively an effect of anger. But to me it seems to be also and equally ascribable to mercy, lest otherwise the elect, for whose sake all things are done, should be unable to endure the bitterness of long-continued contradiction. For they also are led captive under the law of sin, which reigns in their members; although they abhor the dishonourable servitude and the depressing strife, and submit to them most unwillingly.

Let us, then, my brethren, make haste to the day of respiration and reanimation, after that ancient and evil day of conspiracy and expiration, because “the days of man are short.” Let the resipring day receive us, before the suspiring night swallows us up, and involves us in the eternal gloom of the “exterior darkness.” Do you ask me in what this respiration consists? I answer that we begin to respire in a spiritual sense when the spirit in its turn begins to lust against the flesh. To fight against the flesh is to respire. You are respiring when “by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh.” You have respired when you “have crucified your flesh with the vices and concupiscences.” “I chastise my body,” says the Apostle, “and bring it into subjection; lest, perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway.” These, my brethren, are the words of one who was respiring, rather of one who had respired long before. “Go, and do thou in like manner,” I say to each one of you, that you may prove yourselves to have respired, and that you may know that the inspiring day has again begun to shine upon you. Nor shall the night of death be able to conquer this returning day, because it shall shine even amidst the darkness “and the darkness (shall) not comprehend it.” And so far am I from thinking that the “light of life” shall be extinguished with life itself, that I believe to none more truly than to the dead who have died in this light, may be applied the words of the Psalmist, “And night shall be my light in my pleasures.” Why should not the soul be able to see more distinctly when she has put aside the cloud or rather the filth of the flesh which now obstructs her vision? Certainly, once her material bonds are broken, she shall be “free amongst the dead” and seeing amongst the blind. Of old, as we read, when every eye was darkened “in all the land of Egypt,” the people who had by faith the vision of God, that is to say, the people of Israel, were alone able to distinguish objects clearly in the midst of the gloom, for “wheresoever the children of Israel dwelt there was light.” In the same way, amidst the dense shades of death and amongst the sons of darkness, the just shall shine with greater glory and shall see with keener sight, because they shall have passed out of the shadow of the body. On the other hand, they who have not respired before death, who have not sought the light of the inspiring day, on whom the Sun of Justice hath never arisen, they shall pass from darkness into denser darkness. Hence, they who in this life abide in darkness shall abide in deeper darkness in the life to come; and they who live here in light shall hereafter live in greater light.