Sermons on the Song of Songs

“In the streets and the broadways I will seek Him Whom my soul loveth. I sought Him and I found Him not. The watchmen who kept the city found me.”

“In the streets and the broad ways I will seek Him Whom my soul loveth.” The Spouse, my brethren, still thinks as a child. As it seems to me, she had anticipated that, after issuing from the tomb, her Bridegroom would immediately appear in public to instruct the people as before, to cure the sick, and to manifest His glory in Israel; if perchance those who said they would receive Him on condition that He descended from the cross, might be willing to receive Him now when He had risen from the sepulchre. But He had already accomplished the work which the Father had given Him to do, as she ought to have inferred from the words spoken whilst He hung upon the cross—I allude to what He said when just about to expire, “It is consummated.” There was no longer any reason why He should trust Himself to the crowds, who perhaps would not even thus believe in Him. Besides, He was in haste to go to His Father, Who would say to Him, “Sit Thou at My Right Hand until I make Thy enemies Thy footstool.” For when He was “lifted up from the earth” to the glory of heaven, He would then “draw all things” to Himself more powerfully and more divinely. Yet the Spouse, impatient to enjoy Him, but ignorant of the mystery, supposes that He is to be sought “in the streets and the broad ways.” Consequently she is once more disappointed, and compelled to say, “I sought Him and I found Him not.” so “that the word might be fulfilled which He said.” “A little while and you shall not see Me, because I go to the Father.”

We may imagine her saying to herself something like this, “How then shall they believe in Him Whom they have not seen?” As if forsooth faith were from seeing and not from hearing. What great thing is it to believe what one has seen? “But if we hope for that which we see not, we wait for it with patience.” and patience merits a reward. For it is written: “Blessed are they that have not seen and have believed.” Therefore, in order to leave room for the virtue and the merit of faith, the Bridegroom has withdrawn from us His visible presence. Besides the hour had now come when He should return to His own place. Do you ask me, my brethren, what place is that? It is the Right Hand of the Father. For “being in the form of God, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” Let this therefore be the place of the Only-Begotten, where He may rest secure, as beyond the reach of all that could injure Him. Let Him sit not below but beside the Father, so “that all men may honour the Son as they honour the Father.” In this shall appear the indistinction of their Majesty if the Son is confessed to be neither inferior nor posterior but in all respects equal to the Father. But the Spouse can at present think of none of these things. Inebriated with an excess of divine love, she runs hither and thither, seeking with her eyes Him Who is no longer perceptible to sight but only to faith. For she believes that Christ ought not to have entered into His glory without first manifesting to the world the glory of His resurrection, so that the impious might be confounded, the faithful filled with joy, the disciples magnified, the people converted, and He Himself finally honoured by all, when the visible fact of His resurrection had demonstrated to every man the truth of His prediction. Thou art mistaken, O Spouse of Christ. These things must indeed come to pass, but in their proper season.

Consider now in the meantime whether it be not more becoming and more consonant with the divine justice not to “give that which is holy to dogs” nor to “cast pearls before swine.” but rather, according to the expression of the Holy Scripture, to take away the impious one that he “may not see the glory of the Lord”; to preserve its merit to faith which, as we know, appears then to best advantage when we believe what we see not; and to treasure up for the good in the same faith that which is concealed from the wicked, so that “he that is filthy may be filthy still and he that is just may be justified still.” and may not “slumber through heaviness.” Yea, let the heavens and the heaven of heavens pine away and be confounded in their expectation rather than that the Father Almighty should be any longer defrauded of the desire of His Heart, rather than that the Only-Begotten Son’s entrance into His glory should be further delayed, even for the space of a moment, which in truth would be something supremely unworthy. Whatever of glory mortals could give Him, surely, O Spouse, thou canst not esteem it so great as to be able to hold Him back, even for a short time, from the glory which His Father has prepared for Him from all eternity? Moreover it would be quite unbecoming that the fulfilment of the Son’s petition should be longer deferred. Dost thou ask me to what petition I allude? To that which is expressed in the words, “Father, glorify Thy Son.” Nevertheless, as it seems to me, He uttered this rather as a prophecy than as a prayer. That is freely solicited which it is in power of the petitioner to take. Consequently, in making this petition, the Son is not consulting for any necessity of His own, but for our instruction and utility; since, with respect to whatever He receives from the Father, He is not only the Recipient but the Donor also with the Father.

To this it is necessary to add the observation that not alone does the Father glorify the Son, but the Son also glorifies the Father. It is necessary, I say, lest anyone should suppose the Son to be less than the Father, for the reason that He is glorified by the Father. That He in turn glorifies His Father is manifest from His own words, “Father, glorify Thy Son that Thy Son may glorify Thee.” However, it may still be supposed that the Son is inferior to the Father in this respect, that He appears to be devoid of glory until He has received of the Father the glory which He gives back to Him again. But listen to the Son Himself where He tells us that the case is not so, “Glorify Thou Me, O Father, with Thyself, with the glory which I had before the world was, with Thee.” The glory of the Son, therefore, being from eternity, is not posterior to the glory of the Father, and hence They, the Father and the Son, equally glorify Each the Other. But if such be the case, in what has the Father the precedence? Glories that are co-eternal must surely be co-equal also. Yea, they must be not only co-equal but one and the same, just as the Father and the Son are in Nature one and the same. Therefore it seems to me that when the Son said in another place, “Father, glorify Thy name.” He asked for nothing else than that He should Himself be glorified, in Whom and by Whom the Father’s name would be most certainly glorified. And He received the answer, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.” This response from the Father was in itself no slight glorification of the Son. But, as we read in the Gospel, He was more abundantly and more singularly glorified on the bank of the Jordan by the testimony of the Baptist, by the descent of the heavenly Dove, and by the voice of the Father, saying, “This is My beloved Son.” On the mountain also, in the presence of three of His disciples, He was most magnificently glorified, by the same paternal voice speaking once more from heaven, by the strange and admirable transfiguration of His Body, and by the attestation of the two Prophets who appeared conversing with Him.