Sermons on the Song of Songs

“In my bed by night I sought Him Whom my soul loveth: I sought Him and found Him not.

“I will rise and will go about the city: in the streets and the broad ways I will seek Him Whom my soul loveth: I sought Him and I found Him not.

“The Watchmen who kept the city found me: Have you seen Him Whom my soul loveth?

“When I had a little passed beyond them, I found Him Whom my soul loveth: I held Him and I will not let Him go, till I bring Him into my mother’s house and into the chamber of her that bore me.”

In the preceding discourse, my brethren, I enquired into the nature of the affinity between the Word Divine and the soul. And indeed such an enquiry was very necessary. For what can there be in common between such Majesty and such poverty that the loftiness of the One and the lowliness of the other should be represented as mutually embracing, as if they were equals, after the manner and with the affection of a bridegroom and his bride? If we can say this with truth, it is for us a source of joy and confidence exceeding great. On the other hand, to affirm it without truth is to be guilty of presumption deserving of the severest chastisement. For this reason, then, I thought it incumbent on me to examine into the various points of relationship between the Word and the soul. Many of them have now been ascertained, but some others remain still to be investigated. For who is so dull as not to be able to perceive how close must be the relation of conformity between the Image and that which is made according to the Image? In yesterday’s sermon, if you remember, I gave the former of these names to the Word and the latter to the soul. And in the same discourse I pointed out to you not only the relationship which comes from the soul’s having been made according to the Image, but also that due to her being made to the likeness of the Image. I have not yet however explained in what this likeness essentially consists. Well, then, let us apply ourselves now to the task; so that the more perfectly the soul understands the nobility of her origin, the more ashamed she may be to lead a degenerate life, and that she may zealously study to reform whatever she may find in herself corrupted by sin. Thus, by the grace of God, regulating her life in a manner worthy of her parentage, she may at last approach with confidence to the embraces of the Word.

Let her take notice, therefore, that it is to this prerogative of her likeness to the Word she owes the essential simplicity of her substance in virtue of which it is the same thing for her to live as to exist, although for her it is not the same to live virtuously or to live happily as to exist. For between her and the Word there is only similitude, not equality. There is a degree of affinity yet it is only a degree. For it is not the same glory nor an equal excellence to possess an existence which is identical with life, and to possess an existence which is not only identical with life, but even with a happy life. If, then, the latter perfection belongs to the Word, because of His sublimity, and the former to the soul because of her resemblance to Him, and without prejudice to His pre-eminence, the affinity of their natures becomes manifest; and manifest too the prerogative of the soul. To make my meaning plainer, I shall put it in this way: For God alone it is the same thing to be and to be happy; and this is the first and purest simplicity. “The second is like unto this,” namely, when for anything it is the same to be and to live; and such is the case with the rational soul. From this, which is a lower degree of perfection, an ascent can be made not alone to a virtuous life, but even to a blissful life. Nevertheless, not even when the soul has attained thither, shall it then be the same thing for her to be and to be happy; so that she may exult in her resemblance to God, yet in such a manner as always to have in her inequality sufficient reason for all her bones to cry out with the Psalmist, “Lord, who is like to Thee?” Still that perfection, viz., identity of life and existence, is a good degree for the soul, from which and from which only she is able to ascend to a blissful life.

There are, my brethren, two classes of living beings, namely, those which are endowed with both life and feeling, and those which possess life alone. Sentient things are more perfect than insentient, but superior to both is that life itself in virtue of which things live and feel. For life and that which lives do not stand on the same grade of perfection, much less life and beings which are inanimate. The soul indeed is a living thing, but she does not receive her life from any form or principle distinct from herself. And thus, to speak properly, she is not so much a living being as life itself. Hence it is that when infused into the body she animates it, so that, from the presence of life, the body becomes, not indeed life, but living. From this it is evident that not even for a living body is it the same thing to be and to live, inasmuch as it can be without possessing life. For a greater reason still, those things which are devoid of life cannot attain to that perfection. No, nor can it be reached even by everything which is called and is life, and by reason of this fact alone. For there is the soul of the brute, and there is the soul of the plant, the former endowed with feeling, the latter insensate. But for neither of these souls is it the same thing to be as to live, since, as many philosophers maintain, both existed in the elements before they began to animate, the former the body of the brute, the latter the body of the plant. From this it follows that such souls cease to live as soon as they cease to vivify, yet they do not also cease to be. They are disengaged and dissolved, because not only are they compounded with the matter of their bodies, but they are also composite in their own natures. For each of these irrational souls is not one simple entity, but results from the union of different constituents. Consequently, they are not annihilated at the death of the plant or the animal, but are resolved into their elements, and each of the constituent parts returns to its principle, the elements of air, for example, going back to air, the elements of fire going back to fire, and the rest in like manner. For such souls, therefore, it cannot be the same thing to be and to live, since they sometimes are even whilst they live not.