Sermons on the Song of Songs

Sometimes this anger is accompanied with impudence. The person who is reproved, not satisfied with showing resentment against his superior, goes so far as to defend impudently the fault for which he has been corrected. The man who acts thus has evidently become reckless and lost to shame. It is of such that the Lord said by the Prophet Jeremias, “Thou hadst a harlot’s forehead, thou wouldst not blush,” and by Ezechiel, “My jealousy shall depart from thee, and I will cease and be angry no more.” The very sound of these words makes me tremble. Do you not perceive from them, my brethren, how dangerous, how horrible, how dreadful a thing it is to attempt to justify one’s own sin? In another place He says, “Such as I love, I rebuke and chastise.” Therefore, if the jealousy and anger of God have abandoned thee, so has His love. One who is deemed unworthy of His chastisement, will certainly be considered undeserving of His love. “Let us have pity on the wicked,” He says, “but he will not learn to do justice.” Far from me be such pity! Such pity is more to be dreaded than the fiercest anger, since it blocks up against the sinner the path to justification. It were much better, according to the advice of the Psalmist, to “embrace discipline, lest at any time the Lord be angry, and you perish from the just way.” I pray thee, O Father of mercies, to exercise Thy anger against me, only let it be the anger wherewith Thou dost correct the sinner, not that by which Thou shuttest him out eternally from the way of justice. The first kind of anger visits us in love, of which it is the offspring; but the second is fostered and concealed under a dissimulation that should inspire us with terror. It is not, therefore, when I do not feel Thy wrath, but when I groan beneath its weight, that I ought to be most confident of Thy favour; for “when Thou art angry Thou wilt remember mercy.” “Thou wast a merciful God to them,” said the Psalmist, “and taking vengeance on all their inventions.” He is speaking of Moses, and Aaron, and Samuel, whose names he had just mentioned. And notice how he calls it a mercy that God did not spare them for their transgressions. And wilt thou, my brother, put away from thee for ever this mercy, by attempting to justify thy sin and resenting correction? Is not that the same as calling evil good and good evil? Will not this detestable impudence gradually lead to impenitence, the mother of despair? For how can one repent of that which he believes to be good? The Prophet denounces woe against them who thus confound good with evil. And that woe is eternal. There is a great difference between him who is “tempted by his own concupiscence, being drawn away and allured,” and the man who, of his own will and choice, pursues evil as good, and in a state of fatal security, hastens to death as if he were going to life. In the case of persons of the latter class, I confess that I sometimes could have wished I had dissembled and kept silence about the faults I observed them committing, instead of administering correction which they have made the occasion of such utter ruin.

You will tell me, perhaps, that I have the merit of my good action, even though it has failed to benefit the transgressor; that by discharging my duty I have delivered, at least, my own soul from sin; that “I am innocent of the blood of this man,” whom I have warned and exhorted, that he might turn aside from his evil ways and live. But no matter how you multiply such motives for comfort, I refuse to be consoled whilst I see my child dying before my very eyes. As if forsooth I sought my own deliverance in that reprehension and not rather his! What mother could restrain her tears even though conscious that she had spared no pains or trouble to save her infant, if, nevertheless, she now sees herself defeated, and all her efforts unavailing, and the little one already at the point of death? And if her tears are allowed to flow unchecked for the loss of a temporal life, surely I may give myself up to “lamentation and great mourning” over the eternal death of a son, even though my conscience can reproach me with no negligence in his regard. On the other hand, you see, my brethren, from how much misery that religious saves both himself and his superior, who, when reprimanded, answers with meekness, confesses with humility, submits with patience, and obeys with modest simplicity. To one like this, I acknowledge myself a debtor in everything. I am willing to be the servant and slave of such a soul, as of my Lord’s most worthy Spouse, who can say with all truth, “While the King was at His repose, my spikenard sent forth the odour thereof.”

Humility, my brethren, exhales a good odour, which, ascending up from this valley of tears, spreads itself around in every direction, and even perfumes the royal bedchamber with its sweet fragrance. Now, spikenard is a lowly plant; moreover, they who make it their business to study carefully the virtues and properties of herbs, declare it to be of a warm nature. Therefore it seems to me that it can be taken here very fittingly as symbolising the virtue of humility, but only that humility which is heated with the fervour of holy love. The reason of this distinction is that there is a humility which truth begets in us, and which is without warmth; and a humility which is produced and inflamed by charity. The former is resident in the intellect; the latter has its seat in the affections of the will. Thus, if a man considers himself interiorly by the light of truth, without any dissimulation, and pronounces upon himself an unbiassed judgment, I have no doubt he will be humbled, even in his own eyes, and lowered in his own estimation, although he may not yet be willing to lose the esteem of others. He will consequently have humility, but so far only as the effect of truth, not from the infusion of charity. For were he not merely enlightened by the splendour of that truth which gives him a real and salutary knowledge of himself, but also possessed with the love of it, he doubtless would desire, as far as is proper, that others should have the same opinion of him which he has himself and which he knows in his heart to be the truth. I say advisedly, as far as is proper, because, generally speaking, it is not expedient that others know as much about us as we know ourselves. Both the love of truth and the truth of love forbid us to desire the publication of facts the knowledge of which would injure our neighbour. On the other hand, he who, from purely selfish motives, keeps locked up in his own mind the verdict of truth upon himself, makes it plain to all how little he loves the truth, since he is thus ready to sacrifice it to personal honour or temporal gain.