Sermons on the Song of Songs

“Draw me; we will run to the odour of Thy ointments.”

If, my brethren, the ointments of the Bride are so exceedingly precious and magnificent, as you learned was the case when I was treating of them, what are the Bridegroom’s likely to be! And although I am quite unequal to the task of describing and explaining these in a manner worthy of their intrinsic nobility, nevertheless, the greater excellence of their virtue and the superior efficacy of their grace may be clearly inferred from this single fact, that the sweetness of the odour they exhale causes to run, not alone the “young maidens,” but even the Spouse herself. For, as you may have noticed, she does not promise any such effect in the case of her own ointments. She does indeed glory in and boast of their excellence, but she does not pretend that she has been excited to run by them, or that she would be so at a future time. It is only with regard to her Beloved’s ointments that that she makes such a claim or promise. And if she can thus be induced to run by the exhilarating influence of so slight a perfume, wafted to her senses from the unction, what would she not do were she to feel the ointment itself poured out upon her? It would surely be strange if she did not fly. But perhaps some of you may feel tempted to say to me, “Have done with commendations. When thou proceedest to explain to us in what the essence and nature of these ointments consist, it shall then be sufficiently evident what kind their properties are.” No, my friends. I can by no means undertake to give you any such explanation. And I must ask you to believe me when I confess that I am not even sure as to whether those things, which I feel suggested to my mind and am going to speak of, are really the ointments of the Bridegroom, or merely the creations of my own fancy. In my opinion, then, the Bridegroom possesses numerous spices and unguents of various kinds. Of these there are some whose fragrance it is given only to the Spouse to enjoy, because of her singular intimacy and familiarity with Him. The perfumes of others reach the “young maidens.” Others again diffuse their sweet odours even to those who are far remote and extern, so that “there is none who can hide himself from His heat.” But although “the Lord is sweet to all,” He is so “especially to those of the household”; and, as I think, the nearer the soul approaches Him by the merit of her life and the purity of her conscience, the fresher are the spices and the sweeter the ointments whose perfume she is permitted to inhale. Furthermore, in such matters the understanding is altogether unable to transcend the bounds of experience. And I am not so rash as to arrogate to myself that which is the prerogative of the Spouse. None but the Bridegroom Himself can tell with what infusions of spiritual delight He ravishes the soul of His best-beloved, with what aromas of sweetness He intoxicates her senses, with what inspirations He wondrously illuminates and refreshes her mind. Let Him have for her as for His own Bride a private fountain of graces, in which the stranger shall have no share, nor shall the unworthy drink thereof. For it is a “Sealed Fountain,” a “Garden Enclosed.” Still, the waters flow forth therefrom into all the public ways. These waters, I confess, are always within my reach and at my service, provided no man shows discontent or ingratitude when I draw from the common source for the use of myself and others. Now, with your good leave, I will, after the example of St. Paul, commend “my ministry in this part a little.” To me, then, it is certainly something of a weariness and a labour to go forth day by day to draw from the common streams of Holy Scripture, in order to minister to the wants of all of you, so that each may have at hand a supply of spiritual water for his every need, viz., for cleansing, for drinking, or for preparing his food. For the word of God is the salutary water of wisdom, useful not only for drinking, but also for purifying. Hence the Lord said, “And you are clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” But the same divine word may be employed to cook the crude thoughts and feelings of the carnal mind, using the fire of love kindled by the Holy Spirit, and transforming them in the process into spiritual reflections such as may serve as nourishment for the soul, so that she may exclaim with the Psalmist, “My heart grew hot within me, and in my meditation a fire shall break out.”

Those amongst you, my brethren, who by reason of the great purity of their conscience, are able of themselves alone to attain to loftier things than I am engaged in treating of, shall certainly encounter no opposition from me. On the contrary, I offer them my sincere congratulations. But I expect that they, on their side, will suffer me to provide simpler fare for souls more simple. Oh, who will grant me that you may all so abound with the light of the Holy Spirit as to be qualified to discharge even the functions of the prophetic office! Would to God the case were so! Then there would be no necessity for me to occupy myself with these instructions. Would to God that this duty had devolved on some other! Or, at any rate—which, indeed, I should much prefer—that none of you stood in need of such instruction, but were “all taught of God,” so that I might “be still and see” that the Bridegroom of my soul is none other than my Maker. But now, in the meantime—although I am unable to say it without tears—it is not permitted me to seek after, much less to contemplate “the King in His beauty,” “seated upon the Cherubim,” “sitting on a throne high and elevated,” in that Divine Form in which He was begotten, equal to the Father “before the day-star, in the brightness of the saints,” in which the angels desire to behold Him, God with God. Yet, a man myself, I will speak to men of Him as Man, according to the human form wherein, of His exceeding condescension and charity, in order to reveal Himself to us, He made Himself a “little less than the angels,” and “hath set His tabernacle in the sun, and He as a Bridegroom coming out of His bridal-chamber.” I will speak of Him rather as sweet than as sublime, rather as anointed than elevated. I will speak of Him as anointed by the Spirit and “sent to preach the Gospel to the poor, to heal the contrite of heart, to preach a release to the captives, and deliverance to them that are shut up, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

Leaving, then, to each whatever more sublime and delicate perfumes, so to speak, of grace and sanctity it may have been given him to feel and to enjoy from the Bridegroom’s ointments, I shall expend for the common use what I have received from the common source. For the very “Fountain of life,” the “Sealed Fountain” issuing forth from the interior of the “Garden Enclosed,” through the orifice of St. Paul’s mouth, as being truly that wisdom, which, according to the words of holy Job, “is drawn out of secret places”—this Fountain, I say, divides its waters into four streams and through these pours itself out upon the common ways. There it represents to us Him, Who for us has been “made of God Wisdom, and Justice, and Sanctification, and Redemption.” These four streams are also four most precious ointments. For there is nothing to prevent the same thing being conceived as both water and ointment, water in so far as it cleanses, ointment inasmuch as it perfumes. From these streams, therefore, which are at the same time odoriferous ointments, produced from celestial elements on the aromatic hills, such an odour of sweetness filled the nostrils of the Church, that, attracted in her members by the sweetness of the fragrance from the four corners of the world, she hastened to her Beloved, as being indeed that “queen of the south” who hurried from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, drawn by the pleasant odour of his fame.