Sermons on the Song of Songs

“The righteous love thee.”

At length, my brethren, and for the third time, I have come back to you from Rome. And this my last return has been attended with more auspicious omens, and more manifest indications of heaven’s good-will. For the Lion has ceased to rage, the power of evil has passed away, and peace has been restored to the Church. “In her sight is brought to nothing the malignant,” who, for nearly eight years, kept her in a state of turmoil and confusion with his fearful schism. But shall it be to no purpose that I am brought back to you from such great dangers? No, my brethren, since I have been restored to your desires, I am willing and ready to help you along in your spiritual advancement. As I owe my life to the merit of your prayers, so I wish to live only for your interests and your salvation. Since, therefore, it is your desire that I should resume my lectures on the Canticle, begun so long ago, I willingly consent. But I judge it better to repeat and complete the last sermon, which I was forced to break off, than to enter upon something altogether new. Yet I am afraid that my mind, so long distracted and preoccupied with cares, as unworthy as they were various, is not in a condition to handle this subject in a manner befitting its dignity. “But what I have I give you.” And to my faithful service God will be able to add that which I have not, in order that I may transmit it to you. In case He should not, then, let my intelligence be censured, not my good-will.

We have to begin, I think, with the words, “The righteous love thee.” But before proceeding to explain what they mean I must consider to whom they belong, that is, who is the speaker. For the commentator is expected to supply what the inspired author has passed over in silence. Perhaps, then, I had better assign these words to the “young maidens,” and regard them as a continuation of the foregoing. For after saying, no doubt, to their mother, the Spouse, “We will be glad and rejoice in thee, remembering thy breasts more than wine,” they went on and added this also, “The righteous love thee.” As I suppose, they did so on account of some of their own number, who, whilst seeming to run with the others, yet entertained far different sentiments, seeking the things that were their own, not walking with simplicity or sincerity, but envying their mother’s incommunicable glory, and taking occasion to murmur against her from the fact that she alone had been brought into the storehouses. What is this but the same which the Apostle refers to as “perils from false brethren”? These are the persons whose reproaches presently oblige the Spouse to justify herself, when she answers them thus, “I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.” It is, therefore, because of those who censure and calumniate her, that the good, the simple, the humble, and the meek “young maidens say to their mother, in order to console her, “The righteous love thee.” “Pay no heed,” they tell her, “to the wicked reprehensions of these censorious ones, because the righteous love thee.” There is certainly a sweet consolation in the consciousness that we possess the love of the virtuous, when, whilst doing good, we are maligned by the wicked. The esteem of the good, combined with the testimony of our own conscience, is sufficient to “stop the mouth of them that speak wicked things.” “In the Lord shall my soul be praised; let the meek hear and rejoice.” “Let the meek rejoice,” says the Spouse. “Let me but please the meek, and patiently will I endure whatever reproaches the envy of the reprobate may hurl against me.”

It is in this sense, as it seems to me, that the “young maidens” spoke the words, “the righteous love thee.” Such an interpretation, at least in my judgment, has the merit of being very reasonable and natural. For almost in every company of “young maidens some individuals are to be found who curiously examine the conduct of the Spouse, but rather to discover matter for criticism than models for imitation. The virtues of their seniors are a source of bitter grief to such, whereas they are eager to feed their minds on their failings. You may notice them going apart, meeting and sitting together, and then relaxing their insolent tongues to indulge in the detestable sin of murmuring. They are closely conjoined one with another, and they all but forget to breathe, in the ardour of their desire to hear and to speak detraction. They contract a friendship with a view to calumny; they live in harmony for the propagation of discord; they form an alliance to wage war against fraternal charity; and with an equal affection of concordant malignity they celebrate together the symposium of hate. It was thus Pilate and Herod acted of old, concerning whom the Evangelist narrates that they “were made friends on that same day,” namely, on the day of the Lord’s Passion. “When (they) come together, therefore, into one place, it is not now to eat the Lord’s Supper,” but rather to drink themselves and to give others to drink of the “chalice of devils.” And whilst the tongues of some communicate the poison which brings souls to a state of perdition, the minds of others welcome the spiritual death that enters through their ears. Thus, according to Jeremias, “death is come up through our windows,” whilst with itching ears and restless tongues, we are busy in ministering to each other the deadly cup of detraction. Oh, let not my soul have part in the council of slanderers, since they are objects of hatred to God, as the Apostle bears witness, saying that detractors are “hateful to God.” And hear how the Lord Himself, speaking in the Psalms, confirms this: “The man,” He says, “that in private detracted his neighbour, him did I persecute.”

This, my brethren, should not surprise us, since detraction is recognised to be more particularly and more directly opposed and irreconcilably antagonistic to charity, which is God, than any of the other vices, as you yourselves may take notice. For whoever commits a sin of detraction proves in the first place that he is himself void of charity. What other motive can such an offender have except to bring him whom he slanders into hatred and contempt with his hearers? The detracting tongue, moreover, wounds charity in all who listen to it, and, as far as depends on it, utterly destroys and extinguishes that virtue. And not alone on those present has it this effect, but on the absent also, as many as the flying word may happen to reach through the agency of the listeners, who repeat what they have heard. Behold how easily and how speedily a countless number of souls can be infected with the deadly virus of this moral plague by the slanderous word that “runneth swiftly.” Therefore, the Prophet says of detractors, “Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood,” as swift, that is to say, as the “word” that “runneth swiftly.” There is, perhaps, but one speaker, and he speaks but one word. And yet, that word, insinuating the poison through the ears, murders in a single moment the souls of a multitude of hearers. For the heart that is filled with the bitter venom of envy, can only send forth the bitterness of malice through the instrument of the tongue, according to the testimony of Christ, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.”