Sermons on the Song of Songs

There are different species of detractors. Some without shame or concealment spit forth the poison of this pestilence, according as it rises from the heart to the mouth. Others attempt to cover the malignity conceived in their minds and which they cannot keep in, under the mask of a pretended embarrassment. You may observe them beginning by heaving deep sighs. Then, slowly and solemnly, with melancholy countenance, with downcast looks and whining voice, they give free rein to their detracting tongues, and their slanders are received by the listener only the more unsuspectingly, the more evidently they appear to be spoken with reluctance and to proceed from compassion rather than from malice. “It grieves me much,” says one, “because of my great love for him, that I have never been able to persuade so-and-so to give up such and such a fault.” “One thing,” says another, “is absolutely certain, namely, that nothing could ever have induced me to be the first to open my lips about this matter. But now that it has been made known by another, I cannot deny the fact. I am very sorry to have to admit that the report is true.” And he adds, “It is a great pity. For in other respects he is an excellent man, but herein, I candidly confess, there is no excuse for him.”

Having said so much against this most malignant vice, I will now return to the order of my exposition, and I will try to explain whom, in this place, we are to understand by the “righteous.” I do not suppose any sensible person will here understand this word in its original meaning, as signifying straightness in material things, as if they who love the Spouse were the upright in body. Hence I have to understand and explain it of spiritual righteousness, that is, of the uprightness or rectitude of the heart and the mind. For it is the Spirit Who speaks, “comparing spiritual things with spiritual.” It was, therefore, according to the soul, not according to the body, composed of the slime of earthy matter, that God made man upright, when “He created him to His own image and likeness.” For “the Lord our God is righteous, and there is no iniquity in Him.” Therefore, the righteous God made man righteous, like unto Himself. That is to say, He made man without iniquity, just as “there is no iniquity in Him.” Moreover, iniquity is a vice, not of the flesh, but of the spirit. By this you may know that it is in your spiritual nature, not in your gross and material part, that the image of God has to be preserved or restored. For “God is a Spirit,” and they who wish to retain or to recover their likeness to Him, must enter into their own hearts and apply themselves in spirit to that spiritual work. There “beholding the glory of the Lord with open face,” they shall “be transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

Yet God also has given man the uprightness that characterises his bodily frame. And perhaps the reason of this was in order that such physical erectness of our exterior and baser element, might admonish our interior, spiritual man, who is made to God’s image, of the necessity of preserving spiritual uprightness, and that the beauty of the body might stand in reproachful contrast with the deformity of the soul. For what can be so incongruous as to bear about a crooked mind in a straight body? It is surely a shame and a monstrosity that, whilst this “earthy vessel,” this material envelope, keeps its eyes lifted up from the earth, directs its looks to the heavens, and contemplates with delight the luminaries of the firmament, the rational soul, on the contrary, that spiritual and celestial creature, should bend her gaze to the ground, that is, should lower her internal faculties and affections to the level of material things, and, whereas she ought to be “brought up in purple,” should attach herself to unworthy objects and “embrace the dung” as the filth-loving swine. Be ashamed, O my soul, of having thus exchanged the divine image for the brutish. Be ashamed of wallowing in filth, thou who art of heavenly origin. “O my soul,” exclaims the body, “compare thyself with me and be confounded! Created righteous, like to thy Creator, thou hast obtained in me also a helper like to thyself, according to the analogy of corporeal uprightness. Whithersoever thou mayest turn thy gaze, whether to God above thee or to me below, ‘for no man ever hated his own flesh,’ on all sides thou dost behold various reflections of thine own beauty, everywhere in accordance with the dignity of thy position, thou art receiving friendly admonitions from the Spirit of wisdom. But whilst I have retained and preserved the prerogative of uprightness bestowed upon me on thy account, what confusion ought to overwhelm thee for having lost thine? Why must the Creator behold His own divine image effaced from thee, the while He contemplates thine preserved and constantly reproduced and exhibited in me? Now thou hast turned to thine own confusion whatever help was due to thee from me. Changed from a rational to a brutal and bestial spirit, thou art unworthy any longer to inhabit a human body, and dost but abuse my service.”

Such deformed souls cannot love the Spouse, since, being of the world, they are not friends of the Bridegroom. “Whosoever,” says St. James, “will be a friend of this world becometh an enemy of God.” Therefore, it is deformity or curvature of soul to seek after and to relish “the things that are upon earth”; whilst, on the contrary, spiritual uprightness consists in meditating and desiring “the things that are above.” But, in order that this uprightness be perfect, it must be found not alone in the thoughts and the feelings of the mind, but also in external conduct harmonising therewith. So, I would call him perfectly upright whose mind is imbued with sound doctrine, and whose practice is in keeping with his principles. Let faith and conduct reveal to you the condition of the invisible soul. That soul you may consider as righteous which professes the Catholic faith and performs the works of justice. But if either faith or works be lacking, you need have no hesitation in pronouncing her to be deformed. For thus we read, “If thou rightly offerest and dost not rightly divide, thou hast sinned.” We indeed “rightly offer” each of these two, faith and good works; but we do not “rightly divide” one from the other. Do not, my brethren, be righteous offerers and unrighteous dividers. Why would you separate works from faith? Such a separation is sinful and destroys the life of your faith, since “faith without good works is dead.” And would you offer to the Lord a victim that is already dead? For if charity be, so to speak, the soul of faith, what is that faith which “worketh” not “by charity” but a lifeless corpse? Are you, then, doing well in honouring God with such a putrescent victim? Are you doing well in trying to propitiate Him by offering Him the faith you have murdered? How can that be a peace-offering which is immolated with so much dreadful discord? It is not surprising that Cain, after murdering his faith, should rise up also against his brother. Why, O Cain, dost thou wonder that the Lord Who despises thyself has not regard to thy offerings? Nor is it anything strange if He refuses to look upon thee, who art so divided in thyself. Why dost thou deliver up thy soul to envy, whilst thy hand is employed in the work of piety? Thou canst not make peace with God so long as thou remainest at variance with thyself. Thou dost but further provoke instead of appeasing His anger, and if not yet indeed by impiously striking, at least by not rightly dividing. For thou art already a fideicide, viz., a slayer of thy faith, although not as yet a fratricide. Not even now canst thou be righteous when thy hand is extended to God, whilst at the same time envy and hatred of thy brother keep thy heart bent down to the earth. How can righteousness have place in thee, whose faith is dead, whose work is death, whose devotion is extinguished, whose bitterness is exceeding great? The offerer, I allow, has faith, but his faith contains no vivifying love. The oblation is right, but cruel the division.