Sermons on the Song of Songs

“I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.”

You recollect, my brethren, what I said in my last discourse, that the Spouse is compelled to reply to the attacks of certain envious critics, who, in outward seeming, appear to belong to the company of “young maidens,” but in disposition and sentiment are far removed from them. She answers them with the words, “I am black, but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.” Evidently they had been maligning her, reproaching her with her blackness. But observe the patience and benignity of the Spouse. Not only does she not return insult for insult, but she even meets malediction with benediction, calling them “daughters of Jerusalem,” who, for their malice, deserved to be called daughters of Babylon, or daughters of Baal, or any other opprobrious name that might have occurred to her. Clearly, she has learned from the Prophet, or rather from the unction of grace which teaches mildness, that the “bruised reed” must not be broken, nor the “smoking flax” extinguished. She considered, therefore, that they who of themselves were sufficiently excited, should not be subjected to further provocation, nor have other irritants added to the torturing stings of envy. Rather she endeavoured to be “peaceful with them that hateth peace,” knowing that she is a “debtor” even “to the unwise.” Hence, she preferred to soothe them with words of gentleness, because she was more concerned to secure the salvation of these weaklings, than to avenge the wrong to herself.

Such perfection, my brethren, should be the ambition of all. But it is especially the ideal after which all prelates are bound to strive. For good and faithful superiors are well aware that it is not dignity and pomp that have been committed to their charge, but the eternal salvation of weak and languishing souls. Hence, whenever they discover, by the symptom of a querulous voice, the internal discontent of any of these, although it be manifested by outbursts of reproachful and contumelious language against themselves, they realise that they are physicians rather than masters, and so instead of taking revenge, they immediately provide a remedy for this spiritual paroxysm. Here, then, is the reason why the Spouse calls her censurers “daughters of Jerusalem,” after enduring their malevolence and malignity, in order, namely, with words of kindness, to appease their disaffection, to calm their agitation, and to cure their envy. For it is written, “A mild answer breaketh wrath.” Nevertheless, in certain respects, such souls are really “daughters of Jerusalem,” and the Spouse speaks truth in calling them so. For, on account of the sacraments of the Church, common to them with the good, on account of the common profession of Catholic faith, and the (at least, visible) communion with all the faithful, and the hope of heaven, with regard to which we must not despair of any, so long as they live, no matter how sinful their lives may be—for these reasons, I say, the Spouse is right in giving the title “daughters of Jerusalem” even to the malcontents.

Let us examine what she means by saying “I am black (in colour) but beautiful” (of form—formosa). Is there a contradiction in these words, my brethren? God forbid! But I speak on account of the simple-minded, who are unable to distinguish between colour and form. Form has reference and relation to the composition of bodies, whereas colour, such as blackness, belongs only to the superficies. Not everything, therefore, which happens to be black is on this account alone to be considered as deformed. In the eye, for instance, black colour is not displeasing. Black stones have an agreeable effect in ornamentation. Black hair also enhances the beauty and charm of a clear complexion. And your own experience will furnish you with innumerable examples of the same. Countless are the things which, looking to their colour alone, you would pronounce unprepossessing, but which appear really beautiful in form. In this way, perhaps, the Spouse may combine with the loveliness of her form an unsightly defect of colour; yet this can only be the case in the place of her pilgrimage. For the time shall come when, in the fatherland, her glorious Bridegroom will “present her to Himself a glorious Bride, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.” But if she said now that she has not blackness, she would deceive herself, and the truth would not be in her. Wherefore, my brethren, wonder not that she confesses her imperfection, saying, “I am black.” Yet, at the same time, she boasts that she is beautiful. How, indeed, could she be otherwise, to whom the Bridegroom said, “Come, My beautiful one”? But she who is invited to come, evidently has not yet arrived at her destination. So, perhaps, this word “come” is used lest we should think the epithet “beautiful” applies, not to the discoloured Spouse, who is still advancing laboriously on her way, but to that blessed one that reigns immaculate in heaven.

But hear why she calls herself black, and why beautiful. Does she mean that she is black because of the benighted life she previously led under the power of the prince of darkness, whilst she still bore the image of the earthly man; and that she is beautiful by reason of the heavenly similitude, into which she was afterwards transformed, when she began to walk in newness of life? But if so, why does she not say in the past tense, “I was black,” rather than in the present, “I am black”? If, nevertheless, any one of you be satisfied with this interpretation, with regard to what follows “as the tents of Cedar, as the curtains of Solomon,” it will be necessary to suppose that the Spouse compares herself to the “tents of Cedar” on account of her former evil life, and to the “curtains of Solomon” on account of her present sanctity. Tents and curtains sometimes mean the same in the Scriptures, as in that passage of Jeremias where he says, “My tents are destroyed on a sudden, and my curtains in a moment.” According to this sense, therefore, she was black, at first, like the hideous tents of Cedar, but later on she became beautiful as the splendid curtains of the King.

Let us now see whether both her blackness and her beauty cannot be explained with reference to her later and reformed life. If we consider the exterior of the saints, that aspect of them which strikes our senses, how lowly and abject they appear, how wretched and contemptible! And yet they are all the while most admirable in their interior, and “beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.” Does it not seem to you, my brethren, that every such soul can truly reply to those who taunt her with her blackness, “I am black but beautiful”? Would you like me to show you one of these souls, at once black and beautiful? “His epistles indeed, they say, are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible.” This was St. Paul. “O ye daughters of Jerusalem,” do you thus judge St. Paul by his “bodily presence,” and despise him as discoloured and deformed, because you perceive him to be a man of diminutive stature, and afflicted “in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, in many more labours, in stripes above measure, in deaths often”? For these are the things that make him black. It is because of these that the Doctor of Nations is reputed inglorious, ignoble, discoloured, obscure, as the “offscouring of all.” Yet is not he the one that was rapt up to paradise, who, passing through the first and the second, penetrated, “by reason of his purity,” even to the third heaven?

O truly most beautiful soul, which, although dwelling in a weak little body, is yet so honoured as to be admitted to the vision of the celestial loveliness, neither rejected by angelic magnificence, nor repelled by the Divine Glory! And do you call such a soul black? She is “black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.” She is black in your judgment, but beautiful in the estimation of God and of His angels. And, although black, she is so only in her exterior. But to St. Paul “it is a very small thing to be judged by you,” or by those who judge “according to the face.” For man “looketh on the face, but God regardeth the heart.” Therefore, even if his exterior is black, he is yet beautiful interiorly; so that he is pleasing to Him to Whom he has striven to approve himself, although not to you, for if he still pleased you he would not be a servant of Christ. O blessed blackness, which begets in us whiteness of soul, luminousness of knowledge, and purity of conscience!