Sermons on the Song of Songs

“They have made me keeper in the vineyards; my vineyard I have not kept.”

“They have made me keeper in the vineyards.” Who? Is it they of whom thou hast just been saying that they fought against thee? Attend, my brethren, and see if she does not now confess that the authors of her suffering have been also the cause of her advancement. Nor should this surprise us, whenever it happens that the motive of their fighting against her is the desire of her amendment. For who does not know that many are often fought against from motives of love and to their own advantage? How many do we daily see going forward to better things, elevated to higher things, on account of the charitable onslaughts of their superiors! This being evident enough, let me now show, if I can, how even when the sons of her mother have fought against the Church, and that, not with a view to her advantage, but from a spirit of enmity, yet their opposition, far from being hurtful, on the contrary has been profitable to her. For we experience a peculiar pleasure, whenever they, who intend our hurt, subserve our interests against their will. The interpretation just given embraces both these senses, because there have not been wanting to the Church either ill-disposed or well-disposed opponents, fighting against her from opposite motives. But she has derived benefit from all. She boasts of having profited so much from the sufferings caused her by her antagonists, that instead of the one vineyard which they seemed to have taken from her, she now has the joy of being set over many. “Those who fought against me and my vineyard,” she seems to say, “and who cried ‘Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation thereof,’ have done me the service of enabling me to exchange one vineyard for many.” This is the meaning of the words added, “My vineyard I have not kept.” As if she wanted to explain how it happened that she is now appointed keeper, not of one, but of many vineyards. Such, I take it, is the literal sense of the text.

But if we take these words of the Spouse in their obvious signification, content with the meaning which appears to lie upon the surface, we shall imagine ourselves reading in the Holy Scriptures of those material and earthly vineyards, which, as we see, daily receive of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth wherewith to produce the wine that ministers to luxury. And thus we shall seem to have extracted from the inspired utterance, so holy and so divine, nothing, I do not say worthy of the immaculate Bride of Christ, but even befitting any ordinary bride of any ordinary bridegroom. For what is there in common between spouses and the keepers of vineyards? And even granting that there are some points of agreement, how shall we show that the Church has ever been appointed to the guardianship of vineyards? “Doth God take care for” vineyards? But if we adopt a spiritual interpretation, and understand the vineyards to mean the different churches, that is, the different faithful peoples, according to the words of Isaias, “The vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel,” then perhaps we shall begin to see clearly how it is no dishonour to the Spouse to be appointed “keeper in the vineyards.”

This even appears to me to contain no unimportant prerogative. And you, my brethren, will be of the same opinion if you take the trouble to consider carefully how the Church extended her territory into such spacious vineyards throughout the whole world, from that day on which the sons of her mother fought against her at Jerusalem, and thrust her out, together with her new plantation. I speak of the “multitude of believers,” who, as we read, “had but one heart and one soul.” And that primitive plantation is the vineyard which the Spouse acknowledges she has not kept; but “it shall not be reputed as folly unto her.” For it was not so rooted out of Jerusalem as not to be planted elsewhere, and “let to other husbandmen that should render the fruit in due season.” Manifestly, then, it perished not, but peregrinated. It even increased and extended, as having a blessing from the Lord. Then, lift up your eyes, and see whether or not “the shadow of it covered the hills, and the branches thereof the cedars of God”; whether or not “it stretched forth its branches unto the sea, and its boughs unto the river.” And no wonder. For it is “God’s husbandry, God’s building.” It is He Who fertilises it, propagates it, prunes and purges it, “that it may bring forth more fruit.” When shall that, which His Right Hand has planted, be deprived of care and cultivation? Certainly, the vineyard where the Lord is the Vine, His apostles the branches, and His Father the Husbandman, shall never be allowed to suffer from neglect. Planted in faith, rooted in charity, purged with the hoe of discipline, fertilised with the tears of penitence, watered with the word of preaching, it shall thus abound with the wine, not of luxury, but of gladness, the wine which produces all manner of spiritual pleasure, without any uprisings of carnal passion. This assuredly is the wine which “rejoiceth the heart of man,” of which, no doubt, even the angels drink with delight. For such is their thirst for the salvation of men that the conversion and the penance of sinners are to them a new source of joy. The wine they love best are the tears of contrition, because in these tears they discover the very odour of life, the relish of grace, the flavour of forgiveness, the joy of reconciliation, the health of reviving innocence, and the sweetness and peace of a tranquillised conscience.

Therefore, from that one vineyard, which appeared to have been destroyed by the tempest of savage persecution, how many others have been propagated and have flourished throughout the world! And in all these the Spouse has been made the keeper, so that she may not grieve for not having kept her first. Be comforted, O daughter of Sion! If “blindness in part hath happened in Israel,” what dost thou lose thereby? Admire the mystery; but do not be discouraged at the loss. Widen thy bosom, and gather in the “fulness of the gentiles.” Say to the cities of Juda, “To you it behoved us first to preach the word of God; but because you reject it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold we turn to the gentiles.” God indeed proposed to Moses that if he would consent to dismiss the prevaricating people and to leave them exposed to the divine vengeance, he would himself become the father of a great nation. But the holy Lawgiver refused. Why? On account of the exceeding love which held him strongly bound to that people, and because he sought not the things that were his own, but the honour of God, and the profit of many. So great was the charity of this man of God.