Sermons on the Song of Songs

What else, my brethren, sounded in our ears from the school of Christ when it was just now proclaimed that “He who loveth his life shall lose it”? He shall lose it, the Lord says, either by laying it down, as a martyr, or by afflicting it, as a penitent. Although it is a kind of martyrdom to “mortify by the spirit the deeds of the flesh,” a martyrdom less cruel indeed in its terrors than that which dismembers the body with violence, yet more painful by reason of its duration. Do you not perceive that these words of my Divine Master condemn the wisdom of the flesh, whereby we are relaxed in the luxury of sensual pleasure, or we devote excessive attention even to the preservation of our bodily health? That it is not true wisdom which leads to luxury you surely must have learned from holy Job, where he tells us that such wisdom “is not found in the land of them that live in delights.” But he who discovers it cries out, “I loved her above health and beauty.” And if wisdom is to be preferred to health and beauty, how much more to sensuality and turpitude? But what will it avail us to abstain from the pleasures of the flesh, if we make it our daily engrossing care to study the diversities of constitutions and the distinctive properties of the various kinds of food? “Pulse,” thou complainest, “produces flatulency, cheese causes indigestion, milk gives me headache, my chest will not suffer me to drink cold water, cabbage makes me melancholy, I always feel choleric after onions, fish from the lake or from muddy water does not agree with my constitution.” What! In all rivers, fields, gardens, cellars, thou canst find scarcely anything fit to be thy food!

Remember, I pray thee, that thou dost belong, not to the medical, but to the monastic profession; and that thou shalt be judged by thy fidelity to thy religious engagements, not in accordance with the state of thy bodily health. Have mercy, I beg of thee, first, on thy own peace of mind, then on those who have the laborious office of ministering to thy taste. Be kind to the oppressed community. Be kind to conscience. I say “to conscience,” not meaning thine, but thy brother’s, the conscience of him, namely, who, sitting beside thee, partakes of what is set before him, and feels inclined to murmur at thy singular mode of fasting. For he is scandalised either at thy detestable superstition, or at the hardness which he may be tempted to impute to him who has the duty of providing for thee. Thy singularity, I repeat, is a cause of scandal to thy brother, who will either judge thee to be fastidious, when he sees thee abstaining from the common food, and seeking for superfluities, or certainly he will accuse me of cruelty, because I do not make the necessary provision for thy sustenance. Vainly do some seek to flatter their delicacy with the example of St. Paul, who tells his disciple not to drink water, but to use a little wine for his “stomach’s sake” and his “frequent infirmities.” For, in the first place, they ought to take notice that the Apostle is not here recommending such a drink for himself, and that the disciple has not asked it for himself. In the second place, it should be observed that the prescription is not for a monk but for a bishop, and a bishop whose life was very necessary to the Church, then so young and tender. This was St. Timothy. Give me another St. Timothy, and I will offer him gold to eat and balsam to drink. But it is thou that dispensest thyself, and treatest thyself with such tenderness. It makes me suspicious, I confess, to see thee thus indulgent to thyself. And I feel apprehensive lest thou shouldst be deceived by the wisdom of the flesh, masquerading under the name and colour of discretion. At any rate, as thou art so pleased to have the Apostle’s authority for drinking wine, I would remind thee, lest thou shouldst forget, that St. Paul uses the adjective “little.” But enough of this. Let us now return to the Spouse. And let us learn from her not to keep our own vineyards but to lose them for the profit of others. This is especially necessary for superiors, who manifestly have been made “keepers in the vineyards” of the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ, Our Lord, Who is over all things, God blessed for ever. Amen.