Homilies on the Song of Songs 1 part 13/20

For to him who delights through fragrance, it becomes myrrh with spices, through the mortification of earthly members compounding the pure and sweet-smelling life, blended together out of the varied and diverse spices of virtue; but to him who seeks the more perfect food, it becomes bread, no longer eaten upon bitter herbs, as the Law prescribes (for the bitterness pertains to the present), but making the honey its own relish, whenever in its own due season the fruit of virtue sweetens the perceptive faculties of the soul (of which the proof is the bread that appeared to the disciples after the resurrection of the Lord), being sweetened by the honeycomb; and to him who thirsts, it becomes a bowl full of wine and milk—not a sponge soaked with gall and vinegar, such as the Jews offered as their loving-cup to their Benefactor through the reed.

But we are by no means ignorant of the riddles contained in these words;

how Paul was a myrrh-bearing tree, who 'died daily' and himself pronounced upon himself the sentence of death, and through purity and freedom from passion, breathing forth fragrance, became 'a savor of life' to those being saved; and how the living plants of the garden make bread for their Master, for whom he who sits upon the throne testifies, 'I was hungry and you gave me to eat' (for beneficence is the bread of gladness, sweetened by the honey of the commandment); and how again the flourishing plants of the garden pour out wine for the Bridegroom, to whom he says this, 'I thirsted and you gave me to drink,' mingling the wine with milk, not with water after the manner of the tavern-keepers.

And milk is the first nourishment of human nature—pure and simple and truly infantile and guileless, cleansed of every evil cause.

Having said these things to the bride, the Word sets before those who are near the mysteries of the Gospel, saying, 'Eat, O my neighbors, and drink, and be drunken, O my brethren';

for to one who knows the mystical utterances of the Gospel, no difference will appear between the words here and the initiation given there to the disciples;

for in the same way both there and here the Word says 'Eat' and 'Drink.'

But the exhortation to drunkenness, which the Word here makes to the brethren, might seem to the many to contain something more than the Gospel.

Yet if anyone should examine it carefully, this too will be found to accord with what is in the Gospels;

for what he here exhorted his friends by word, that he did there by deeds, because all drunkenness is wont to produce an ecstasy of the mind in those overcome by wine.

Therefore what is here urged, this both then came to pass and always comes to pass through that divine eating and drinking, when there enters together with the eating and drinking a transformation and ecstasy from the worse to the better.

'They shall be drunken,' says the prophecy, 'with the fatness of the house of God, and they shall be given to drink of the torrent of thy delight.'

Thus was the younger Benjamin, Paul, also made drunken, when he 'was in ecstasy,' saying, 'For if we were beside ourselves, it was to God' (for his ecstasy was directed toward Him), 'or if we are of sound mind, it is for you'—to whom in his words before Festus he showed that he was not raving mad, but was uttering words of sobriety and righteousness.

I know too that the blessed Peter was in this same kind of drunkenness, being at once both hungry and drunken;

for before he had taken bodily food, when 'he became hungry and wished to taste,' while his own people were preparing the table for him, there came upon him that divine and sober drunkenness, through which he was in ecstasy out of himself and beheld the evangelical sheet let down from above by four corners, containing within itself every kind of mankind in the forms of countless birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things and wild animals, shaped according to the differences of the objects of worship; whose beastlike and irrational form the Word bids Peter to sacrifice, so that when they are cleansed, what remains might become edible—when also the word of true religion is delivered plainly, the divine voice saying not once, 'What God has cleansed, do not call common,' but with this proclamation made thrice, so that we might learn that by the one voice God the Father is the one who cleanses, and by another likewise that the God who cleanses is the only-begotten God, and by yet another in like manner that the God who cleanses all uncleanness is the Holy Spirit.

Since, then, such is the drunkenness from the wine which the Lord sets before his fellow-drinkers, through which the soul's ecstasy toward the more divine things comes about, he rightly exhorts those who through the virtues have become near—not those who stand far off—'Eat, O my neighbors, and drink, and be drunken';

for 'he who eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself'; and rightly did he address those worthy of the food as brethren;

for 'whoever does his will' is named by the Word both brother and sister and mother.

And fittingly does sleep succeed the drunkenness, so that through digestion the power might be distributed to the banqueters unto well-being.

For this reason, after that great feast, the bride comes to be in sleep.

But this sleep is some strange thing, alien to the customary way of nature;

for in the case of ordinary sleep, neither is the sleeper awake nor is the waker asleep, but the two—sleep and wakefulness—cease in one another, giving way by their mutual successions and coming to each in turn; but here a certain new and paradoxical mixture of opposites and their conjunction is observed in her;

'For I,' she says, 'sleep, but my heart is awake.'

What understanding, then, must one take concerning these things? Sleep is a likeness of death;

for in it every perceptive activity of the body is dissolved, since neither sight nor hearing nor smell nor taste nor touch performs its own function during the time of sleep;

but it also loosens the tension of the body, and it produces forgetfulness of the cares that are in a man, and lulls fear, and tames anger, and slackens the intensity of those who are embittered, and produces insensibility to all evils, so long as it happens to hold sway over the body.

Therefore we learn this through what has been said: that she who exults in these things and says 'I sleep, but my heart is awake' has become higher than herself.

For truly, in those in whom the mind alone lives by itself, disturbed by none of the senses, the nature of the body becomes disabled as by some sleep and slumber, and one may truly say that sight slumbers through inactivity, since those spectacles are held in dishonor which are wont to astonish childish eyes.

These are the things of earthly matter—such as gold and silver, and those stones which by some fair color stir up covetousness in the eyes—but also the wonders that appear about the heavens, both the rays of the stars and the disk of the sun and the many-formed shape of the moon, and whatever else brings pleasure to the eyes because it does not remain forever but shifts together with the passage of time and is carried away along with it.

When all such things are disdained on account of the contemplation of the true goods, the eye of the body is disabled toward none of the things shown by it, since the more perfect soul is not drawn down, because it beholds by the understanding alone the things that are above the visible.

So too hearing becomes as it were dead and inactive, while the soul is occupied with the things beyond reason.

As for the more brutish of the senses, it is not even worthy to say that they are cast off from the soul from afar like some deathly stench—both the smell that tracks out odors, and the taste that sits attending upon the service of the belly, and touch besides these, that slavish and blind faculty which nature perhaps made only for the sake of the blind; and when all of these are held in check as it were in some sleep through inactivity, the activity of the heart is pure, and the reasoning faculty looks upward, remaining unresounded-through and unmuddied by the movement of the senses.

For since pleasure in human nature is twofold—the one wrought in the soul through freedom from passion, the other through passion in the body—whichever of the two the free choice takes hold of, this holds the mastery over the other.

So that if anyone should look toward sensation, being drawn on by the pleasure implanted in the body through it, he will live out his life without a taste of the divine gladness, because it is somehow natural for the better to be overshadowed by the worse.

But in those whose desire has its inclination toward the divine, the good remains unovershadowed, and everything that bewitches sensation is deemed to be something to be shunned.

For this reason the soul, whenever it is gladdened by the contemplation of Being alone, is awake to none of the things wrought according to pleasure through sensation, but having lulled to sleep every bodily movement, with bare and pure understanding it receives, through the divine wakefulness, the manifestation of God.

Of which may we too be counted worthy, achieving through the aforesaid sleep the wakefulness of the soul, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom belongs the glory unto the ages of ages.

Homily 11. 'The voice of my beloved knocks at the door:

Open to me, my sister, my near one, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is filled with dew and my locks with the drops of the night.'

'I have put off my tunic; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them? My beloved put forth his hand through the opening, and my belly was thrilled at him.'

'I rose up to open to my kinsman; my hands dropped with myrrh, my fingers with full myrrh'

'upon the handles of the lock. I opened to my kinsman; my kinsman had passed by,'

'my soul went forth at his word.'

'I sought him and did not find him; I called him and he did not answer me.'

'The watchmen who go about the city found me; they struck me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took my veil from me.'

This too is one of the great commandments of the Lord, through which the mind of those instructed by the Word shakes off from itself, as it were dust, all that is material in its nature, and is lifted up toward the desire of things transcendent. This is the requirement that those who gaze toward the life above should be stronger than sleep, and should keep unceasing watch with the mind, driving away the drowsiness of the eyes as though it were some deceiver of souls and a plotter against the truth.

These are dream-like phantasms:

offices of power, riches, dominions, vainglory, the enchantment that comes through pleasures, the love of glory and of enjoyment and of honor, and all the things which in this present life are pursued in vain by the unreflecting through some fantasy. These things, flowing away together with the transient nature of time, have their being only in appearance; they neither are what they are supposed to be, nor do they remain permanently even in the supposing of them. Rather, they seem to come into being and to perish at the same moment, like the waves that rise up upon the waters, which for a season swell together with the movement of the winds and hold their bulk in an unstable durability.

For in a brief moment, having risen up together with the breath of wind, again it shows the surface of the sea smooth and level, once the wind has subsided together with it.

In order, then, that our mind may come to be outside such phantasms, it enjoins us to shake off this heavy sleep from the eyes of the soul, lest by our zeal for what has no real existence we should slip away from the things that truly subsist and are genuinely real.

For this reason it also suggests to us a means of wakefulness, saying: 'Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning.'

For the light shining before the eyes drives sleep away from the eyes, and the loins constricted by the belt render the body incapable of sleep, since the perception of toils does not admit the relaxation that comes from sleep.

But surely what is signified through these riddles is clear: that he who is girded with temperance lives in the light of a pure conscience, while the lamp of frank confidence illumines his life all around; through these the truth shines forth, and the soul remains sleepless and undeceived, drowsing over none of these deceitful dreams.

And if this be rightly accomplished according to the Word's guidance, an angelic kind of life will take us up.

For the divine commandment likens us to these, when it says: 'And you yourselves be like men waiting for their own lord, when he shall return from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks they may straightway open to him.'

For those are the ones who await the Lord's return from the wedding, and who sit by the heavenly gates with wakeful eye, so that the King of glory, returning from the wedding, may again enter through them into that supra-heavenly blessedness.

Whence, according to the psalmody, the Bridegroom, having come forth as from a bridal chamber, betrothed to himself the virgin—that is, us—through the mystical regeneration, having re-constituted into virginal incorruption the nature that had played the harlot with idols.

Now, then, since the wedding has already been accomplished and the Church has been wedded by the Word—as John says, 'He who has the bride is the bridegroom'—and since she has been received into the bridal chamber of the mysteries, the angels awaited the return of the King of glory to the blessedness that is according to his nature.

To these, then, he said we must be made like in our manner of life, so that, just as they, living far from evil and deceit, are made ready for the reception of the Master's coming, so we too, keeping watch at the porches of our dwellings, may make ourselves ready for obedience, whenever he stands and knocks at the door.

'For blessed,' he says, 'are those servants whom the Lord, when he comes, shall find so doing.'

Since, then, it is blessed to obey the one who knocks, for this reason the soul that ever looks toward blessedness perceives the one standing at the door—the soul that keeps good watch over her own treasures—and says: 'The voice of my kinsman knocks at the door.'

How might one worthily understand, through these words, the bride's ascent toward the things more divine? She who with such authority and confidence banished from herself that harsh north wind and drew to herself the luminous Spirit; she who through her mouth wrought paradises of pomegranates whose spices were the choice fruits; she who set out her own garden as a table for the Master of creation, of which nothing that was set forth appeared to be cast off, but all things were attested to be good.

The wine mingled with milk, concerning which the Word attested her perfection, saying, 'You are altogether beautiful, and there is no blemish in you'—she is now in such a state:

as though she were now for the first time about to receive the manifestation of God, and as though she had not yet received and taken in the Word now standing before the doors, she makes the manifestation of his power to consist in the marvel of the voice.

For this reason she says that the voice of the Bridegroom touches not yet herself, but her door.

'For the voice,' she says, 'of my kinsman knocks at the door.'

Do you see how the course is boundless for those who ascend toward God—how that which is ever apprehended becomes a beginning toward that which lies beyond it?

For when, on the basis of what was said to her, we had hoped for some halt in the course of her progress toward the heights (for what more could anyone seek after the testimony of perfection?), then we behold her still within, not yet having come outside the doors, nor yet having reveled in the vision face to face, but still being led through hearing toward participation in good things.

This, then, is the teaching we learn through what has been said: that always, for those who advance toward the greater, the apostle's voice is fitting, which says, 'If anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not yet know as he ought to know.'

For in the things that had gone before, the soul knew him as much as she had apprehended; but since what has not yet been apprehended is infinitely greater than what has been apprehended, for this reason the Bridegroom has often appeared to the soul and yet, as though he had never yet come before her eyes, promises through his voice that he will be seen by the bride.

That the meaning may become clearer to us, I will add to the discourse a certain image by way of example.

For just as, if someone should come near to that spring which Scripture says arose out of the earth in the beginning—so vast in its abundance that it flooded the whole face of the earth—the one who has drawn near to the spring will marvel at that boundless water which perpetually gushes forth and pours out from it, yet he would not say that he has seen all the water (for how could he see that which is still hidden in the bosom of the earth?); so that, even if he should remain long by the gushing spring, he is ever at the beginnings of the contemplation of the water.

For the water does not cease ever flowing and ever beginning to gush forth. In the same way, he who looks toward that divine and boundless beauty—since what is ever being found is altogether newer and more marvelous than what has already been apprehended—marvels at that which is ever appearing anew, yet never comes to a stop in his desire to see, because what is looked for is in every way more magnificent and more divine than what has been seen.

For this reason, then, here too the bride, ever marveling at and being astonished by that which is being known, never in the things already known brings to a stop her longing for that which is being contemplated.

Wherefore now too, as though the Word were still knocking at the door, she perceives him and rouses herself to obedience, and says: 'The voice of my kinsman knocks at the door.'

Then, having given silence to her ears, she hears the Word that resounded through the voice.

And the word is of this sort:

'Open to me, my sister, my near one, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is filled with dew and my locks with the drops of the night.'

One might grasp the meaning of this by contemplation in the following way:

for the great Moses, the manifestation of God began through light; after this God converses with him through a cloud; then, having become higher and more perfect, he beholds God in the thick darkness.

And what we learn through this is of this kind:

when everything perceptible has been left outside, there remains for the contemplation of the soul only that which is invisible and incomprehensible, in which God is; as the Word says concerning the lawgiver, that 'Moses entered into the thick darkness where God was.'

Now that these things have been thus contemplated by us, it would be proper to consider also the kinship of the words set before us with what has been said.

There was a time when the bride was black, darkened by unenlightened doctrines, when the sun overlooked her—the sun that through temptations scorched the rootless seed sown upon the rocks—when, overcome by those who contended within her, she did not keep her own vineyard, when, ignorant of herself, she pastured herds of goats instead of sheep.

But since, having torn herself away from her natural affinity with evil, she longed through that mystical kiss to bring her mouth to the fountain of light, then she becomes beautiful, illumined all around by the light of truth and having washed away the blackness of ignorance with the water.

Then she is likened to a horse because of her swift running, and to a dove because of the swiftness of its flight.

Through these, having run past everything apprehensible and visible like a horse, and having flown over it like a dove, she first rests with desire under the shadow of the apple tree—naming the overshadowing thing an apple tree instead of a cloud—but now she is already enveloped by the divine night, in which the Bridegroom is present but is not seen.

For how could that which is not seen appear in the night? Yet he gives the soul some perception of his presence, while he escapes clear comprehension, being hidden in the invisibility of his nature.

What, then, is the mystical initiation that comes to the soul through this night? The Word touches the door.

And by the door we understand the mind's conjectural apprehension of things unutterable, through which that which is sought is admitted within.

Standing, then, outside our nature, the truth—through the partial knowledge, as the apostle says—knocks upon the door of the mind in certain intimations and riddles, saying 'Open,' and together with the exhortation suggesting the manner in which it is fitting for the door to be opened, holding out, as it were, certain keys—these beautiful names, through which what is shut is opened.

For the significations of these names are, quite plainly, keys that unlock hidden things:

sister, and near one, and dove, and perfect one.

For 'if you wish,' he says, 'that the door be opened to you and that the gates of your soul be lifted up, so that the King of glory may enter, you must become my sister by receiving my will into your soul'—as he says in the Gospel that he becomes brother and sister to the one who lives in his will—'and you must also draw near to the truth and become truly near, so as to be separated by no intervening wall, and you must have in the nature of the dove that which is perfect; and this is to be undiminished and full of all guilelessness and purity.'

'Taking these names, O soul, as certain keys, open through them the entrance to the truth, having become sister and near one and dove and perfect one.'

'And your gain from receiving me and taking me in will be the dew from my head, of which I am full, and the drops of the night that flow down from my locks.'

Now of these, that the dew is healing we have clearly learned from the prophet, who says, 'The dew that comes from you is healing to them'; but the drops of the night belong to the meaning contemplated above.

For it is not possible for one who has come within the innermost and unbeheld sanctuaries to meet with some downpour of knowledge, or a torrent; but it is to be cherished if the truth should sprinkle upon us the knowledge of them in certain fine and faint intimations, as a rational droplet flows down through the holy and God-borne ones.

For I think that by 'locks' hanging from the head of the universe are figuratively named the prophets and evangelists and apostles, each of whom, drawing as much as they could contain from the dark and hidden and invisible treasures, become for us rivers full of waters.

Such a river was Paul, cresting above heaven with the waves of his thoughts up to the third heaven, up to paradise, up to the unutterable and inexpressible words; and through all such lofty speech he floods with his discourse, yet he shows again that this discourse is but a dewy droplet in comparison with the true Word, when he says, 'We know in part and we prophesy in part';

and, 'If anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not yet know as he ought to know';

and, 'I do not yet reckon myself to have apprehended.'

If, then, the moisture of the dew and the droplet from the locks seem to be rivers and seas and waves when judged against our capacity, what ought one to reckon concerning that fountain which said, 'If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink'? Let each of the hearers take for himself, by analogy with what has been said, a conjecture of the marvel.

For if the droplet sufficed for the generation of rivers, what is one to reckon concerning the very river of God himself, judging by this droplet? But let us see also how the bride obeys the Word, how she opens the entrance to the Bridegroom.

'I have put off,' she says, 'my tunic;'

'how shall I put it on again? I have washed my feet;'

'how shall I defile them?' Well did she hear the one who commanded her to become sister and near one and dove and perfect one, so that through these the truth might take up its dwelling in the soul.

For she did what she heard, having put off that tunic of skin which she had wrapped around herself after the sin, and having washed from her feet the earthy defilement with which she had been entangled when she descended from her sojourn in paradise into the earth, when she heard, 'Earth you are, and to earth you shall return.'

Through these she opened the entrance to the soul for the Word, once the veil of the heart—that is, the flesh—had been drawn apart.

And in saying 'flesh' I mean the old man, whom the divine apostle commands those who are about to wash away in the laver of the Word the filth of the soul's steps to put off and lay aside.

Therefore, the one who has put off the old man and stripped away the veil from the heart has opened an entrance for the Word, who, once He has come within, is made by the soul into a garment for itself, according to the Apostle's instruction, who bids the one who has put off the tattered covering of the old man to 'put on the new tunic that was created according to God in holiness and righteousness.'

And He says that Jesus is this garment.

But the bride's confession—that she no longer takes up again the tunic she has cast off, but is content with the one tunic according to the law given to the disciples, the tunic which she put on when she was renewed through the birth from above—confirms the Lord's word, which commands those who have once been adorned with the divine garment no longer to put on over it the tunic of sin, nor to have two tunics, but only the one, lest there be about the same person two tunics that are irreconcilable with one another.

For what fellowship has the dark garment with that which is luminous and immaterial? And the law says not only this—that one must not have two tunics—but also that one must not sew the new cloth onto the old garment, lest the unseemliness of the one who wears such a thing become worse, since neither does the patch remain, and the old garment suffers a worse and scarcely-healed tear.

For, He says, 'the new patch takes away from the old, and a worse tear is made,' so that through it the unseemly parts are made public.

For this reason she says, 'I have put off my tunic;'

how shall I put it on again? For who, when he beholds about himself the sun-like tunic of the Lord, woven through purity and incorruption—such as He displayed at the Transfiguration on the mountain—would then consent to clothe himself again in the poor and tattered garment which, as the Proverb says, the drunkard and fornicator wears? Nor, having washed her feet, does she again receive upon her step the defilement that comes from the earth.

For, she says, 'I have washed my feet;'

He girded the feet with sandals—He who, having wrought the priestly vestment with skill according to the pattern shown on the mountain, blending in the weave the radiance of gold and purple and fine linen and blue and scarlet, so that a beauty compounded of all should flash forth—yet devised no ornament for the feet; rather, the adornment of the priestly foot was to be bare of every covering and free.

For the priest must in every way stand upon holy ground, upon which it is not lawful to tread with dead skins.

For this reason the Lord also forbids sandals to His disciples, since He commands them not to go into the way of the Gentiles, but to advance along the holy way.