Homilies on the Song of Songs 1 part 16/20

For when the maidens saw the noble departure of the soul, of the bride, when she who said 'My soul went forth at his word' was joined to the Word, and knew that in going forth she sought him who is not found by signs and called aloud upon him who does not answer to names, for this reason they say:

How shall we ourselves recognize him who is found by no distinguishing sign, who neither answers when called nor is grasped when sought? Do you also, therefore, remove from our eyes the veils, even as the watchmen of the city did for you, so that some guidance toward the sought-after one may be given us.

Tell us what your beloved is, according to what he is in the principle of his nature;

Give us an approach to the knowledge of him through certain distinguishing tokens, you who have been filled with the Beautiful and for this reason have become fair among women;

Make known to us the object of our search;

of the arrow of love, by which you have been wounded to the very heart, increasing your longing through the sweet pain.

It would be better, however, to take up the same saying again word for word, so that the meaning set forth may be fitted to the text:

'What is your beloved, O fairest among women? What is your beloved beyond another beloved, that you have so adjured us?' Let us then hear her who has carefully removed the veil and, with the eye of the soul unveiled, looks toward the truth.

How does she sketch for them the object of their search? How does she paint in words the character of the one longed for? How does she bring before the eyes of the maidens him who is unknown? For since of Christ one part is created and another uncreated (we call uncreated that which is eternal and before the ages and the maker of all things that are, but created that which, according to the dispensation on our behalf, was conformed to the body of our lowliness),

or rather it would be better to set the meaning concerning this before our discourse through the divine words themselves:

I mean, 'Great is the mystery of godliness, through which God was manifested in the flesh'—he who, being in the form of God and having come, through the flesh, in the guise of a servant to dwell among men, once for all drew to himself, through the firstfruits, the perishable nature of the flesh, which he assumed through incorrupt virginity, and ever sanctifies together with the firstfruits the common lump of nature; through those who are united to him by fellowship in the mystery he nourishes his own body, the Church, and fittingly joining the members that are grafted into him through faith to the common body, he renders the whole comely, arranging the believers, becomingly and harmoniously, into eyes and mouth and hands and the remaining members.

For thus Paul says that 'the body is one, but the members are many.'

'And all the members do not have the same function'; but there is even an eye in the body that does not despise the hand, and a head that does not thrust away the feet; rather, the whole body is blended together with itself, through its members, by the variety of activities, so that the parts may not be in strife against the whole.

Having set forth these thoughts in riddles, he advances the discourse to something clearer, saying that 'God set in the Church apostles and prophets and teachers and shepherds, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.'

And again he says, 'Let us grow up in all things into him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, fitly framed and knit together through every joint of supply, according to the working in the measure of each single part, makes increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.'

Therefore he who looks to the Church looks straightway to Christ, who builds himself up and magnifies himself through the addition of those who are being saved.

She, then, who has laid aside the veil from her eyes beholds with pure eye the ineffable beauty of the Bridegroom, and for this reason has been wounded by the incorporeal and fiery arrow of love;

for intensified love is called eros, of which no one is ashamed when the shooting from it is not according to the flesh, but rather he glories in the wound when he receives, through the depth of the heart, the point of immaterial longing.

This indeed she too has done, saying to the young women that 'I am wounded with love.'

She, then, who has advanced to such perfection—since it was necessary also to show the maidens the beauty of the Bridegroom—does not speak of that which was in the beginning (for it was not possible that the ineffable should be made manifest by the power of words), but leads the maidens by the hand to the theophany that came to us through the flesh (which indeed the great John also did, keeping silence about what was from the beginning, but relating with care 'that which we have seen and heard, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of the truth').

The bride, therefore, says to them:

'My beloved is white and ruddy, chosen out from among ten thousands.'

'His head is gold, even fine gold; his locks are palm-fronds, black as a raven; his eyes are as doves upon the fullness of waters, washed in milk, sitting upon the fullness of waters.'

'His cheeks are as bowls of spice pouring forth perfumes; his lips are lilies dropping full myrrh; his hands are turned, of gold, filled with beryls (Tharsis); his belly is a plate of ivory upon a sapphire stone; his legs are pillars of marble, founded upon bases of gold.'

'His appearance is as choice Lebanon, as cedars; his throat is sweetness, and he is altogether desire.'

'This is my beloved, and this is my near one, O daughters of Jerusalem.'

For all these things, through which the sketch of the beauty has been made, are not indicative of the invisible and incomprehensible things of the Godhead, but of those things manifested according to the dispensation, when he appeared upon the earth and dwelt among men, having clothed himself with human nature; through these things, according to the apostolic word, 'his invisible things also, being understood by the things that are made, are clearly seen,' being manifested through the fashioning of the ecclesiastical order.

For the building of the Church is a creation of a world, in which, according to the prophet's voice, a new heaven also is created (which is the firmament of faith in Christ, as Paul says), and a new earth is fashioned, 'which drinks in the rain that comes upon it,' and another man is molded, he who through the birth from above is renewed after the image of him who created him, and another nature of luminaries comes to be, concerning whom he says that 'you are the light of the world,' and 'among whom you shine as luminaries in the world,' and many stars, those which rise in the firmament of faith.

And this is not yet the marvel, that there are multitudes of stars in this new world, numbered and named by God, whose names the Maker of such stars says are inscribed in the heavens (for thus I heard the Creator of the new creation saying to his own luminaries, 'Your names are written in the heavens'); this, then, is not the only paradoxical thing of the new creation, that a multitude of stars is fashioned in it by the Word, but that many suns also are created, illuminating the world with the rays of good works, as the Maker of such suns said:

'Let your light shine before men,' and 'Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun.'

Just as, therefore, he who has looked upon the perceptible world and observed the wisdom shining forth in the beauty of the things that are reasons, through the things that are seen, to the invisible beauty and the fountain of wisdom whose outflowing established the nature of the things that are, so also he who looks toward this new world of the creation that is according to the Church beholds in it him who is and becomes all in all, through the things comprehensible and grasped by our nature leading his knowledge, as by the hand, toward the incomprehensible.

She sketches for the maidens the tokens of the sought-after one, and having made the whole Church one body of the Bridegroom, she indicates through each of the members some particular thought in her sketch of the beauty, through which the whole beauty of the body is completed out of the parts contemplated singly.

She makes, then, the beginning of the teaching from that which is nearest and most proper to us;

for she begins from the body of catechesis.

just as indeed Matthew also did;

through these thoughts, then, the bride initiates the young women into the mystery, that:

your mind will not be led up to the ungraspable and undefined until it has laid hold, through faith, of him who was seen;

and that which was seen is the nature of the flesh;

for having said 'My beloved is white and ruddy,' she sketches in her discourse, through the mixture of these two colors, the property of the flesh.

This she also did in what preceded, naming him an apple, whose appearance is seen to be a blend of each of the two colors;

for the apple is white and reddens, the redness, I think, symbolically indicating the nature of blood.

But since all flesh is constituted in a birth, marriage in every case paving the way for the birth of those who come into this life through generation, in order that no one, having admitted the generation of flesh concerning the mystery of godliness, might slip down in his mind toward the works and passions of nature, imagining the origin of that flesh also to be of the same kind as all others, for this reason she confessed that he who partook of flesh and blood was white and ruddy, hinting through the two colors at the nature of the body, yet does not say that his childbearing came to be of like manner with the common birth.

But out of all the ten thousands—of nature flowing through the birth of those who come after, from the time men came into being and to whatever extent it will proceed—this one alone has touched this life by the new manner of childbearing, in which nature did not cooperate toward his coming to be, but rather served.

For this reason she says that this white and ruddy one, who sojourned in life through flesh and blood, alone out of all the ten thousands was chosen out from virginal purity;

of whom the conception was without union, the childbearing without defilement, the travail without pain;

of whom the bridal chamber was the power of the Most High, like a cloud overshadowing the virginity, and the marriage-torch was the illumination of the Holy Spirit, and the couch was passionlessness, and the marriage was incorruption.

He, then, who came to be from such things was rightly named 'chosen out from among all the ten thousands,' which signifies that he was not from childbed;

for of him alone the generation was apart from childbearing, just as also the constitution was apart from marriage.

For it is not proper to speak the word 'childbearing' concerning her who is incorrupt and unacquainted with marriage, because the terms of virginity and of childbearing are incompatible with respect to the same person.

But just as a son was given to us without a father, so also the child was begotten without childbearing.

For as the Virgin did not know how the God-receiving body was constituted in her body, so neither did she perceive the birth, the prophecy testifying to her the painlessness of the travail;

for Isaiah says that 'Before the pangs of travail came, she escaped and gave birth to a male.'

For this reason he is 'chosen out from childbed' and, in each respect, foreign to the sequence of nature, neither having begun from pleasure nor having come forth through pains.

And this comes to be according to due sequence and is not outside what is fitting;

for since she who introduced death into nature through sin was condemned to bear children in sorrows and pains, it was altogether necessary that the mother of Life should begin from joy in the conception and complete the birth through joy.

'Rejoice,' he says, 'you who are full of grace,' the archangel casting out by this voice, addressed to her, the sorrow that had from the beginning been allotted to childbirth by sin.

having come to be, the one rightly named white and ruddy on account of the flesh and the blood, and 'chosen out from among the ten thousands' on account of the incorrupt and passionless peculiarity of his birth beyond all the rest.

Or perhaps it was also on account of the other forms of his generation, those that came to be apart from childbearing, that the bride applied this saying to him.

But you are surely not ignorant of how often he was begotten—he who is the firstborn of all the new creation, the firstborn among many brethren, the firstborn from the dead, the first to loose the pangs of death and to pave for all the birth from the dead through the resurrection.

For in all these he was begotten, yet he did not pass into generation through childbearing;

for the birth from water did not admit the passion of childbearing, nor did the regeneration from the dead, nor the primogeniture of this divine creation, but in all these the birth is pure of childbearing.

For this reason she says, 'Chosen out from among tens of thousands.'

It would now be the fitting moment to consider, through the words already spoken, what manner of beauty of his she recounts limb by limb.

'His head,' she says, 'is gold, kephaz.'

But the Hebrew word, if it be rendered into our own tongue, indicates by this expression gold that is pure and refined and free from every admixture.

Those who rendered the Hebrew expressions into Greek seem to me to have left the word kephaz untranslated, because they could find in the Greek vocabulary no term capable of conveying the sense that is discerned in the Hebrew word.

But having learned this—that such a word indicates what is genuinely pure, unmixed with and incapable of receiving any foul matter—we are led to understand concerning the text before us that Christ is the head of the body, the Church.

And when we now say 'Christ,' we do not refer this name to the eternity of the Godhead, but to the God-receiving man, who appeared upon earth and dwelt among men, the offspring of virginity, in whom dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily—the first-fruits of the common lump, through whom the Word clothed itself with our nature, rendering it undefiled, purged of all the passions inborn within it.

For thus the prophet says concerning him: 'He committed no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth'—he who was tempted in all things according to the likeness of our nature, yet without sin.

The head, then, of the body of the Church—the first-fruits of our whole nature—is the gold that is pure and unmixed with and incapable of receiving any evil; while the locks, once dark and black and likened in appearance to ravens (I mean those ravens whose work it is, according to the proverbial saying, to peck out the eyes and to make of those deprived of their organs of sight food for the young of the eagles)—these locks, having become fir trees, those lofty trees that reach to heaven, by running up from earth to the heavenly height, become an adornment to the beauty of the Bridegroom, having attached themselves to the divine head.

You are surely not ignorant of what the work of these locks is, having learned above from the very voice of the Bridegroom that 'My locks are filled with the drops of the night.'

Those, then, are the locks that drip, which the prophets have named clouds, from which comes the rain of teaching that waters the living fields for the fruitfulness of God's husbandry.

And I think that by the locks the Word figuratively signifies the apostles, some of whom were formerly dark by reason of the practices of their life;

sprinkling upon the body of the Church the word of the hidden and dark mysteries.

These, then, we have supposed to be called locks by the bride, who, hanging from the golden head, make through themselves no small addition to its comeliness, being agitated by the breeze of the Spirit.

These become a crown of beauty to the undefiled head, adorning it with their own encircling.

For it seems to me that the prophecy speaks concerning these when it says: 'You have set upon his head a crown of precious stone.'

so that they may be understood under both names:

as comely locks and as precious stones adorning the head through themselves.

It would be consistent, then, to consider also with the discourse what has been said concerning the eyes.

'His eyes are as doves beside the fullnesses of waters, washed in milk, sitting beside the fullnesses of waters.'

The meaning of these words is higher than our comprehension—for whatever we may conceive concerning them, we reckon it to be less than the truth—yet as we examined it with diligence, it appeared to us to be somewhat as follows:

Somewhere in his own words the divine apostle says that the eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' establishing thereby the doctrine that the body of the Church ought to act by means of both—the discerning faculty of truth being rightly blended with the practical; for neither does contemplation by itself perfect the soul, unless the works also be present that set the moral life aright, nor does practical philosophy furnish sufficient benefit unless true piety guides what is done.

If, then, the conjunction of the eyes with the hands is necessary, we are perhaps led by what has been said first to consider who the eyes are, and then to receive in contemplation the praise concerning them.

But the discourse concerning the hands we shall reserve for its own proper place.

For the proper work of the eyes by nature is to see.

Wherefore, according to their bodily position, they are set above all the other organs of sense, appointed by nature to be placed foremost for the guidance of the whole body.

When, therefore, we hear those who guide toward the truth so named by the divine Scripture—one of whom was called 'the seer,' another 'the beholder,' and yet another 'the watchman,' thus named by God through prophecy—we are led thereby to think that here those appointed to look upon, to oversee, and to survey are being called eyes.

And we are taught that the marvel concerning them comes about by a certain comparative likeness, the juxtaposition with what is superior sketching out their beauty;

for she says, 'His eyes are as doves.'

For truly a fine praise of such eyes is guilelessness, which those achieve who no longer defile themselves with the fleshly life, but live and walk by the Spirit;

for the spiritual and immaterial life is characterized by the form of the dove, since the Holy Spirit itself was thus seen by John flying from the heavens upon the water.

Therefore he who is appointed by God to serve as an eye to the body of the Church, if he is to oversee, look upon, and survey purely, ought to wash away in the water every discharge that comes from evil.

But it is not one water that cleanses the eyes; rather she says that there are many fullnesses of such waters.

For as many as the virtues are, so many springs of cleansing waters must we conceive, through which the eyes become ever purer than themselves;

such a spring of cleansing water is temperance, another such spring is humility, and truth, and righteousness, and courage, and the desire for the good, and estrangement from evil.

These and such as these are waters from one spring, but gathered from diverse streams into one fullness, through which cleansing comes to the eyes from every passionate discharge.

of the saying, 'Washed in milk.'

A fitting praise for such eyes is that the dove of this kind should be made beautiful by being washed in milk;

for true is the observation concerning milk, that alone among liquids it has this peculiar property, that no image or likeness of anything is reflected in it.

For all things that are of a liquid nature, after the manner of mirrors, cause by the smoothness of their surface the likenesses of those who look into them to be reflected back; but in milk alone does such image-making have no place.

For which reason the most perfect praise of the eyes of the Church is this: that they sketch within themselves through deception nothing unsubstantial, erring, or vain apart from the truth of things that are, but behold that which truly is, and do not admit the deceived sights and phantasms of this present life.

For this reason the washing of milk was judged safe by the perfect soul for the purity of the eyes.

But the discourse that follows is a law for those who give heed, concerning that upon which the eyes ought to have their earnest attention;

for she says, 'Sitting beside the fullnesses of waters.'

For such a saying enjoins the continual attendance of attention upon divine learning, through which he praises the pure eyes and also teaches us how we may ever recover the proper beauty of the eyes by sitting beside the fullnesses of the waters; whereas the many of those appointed to be eyes, having abandoned to sit beside such fullnesses, sit instead beside the rivers of Babylon, fulfilling the accusation that came from the face of God against such: 'They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have hewn out for themselves broken cisterns, which can hold no water.'

The lesson, then, is how the eye may become beautiful, seemly and fitting to the golden head: that it be undefiled like the dove, unerring and undeceived according to the nature of milk, imagining nothing through any deception of unsubstantial things, and that it sit through perseverance and attendance beside the fullnesses of the divine waters, after the likeness of the tree planted beside the channels of the waters and not removed;

for thus the fruit will be brought forth in its proper season, and the branch will be kept ever-flourishing, agitated with the fair color of its leaves.

But now many of the eyes, neglecting these spiritual waters and caring little for attendance upon the word, either dig for themselves the cistern of avarice, or quarry out vainglory, or sink the well of pride, or dig with diligence certain other cisterns of deception, which have not the nature to hold continually the water they eagerly seek—the honor and power and glory here below, about which the earnestness of the many is engaged, dissolving away at the very moment of its coming together, and leaving no trace of their vain earnestness among those who have been deceived.

The Word desires those who see and oversee to be such, before whom there ought to be set, as a certain covering of eyebrows, the security of divine teachings, and covered over by humility, as by a certain covering of eyelids, the purity and radiance of their conduct, lest ever the beam of conceit, falling upon the pure pupil, become a hindrance to sight.

But what praise there is, after the eyes, of the members of the Bridegroom, we shall proceed to in what follows, God granting it, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory unto the ages.

Discourse 14. 'His cheeks are as bowls of spice pouring forth perfumes; his lips are lilies dropping choice myrrh in fullness;'

'upon golden bases; his form is as choice Lebanon, as cedars; his throat is sweetness and altogether desire.'

'This is my beloved, and this is my near kinsman, O daughters of Jerusalem.'

He who nourishes with guileless milk that which is still an infant in spiritual age—becoming, as the apostle himself says, a nurse to the newborn in the Church—reserves the bread of wisdom for those perfected according to the inner man, saying:

'We speak wisdom among the perfect,' who, having the senses of the soul exercised by the habit of good teachings, become well fitted to receive the bread of wisdom, needing for nourishment the cheek that grinds fine among the teeth of their reasonings.

There must therefore be cheeks also in the body of Christ for those who no longer cling to the breast of the word but already long for the more solid nourishment, concerning whom the bride now makes her discourse, saying thus:

'His cheeks are as bowls of spice pouring forth perfumes.'

Now that the discourse concerning the cheeks follows consistently upon what was contemplated concerning the eyes would be clear to everyone who listens with understanding;

for on this account the eye must, while attending upon the fullness of the spiritual waters, be washed in the unerring and guileless milk, being likened to the innocent dove, so that it may make all who contribute to the body of the Church partakers of its own good things.

For which reason also the great Isaiah bids him who has ascended through his conduct to the high mountain to cry out with a loud voice, so that those who hear may through him know the Lord who comes with might, and the arm that has dominion over the things that are, who shepherds the flock and gathers the lambs, and comforts those who through good hopes are with child, who has measured the heaven with a span and encompasses all the earth in his hand—and whatever else besides these the prophecy says must be proclaimed by him who has ascended to the summit.

If, then, the power from the waters and the milk comes to the eyes for this end—the knowledge of the truth—consistently after these are praised the cheeks, whose work is to grind fine the nourishment through which the nature and strength of the body is preserved.

Let us see, then, in what the praise of the cheeks consists.

Let us hear from the bride herself what things she sets forth concerning them:

'His cheeks,' she says, 'are as bowls of spice pouring forth perfumes.'

If by the name of the bowl the Word signifies the outspread form of drinking-vessels, in which the hollow is concealed by the fashioning—the shape being neither made too deep nor spread out flat in a straight plane, so as to seem neither exactly hollow nor level—if, then, the bride indicates such a form through the bowl, the praise of the cheeks would have its own proper meaning from this shape.

For one might say that he who wishes to praise the simplicity and openness and guilelessness of the teaching makes mention of the bowl, in which cannot subsist that depth forbidden by the prophet who said:

'Let me be delivered from those who hate me, and from the deep waters.'

We say, then, that the truth manifested in simplicity, without any deceitful hollow, is signified through the name of the bowl, whose material is the spice, and whose work is to bring forth perfumes;

for 'His cheeks are as bowls of spice,' made not of silver or gold or glass or any other such material, but of the spice itself, bringing forth these things out of themselves, through which the ointments are prepared.