Homilies on the Song of Songs 1 part 20/20

And since many blessed fears are made manifest by the holy Scripture, there would be also in the case of these, analogously to the six commandments, the increase to tenfold, so that he who has been taught by the psalmody how the fear of the Lord is set right through departing from evil and doing good, may multiply tenfold, as it were, a mina or a talent—the substance of fear—through his labor, and thus [cause] the soul that ranks second after the queen, which works out the good through fear and not through love, to be enlarged unto the number of eighty, showing each kind of the things set right through fear in the course of her own life without confusion and distinctly, so that in her case too the account of the eighth is enlarged together with the increase to tenfold, and so she becomes a concubine drawing near to the good in slavish fear and not in bridal love—a concubine instead of a queen—because of the fear of the eighth, which she has increased tenfold in her right doings, contributing to the number of eighty.

whom the account of the history also commands—having served for a season by a spurious and not a noble offspring—not to dwell to the end with the queen, since the royal inheritance is not on an equal footing for the servile offspring with the freeborn birth;

'For cast out,' it says, 'the bondwoman and her son;'

'for the son of the bondwoman shall not inherit with the son of the freewoman.'

But if to anyone the interpretation applied to the number set before us in the sayings seems too forced, let him remember that at the outset also we testified that we cannot attain to the truth in these matters, having touched upon them only so far as not to pass by the riddles altogether untried.

Nevertheless, if love should perfectly cast out fear, according to what is written, and fear, being transformed, should become love, then the saved is found to be a unit, in the union with the sole good, all being made one with one another through the perfection that is according to the dove.

For something of this kind we understand from the ensuing word, which says: 'My dove is one, my perfect one;'

'she is the only one of her mother, she is the chosen one of her that bore her.'

which is more clearly interpreted for us in the Gospel through the voice of the Lord:

that all, being knit closely together, may become one body and one Spirit through the one hope unto which they were called.

But it would be better to set forth verbatim the divine voices of the Gospel themselves:

'That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us.'

And the binding element of this unity is the glory;

and that the Holy Spirit is called 'glory,' none of those who have examined the matter would gainsay, looking to the very voices of the Lord:

'For the glory,' He says, 'which Thou gavest Me, I have given unto them.'

For He truly gave such glory to His disciples, He who said to them these words:

And He who had clothed Himself in human nature received this glory which He always possessed before the world was; and when that nature was glorified through the Spirit, the imparting of the Spirit's glory extends to all that is akin to it, beginning from the disciples.

'The glory which Thou gavest Me, I have given unto them, that they may be one, even as We are one;'

'I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one.'

He, then, who has run up from infancy to a perfect man through growth and has attained to the measure of the spiritual age, and who from the bondwoman and the concubine has passed over to the dignity of the kingdom, and has become receptive of the glory of the Spirit through freedom from passion and purity—this one is the perfect dove upon whom the Bridegroom gazes, saying, 'My dove is one, my perfect one; she is the only one of her mother, she is the chosen one of her that bore her.'

And we are surely not ignorant of the dove's mother, having recognized the tree from its fruit;

for just as, when we behold a man, we do not doubt that he is from a man, so also, when we seek the mother of the chosen dove, we shall conceive her to be none other than a dove;

for in the child the nature of the begetter is altogether beheld.

Since, then, that which is begotten of the Spirit is spirit, and the child is a dove, altogether a dove is also the mother of the child—she who flew down from heaven upon the Jordan, as John testifies.

Her the maidens call blessed; her the concubines and queens praise;

for one common course is set before all souls, drawn from every rank, leading toward such blessedness.

'The daughters saw her, and they will call her blessed;

the queens and the concubines will praise her.'

And it is the nature of all to strain by desire toward that which is blessed and praised.

So that if the daughters call the dove blessed, they altogether desire to become doves themselves as well.

And the fact that the dove is praised by the concubines and the queens is a proof that these too have their zeal set upon that which is praiseworthy, until, when all have become one—all looking toward the same goal of desire, and no vice being left remaining in any—God may become all in all, in those who through unity are commingled with one another in the fellowship of the good, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be the glory and the might unto the ages of ages.