Sermons on the Song of Songs

OF TWO PRINCIPAL FACTS IN THE REDEMPTION OF THE HUMAN RACE; THE MANNER IN WHICH IT IS ACCOMPLISHED, AND THE BENEFITS WHICH WE DERIVE FROM IT.

I SAID at the end of the last sermon, and I willingly repeat it now, that I desire to see you all become sharers in that sacred unction, by which a holy devotion acknowledges the benefits of God with joy and thanksgiving. For this is extremely beneficial, inasmuch as it lightens the troubles of this present life, which become more supportable when we rejoice in the praises of God, and also because nothing represents so perfectly on earth the state of the blessed in heaven as the gladness of those who are occupied in praising God; as the Scripture declares: Blessed are they that dwell in Ihy House: they will for ever be praising Thee (Ps. lxxxiv. 5). I think it was this perfume that the Psalmist had particularly in view when he said: Behold^ how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to divell together in unity; it is like precious ointment upon the head (Ps. cxxxiii. 1, 2). This does not seem to be a description of the former kind. For though that be good, it is far from being pleasant, because the remembrance of sins causes bitterness, not pleasure. Nor do those who are compounding it dwell together, since each is occupied in separately lamenting his own sins. But as for those who are wholly occupied in praising God, they regard God only, and think but of Him; and on this account, it is truly said that they dwell together in unity. Again, that which they are engaged in doing is not only good because they are ascribing glory to Him to whom it most justly belongs, but also pleasant, because they take delight in doing it.

2. On this account I counsel you, my friends, to turn yourselves away sometimes from the anxious and painful retracing of your past erring lives, and to pursue paths which are easier and afford more pleasant thoughts in the recalling of God's benefits, so that by fixing your thoughts and your eyes upon Him, you may obtain some relief from the shame and confusion of face which are caused by thinking of yourself. I would that you should make trial of the advice which the holy Psalmist gives when he says: Delight thou in the Lord, and He shall give thee thy hearfs desire (Ps. xxxvii. 4). Sorrow for sin is indeed necessary, but it ought not to be continual; and there should be mingled with it the more joyful remembrance of the Divine goodness, lest the heart should be burdened because of the sorrow it feels, and despair should bring about the actual loss of it. With wormwood let us mix honey, so that the draught thus tempered with moderate sweetness may be able to be drunk, and that its bitter may be salutary. Listen how God Himself tempers the bitterness of a contrite heart, so as to draw back from the abyss of desperation him who is in fear and discouragement; to console the sorrowful by the honey of a sweet and faithful promise; to raise up him who is of little faith. He says by the prophet: With my praise will I restrain thee as with a bridle, that thou perish not (Is. xlviii. 9, Vulg.); that is to say, ' For fear lest the sight of your sins should cast you into excessive sorrow, and that, carried away by despair, like a horse without rein, you should fall down a precipice and perish, I will rein you back (He says) by the bridle, as it were, of My mercy; I will raise you up by My praises; you shall breathe again at the sight of My benefits, instead of being confounded at the sense of your own demerits; and the more blamable you find yourself to be, the more shall you find Me kind and forgiving.' If Cain had been restrained by this bridle, he would not have said: My iniquity is too great to obtain pardon (Gen. iv. 13, Vulg.). God forbid! God forbid! For His goodness is greater than any iniquity whatsoever. That is why the just man is not his own accuser always, but only in the beginning of his discourse,1 for his custom was to close his discourse with praises of God. Notice in what order a just man proceeds: / thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto Thy testimonies (Ps. cxix. 59); so that after having endured contrition and unhappiness in his own ways, he takes delight in the way of the testimonies of God, as in all manner of riches. Do you also, after the example of the righteous, if you have feelings of humility about yourselves, be assured also of the goodness of the Lord. For so you read in the words of the Wise Man: Think of the Lord in goodness, and in simplicity of heart seek Him (Wisd i. 1). The frequent, or, I should say, the continual, remembrance of the Divine liberality will easily bring the mind to a firm belief in this. Otherwise, how can that precept of the Apostle be carried out, In everything give thanks (1 Thess. v. 18), if those benefits for which thanks are owed are suffered to fade from the heart? I would not that you should be open to that opprobrium which was deserved by the Jews, of whom Scripture testifies that they were not mindful of His benefits, nor of the wonderful works that He had showed them (Ps. lxxviii. n).

3. But as it is impossible for any man to recount and enumerate all the blessings which our merciful and compassionate Lord does not cease to pour upon the children of men (for who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord, or who can show forth all His praise? (Ps. cvi. 2), at least that which is the chief and the greatest of His benefits, I mean the work of our redemption, ought never to depart for a moment from the memory of those whom He has redeemed. And in this

work there are two principal things which occur to my mind at this time, which I will commend to your meditation and study. This I will do in as few words as possible, being mindful of that saying: Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser (Pro v. ix. 9). These two things are: the manner in which it was accomplished, and the benefits which we derive from it. As for the manner, it was the self-emptying (exinanitio) of God; as for the benefit derived by us, it is that we should be filled with Him. Meditation upon the former great mystery is the seed-ground of holy hope; upon the latter, the incentive to the most exalted and ardent love. Both the one and the other are necessary to our spiritual progress; to ensure, on the one hand, that our hope be not unaccompanied by love, and therefore mercenary; and, on the other, that our love be not lukewarm, and so become unfruitful.

4. The fruit and final reward of our love which we await, shall be such as He, whom we love, has promised: Good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, they shall give into your bosom (Luke vi. 38). That measure, as I hear, shall be without measure. But that which I long to know is what that is which shall be bestowed without measure, or rather, that eternal blessedness (immensilas) which is promised to us. But eye hath not seen, O Lord, except Thee, what Thou hast prepared for them that love Thee (Is. lxiv. 4, and 1 Cor. ii. 9). O tell us what good things Thou dost prepare, O Thou who art preparing them! We believe, we hope in absolute confidence, as Thou hast in fact promised, that we shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy House (Ps. lxv. 4). But with what good things, I pray, and of what nature? Shall it be with corn and wine and oil that we shall be satisfied, or, perchance, with gold and silver and precious gems? But these things we have known and seen; we have seen and have even contemned. That which we seek, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath the heart of any man risen to imagine it. This, of whatsoever nature it be, is what we choose and we desire; and this it delights us still to seek. They shall all be taught of God, He saith (John vi. 45), and God shall be all in all (1. Cor. xv. 28). As I apprehend it, then, the fulness [of blessedness] which we await from God shall be derived from no other than God Himself.

5. But who can comprehend how great a variety of blessedness and sweetness is comprehended in this brief saying, God shall be all in all? Not to speak of the body, there are in the soul three faculties— the reason, the will, and the memory — and these three are, in fact, the soul itself. Everyone who walks in the Spirit feels how greatly each of these faculties is wanting in him during this present life. Wherefore is this the case, except that God is not yet all in all? Hence it is that the reason very often errs in its judgments, the will is agitated by manifold (quadruplici) troubles and passions, and the memory is confused by the multitude of things which it has let slip. To this threefold power of vanity a creature so noble is subjected, though against its will, yet it hopes one day to be delivered. For He who satisfieth with good things the longing desire of the soul, shall Himself be to the reason fulness of Light, to the will the completeness (multitude*) of peace, to the memory an eternal continuity. O Truth, O Charity, O Eternity! O Trinity, blessed and blessing! To Thee the trinity of my unhappy being aspires in its unhappiness, caused by its grievous separation from Thee. In how many errors, sorrows and fears, has not that separation involved it? Woe is me! what a trinity have I accepted in exchange for Thee! My heart panteth, and thence my pain; my strength faileth me, and thence my fear; the light of my eyes is also gone from me (Ps. xxxviii. n), and therefore my error and wandering. O trinity of my soul, how different a trinity hast thou found in the place of exile [from the Trinity of my God].

6. Yet, why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him (Ps. xlii. 5) when error shall have passed away from my reason, the pain of wavering from my will, and every kind of fear from my memory; and to those troubles a marvellous peace, a perfect blessedness, an eternal security, shall have succeeded. God as Truth shall perform the first: God as Charity, the second; and God as Supreme Power, the third: and thus God shall be all in all, the reason receiving a light which shall never be extinguished, the will obtaining a state of peace which cannot be disturbed, and the memory eternally inhering in the unfailing Source of being and of fact. You will consider whether you should not rightly assign the first of these to the Son, the second to the Holy Ghost, the third to the Father; yet so as not to withdraw either of these from either the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Ghost, lest with regard to either of the Divine Persons, either distinction should lessen the Plenitude, or Perfection take away from that which in each is Proper and Particular. Consider also that there is a similar threefold division in that which the children of this world make their own — namely, the allurements of the flesh, the vain shows of the world, and the pomps of the devil; and, nevertheless, it is by all this that the present world seduces those unhappy ones who are lovers of it, as St. John declares: All that is in the zvorld, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John ii. 16). So much with regard to the benefits of redemption.

7. As for the manner of redemption which I defined, if you remember, to be the self-emptying of God, there are three chief points which I propose for your consideration. For this is not a simple inanition, or one which is only limited or partial; but the Lord emptied Himself so far as to assume flesh, to undergo death, to endure the Cross (Phil. ii. 7, 8). Who can possibly be able to form a just idea of the greatness of the humility, of the condescension, of the goodness, shown by the Lord of Glory in clothing Himself with Flesh, in suffering death, in bearing the ignominy of the Cross?

Someone will perhaps say: ' Could not the Creator repair His work without such difficulty?' He could have done so, but He preferred to do it by the way of suffering, so that man might thenceforth find no ground for that worst and most odious vice of ingratitude. Unquestionably He endured many labours and pains that He might render man the debtor for much love, and that the difficulty of Redemption might carry gratitude to a much greater height in those whom the comparative ease of their Creation1 had so little inspired. For what did man, created and ungrateful, say in his own behalf? ' I was of free grace brought into existence, but my Creator had no difficulty or labour in forming me; for He spake, and I was made, as were all other works of His Hands. What great gift is it that you have bestowed at no greater cost than a word spoken?' Thus did human impiety depreciate the benefit of creation, and draw a reason for ingratitude from that which ought to have been a ground for love, and for excuses, which themselves needed excuse, on behalf of human sins. But the mouth of those who spoke those evil words has now been stopped. It appears more clearly than light at what vast cost [God] has accomplished thy salvation, O man; for He has not disdained from being Lord to become a servant, from being rich to become poor, from being Son of God to become the Son of Man. Remember, then, that though thou wert created out of nothing, thou wert not redeemed for nothing. It was in six days that He created all things, and thee among the rest. But it occupied more than thirty years of life upon the earth to accomplish thy salvation. How great were [thy Saviour's] exertions, and how great His sufferings! Did He not endure the wants and infirmities of the flesh, the temptations of the devil, and the ignominy of the Cross; and was there not heaped upon them all the horror of His Death? And all these were necessarily endured. Thus it was, thus, that Thou, O Lord, hast saved men and beasts; how excellent is Thy loving kindness, O God! (Ps. xxxvi. 6, 7).

8. Meditate upon these things, revolve them continually in your minds. With such precious perfumes steep your hearts, that you may dissipate the evil odour of your sins which has long troubled them, and that you may abound in their odours, as salutary as they are sweet Yet do not suppose that you possess the best of those which are upon the bosom of the Bride. The want of time, and the necessity of bringing this sermon to a close, forbids my beginning to speak of these now. What has been said of the others, retain in your memory, approve your possession of them by your life; and finally, assist me by your prayers, that I may be enabled to speak worthily worthy words concerning these joys of the Bride which are so great; and may build up your souls in the love of the Bridegroom, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.