Sermons on the Song of Songs

OF THE GROANS OF THE SOUL,. WHICH SIGHS FOR ITS HEAVENLY FATHERLAND; AND OF THE COMMENDATION OF CHASTITY AND WIDOWHOOD.

c The voice of the turtle is heard in our land,* — Cant ii. 12.

I AM obliged to allow that this is the second time that He who is of the heaven speaks of the earth; and that He mentions it with as much intimate knowledge of it, as affection, as if He were one of its citizens. It is the Bridegroom who speaks; and as, when He observed that the flowers had appeared, He did not say simply * on the earth/ but * on our earth,' so now He says: • The voice of the turtle is heard in our land.' What can, then, be the reason for a mode of speech so unusual, not to say so unworthy of God? You will nowhere find, I think, that He has spoken thus of heaven, and that in no other place has He done so of earth. Observe, then, how kind

and sweet it is of the God of heaven to say 6 our earth? Listen, sons of men and earth-born ones: The Lord hath done great things for us (Ps. cxxvi. 3). He has a close relation with the earth, and with the Bride, whom it has pleased Him to draw from the earth to associate closely with Himself. Thus it is that He says our land. This phrase is not one of sovereignty, but of familiarity and of alliance. He speaks thus not as Lord, but as Bridegroom. What? He is Creator, and yet regards Himself as companion! It is Love that speaks, and love knows nothing of mastership. For this Song is a song of love, and it is appropriate to fill it with loving speeches only. Also this love is of God; nor has He it from any other than Himself, because He is the Source of love. And it is so much the more powerful and vigorous, inasmuch as He and love are but one. But those whom He loves, He treats as friends, not as servants. From being the Master, He becomes the Friend; for He would not call His disciples His friends, unless they were so in reality.

2. Do you perceive that even His Majesty yields to His Love? It is so, indeed, brethren; love looks up to no one, but neither does it look down upon any. It regards with an equal eye all who are united among themselves by a perfect bond of love; it combines together in its own self the loftiest with the lowest; nor does it merely make them to be equals, but makes them to be one. You think perhaps that God is excepted from this rule of love; but do you not know that he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit (1 Cor. vi. 17)? Why do you wonder at this? He is made to be, as it were, one of us; and yet it is too little to say this, for He is made, not, as it were, one of us, but one of us in truth. It is too little for Him to be made equal to men; He is Himself made a man. Thus it is that He claims our earth as His, not as a mere possession, but as His birthplace and fatherland. Why should He not so claim it? It is from thence that He takes His Bride; thence is the substance of His Body; thence does He become a Bridegroom; and since He and His Bride are one flesh (Gen. ii. 4; Matt. xix. 5), why should they not have one fatherland also? The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lords, saith the Psalmist; but the earth hath He given to the children of men (Ps. cxv. 16). It is, then, as Son of Man that He inherits the earth, as being Lord He has it in His power, as Creator He administers it, and as Bridegroom He shares it with His Bride. In saying, then, our land, He shows that He disclaims the possession of it in sole proprietorship, and does not disdain to share it with another. It is on this account that the Bridegroom so benignantly uses this phrase, and deigns to say our land. Now let us go on to consider other things.

3. The voice of the turtle is heard in our land. This is a sign that the winter has passed, a warning that the time of pruning and culture is at hand. That is according to the letter. Taking it in another sense, the voice of the turtle is not sweet in itself, but it announces things which are sweet. This is a little bird, and not of great cost to buy; yet, if you consider the matter, it is of no small value. Its voice resembles more a moan of pain than a song of gladness, and this recalls to us our state of pilgrimage. Willingly do I listen to the voice of a preacher who arouses, not applauses for himself, but grief and sorrow for sin, in me. If you teach others to mourn, you will show yourself truly like the turtle; and if you desire to be persuasive [to penitence], you must effect this, not by declamation, but by being unfeignedly penitent yourself. Example is especially in this matter, as in many others, far more effectual than precept. Your voice will be persuasive and powerful if it be known that you are persuaded yourself of that which you are endeavouring to enforce on others. Actions speak louder and more effectively than words. Practise yourself what you urge upon others, and you will not only correct more easily what is wrong in me, but will free yourself from a great responsibility. It will not, then, apply to you if any should say: They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders: but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers (Matt, xxiii. 4). Nor need you fear that reproach: Thou, therefore, which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself 1 (Rom. ii. 21).

4. The voice of the turtle is heard in our land. As long as men^ have received their reward for the worship which they render unto God only in the earth, and that land which flows with milk and honey, they do not at all realize that they are strangers and pilgrims upon the earth, nor mourn as the turtle in sad remembrance of their own country; but on the contrary, misusing the place of their exile as if it were their country and home, they have set themselves to eat the fat things of it, and drink the sweet. Thus it is that so long a time passes without the voice of the turtle being heard in our land. But when the promise of the kingdom of heaven has been made, when men have realized that they have not here a continuing city, and have begun to seek eagerly for that which is to come, then first the voice of the turtle is plainly heard sounding in the land. For when a holy soul sighs for the Presence of Christ, when it endures with pain to see the possession of His Kingdom deferred, when it hails from afar with sighs and groans the dear land it longs for, does it not seem to you that each soul which so bears itself on earth is as the chaste turtle which sits apart and utters its mournful note? Then it is, and thenceforward, that the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. How can it be otherwise than that the absence of Christ should move me to frequent tears and daily groanings? Lord, all my desire is before Thee: and my groaning is not hid from Thee (Ps. xxxviii. 9). Thou knowest, O Lord, I am weary with my groaning; but blessed is he who can say, like the Psalmist: All the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears (Ps. vL 6). Nor is it only I in whom these groanings are found, but all those who love His appearing. For what does He Himself say? Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the Bridegroom is with them? but the days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they (moum) (Matt. ix. 15); as if He had said: * Then shall the voice of the turtle be heard.'

5. So it is, O dear Lord Jesus; those days have come. For the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God (Rom. viii. 19-22). And not only they, but we ourselves also groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body; knowing this, that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord (2 Cor. v. 6). Nor are those groans fruitless to which a response so kind and merciful is made from heaven, inasmuch as we hear: For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord (Ps. xii. 5). That voice of groaning and complaint was heard in the time of the Fathers also, but seldom, since each of them retained his groans, as it were, within his own breast. Wherefore, also, one of them said: My secret to myself my secret to myself woe is me (Is. xxiv. 16, Douay). So, also, he who said: My groaning is not hid from Thee (Ps. xxxviii. 9), in declaring that from God alone was it not hidden, showed that it was hidden from others. And, therefore, it could not then be said, The voice of the turtle is heard in our land, since it was then a secret, known but to few, and not yet divulged to the multitude. But when the proclamation has been openly made: Seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God (Coloss. iii. 1); that plaintive cry of longing, the lament, as it were, of the turtledove, begins to belong to all, and the reason for it to be the same for all, since all know the Lord, as we read in the prophet Jeremiah: They shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord (Jer. xxxiL 34).

6. But if there are many who utter that plaintive cry, why does He speak of only one? The voice of the turtle, He says. Why does He not say, 1 of the turtles?' Perhaps the Apostle resolves this difficulty, where he says that the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for the saints with groanings that cannot be uttered (Rom. viii. 26). Thus, in fact, it is. He who arouses in others those aspirations which groans manifest outwardly, is brought before us as Himself groaning. And however many there be whom you hear thus groan, it is one sound that the lips of all of them utter. Why should it not be, in fact, His voice, seeing that it is He who in the mouth of each forms the words of petition for the necessities that each feels? For the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal (1 Cor. xii. 7); to each one His Voice declares Him present, and makes Him manifest. Learn from the Gospel that the Holy Spirit has a voice. The Spirit breatheth where He will, and thou hearest His voice, but thou knoioest not whence He cometh or whither He goeth (John iii. 8, Douay). But he, who was as a master who was himself dead,1 teaching the dead letter of the Law to those who were similarly dead, did not know this. Nevertheless we, who have been brought from death unto life by the life-giving Spirit, we know, by His gracious illumination, and through our assured and daily experience, that our vows and aspirations come from Him, and ascend to Him, and there find mercy before the eyes of God* For when has God ever rendered the voice of His Spirit ineffectual? And He knows what His Spirit desires, inasmuch as He maketh intercession for the Saints according to the Will of God.

7. It is not only its plaintive cries which render the turtle acceptable, but also its chastity. For this merit it was judged a worthy offering for a Virgin Birth; and thus we read in the Scripture: A pair of turtle-doves, or two young pigeons (Luke ii. 24). And although the Holy Spirit is in other passages customarily spoken of under the figure of a pigeon or dove, yet that is a bird given to passion, and therefore not suitable to be offered in sacrifice to the Lord, except it were young and immature. But for the turtle-dove no age is prescribed, because its chastity at any age is recognised. It is content with one mate, and if he be lost does not take another, thus condemning a plurality of marriages among men. For although that is a remedy for incontinence, and therefore only a venial fault, yet that the incontinence itself should be so great is not creditable. It is a cause for shame that reason should be unable to do in man, and that in a matter of honour and uprightness, what nature is able to do in a bird. The widowed turtle may, in fact, be seen to practise all the tasks belonging to holy widowhood diligently and without weariness. You see it everywhere solitary; you hear it everywhere uttering its melancholy note; nor is it ever to be found perched upon any green bough; and from it you may learn to avoid as pestilential the ever green and vigorous shoots of pleasures. Add to this that it is most given to haunt mountain peaks and the loftiest summits of trees, and thus teaches us to despise earthly things and to love heavenly, a purpose especially appropriate to a state of chastity.

8. From all this it may be inferred that the note of the turtle is also a preaching of chastity. This utterance was not at first heard in the earth, but rather that other: Increase, and multiply, and replenish the earth (Gea i. 28). To no purpose would that call to chastity have sounded, when the country of the resurrection (Luke xx. 35, 36) had not as yet been revealed, in which men, far more happily, neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in Heaven. Or was it the time for that utterance to be heard when every barren woman in Israel was held to be under a reproach, when the Patriarchs themselves had many wives at once, when the Law required a man whose brother died without children to raise up seed unto his brother? But when that commendation of eunuchs who had made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake was heard from the mouth of the heavenly turtle (Matt. xix. 12), and when also the counsel of that other chaste turtle as regarding virgins was everywhere followed (1 Cor. vii. 25), then it might begin truly to be said that the voice of the turtle has been heard in our land.

9. Since both flowers, then, have appeared, and the voice of the turtle has been heard in our land, without doubt the Truth has been made known both to hearing and to sight. For a voice is heard and a flower seen. By flowers are meant miracles, as I have explained above, which, joined to the impression made by the voice [of him who preaches the truth of the Gospel], brings forth the fruit of faith. For although faith cometh by hearing, the confirmation of the faith comes from sight. The voice has sounded, the flowers have shone, and truth has sprung up out of the earth by the confession of believing souls, word and sign thus concurring to the testimony of the faith. Those testimonies are rendered abundantly easy of belief when the flower attests the witness of the voice, the sight that of the hearing. The things that are heard confirm those that are seen, so that the testimony of two witnesses (I mean that of the ear and of the eye) establish the truth of that which they declare. Wherefore the Lord said: Go your way, and tell John (for He was addressing the disciples of that teacher) what things ye have seen and heard (Luke vii. 22). The certitude of faith could not have been expressed to them more briefly or more clearly. The same conviction was speedily brought about throughout the whole world, and by the same summary of argument. What things, He said, ye have seen and heard, O saying of little length, yet strong and effectual! I assert with assured belief that which I have perceived by the testimony of my own ears and my own eyes. The trumpet of salvation sounds, the miracles shine clear before the eyes of men, and the world believes. It is speedily persuaded of the truth of that which is asserted, when it is authenticated by actions so marvellous. Thus we read that the Apostles went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the Word with signs following (Mark xvi. 20). We read that He was transfigured on the mount in a cloud of wonderful brightness, and that nevertheless a Voice from Heaven bore witness to Him (Matt. xvii. 2-5). We read also of a Dove which similarly pointed Him out on the banks of Jordan, and of a Voice which bare witness to Him (Matt. iii. 16, 17). And thus it is that the mercy of God makes these two things, the voice and the outward sign, to concur everywhere to introduce the faith; so making, by these two senses, as by two open windows, a wide opening for truth to reach the soul.

10. There follows, The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs. Of these we do not eat; their immaturity makes them unfit for use. They have the appearance, but not the taste, of good figs; and in this they are perhaps made to describe hypocrites. Yet we do not altogether reject them, for we may perhaps have need of them another time. They will fall prematurely of their own accord, like grass growing upon the housetops, which withereth afore it groweth up (Ps. cxxix. 6), which, as I think, is spoken of hypocrites. Yet not without cause is mention made of them in this nuptial song. Doubtless they are of no use for food, but they may serve for another purpose; for in a nuptial festival many other things beside viands are needed. I think that the subject ought not to be passed by altogether without mention; but whatever be its significance I am unwilling to discuss it within the narrow limits left me at the end of this Sermon; I defer it, therefore, to another time, which may be less occupied. I leave you to judge whether I am right in so doing; do you only obtain for me from God, by your prayers, that I may be enabled to explain, so as to conduce to your edification, what I think; and that all may be to the praise and glory of Him who is the Bridegroom of the Church, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is above all, God blessed for ever.

OF THE INCREDULITY OF THE JEWS, AND OF THEIR SLAYING CHRIST, BY WHICH THEY FILLED UP THE MEASURE OF THEIR FATHERS.

HIS sentence depends on those which precede it. The speaker had said that the time for pruning and culture of the vine

"** had come, and that this was shown as well by the appearance of flowers, as by the hearing of the note of the turtle-dove. He shows it by the production of green figs also, because the coming of spring is evidenced not only by the appearance of flowers and by the call of the turtle-dove, but by the fruits of the fig-tree. For the season is never more mild than when the fig-tree has produced its green fruit. The fig-tree has not flowers, but fruit, at the time when other trees flower. And as flowers appear and pass away, being useful only as a mark of, and a stage in the production of, the fruits which are to follow them, so is it with those fruits which appear for a time, but fall prematurely, and are themselves unfit to be eaten, but give place to others which attain ripeness. It is by this, as I have said, that the Bridegroom marks the advance of the season, and makes it the ground for earnestly urging the Bride not to be slothful in entering upon the work in the vineyard which has to be done, in its proper season, so that it be not lost So much for the literal sense.

2. But what of the spiritual meaning? It is plain that here we must regard, not the fig-tree as being spoken of, but the people which it represents, since God's care is for men, not trees. Truly, the people is (as it were) a fig-tree; frail because of the flesh, of small sense and intelligence, of no high disposition, and whose earliest fruits (to carry on still the metaphor) are earthly and unripe. For it is not the object of popular desire to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matt. vi. 33); but rather, as says the Apostle, to think of the things of this world, wherewith husbands may please their wives, and wives their husbands. Such shall have trouble in the flesh (1 Cor. vii. 28, 33), but we do not deny that at the last they