Homilies on the Song of Songs 11

Homily 11 (Song 5:2–4)

"The voice of my beloved knocks at the door: 'Open to me, my sister, my close one, my dove, my perfect one; for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.' I have taken off my tunic; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I soil them? My beloved put out his hand through the opening, and my belly was stirred [for him]."

This too is one of the Lord's great commandments, by which the mind of those who are disciples of the Word, shaking off from itself, like dust, everything material in nature, is lifted up to the desire for things that lie beyond. It is this: that those who look to the life above must be stronger than sleep and keep watch in mind continually, driving drowsiness from their eyes as a kind of deceiver of souls and plotter against the truth. I mean that drowsiness and sleep through which these phantoms are shaped for those sunk deep in the deceit of life: offices of rule, powers, conceit, the bewitchment of pleasures, love of glory and of enjoyment and of honour, and everything that in this life the unreflecting pursue in vain through some imagining. These things, flowing past with the passing nature of time, have their being in seeming: they are neither what they are thought to be, nor do they remain for ever even in being thought so, but they seem to come into being and perish at once, like the waves that rise to a crest on the waters. For a moment these swell with the movement of the winds and have a mass that is not secure in remaining; for, having risen up for a short moment with the gust, they again show the surface of the sea level, subsiding together with the wind.

So that our mind may come to be outside such phantoms, he bids us shake off this heavy sleep from the eyes of the soul, so that we may not slip away from what subsists and truly is through zeal for what has no existence. For this reason he suggests to us a device for wakefulness, saying: "Let your loins [be girded] and your lamps burning in your hands." For the light shining in the eyes scares sleep away from them, and the loins bound tight by the belt make the body unreceptive to sleep, since the feeling of discomfort does not allow the relaxation that sleep brings. What is shown through the riddles is surely clear: the one girded with self-control lives in the light of a pure conscience, his life lit by the lamp of boldness; and when the truth shines forth, the soul remains sleepless and undeceived, wasting itself on none of these imperfect dreams. [If] this is achieved according to the Word's guidance, a kind of angelic life takes us over. For the divine commandment likens us to them, where it says: "And you, be like men waiting for their master, when he returns from the wedding, so that when he comes and knocks they may open to him at once." For they are the ones who wait for the Lord's return from the wedding, [watching] at the heavenly gates with wakeful eye, so that the King of glory may enter through them again when he returns from the wedding to that blessedness above the heavens. From there, as the psalm says, the bridegroom went out as from a bridal chamber and betrothed us to himself as a virgin through the mystical rebirth, we who had played the harlot with idols, re-forming our nature into virginal incorruption. Since, then, 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 chamber of the mysteries, the angels were waiting for the King's return, when the church is brought back up to the blessedness that is according to nature. He said, then, that our life too must be made like theirs, so that, as they, living far from vice and deceit, are ready to receive the Master's coming, so we too, [keeping watch], may make ourselves ready to obey whenever he stands and knocks at the door. "For blessed," he says, "are those slaves whom their master, when he comes, will find doing so."

Since, then, it is blessed to obey the one who knocks, the soul that looks always toward blessedness, keeping good watch over its own treasures, perceives the one standing at the door and says: "The voice of my beloved knocks at the door." How could anyone worthily understand through these words the bride's ascent to more divine things? [She who] with such authority and confidence [drove away] that harsh north wind from herself, [and] drew to herself the bright [noonday] wind, who makes paradises of pomegranates through her mouth, whose fruit trees were spices, who set her garden as a table before the Master of creation, of whose offerings nothing appeared fit to be thrown away, but all were attested to be good, the myrrh, the spice, the bread with honey, the wine with milk; she to whom the Word testified her perfection, saying, "[You are all] fair, and there is no blemish in you": she is now so disposed as though she were about to receive the manifestation of God for the first time, and as though she had not yet received the Word who now stands before the doors, or made him dwell with her; she treats the power of his voice with wonder. For this reason she says that the bridegroom's voice touches not yet herself, but her door: "For the voice of my beloved," she says, "knocks at the door."

Do you see how boundless the course is for those who climb toward God, how what is grasped at any time becomes the beginning of what lies beyond? For we hoped from what was said to her that some halt had come to the course of her journey toward the heights. For what more could anyone seek after the testimony of perfection? Then we see that she is still within, and has not yet come outside her doors, nor delighted in a face-to-face manifestation, but is still led by hearing toward participation in the goods. So we learn this teaching from what has been said: that for those who are always advancing to greater things, the apostle's saying is fitting: "If anyone thinks he has known, he has not yet known as he ought to know." For the soul knew him in what went before as far as it grasped him. But since what is not yet grasped is infinitely greater than what has been grasped, the bridegroom has therefore been seen many times by the soul, and yet, as though he had never come before her eyes, he promises by his voice that he will be seen by the bride.

To make the thought clearer to us, I shall add an image to the argument by way of example. If someone came near that fountain which Scripture says at the beginning came up out of the earth, so great in quantity as to water the whole face of the earth, the one who came near the fountain would marvel at that boundless water always gushing out and pouring forth from it; yet he would not say that he had seen all the water. For how could he see what is hidden in the bosom of the earth? So, even if he stays a long time by the welling spring, he is always at the beginning of his contemplation of the water. For the water never stops, always flowing and always beginning to well up. So the one who looks toward that divine and boundless beauty, since what is found at any time is seen to be wholly newer and more wonderful than what has already been grasped, marvels at what is always appearing, yet never stops in his desire to see, because what is hoped for is more magnificent and more divine than everything that is seen. For this reason here too the bride, always marvelling and astonished at what is known, never halts her longing for what is contemplated at what she has already known. So now too she perceives the Word as still knocking at the door, and rises to obey, and says: "The voice of my beloved knocks at the door." Then, giving quiet to her hearing, she hears what the one who sounded through the voice [says]: "Open to me, my sister, my close 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 sense of this in contemplation thus. For the great Moses the manifestation of God began through light; after this he speaks with him through a cloud; then, having become higher and more perfect, he sees God in darkness. What we learn through this is something like this. The first withdrawal from false and erring notions about God is the passage from darkness to light. The closer perception of hidden things, which guides the soul by the hand through what appears to the invisible nature, becomes like a cloud, which overshadows all that appears and guides the soul and accustoms it to look toward what is hidden. And the soul that journeys upward through these, having left behind the things below as far as is attainable for human nature, comes to be within the sanctuaries of the knowledge of God, enveloped on every side by the divine darkness; in which, since everything that appears and is grasped has been left outside, there remains for the soul's contemplation only the invisible and incomprehensible, in which God is, as the word says of the lawgiver: "And Moses entered into the [darkness where God was]."

With these points considered in this way, we should examine 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, the sun having looked askance at her, the sun which through temptations scorches the rootless seed on the rocks; when, defeated by those who fought within her, she did not guard her own vineyard; when, not knowing herself, she shepherded flocks of kids instead of sheep. But when she had withdrawn herself from her natural union with evil and longed through that mystical kiss to bring her mouth to the fountain of light, then she becomes fair, illumined by the light of the truth and having washed off the blackness of ignorance in the water. Then she is likened to a horse for her swiftness, and to the dove for the quickness of her mind. Flying through everything that is grasped and appears, like a horse and like a dove, she first rests with desire in the shade of the apple tree, naming "apple tree" instead of cloud what overshadows her; but now she is already enclosed by the divine night, in which the bridegroom comes but does not appear. For how could what is not seen appear at night? But he gives the soul some sense of his presence, while escaping clear perception, hidden in the invisibility of his nature.

What, then, is the initiation that comes to the soul through this night? The Word touches the door. And by the door we understand the conjecturing thought about things unspeakable, through which what is sought comes to dwell within. The truth, then, standing outside our nature, through knowledge in part, as the apostle says, knocks at the door of the mind with certain hints and riddles, saying, "Open," and with an exhortation suggests the manner in which the door should be opened, offering, as it were, keys: these fair names, by which what is locked is opened. For the meanings of these names are simply keys, which open what is hidden: sister, close one, dove, and perfect one. "For if you wish," he says, "that the door be opened to you, and 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 the one who lives in his will becomes his brother and sister. "And you must also draw near to the truth, and become close, so as to be walled off by nothing in between, and have perfection in the nature of the dove: that is, to be lacking in nothing and filled with all innocence and purity. Taking these names, O soul, as keys, open by them the entrance to the truth, becoming sister and close one and dove and perfect one. And your gain from receiving me will be the dew from my head, with which I am full, and the drops of the night that flow from my locks."

Of these, we have learned clearly from the prophet that the dew is healing, for he says: "The dew from you is healing to them." The drops of the night belong to the sense contemplated before. For it is not possible for one who has come within the sanctuaries and the unseen to meet a rain shower or a torrent of knowledge. It is enough if the truth sprinkles knowledge of itself on us in fine and faint thoughts, the drops of reason flowing through the saints and those borne by God. For I think that the locks hanging from the head of the universe are figuratively named the prophets and evangelists and apostles, each of whom, drawing as much as he could hold from the dark, hidden, and invisible treasures, becomes for us rivers; but compared with the truth as it really is, they are drops of dew, even if they overflow with the quantity and greatness of their teaching. Such a river was Paul, cresting with the waves of his thoughts above heaven, as far as the third heaven, as far as paradise, as far as the unspeakable and unutterable words; and, though he [overflows] with the word through all such lofty speech, he shows again that this word is a drop of dew compared with the Word who truly is, where he says, "We know in part, and we prophesy in part"; and, "If anyone thinks he has known anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know"; and, "[I do not reckon] myself to have laid hold." If, then, the moisture of the dew and the drop from the locks seem rivers and seas and waves when judged by our capacity, what must one reckon about the fountain that said, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink"? Let each of the hearers take a conjecture of the wonder in proportion to what has been said. For if the drop sufficed for the making of rivers, what [must we] reckon, by analogy from this drop, the river of God itself [to be]?

Let us see also how the bride obeys the Word, how she opens the entrance to the bridegroom. "I have taken off my tunic," she says; "how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I soil them?" She heard well the one who bade her become sister and close one, dove and perfect one, so that through these the truth might come to dwell in the soul. For she did what she heard: she took off the tunic of skin which she had put on after the sin, and washed off from her feet the earthiness with which she had been wrapped from the time she was released from her life in paradise into the earth, when she heard, "Earth you are, and to earth you shall return." For this reason she opened the entrance to her soul for the Word, the veil of the heart, that is, the flesh, having been drawn aside. By "flesh" I mean the old man, whom the divine apostle bids those who are to wash off the filth of the soul's feet in the bath of the word to put off and lay aside. So, having put off the old man and taken away the veil of the heart, she opened the entrance to the Word; and when he has come within, the soul makes him her garment, according to the guidance of the apostle, who bids the one who has put off the fleshly covering of the old man to put on the tunic created according to God in holiness and righteousness; and he says that the garment is Jesus.

The bride's declaration is that she will no longer take up again the tunic she has cast off, but will be content with one tunic, according to the law given to the disciples, which [she received] through the birth from above: the Lord's word, which bids those once adorned with the divine garment no longer to put on over it the tunic of sin, nor to have two tunics, but one only, so that two tunics incompatible with each other may not be [worn] about the same person. For what fellowship has the dark garment with the one that is light-like and immaterial? The law says not only that one must not have two tunics, but also that one must not sew new cloth on an old garment, so that the unseemliness of the one who wears such a thing may not become worse, when the patch does not stay and the old garment suffers a worse tear, hard to mend. "For the new patch," he says, "pulls away from the old, and a worse tear is made," so that the unseemly parts are exposed through it. For this reason she says, "I have taken off my tunic; how shall I put it on?" For who, seeing about himself the Lord's tunic shining like the sun, put on him through purity and incorruption, such as he showed at the transfiguration on the mountain, would then consent to put on himself the beggarly and ragged garment which the drunkard and the fornicator, as the proverb says, wear?

Nor, having washed her feet, [will she take on] again on her step the defilement from the earth. "For I have washed my feet," she says; "how shall I soil them?" For neither is Moses recorded, after he had freed his feet from the dead covering of skins at the divine command, when he stepped on the holy and illumined ground, to have bound his feet again in sandals; even when he skilfully made the priestly vestment according to the pattern shown on the mountain, mixing in the weaving the gleams of gold and purple, fine linen, blue and scarlet, so as to make a beauty mingled of them all, he devised no adornment for the feet: the adornment of the priestly foot was to be bare of all covering and free. For the priest must surely stand on holy ground, on which it is not lawful to walk with dead skins. For this reason the Lord forbids sandals to the disciples, since he bids them not to go on the road of the Gentiles, but to proceed by the holy road. You surely know the holy road on which the disciples are bidden to run, having learned it from the one who said, "I am the way," which no one can touch who has not taken off the covering of the dead man.

Since, then, the bride has come to be on this road, on which the Lord washes the feet of those who walk on it with water and wipes them with the towel with which he girded himself (and the Lord's girdle is a power that cleanses sins: "For the Lord has put on power," it says, "and girded himself"), she therefore, with her feet cleansed, keeps herself on the royal road, turning aside neither to the right nor to the left, so that she may not, by setting her step outside the road on either side, soil her foot with mud. You surely understand what is shown through these words: that she who has once taken off her sandals through baptism (for loosing the straps of the sandals is the proper work of the one who baptizes, as John testified that he could not do this in the case of the Lord alone; for how could he have loosed one who had never been bound by the strap of sin at all?) has washed her feet, casting off every earthly filth together with the sandals. So she keeps her step unsoiled on the paved road, as David also did, when, having freed himself from the material of the mud, he set his feet on the rock, saying in his word: "He brought me up out of the pit of misery and out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and directed my steps." By the rock we understand the Lord, who is light and truth and incorruption and righteousness, with which the spiritual road is paved. Whoever does not turn aside from these on either side keeps his footprint safe, soiled nowhere by the mud of pleasure.

These, in my judgment at least, are the things by which the door is opened to the Word by the bride. For the declaration that she will no longer take up the mud she has cast off, nor receive earthy defilement in the journey of life, becomes the entrance of sanctification into the soul so prepared. And the Lord is sanctification. [So much for these words.]

After this the soul again reaches the ascent that lies beyond, no longer with a voice knocking at the heart's door, but with the divine hand itself slipping inside through the opening. "For my beloved," she says, "put out his hand through the opening, and my belly was stirred for him." To one who listens intelligently it is surely plain how much higher what is now said is than what came before. Saying "Open" to the bride, the Word gives her, through the divine names, the power to open. The bride obeys the Word; she becomes what she heard, sister and close one and dove and perfect one; she strips off that tunic of skin, washes off the filth of her feet, and neither puts on again that hateful and ragged garment nor sets her step on the earth any more. She heard his voice, then, and obeys the command. She opens the door, taking away the veil of the heart; she tears apart the curtain of the flesh at the door; the whole gate of the soul is opened, so that the King of glory may enter. But the breadth of the gate proved to be a small hole, narrow and short, through which not the bridegroom himself but only his hand could barely pass, so as to come inside through it and touch her who desires to see the bridegroom; and she gained only so much as to know that the hand is that of the one she longs for.

What teachings are shown us we might learn through the philosophy in these words, if we spend a little more time on the text. The human soul is on the border between two natures, one bodiless, intellectual, and pure, the other bodily, material, and irrational. As soon as it has been cleansed of its attachment to the coarse and earthy life, [and has turned] through virtue to what is akin to it and most divine, it does not stop searching out and seeking the principle of beings: what the fountain of the beauty of beings is, from where its power gushes, what wells up the wisdom that shows in their being. But, setting in motion all reasonings and every power of searching thought and busying itself with what is sought, it makes the limit of its grasp of God only his activity that comes down to us, which we perceive through our life. And as the air that rises from the earth together with water does not stay at the bottom of the pool, but, becoming a bubble, runs up to what is akin to it, and when it has passed through the topmost surface of the water and been mixed with the air, then stops its upward movement, so the soul that searches out divine things experiences something similar: when from things below it stretches itself up to the knowledge of what lies beyond, having grasped the wonders of his activity, it cannot advance further by its curiosity, but marvels at and reveres the one known only to exist, from what he works.

It sees the heavenly beauty, the rays of the luminaries, the swift circling of the sky, the well-ordered and harmonious revolution of the stars, the year's circle turning back on itself through four seasons; the earth disposed together with what surrounds it, varying its own activities with the difference of the movement of what lies above; the many forms of nature among living creatures, those that live in the waters, those allotted movement through the air, and those whose life is on dry land; the manifold kinds of plants and the varied herbs, differing from one another in quality, power, and shape, and the properties of fruits and juices, and the other things through which God's activity is shown. Seeing these, the soul reckons in mind, through wonder at what appears, that the one who is understood through his works exists. But perhaps in the age to come, when everything that is seen passes away, according to the Lord's word, who says, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away," and we pass on to that life which is beyond eye and ear and mind, then we shall no longer know the nature of the good in part through his works, as now, nor will what lies beyond be understood through the activity of what appears; but the form of the unspeakable blessedness will surely be grasped in another way, and there will be another manner of enjoyment, which by nature cannot now enter the heart of man. For the time being, though, the limit for the soul of knowledge of the unspeakable is the activity that shows itself in beings, which we have understood to be called figuratively a hand.

This, then, is the teaching that has been set out in philosophy for us through these divine words: the pure soul, no longer walking on the earthly and material life, so as not to soil her step by leaning on things below, expected to receive the bridegroom himself, wholly come into the house; [but] she has been content for the time being to see only the hand in the opening, by which his active power is interpreted. "My beloved," she says, "[put out] his hand through the opening." For human power has no room to receive the boundless and incomprehensible nature into itself. "And my belly," she says, "was stirred for him." The word "stirring" signifies a certain amazement and astonishment at the wonder that appeared. For her whole power of thought was moved to wonder at what is worked by the divine hand, whose understanding, lying beyond us, interprets by itself the incomprehensibility and the uncontainability of the nature of the one who works. For the whole creation of beings is the work of that hand which was made manifest to us through the opening, as John cries out, and the prophet sounds together with the gospel. For the one says, "All things came into being through him"; and the prophet names the power that made beings a hand, saying, "My hand made all these things." Since, then, [the soul sees] the works of that activity, all the rest and the heavenly beauties too, yet the searching mind of man has not yet grasped what man is in his essence, or the sun, or any other of the wonders that appear in creation, for this reason the heart is stirred at the divine activity: if it has no room to grasp these things, how will it grasp the nature that lies beyond them?

Perhaps someone, taking the riddles of what has been said in another way, will offer a contemplation not beyond what is reasonable. For I think that the whole of human life is to be understood as the bride's house, and that this hand which made beings, coming to dwell in us, contracted itself to the shortness and worthlessness of human life by sharing our nature in all things, in likeness, without sin. And having come to be among us, it produced stirring and astonishment in souls: how is God manifested in flesh? How does the Word become flesh? How is there birth in virginity? How is the light [mingled] with darkness, and life with death? How has the short opening of life room to receive into itself the hand that holds all beings, by which the whole heaven is measured, and all the earth and all the water are held? It is reasonable, then, that the grace of the gospel is signified to us prophetically by the bride through the riddle of the hand. For when the Lord was seen on earth and lived among men, we came to know the pure and immaterial beauty of the bridegroom, the Godhead of the Word, and the brightness of the true light, through the hand of his works. For by the hand we understand his power that worked the wonders, by which the dead were brought to life, the sight of the blind was restored, the disease of leprosy was banished, and every kind of incurable and grievous sickness left bodies at a command.

Since this twofold contemplation of the hand has been set before us, of which the one proposes that the divine nature, being wholly incomprehensible and beyond conjecture, is known through its activity alone, and the other says that the grace of the gospel is proclaimed beforehand by the bride through these words, we shall leave it to the hearer to choose the more suitable one, the one that fits the subject better than the other. But whichever is thought more profitable to the soul, sufficient guidance toward the good would come to us through each of the two. For from knowing that what can be known of God, according to Paul's word, is clearly seen, being understood from the creation of the world, we shall refrain from curiosity about things incomprehensible, so that heresy may not find material against the truth through speculation about the unreachable and unutterable nature. And if we suppose that the riddle of the hand looks to the gospel, our faith in the mystical teachings will become firmer in this way too, through [the prophecy spoken beforehand], in Christ Jesus, to whom be glory for ever.