St. Bernard: On the Song of Songs

 

St. Bernard: On the Song of Songs

 

By your leave then we shall search the Sacred Scripture for these three things, the garden, the storeroom, the bedroom. The one who thirsts for God eagerly studies and meditates on the inspired word. Know that there we are certain to find the one for whom we thirst. Let the garden, then, represent the plain, unadorned historical sense of Scripture, the storeroom its moral sense and the bedroom the mystery of divine contemplation. For a start I feel my comparison of scriptural history to a garden is not unwarranted, for in it we find persons of many virtues like fruitful trees in the garden of the Bridegroom, in the Paradise of God. You may gather samples of their good deeds and good habits as you would apples from trees.

 

Grace alone can teach it, it cannot be learned except by experience. It is for the experienced, therefore, to recognize it and for others to burn with the desire, not so much of knowing as of feeling it, since this canticle is not a noise made by the mouth but a jubilation of heart, not a sound of the lips but a tumult of internal joys, not a symphony of voices but a harmony of wills. It is not heard outside, for it does not sound externally. The singer alone can hear it and he to whom it is sung, namely the bridegroom and Che bride. For it is a nuptial song, celebrating the chaste and joyous embraces of loving hearts, the concord of minds and the union resulting from reciprocal affection.

 

If we fervently persist with prayers and tears, the Bridegroom will return each time and not defraud us of our express desires. But only to disappear soon again and not to return again unless he is sought for with all our heart. And so, even in this body we can often enjoy the happiness of the Bridegroom's presence but it is a happiness that is never complete because the joy of his visit is followed by the pain of his departure. The beloved has no choice but to endure this state until the hour when we lay down the body's weary weight and raised aloft by the wings of desire freely traverse the meadows of contemplation and in spirit follow the One we love without restraint wherever he goes.

 

But let me tell you what I have attained to or rather what I believe myself to have attained to. And you must not regard as a boast this communication which I make only for your own good.  There is a place where the Lord appears truly tranquil and at rest. It is the place neither of the judge nor of the teacher but of the bridegroom. It becomes for me (whether for others also, I do not know) a real bedchamber whenever it is granted me to enter there.  . . If, my brothers, it should ever be granted to you to be so transported for a time into this secret sanctuary of God and there be so rapt and absorbed as to be distracted or disturbed by no necessity of the body, no importunity or care, no stinging of conscience or, what is more difficult to avoid, no inrush of corporal images from [he sense of imagination, you can truly say, "The King has brought me into his bedchamber. "