Evenings With Bede are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.
SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.
The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.
A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.5
I am black but beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem. Like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon. Do not think to consider me, for I am swarthy because the sun has discolored me. My mother’s children have fought against me and made me keeper of the vineyards; my own vineyard I have not kept. Show me, You whom my soul loves, where You pasture your flock, where You lie down at midday; lest I begin to wander after the flocks of Your companions.
A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede
After Holy Church has been led into Christ’s chambers through the knowledge and hope of celestial blessings, after she has learned to love Him with a righteous heart and to rejoice and exult in His grace alone, it remains to be shown what struggles she endures for the sake of that same love of Him, and what afflictions she bears for the sake of acquiring the blessings which she has tasted. There follows: “I am black but beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem.” She is undoubtedly “black” with respect to the misfortune of her afflictions, but “beautiful” in the comeliness of her virtues; or, rather, in the sight of the Judge Who sees within she is all the more beautiful the more often she is harassed and, as it were, disfigured by the afflictions of fools. Now she calls the souls to whom she is speaking “daughters of Jerusalem” because they have been initiated into the heavenly mysteries and are longing for their dwelling place in the heavenly homeland. For in order to console them in their tribulations the holy mother says, “I am black but beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem,” as if she were saying opening, “I do indeed appear exceedingly vile in the eyes of my persecutors, but before God I am shining brightly with a glorious confession of the truth, for which reason you ought to be less sorrowful amid the labors of this exile in which you remember that you are citizens of a heavenly homeland, and in which you hasten through the adversities of a collapsing world toward the vision of eternal peace.”
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