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, then 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, 1.1
Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His mouth: for Your breasts are better than wine, the glowing ardor of the best ointments. Your name is oil poured out: therefore young maidens have loved You. Draw me: we will run after You to the odour of thy ointments. The King has brought me into his storerooms: we will exult and rejoice in You, remembering Your breasts more than wine: the righteous love You.
A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede (page 38)
Now as soon as the synagogue who longs for the Lord to come has said to the prophets who are predicting Him: “Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His mouth,” that is, Let Him impart to me the gifts of His teaching, she suddenly turns to Him for Whom her desire has been burning, and adds, “For your breasts are better than wine,” as if she were to say openly, “The reason that I long for you to come and renew me with Your kisses is that the sweetness of Your presence incomparably surpasses all those gifts that You have sent through the heralds of Your coming.” For she speaks of the fermentation of knowledge of the law as “wine,” but by “breasts” she means the first principles of evangelical faith, concerning which S. Paul says, “I fed you with milk, not solid food” (1 Cor 3:2); and again, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). Therefore, the breasts of the Bridegroom are better than wine because all those whom the first principles of the New Testament regenerate “by water and the Spirit” (Jn 3:5) they afterward render fit for entrance into heavenly life, whereas prolonged observance of the law was never able to do this even among those who were so aroused by the taste of supernal sweetness that they could truthfully say “And your chalice which inebriates, how excellent it is!” (Ps 23.5), as the Apostle Paul confirms when he says “For the law brought nothing to perfection” (Heb 7:19). Now if the breasts of Christ (that is, the first beginnings of faith in the Lord) are better than the wine of the law, how much more does the wine of Christ (that is, the perfection of evangelical doctrine) surpass all the ceremonies of the law? If the Sacraments of His incarnation lead to life, how much does the knowledge of His divinity glorify? How much the vision of it? For the Bridegroom Himself signifies that He has not only milk but also wine when He says later in the Song of Songs: “I drink wine with my milk” (Sg 5:1). In the gospel He mystically signifies how much His own wine excels the wine of the law when the old wine was running out at the wedding feast that typified the church, and from water He made new wine that was truly quite deserving of greater praise (Jn 2:1-10). And justly does she refer to the “breasts” of the Bridegroom, which is a part of the female body, in order at the very beginning of the Song she might clearly show that she is speaking figuratively, just as in the Apocalypse (the Book of Revelation, which is itself also a typological book) when S. John says of Him: “I saw in the midst of the seven lampstands one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe,” he adds, “and girded with a golden sash across the paps” (Rev 1:12-13). But even the Bridegroom Himself (that is, our Lord) does not shrink from applying to himself a figure of the feminine sex, when through Isaiah He says, “Shall I who make others to bear children not bear children myself? says the Lord; shall I, Who gives the power of generation to others, be barren?” (Is 66:9). And again, “As a mother caresses her child, so will I comfort you” (Is 66:13). And in the Gospel, to the unbelieving city: “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not!” (Mt 23.37).
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