Evenings with Bede: S2, Ep. 17

Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes 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 the Venerable S. 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, 1.8

If you do not know yourself, O fairest among women, go forth and follow the tracks of the flocks, and pasture your kids by the shepherds’ tents. I have compared you, my friend, to my company of horsemen among Pharaoh's chariots. Your cheeks are beautiful as a turtledove’s; your neck as jewels; we will make you necklaces of gold, inlaid with silver.

A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede

Emphasizing the importance of keeping the sobriety of a turtledove, the Bridegroom adds: “Your neck as jewels; we will make you necklaces of gold, inlaid with silver.” Surely it is through the neck that we both take in food to nourish the body and bring forth words with which we declare the secrets of our hearts to our neighbors. For this reason the role of the church’s teachers is rightly represented by the neck, since they both instruct the unlearned with an edifying word and in the process of that same instruction convey the food of salvation to the members of the holy Church entrusted to them. Clearly, this neck is rightly compared to jewels. . . . The necklaces are also ornaments for a virgin’s neck, namely, little chains woven with golden bands. . . . These aptly signify the weaving together of the divine scriptures through which the loveliness of holy Church increases when every single one of the faithful strives to shine with virtues by observing the words and deeds of the fathers more and more. For the gold from which He says that the necklaces are made is the splendor of the spiritual sense of Scripture, and the silver with which he states they are inlaid is understood as the luster of heavenly eloquence. Now what He promises in the plural (“We will make you”) is said with reference to those through whom sacred scripture has been ministered to us by the agency and cooperation of God’s spirit, of whom there have been very many from the time in which Solomon foretold these things until that which is to come. Therefore, He encircles the Bride’s neck with gold necklaces inlaid with silver because He has prepared divine diadems for the Church by inspiring those whom He has placed in authority with responsibility for teaching His faithful, and He encircles her neck with necklaces fashioned by the craftsman’s art when every faithful soul continually looks towards the holy Scriptures in all that she says or does, or perhaps I should say in everything that she lives and hopes, and diligently directs both her mind and her words according to their pattern, and thus this little verse is joined to the one above, for the reason that holy Church’s cheeks are beautiful as a turtledove’s (that is, that her modesty remains inviolate) is because frequent meditation on divine Scripture does not allow her to err.

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