Salesian Literature

Part I: Presentation

1. The Canticle in Francis’ Youth   ::   2. The Canticle in his Life and Writing

3. Analysis of the Salesian Commentary on the Canticles   ::   4. Theology of the Canticle of Canticles

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4.  Theology of the Canticle of Canticles

 

(a) The Bridegroom is Christ:  St. Francis de Sales affirms that “Love is the sum of all theology.”  The Doctor of the Church invites us, more especially here in the opportunity given by the Canticle of Canticles, to reflect more deeply on the fundamental relations between theology and love.

Moreover, it is astonishing to consider how he ha marvellously known to encapsule all of “holy doctrine” in this precise writing about a delicate story of love.

 

What is theology, if not the study of God?  And what is love, if not one of the divine attributes by which St. John tells us that “God is Love?”  And he does so with such insistence that we have the right and duty to ask ourselves whether theology would not truly be the very study of Love.

 

And why would we not ask love itself who God is?  Will we know how to have the eyes and heart capable of such a consideration and of such a question?  Is this not ultimately the question which the “Canticle of Canticles” poses to us?

 

(b) The Creation of Man:  The mystery of the Incarnation reunites the mystery of all creation in order to govern it and afterwards to motivate it: “I have come so that they may have life and (have it) to the full…”  And how can life superabound, if not in and by love?  It seems, then, by re-reading the marvellous Salesian pages on the motive of the Incarnation, that everything in the world must converge, as it did in the blessed hour of the Annunciation, to pierce better the mystery of the being of Jesus.  Since the first cell of matter, since the first life, since the first knowledge of existing, and since the first gesture of love everything in the evolution of the Universe is ordered to the realization of a heart capable of God, a heart capable of loving as God loves.  “We plant the vine on account of the fruit,” and this Fruit is Love Incarnate, Jesus the Beloved Son, indissolubly united to Human Nature, even more strongly than that couple of Man and Woman “who will henceforth be a single flesh,” because it is precisely a sacrament of that Union of Christ and his Church, intimate union of the “Mystical Body of Jesus,” in the image of the mystery itself, of the union of the divine and human natures in the Person of the Word.

 

One understands, then, that this union at the time of the Incarnation is presented to us as the fruit of an ecstasy, as the promise realized by a kiss, and finally, as the accomplishment of a Word, these three facets attempting to seize Love in its ineffable mystery.

 

Yes, this Man, Jesus, has been created by love and for love, and God has so experienced in him that what he had made was good, very good, for him, meaning for Love, that he communicates his own mystery.

 

God is Love because He is Three Living Beings admirably United in a single Love… And are we not aware that when we truly love, it is this “image of God” in us which begins to vibrate, to live in the proper divine rhythm?

 

(c) Sorrow and Joy of Love:  But this man whom God has willed thus capable of Love must, himself, bring about his own capacity to love and must do this until the mysterious change (brought about) by death: “Love is stronger than death.”  This phrase is upheld in each movement of the Spouse and the Bridegroom, and it is love which realizes this astonishingly generous acceptance of death in the flight of its own sign.  Man is “ecstasy” – “there is no greater love than to give one’s life for those whom one loves.”

 

And love has existed until the very end.  It has totally broken to pieces and disparaged this body in frightful and insupportable sorrow.  It has led us to the passion of Christ, to the limit of the Intolerable Annihilation of the Body in order to form it afterwards and, finally, to burst forth in Joy.  But Love goes further and can, itself, predict joy to us even in the midst of sorrow, and the Canticle invites us to admit that the crown of Jesus was a crown, even if it was a crown of thorns, and that the thorns were real thorns.  And all because love wanted it that way!

 

With the Canticle, we experience again in the sorrowful way of the Passion in the intense compassion and condolence of the Spouse.  But to the sorrow of Jesus is added the suffering of not being able to correspond and, therefore, of not being able to feel the joy or even to have a presentiment of it.  And why, if not because we are still dulled by a strange sleep.  It is love, likewise, which awakens.

 

(d) The Resurrection of Love:  There is only one man who has known how to love, and it is Jesus.  And this (is so) simply because he has loved beyond death, on the shores of a lake, when he asked St. Peter three times: “Do you love me?”

 

Thus, even more than before, the heart of Jesus was desirous of the love of men, the love stronger than death, and each time that we truly love, it is our heart which we prepare for the resurrection.

 

“I have discarded my clothes; how will I clothe myself?” In this way, St. Francis shows us Jesus dressing himself in his resurrected body and realizing the response: “Yes, it is truly I …”

 

That is why the mystery of the Church has become inseparable from the mystery of the Presence of the Resurrected One.

 

Yes, Love exists and does not cease desiring to gather together and make live all loves, by nourishing them in the true Love, that of Jesus.

 

Now St. Francis has the gift of acquainting us with the presence of Jesus, a presence not only interior, but cosmic, universal, concrete and real.  “No, this is not imagination, but a real truth, since even when we do not see Him, so it is that from on high he considers us.  St. Stephen saw Him, in this way at the time of his martyrdom…”[1]

 

It is necessary, therefore, that our faith in love rejoin that Faith in the Love Incarnate by living now his life, that which we one day desire to live.

 

Now it is not love, Himself, which enlivens our Faith and gives it not only the eyes, but a heart capable of loving as He loves now, and not only as he loved formerly.

 

Rejoice in the Resurrection, but not only at Easter, because for anyone who loves, it is always Springtime.  It is, in this way, that all of life is a Chant and Praise of the God of Love.

 

(e) The Action of Grace: What is the Eucharist, if not the possibility of loving Jesus here and of loving him intimately? “Love desires the secret” …, but a little afterwards it cannot refrain from radiating as delivered from all human respect.

 

Twice the mystery of the Eucharist is evoked in the Canticle, but it is likewise strongly present in the mystical explanation of “eating and drinking.”  Thus, the Sacrament is an act of Union, a sign of love and a participation in the very mystery of life, of nourishment, and of vital energy.

 

The Eucharist is an Action of Grace because, St. Francis de Sales tells us it is already like a “kiss” by which “we receive the blood of the Saviour in his flesh and his flesh in his blood… into our corporal mouth,” and he specifies, “so that we might know that in this way it applies to us his divine Essence in the Eternal Banquet of Glory.”  Therefore, it is an action of grace and joyous “thanks” for Love, for by the Eucharist we receive a “deposit” of union in fullness.

 

But, it is not, of course, a question only of “personal” happiness, since in the Sacrament is found implied, without separation, the very mystery of Love in its effort of union and reunion, in its teaching about the very mystery of the Church: He gives himself to me because he wants to give himself to everyone, and the universal abundance of the Eucharistic communion is a function of the depth of its interior intensity.  Will love be capable of making us understand the truth of this paradox?

 

(f) Richness of Love:  Without entering into the polemic, the Canticle of Canticles poses a problem to everyone which can shock and offend us.  Was St. Francis so naïve, and should we merely excuse him?  This would, indeed, be very easy and comfortable to do.  No, the “Canticle” is and will remain a chant of love, a chant of human love in which the ardour, force and lyric poetry are found entirely oriented towards God.

 

Does the Canticle wish to preserve love?  Or is it only a pleasing pretext in order to express curious, mystical experiences?  Let us refrain from believing that it would be necessary to doubt the value of everything which can awaken us to the knowledge of God.  for, as Francis de Sales tells us, not only does love possess the “same properties” in God as in man, but all our gestures, everything which lives and expresses itself, always lives and expresses itself beyond its immediate motivation, towards God.

 

Likewise, love has another richness, (for) when it is lived fully, it always brings us back to the origin as to the end, so that all our life is preserved from corruption, from worry, and from mortal indifference.

 

Therefore, the mystery of the “Canticle of Canticles” successfully catches up with the person who can find true happiness even in the condition of not considering or tasting real pleasure, even in renouncing it: man has never been made for himself, but (only) in order to give himself.

 

That is why love and death resemble each other, almost as strongly as they oppose each other, and why in every ecstasy death is there as is love.  And if we speak of the “kiss of death,” we cannot forget the odious kiss of Judas which killed Christ.  It is love, therefore, which expresses the kiss and not the reverse.

 

But since the Canticle has magnificently chanted that love is stronger than death, Christ Jesus, by his resurrection, has come to bring us true Love, the Love stronger than Death.

 

(g) Conclusion: Jesus is the Alpha and Omega of the Canticle of Canticles such is the point which this Salesian commentary poses, not only to exegetes, but likewise to theologians.  It is by citing these words of the “Canticles” that Francis de Sales began his Treatise on the Love of God: “so that one may know that all the doctrine which she (the Church) announces consists of sacred dilection” – that is, of Love.

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[1] Oeuvres, Tome III, p. 76.  Introduction to the Devout Life, Part 2, Chapter 2.

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