Canticles - part II - A - 1

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Prologue

The Great Solomon describes, with a delicately admirable air, the loves of the Saviour and the devout soul, in this divine work which, for its excellence, is called:

1:1. The Canticle of Canticles

And in order to elevate us more gently to the consideration of the spiritual love which exercises itself between God and us by the correspondence of the movements of our hearts with the inspiration of his divine majesty, it makes use of a perpetual representation of the loves of a chaste shepherd and a modest shepherdess.[1]

The divine lover, gasping a profound sigh, begins by saying:

1:2. Let him kiss me, this dear friend of my soul;

Let him kiss me with a kiss of his mouth?

See how the soul (in the person of the shepherdess), by the first wish which she expresses, seeks a chaste union with her Bridegroom, how it is the one end to which she aspires and for which she breathes. For, I beg you, what eels can this first sigh mean?

From all time the kiss, as though by natural instinct, has been used to represent perfect love, meaning the union of hearts, and this is not without good reason. We express our passions and the movements which our souls have in common with animals by our eyes, our eyebrows, the forehead, and all the rest of our face. “A man is known by his face,” says the Scripture (Eccl. 19:26), and Aristotle, giving the reason why ordinarily only the appearance of great men is portrayed, says: “It is (so), seeing that the face expresses what we are.”

Yet, we do not pour out our discourse and the thoughts which proceed by reason, by which we are different from animals, except by our words and, consequently, by means of the mouth. Hence, to pour out one’s soul and to lay bare one’s heart means nothing else than to speak. “Pour out your hearts before God,” says Psalm 61:9 meaning, express and pronounce the affections of your heart by words. See the devout mother of Samuel saying her prayers, though so beautifully that one hardly noticed the movement of her lips: “I have laid bare my soul before God” (2 Kings 1).

Thus, when persons kiss, one mouth is applied to the other in order to testify that they would like to pour out reciprocally the souls of one into the other, in order to untie them in a perfect union. For this reason, the kiss has always been the sign of love and dilection.

In this way, this sign was employed universally among the first Christians, as the great St. Paul testifies when he says to the Romans and to the Corinthians: “Greet each other mutually by the holy kiss” (Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 16:20; 2 Cor. 13:12). And, as many witnessed, Judas, in the capture of Our Lord, used the kiss to make him known, because this Divine Saviour ordinarily used to kiss his disciples when he met them, and not only his disciples, but also the small children whom he used to take up lovingly into his arms, as it was (with) that child by whose comparison he so solemnly invited his disciples to the love of one’s neighbour… (Mk. 9:35-10:16; Mt. 18:1; 26:48).

And so, the kiss thus being the living mark of the union of hearts, the Spouse aspires in all her pursuits to be united with her Beloved; “Let him kiss me,” she says, “with a kiss of his mouth,” as if she, herself, had written:

So many sighs and inflamed arrows

that my love unceasingly casts

will they never obtain for me what my soul desires?

I run, ah, will I never reach the prize for which I fly,

the prize of being united heart to heart, spirit to spirit,

with my God, my Bridegroom, and my Life?

When will this be

that I will pour forth my soul into his heart

and thus, blessedly united,

we will live inseparable?[2]

But is there enough propriety, O beloved of the Beloved, between you and the Bridegroom to arrive at the union which you desire? “Yes,” she says, “give it to me, that kiss of union, O dear friend of my soul…”[3]

Listen to the holy Sulamite. She wants first to kiss her Bridegroom even before having greeted him; nor does she even offer an introduction. But have compassion on her passion; she is transported by love. That is why she excuses herself by saying that the loves stronger than wine have intoxicated her. It is necessary to pardon her if she begins without method, for love has not other (method) than ardour.[4]

1:3. Your loves are better than wine

and more fragrant than perfumes.

Your name, itself, is the perfume poured forth;

the young girls have followed you.

1:4. Draw me in pursuit; we will follow

and will run to the scent of your perfumes.

Alas, O my dear Bridegroom, my friend, draw me, I beg you, and tame me under your arm, because I cannot otherwise go. But if you draw me, we will run: you, aiding me by the scent of your perfumes and I, corresponding by my feeble consent and smelling your sweetness, which reinforce me and reinvigorate me, until the balm of your sacred Name be poured forth in me.

See, she would not pray if she had not been excited, but as soon as she is excited and senses the attractions, she prays that she be drawn. Being drawn, she runs, but she would not run if the perfumes which draw her and by which she is drawn had not revived her heart by their precious scent. And as she runs more quickly and approaches nearer to her heavenly Bridegroom, she senses even more deliciously the sweetness which he pours forth, until at last he, himself, flows into her heart by means of a balm poured forth, so that she, herself, cries out:

O my Bridegroom, you are a Balm

poured into my bosom!

(It is) no wonder

the young souls cherish you so.[5]

Thus, the heart of God will be drawn into ours, and he pours forth there his precious balm. And thus is practised that which the holy Spouse says with such joy:

My king has led me into his dwelling;

We will skip with joy,

And we will rejoice in him and with him,

In the recollection of your loves,

Which are better than wine;

The good (ones) love and esteem you.[6]

When the heavenly Spouse wishes to express the infinite sweetness of the perfumes of her divine Bridegroom, she says:

Your name … is an ointment poured forth,

as if she said:

You are so excellently perfumed

that it seems that you are all perfume…

Thus, the soul which loves God is so transformed in the divine will that it merits being called the divine will, rather than obedient or subject to the divine will, for which God, through Isaiah (62), says that He will call the Christian Church by a New Name, which the mouth of the Lord will name, mark and engrave on the heart of the faithful (ones). After explaining this name, he says that it will be “my-will-in-them,” as if he said: among the true children of the Saviour (there) will be that one leading, reigning and universal will which will animate, govern and direct all hearts.[7]

The Fathers, considering this word of the Canticle of Canticles which the Spouse addresses to her Bridegroom (“let him kiss me with a kiss of his mouth”), say that this kiss which she desires so ardently is nothing other than the accomplishment of the mystery of the Incarnation, a kiss so waited and hoped for during so long a continuation of years by all the souls which merit the name of lovers.[8]

At last this kiss, which had been refused and put off for such a long while, was accorded to that sacred Lover, Our Lady, who merits above all others the name of Spouse and Lover, par excellence. It was given to her by her heavenly Bridegroom on the day of the Annunciation … at the very moment when she darted forth that most loving sigh: Let him kiss me with a kiss of his mouth! It was then that the divine union of the Eternal Word with human nature, represented by the kiss, was made in the sacred womb of the glorious Virgin.

See, by grace, how this divine Lover delicately expresses her lovers:

Let him kiss me, meaning let this Word, which is the Word of the Father going forth from his mouth, come to unite itself to me by the mediation of the Holy Spirit, who is the Eternal Sigh of the Love of the Father toward his Son and of the Son, reciprocally, toward his Father.

But when was that kiss given to this incomparable Spouse? At the very instant when she responded to the Angel that word so desired: Let it be done to me as you say (Lk. 1:38).[9]

Thus, this sacred soul says: Let him kiss me with a kiss of his mouth, breathing into me the breath of the loving life…[10]

To kiss signifies nothing other than the sweet repose of contemplation, where the soul, by a loving affection disengaged from all the things of the earth, occupies itself in considering and contemplating the beauties of its heavenly Bridegroom, without remembering to assist its neighbour and secure fro him all his necessities; to which the divine Bridegroom, who wishes that Charity be well directed, says:

You desire, my sister, my beloved, that I kiss you with a kiss of my mouth so as to unite yourself to me by contemplation. Truly you are right; what you ask is something very good, very excellent and desirable. But this is not enough, for “your loves are better than wine…”

meaning that it is better to assist your neighbour … then to be always occupied by lofty contemplation, so that sometimes it is necessary to leave one for the other. I am not saying that it would not be necessary to mediate and contemplate at all, O certainly not! But I do say that it is necessary to do one in order to render oneself more capable of the other.[11]

It is true that, by waiting for this great kiss of indissoluble union which we will receive on high in glory, he gives us some of it by a thousand slight sentiments of his agreeable presence, because if the soul were not kissed, it would not be drawn, nor would it run to the scent of the Beloved.

For this reason, according to the simplicity (i.e., original) of the Hebrew text and according to the translation of the Septuagint, she wishes for several kisses: “Let him kiss me,” she says, “with the kisses of his mouth!”

But seeing that these small kisses of the present life correspond entirely to the eternal kiss of the future life, s trials and preparatives and pledges of it, the sacred Vulgate Edition has piously reduced the kisses of Grace to that of Glory, expressing the wish of the heavenly love in this way:

As if she said,

Let him kiss me with a kiss of his mouth! Among all the kisses, among all the favours which the Friend of my heart, or the heart of my Friend, has prepared for me, ah, I neither sigh nor aspire (other) than to that great and solemn nuptial kiss which should last eternally and by comparison to which the other kisses do not merit the name of kisses, since they are rather signs of the future union between my beloved and me and are not the union itself.[12]

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[1] Oeuvres de St. Francois de Sales. Annecy: Religieuses de la Visitation, 1893-1993), Tome 4, p. 50. Treatise on the Love of God, Book 1, Chapter 9.

[2] oeuvres, Tome 4, p. 50. Treatise on the Love of God, Book 1, Chapter 9.

[3] oeuvres, Tome 4, p. 74. Treatise on the Love of God, Book 1, Chapter 15.

[4] oeuvres, Tome 5, p. 393. Treatise on the Love of God, Book 6, Chapter 7 to Chapter 11.

[5] oeuvres, Tome 4, p. 162. Treatise on the Love of God, Book 2, Chapter 21.

[6] oeuvres, Tome 26, p. 17. The Mystical Exposition of the Canticle of Canticles, trans. Henry Benedict, Canon Mackey, D.D., O.S.B. (publication information unknown), Discourse I, p. 3.

[7] oeuvres, Tome 5, p. 78. Treatise on the Love of God, Book 8, Chapter 7.

[8] oeuvres, Tome 9, p. 423.

[9] oeuvres, Tome 10, p. 44.

[10] oeuvres, Tome 5, p. 379. Treatise on the Love of God, Book 5, Chapter 2 to Chapter 4.

[11] oeuvres, Tome 10, p. 465.

[12] Oeuvres, Tome 4, p. 188. Treatise on the Love of God, Book 3, Chapter 6.

St. Francis de Sales and the Canticle of Canticles

ST. FRANCIS DE SALES AND THE CANTICLE OF CANTICLES

TABLE OF CONTENTS :: Preface :: Introduction :: Part I :: Part II :: Part III

A Spirituality for Everyone

St. Francis de Sales presents a spirituality that can be practised by everyone in all walks of life