Salesian Literature

Part III: The Mystical Exposition of the Canticle of Canticles

::   Foreword   ::   Preface   ::   Discourse 1   ::   Discourse 2   ::   Discourse 3   ::   Discourse 4   ::   Discourse 5   ::   Discourse 6

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Part III: Mystical Exposition of the Canticle of Canticles

Preface

 

In this world there are two types of unions of the soul with God: the first by grace, which is given in baptism or by means of penitence, and the second by devotion, which is accomplished by means of spiritual exercises.  The one renders us innocent, the other spiritual.

       

Solomon, presuming to have taught sufficiently the first type of union in his other Books[1], teaches only the second type in the Canticles, where he presupposes that the Spouse, who is the devout soul, is already married to the divine Bridegroom.  This work represents the holy and chaste loves of their marriage that are produced by mental prayer, which is nothing else than the consideration of God and of divine things.

       

Under this name of “consideration” four different actions of understanding are included: thought, study, meditation, and contemplation.[2]  We think of things without any goal or intention.  We study them to be more learned.  We meditate upon them in order to love them, and we contemplate them in order for us to take pleasure in them.  Thought regards a portrait simply, in order to see there colours and images, without any other goal; study involves learning the art and imitating it.  Meditation seeks to love the person represented, as princes do their spouses, though often they see them only an image; contemplation, because they already love the person represented, takes pleasure in looking at his portrait.  The first one of these four actions is without end; the second is of service to the understanding; the third and fourth are of service to the will, the one inflaming it, the other gladdening it.  These last two are the super-mysteries of the Canticle; but between the one and the other one can justly place “petitions,” and all three correspond to the theological virtues.

       

Meditation is founded on faith, considering that which we believe in order to love it.  Petitions are based on hope, asking that which we hope for in order to obtain it.  Contemplation is founded on charity, contemplating that which we love in order to take pleasure therein.

       

Nevertheless, the subject of this Book does not comprise petitions nor the two sole affective considerations, nor even devotion. (Devotion is neither meditation nor contemplation, but is the effect of them; it is nothing else than a general virtue, contrary to spiritual laziness, which renders us prompt in the service of God.)[3]  In this way, where it is faith, we are made more prompt to believe by devotion; where it is hope, we are rendered more prompt to desire that which God promises.  By charity, we are enabled to love that which God commands; by temperance, to abstain ourselves; by fortitude, to endure; and so on with the other virtues.  Devotion joins to the particular promptings that produce habits a general and common one, engendered by meditation and contemplation, in the same way that the pilgrim is more disposed for travel by taking food.

       

Solomon’s goal in the Canticles is devotion, but its subject is mental prayer, considered as meditation and contemplation, not as thought, nor as study, nor as petition, nor as devotion, nor even as consolation and the delight one has in prayer.  (This delight, not always being found there, is distinguished from prayer; instead it often happens that this delight, absent from the prayer of good persons, is found in that of great sinners.)  But the pilgrim, who is healthy after being replenished with food, either with or without delight, returns always more promptly to his journey.

       

Now, if mental prayer is distinguished from spiritual delight as cause from effect, it is even more distinct from spiritual joy which is engendered by the multitude of delights.  The courtier who has received various favours from his prince acquires a habit with which he serves him not only promptly, but happily.  So also we must always serve God promptly; we serve him only happily when we receive several spiritual delights which result from mental prayer.  The pilgrim will be more disposed for the journey if he has eaten; but if he has eaten with delight and appetite, he will be not only disposed, but joyous and happy as well.

       

We say also that possibility, facility, promptness, and gaiety are different things in one action.  To resuscitate a dead infant is not within the possibility of the mother; to heal the child when it is extremely sick is something possible, but not easy; to burn its wound by order of the doctor[4] is possible and easy, but only with resistance and fright and not with promptness; to freshen the child’s dressings is done easily, and promptly, but not joyfully; but after the child is healed, to receive and welcome it between the mother’s arms is done easily, promptly, and gaily.  Thus, the sinner does not, of himself, have the possibility to serve God meritoriously; being in grace, he has the possibility, with resistance and without facility; after having progressed he serves him easily; after he is devout, he serve him promptly; if he is contemplative, he serves him joyfully.  Hence, grace gives the possibility; charity enables the facility; mental prayer issues forth in promptness and devotion; and the multitude of delights yields gaiety.

       

Above all these actions are ecstasy and rapture; for when in prayer, by meditating and contemplating, man is attached in such a way to the object that he goes out form himself, he loses the use of his senses and dwells absorbed and attracted beyond himself.  This alienation of understanding on the part of the object which ravishes the soul is called rapture; on the part of the power which dwells absorbed and engulfed, it is called ecstasy, which is the last effect of mental prayer here below.

       

In brief, mental prayer is the subject of the Canticles.  But one needs the knowledge of subtle things for the explanation of its terms, even when they seem quite literal, although this may happen quite rarely and it may be very difficult to know them.  Whereas, on the contrary, the mystical terms are there in abundance and are most diverse.  For example, terms such as devotion, delight, joy, rapture, ecstasy, and similar things are never found there; but at each step along the way words like sleep, dream, inebriation, languor, faintness, and others similar to these appear.  Not even the nature nor the properties of God or of the soul are at all named; but in place of all these are mentioned eyes, hair, teeth, lips, necks, vestments, gardens, anointings, and a thousand similar things which have caused confusion in the commentaries because of the liberty which commentators have exercised in explaining the sense of each of these and, which is worse, by the insupportable license which the same commentator has taken of understanding in one same page the same word in different manners and for different things.

       

But we have undertaken nothing without imitation of the better authors and without apparent propriety between the signifying term and that which is signified.  And having once given a signification to a term, we have never changed it afterward.  Kisses will always signify spiritual consolations; embraces, the unions with God; the sweetness of foods, the spiritual delights; the languors and faintings, the gaieties and joys; the sleeps and inebriations, the raptures and ecstasies.  In the Spouse, when it is a question of exterior virtue, the neck will signify the strength needed to execute it; when it is a question of interior virtue, it will signify the irascible part, and never will its signification change.  In the Bridegroom, the head will signify charity.  The theatre of Jerusalem will always be the militant Church[5]; the Bridegroom will always be God uncreated or incarnate; the Spouse, the soul; the chorus of women, worldly conversations.

       

In the end, mental prayer is the mystical subject of the Canticle.  But what things does Solomon, or rather the Holy Spirit, come to say about it?  He seeks to demonstrate to us by how many degrees a soul, being in mental prayer, can climb to the highest consideration of God, and with which remedies the soul can be aided against many obstacles.  Concerning this, one can make the following division:

       

In prayer there are five principal obstacles, five principal remedies and five degrees.  But the sixth scene represents a soul, which, having surmounted all these obstacles, has no more need of remedies; yet in each of the five other scenes an obstacle, a remedy and a degree are presented.

       

In the first, the distant recollection of sensible pleasures in the past is the obstacle; the remedy is the desire for spiritual things and the asking of God for them; the first degree is to consider God in corporal things.

       

In the second, the obstacle is the distraction of the imagination by fantasies and sensible vision; the remedy is the attention to inspirations; the degree is the consideration of God in spiritual things.

       

In the third, the obstacle is human praise; the remedy is to delight in what is divine; the degree is the consideration that the soul makes of God in itself.

       

In the fourth, the obstacle is the fatigue of the body and the sensible part; the remedy is spiritual conferences and conversations; the degree is to meditate on God, not in himself, but in his Humanity.

       

In the fifth, the obstacle is human respect; the remedy is solitude; the degree is the consideration of God in himself, as God. 

 

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[1] The belief that Solomon was the most illustrious of the sages gave rise to the opinion that he was the originator of the Wisdom literature in Israel.  As such, some of these books (e.g., Ecclesiastes, Proverbs) were commonly attributed to his authorship.

[2] Cf. Treatise on the Love of God, Book 6.

[3] Cf. Introduction to the Devout Life, Part I, Chapter 1.

[4] For various illnesses, a “home remedy” common in those days was to “bleed” the wound by applying heat so as to destroy the infection.

[5] In Francis’ understanding, Jerusalem is the scene of the Canticles; the “militant” Church is the Church community as it continues to exist here on earth, as distinguished from the “triumphant” Church in heaven.

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