In my bed at night I sought him whom my soul loved, as if he had stolen in upon her. Let one who seeks carefully seek while in his bed; let him seek at night. Let there be neither nights nor holiday, let no time be free from pious service, and if one does not find him at first, let him persevere in searching after him. . . .

And because we see the heavenly mysteries represented allegorically on earth through the gospel, let us come to Mary Magdalene and to the other Mary.^[1] Let us meditate upon how they sought Christ at night in the bed of his body, in which he lay dead, when the angel said to them, You seek Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen. Why then do you seek the living one among the dead?^[2] Why do you seek in the tomb him who is now in heaven? Why do you seek in the bonds of the tomb him who frees all men of their bonds? The tomb is not his dwelling, but heaven is. And so one of them says, I sought him and I did not find him.

In my chamber by night I sought him. This refers to the women who came at the beginning of the morning on the sabbath to the tomb of Jesus and did not find him.^[1] He is in the chamber, therefore, or away from the chamber. Or perhaps they call their chamber the Lord’s tomb because we are buried together with him.^[2] But when they did not find him, they heard at once: He is not here, for he has been raised.^[3] And they discovered guardian angels, whom they asked, Where have you laid the Lord?^[4] Then, when they had left the angels whom they were questioning, the Lord met them and said, Rejoice.^[5] For this reason, it says, When I had passed by them for a little while, I found him whom I will not let go. She grasped his feet and heard, Don’t hold me.^[6] Finally, he called the gathering of the apostles the house of the mother, to whom he announced the resurrection of Christ.

To what does this bed refer, upon which the church seeks the one whom its soul loves, if not to the bed of its heart in which wisdom rests, where it seeks our Lord and Savior through continuous meditation? If the bed is the secrecy of the heart, then what is the night in which the church sought the Lord but was unable to find him? Surely it means that the God of light was not easily found in darkness.

The chamber is indeed the heart that becomes an acceptable dwelling of God when it returns to that state which it had in the beginning made by her who conceived me. We would be correct by understanding mother as the first cause of our being.

Let us follow him by day, the present day of the church, which Abraham saw and was glad.^[1] This is why we follow Christ during the day; for he will not be found by night. Upon my bed, Scripture says, by night I sought him whom my soul loves. I called him, but he gave no answer.

We seek the one we love upon our beds when we sigh with longing for our Redeemer during our short period of rest during the present life. We seek him during the night, because even though our hearts are already watchful for him, our eyes are still darkened. But it remains for the person who does not find the one he loves to rise and go about the city, that is, he must travel about the holy church of the elect with an inquiring heart. He must seek her through its streets and squares, making his way, that is, through narrow and broad places, on the watch to make inquiries if any traces of her can be found in them, because there are some, even of those leading worldly lives, who have something worth imitating of virtue in their actions. The watchmen who guard the city find us as we search, because the holy fathers who guard the church’s orthodoxy come to meet our good efforts, to teach us, by their words of their writings. Scarcely have we passed them by when we find him whom we love. Although in his humility our Redeemer was a human being in the midst of human beings, in his divinity he was above human beings. Therefore once the watchmen have been passed by, the beloved is found.

Since the bridegroom is incomprehensible in his being even to the holy angels, and hence they did not give me an answer to my question, teaching me by their silence that he is incomprehensible even to them, the uncreated to created beings, I left them as well, still searching for my beloved.

It was not long after passing them that I found him whom my soul loved. I laid hold of him. I had scarcely bypassed the creature to reach the angelic nature itself in an effort to find my uncreated beloved, my benefactor as he is, when by faith alone I came upon him, bypassing all beings and with the confirmation from experience itself that the one responsible for everything is above all beings and in his being is seen by no nature, of the senses or the intellect, being superior to them in substance.

Happy the person in whose heart Jesus sets his feet every day! If only he would set his feet in my heart! If only his footsteps would cling to my heart forever! If only I may say with the spouse, I took hold of him and would not let him go.

What is signified by the house of your mother and her chamber except the interior, secret place of your nature? Keep this house, and cleanse its inmost parts so that, once it is an immaculate house unstained by any sordidness of an adulterous conscience, a spiritual house held together by the cornerstone may rise into a holy priesthood, and the Holy Spirit may dwell in it. One who thus seeks Christ, who entreats him, is not abandoned by him. Rather, that one is frequently visited, for he is with us until the end of the world.

In my mother’s house and in the chamber where she conceived me. This is the voice of the church speaking. If the church is a mother to all, we must ask for the identity of the mother of the church, in whose house and in whose chamber she is said to have been conceived. I have already shown above what is the church, namely, the body of Christ that consists of his gathering members. The mother of the church, therefore, is the holy heavenly Jerusalem.^[1]

She says she found him and did not let him go before bringing him into her mother’s house and the inner chamber of the one who conceived her. By city she refers to the house of God, which we call church, by marketplaces and streets the divine Scriptures, by the city’s watchmen the holy prophets and the sacred apostles, from whom the pious soul learns in its longing for the divine Word. After these she finds the bridegroom attended by guards and attendants, she lays hold of him, clings to him and is reluctant to leave him before she brings him into her mother’s house and the inner chamber of the one who conceived her. Now, we recognize the mother of the pious as the Jerusalem on high, of whom blessed Paul says, The Jerusalem on high is free in being mother of us all.^[1] See commentary on

The myrrh that was mixed with frankincense was used for burying him, but frankincense because whoever rises with Christ shares his divinity. And the ecclesiastical soul is imbued not only with these fragrances but also with various principles of knowledge. For whoever discerns accurately and searches all the way to the highest peak will be said to crush everything and reduce to dust the doctrines of good fragrance, like some perfume with which the bride is now said to be fragrant. Perhaps also the one who does not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit, whose heart has not been hardened, generating and preserving various sweet smells, renders a good odor from all the herbs which are now called perfumes. Likewise, some will say that the holy and ecclesiastical soul, a daughter formerly destitute of God, ascends from the assembly of the Gentiles, that is, from the desert of those who are remiss in dogmas, words and deeds, having abandoned God, and rises to the things that are of God.

They also bring frankincense, translated as whitening, since they reject every dark condition, so that the words are fitting for them: Who is she who comes up all white? For in this way they will be able to bring praise to the house of the Lord, not having a spot or a wrinkle or any such thing which brings dirt on the church of Christ.

For Solomon made himself a bed of wood from Lebanon. Its pillars were of silver, its bottom of gold, its back strewn with gems.

Do you, therefore, grind your faith so that you may be like the soul that excites in itself the love of Christ, that the powers of heaven admire as it mounts up, that it may rise easily and soar above this world with joy and gladness. Like the vine, put forth branches, and like smoke, rise on high, shedding the odor of a holy resurrection and the sweetness of faith, as you have it written: Who is she that goes up by the desert like a branch of the vine burning with smoke, fragrant with myrrh and frankincense, and with all the powders of the perfumer?

Behold the litter of Solomon surrounded by sixty mighty men from the powerful of Israel, each one equipped with a sword and trained for battle. O blessed sight! O litter of sabbath rest! For Solomon’s litter reveals nothing other than Christ himself.

We must enquire why on earth they call the bridegroom Solomon. Solomon means peaceable, as you can find in the Chronicles. God said to David, when he wanted to build the new temple, Lo, a son is born to you; he will be a man of repose, and I shall give him peace from all his enemies round about, because his name is Solomon, and I shall give peace and tranquility to Israel in his days. He will build a house for my name, and he will be a son to me, and I shall be a father to him, and I shall assure the throne of his kingdom in Israel forever.^[1] . . .

It was not Solomon who had dominion to the ends of the world but he who sprang from Solomon in his humanity, Jesus Christ, and was called Solomon on account of his peaceable and gentle nature and his being the cause of peace.

Lo, it is Solomon’s bed. Let us understand the bridegroom’s bed to be the divine Scriptures. When the bride reclines on them, as it were, along with the bridegroom, and receives the seeds of teaching, she conceives, bears, is in labor and gives birth to spiritual benefit.

Thus he was crowned by the blessed mother who begot him according to the flesh, Christ the King, the true Solomon. This was the day of his wedding and the day of gladness of heart, when the immaculate was joined to the stained. Our Lord Jesus Christ made the church immaculate by the touch of his body and blood and rendered it most beautiful, cleansed from every stain of sin by the most holy washing of baptism, with every wrinkle of heretical inclination wiped away by the salve of doctrine.

What then is their meaning? Perhaps the loveliness of the divine beauty has something fearful about it as characterized by elements contrary to corporeal beauty. What attracts our desire is pleasant to the sight, soft to the touch, and not associated with anything fearful or terrifying. But that incorruptible beauty is fearful, terrifying and not easily frightened. Since our desire for carnal things in the body’s members is subject to passion and defilement, like a band of robbers it ambushes the mind, captivates it and carries away the will. Therefore it becomes God’s enemy; as the apostle says, the wisdom of the flesh arises from what is inimical to God.^[1] It follows that the love of God arises from what is opposed to carnal desire. If carnal desire consists of weakness, laxity and laziness, the love of God is made up of a fearful, terrifying fortitude. An unrelenting anger scares and puts to flight the ambush resulting from pleasure, thus revealing the soul’s beauty as pure and no longer sullied by a desire for carnal pleasure. The king’s nuptial bed is therefore surrounded by armed men expert in battle. The sword at the thigh terrorizes and causes fear against dark, nocturnal thoughts and against those who lie in ambush to shoot arrows in the darkness at the upright of heart.^[2] The weapons of those standing guard around the bed destroy impure desires.

Solomon’s litter, therefore, is the glory of heavenly beatitude in which the King of peace himself rests with his saints, a rest toward which the King’s beloved, that is, the church, strains daily through the desert of this world and already partly enjoys, insofar as he gives his faithful a foretaste of their future reward. But they will receive it fully only when, at the end of the age, the founder and king of the heavenly city gathers the elect from the four winds and, as was said elsewhere, girds himself and makes them recline at table and serves them.^[1]

We should think that the use of gold denotes spiritual union, which is precious and divine. For, to demonstrate the union of God and humankind, the ark in the desert was also covered within and without by gold.^[1] The purple signifies that number of persons who are called to the kingdom. And when someone believes, at that moment Christ is received in the heart, who is a precious pearl. For it says that he made a litter for himself from the daughters of Jerusalem on account of love alone: For God so loved the world that he sent his only-begotten Son, that all who believe in him would not perish but have eternal life.^[2]

The church forged from the Gentiles says this: Go forth and see. But what it calls the day of his wedding is the day of his passion, when he married the church by his blood.^[1]

Then when the bride has been led to the resting place of her bridegroom, they sing the nuptial song and express love from the daughters of Jerusalem: Come forth and look upon King Solomon in the crown with which his mother has crowned him on the day of his marriage. They sing the epithalamium and call upon the other heavenly powers or souls to see the love that Christ has toward the daughters of Jerusalem. On this account he deserved to be crowned by his mother, as a loving son, as Paul shows, saying that God has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his loving son.^[1]

It is written that there was put on him a crown of thorns. Of this hear in the Canticles the voice of God the Father marveling at the iniquity of Jerusalem in the insult done to his Son: Go forth and see, you daughters of Jerusalem, the crown with which his mother has crowned him.

Every king is proclaimed by soldiers. It was fitting that Jesus also, in figure, be crowned by soldiers. For this reason Scripture says in the Canticles: Daughters of Jerusalem, come forth and look upon King Solomon in the crown with which his mother has crowned him. But the crown was also a mystery, for it was a remission of sins and release from the sentence of condemnation.

No one can adequately grasp the terms pertaining to God. For example, mother is mentioned in the Song in place of father. Both terms mean the same, because there is neither male nor female in God. For how can anything transitory like this be attributed to God? But when we are one in Christ, we are divested of the signs of this difference along with the old person. Therefore every name equally indicates God’s ineffable nature; neither can male nor female defile God’s pure nature. Because of this, the father mentioned in the gospel parable prepares a wedding.^[1] The prophet says of God, You have placed on his head a crown of precious stones.^[2] Hence the Song says that a crown is placed upon the bridegroom by his mother. Since the nuptials and bride are one, one mother places the crown upon the bridegroom’s head. Neither does it make much difference whether one calls the Son of God the only begotten God, or the Son of his love. According to Paul, each name has the capacity to be a bridal escort that leads the bridegroom to dwell in us.