One Is My Dove: The Only One of Her Mother and the Church Built upon the Rock
Old Testament: Canticles 6:7-8
There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and young maidens without number. One is my dove, my perfect one is but one, she is the only one of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her. The daughters saw her, and declared her most blessed: the queens and concubines, and they praised her.
Old Testament, also: Canticles 4:12
My sister, my spouse, is a garden enclosed, a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up.
New Testament: Matthew 16:18-19; Ephesians 4:3-6
And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven. ... Careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. One body and one Spirit; as you are called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.
The connection
The bridegroom of the Canticles looks over a crowded court, "threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and young maidens without number", and sees only one: "One is my dove, my perfect one is but one, she is the only one of her mother." There are many who could be chosen, and one who is. Even the rivals see it; the daughters declare her most blessed, and the queens praise her. The Fathers read the dove as the Church, and St Cyprian sets her beside the words to Peter. "Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church." Christ gives the keys to one man, and although He gives the same power to all the apostles after the Resurrection, He begins with one, Cyprian says, "that He might set forth unity": "the beginning proceeds from unity." And it is this one Church, he goes on, that the Holy Ghost named in the Song of Songs: "My dove, my spotless one, is but one." St Paul gives the same oneness its full shape: "One body and one Spirit ... One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all." The Bridegroom does not have a harem of churches. He has one bride, as there is one Lord, and He built her on one rock so that her oneness would be something that could be seen.
Moral sense
Belonging to Christ is not a private arrangement beside His Church; it is being one member of the one dove He chose. Cyprian's question stands for whoever would knowingly leave her: can one who does not hold the unity of the Church think that he holds the faith? The soul keeps the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, as Paul asks, by staying within the one fold under the one shepherd and those He set over it.
Anagogical sense
The one dove chosen out of the crowd is the Bride of the Lamb made ready at the end, one out of every nation and tongue. The keys given on earth open onto the kingdom of heaven, where whatever was bound and loosed in the one Church is found bound and loosed.
The Fathers
St Cyprian, On the Unity of the Catholic Church 4: "Assuredly the rest of the apostles were also the same as was Peter, endowed with a like partnership both of honour and power; but the beginning proceeds from unity. Which one Church, also, the Holy Spirit in the Song of Songs designated in the person of our Lord, and says, 'My dove, my spotless one, is but one.'"
Warrant
Patristic because St Cyprian joins the two himself. In On the Unity of the Catholic Church 4 he quotes Matthew 16:18-19, says Christ arranged "the origin of that unity, as beginning from one", and continues: "Which one Church, also, the Holy Spirit in the Song of Songs designated in the person of our Lord, and says, My dove, my spotless one, is but one." The corpus prints the received text of that chapter; a second version in the manuscripts adds sentences on Peter's primacy, and the entry does not rest on them. Cyprian also reads the garden enclosed of Canticles 4:12 of the one Church (Epistle 75), and St Augustine (Tractates on John 6) answers, in the voice of the Church, that the verse was said to the Catholic Church. Ephesians 4:3-6 is the passage Cyprian quotes next, as "the sacrament of unity". In the Septuagint the daughters "declare her blessed" (makariousin), the word of Luke 1:48; the entry notes it and does not build on it. St Cyprian joins the one Church to the one chair on the rock again in his letter to the people of Carthage against the schism of Felicissimus (Epistle 39): "There is one God, and Christ is one, and there is one Church, and one chair founded upon the rock by the word of the Lord."
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 881.
The verses
Canticles 6:7 · Canticles 6:8 · Canticles 4:12 · Matthew 16:18 · Matthew 16:19 · Ephesians 4:3 · Ephesians 4:4 · Ephesians 4:5 · Ephesians 4:6
