Canticles 5:2

31. Moreover, when we stand praying, beloved brethren, we ought to be watchful and earnest with our whole heart, intent on our prayers. Let all carnal and worldly thoughts pass away, nor let the soul at that time think on anything but the object only of its prayer. For this reason also the priest, by way of preface before his prayer, prepares the minds of the brethren by saying, “Lift up your hearts,” that so upon the people’s response, “We lift them up unto the Lord,” he may be reminded that he himself ought to think of nothing but the Lord. Let the breast be closed against the adversary, and be open to God alone; nor let it suffer God’s enemy to approach to it at the time of prayer. …

Chapter XIII. 6-10 (continued), and Song of Sol. V. 2, 3

2. For thus she speaks: “I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my Beloved that knocketh at the gate.” And then He also says: “Open to me, my sister, my nearest, my dove, my perfect one; for my head is filled with dew, and my hair with the drops of the night.” And she replies: “I have put off my dress; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?” O wonderful sacramental symbol! O lofty mystery! Does she, then, fear to defile her feet in coming to Him who washed the feet of His disciples? Her fear is genuine; for it is along the earth she has to come to Him, who is still on earth, because refusing to leave His own who are stationed here. …

Now if it was altogether unseemly in any of the Bishops to change their opinions merely from fear of these things, yet it was much more so, and not the part of men who have confidence in what they believe, to force and compel the unwilling. In this manner it is that the Devil, when he has no truth on his side, attacks and breaks down the doors of them that admit him with axes and hammers. But our Saviour is so gentle that He teaches thus, ‘If any man wills to come after Me,’ and, ‘Whoever wills to be My disciple;’ and coming to each He does not force them, but knocks at the door and says, ‘Open unto Me, My sister, My spouse;’ and if they open to Him, He enters in, but if they delay and will not, He departs from them. For the truth is not preached with swords or with darts, nor by means of soldiers; but by persuasion and counsel. …

6. But if even real virgins, when they have other failings, are not saved by their physical virginity, what shall become of those who have prostituted the members of Christ, and have changed the temple of the Holy Ghost into a brothel? Straightway shall they hear the words: “Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground; there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldæans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. …

25. Ever let the privacy of your chamber guard you; ever let the Bridegroom sport with you within. Do you pray? You speak to the Bridegroom. Do you read? He speaks to you. When sleep overtakes you He will come behind and put His hand through the hole of the door, and your heart shall be moved for Him; and you will awake and rise up and say: “I am sick of love.” Then He will reply: “A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.”

Go not from home nor visit the daughters of a strange land, though you have patriarchs for brothers and Israel for a father. Dinah went out and was seduced. Do not seek the Bridegroom in the streets; do not go round the corners of the city. For though you may say: “I will rise now and go about the city: in the streets and in the broad ways I will seek Him whom my soul loveth,” and though you may ask the watchmen: “Saw ye Him whom my soul loveth?” no one will deign to answer you. The Bridegroom cannot be found in the streets: “Strait and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life.” So the Song goes on: “I sought him but I could not find him: I called him but he gave me no answer.” And would that failure to find Him were all. …

26. These things being so, my Eustochium, daughter, lady, fellow-servant, sister, these names refer the first to your age, the second to your rank, the third to your religious vocation, the last to the place which you hold in my affection, hear the words of Isaiah: “Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation” of the Lord “be overpast.” Let foolish virgins stray abroad, but for your part stay at home with the Bridegroom; for if you shut your door, and, according to the precept of the Gospel, pray to your Father in secret, He will come and knock, saying: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man…open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” Then straightway you will eagerly reply: “It is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my …

10. Whether you read or write, whether you wake or sleep, let the herdsman’s horn of Amos always ring in your ears. Let the sound of the clarion arouse your soul, let the divine love carry you out of yourself; and then seek upon your bed him whom your soul loveth, and boldly say: “I sleep, but my heart waketh.” And when you have found him and taken hold of him, let him not go. And if you fall asleep for a moment and He escapes from your hands, do not forthwith despair. Go out into the streets and charge the daughters of Jerusalem: then shall you find him lying down in the noontide weary and drunk with passion, or wet with the dew of night by the flocks of his companions, or fragrant with many kinds of spices, amid the apples of the garden. …

1. Your letter which has suddenly arrived was not expected by me, and coming in an unlooked for way it has helped to rouse me from my torpor by the glad tidings which it conveys. I hasten to embrace with the arms of love one whom my eyes have never seen, and silently say to myself: ‘“oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I flee away and be at rest.”’ Then would I find him “whom my soul loveth.” In you the Lord’s words are now truly fulfilled: “many shall come from the east and west and shall sit down with Abraham.” In those days the faith of my Lucinius was foreshadowed in Cornelius, “centurion of the band called the Italian band.” And when the apostle Paul writes to the Romans: “whensoever I take my journey into Spain I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you;” he shews by the tale of his previous successes what he …

May you be kept holy both in body and spirit by the Samaritan, that is, saviour and keeper, of whom it is said in the psalm, “He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.” May the watcher and the holy one who came down to Daniel come also to you, that you too may be able to say, “I sleep but my heart waketh.”

7. When Paula comes to be a little older and to increase like her Spouse in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man, let her go with her parents to the temple of her true Father but let her not come out of the temple with them. Let them seek her upon the world’s highway amid the crowds and the throng of their kinsfolk, and let them find her nowhere but in the shrine of the scriptures, questioning the prophets and the apostles on the meaning of that spiritual marriage to which she is vowed. Let her imitate the retirement of Mary whom Gabriel found alone in her chamber and who was frightened, it would appear, by seeing a man there. …