Category Archives: Old Testament

“Daughters of Jerusalem:” the Children of Our Lady

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Mary, the Mother of God, nurtures and is nurtured in glory by her Beloved, her Son; the eight angels reveal the mystery of the Eighth Day, the glorious Kingdom of God, which is manifest in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. At the altar, we enter into the eschatological reality of the Paschal Mystery, as we worship together— one Body of Christ, in heaven and on earth.

“Is he your Son, O Virgin of virgins? Is he your beloved, O most beautiful of women? ‘Clearly so… he is my Son, O daughters of Jerusalem (Song of Songs 5:9, 16). My beloved is love itself… and is found in whosoever is born of him.'”

In one of his sermons for the Nativity of the Mother of God, St. Guerric of Igny places these words from the Song of Songs on the lips of the Virgin Mary when he–the preacher–asks the Virgin to tell the congregation listening to the sermon about her Beloved, who is her Son. In this sermon, the “daughters of Jerusalem” are the monks and visitors listening to the sermon. These daughters of Jerusalem are also claimed as children of the Virgin as well: St. Guerric preaches that “she desires to form her Only-begotten in all those who are her children by adoption…. she nurtures them every day until they reach the stature of the perfect man, the maturity of her Son [Ephesians 4:13], whom she brought forth once and for all.” All those in whom love is found are members of her Son and thus her children by adoption and she nurtures them to share more completely in that Love which took flesh in her womb.

Just as St. Paul labored to give birth to Christ in his spiritual children (Galatians 4:19), the Mother of God is the mother of all those in whom Christ is born. “She herself, like the Church of which she is the type, is the mother of all who are reborn to life,” St. Guerric preached. What Mary gives the world, clothed with flesh, the Church gives us clothed with words, bread, wine, water, and oil. As the daughters of Jerusalem, we–no less than those who heard St. Guerric first preach his sermons–are privileged to nurture Love within us and among us as children of Mary, members of her Only-begotten.

St. Guerric of Igny (died 1157) was a scholar who became a disciple of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and took monastic vows to remain in St. Bernard’s community. But in 1138 St. Guerric was sent by St. Bernard to be the second abbot at the new monastery of Igny, near Rheims. As abbot there, St. Guerric became famous for the sermons he preached. His sermons for Advent-Christmas-Epiphany-Purification are especially stunning. Find translations of his sermons here.

“I am dark and lovely:” Part 2

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Our Lady of Montserrat at the Santa Maria de Montserrat monastery on the MontserratMountain in Catalonia, dates from the 12th century. The famed image once bore the inscription ”Nigra Sum Sed Formosa” (Latin: I am Black, but Beautiful). I had the privilege of visiting Our Lady in the church of Montserrat outside Barcelona many years ago; my children wanted to skip along the sheer edge of the mountaintop and protested when I insisted they step away from the edge: “Daddy won’t let us be light-hearted!”

“Do not gaze at me because I am swarthy, because the sun has scorched me,” protests the bride in the Song of Songs (1:5). St. Bernard of Clairvaux–in his sermons on the Song–interprets this swarthiness caused by the scorching sun, as the virtue that comes as the result of hard work and effort. It is also the swarthiness that “is caused by the heat of persecution…. the zeal for what is right…. to be on fire with fraternal love, to weep with those who weep, to rejoice with those who rejoice, to be weak with those who are weak.” St. Bernard tells us, Just like the burning sun therefore, the ardor of desire [for both God and neighbor] darkens her complexion while still a pilgrim in the body….”

She who loves God most ardently and is most burnt by her ardor for God and neighbor is identified by the tradition of the Church as Mary, the Mother of God. She is burnt by the burning sun but, like the burning bush, not consumed by the flame of the Divine. She is zealous for what is right while rejoicing and weeping with those who rejoice and weep. One of the most popular images of the Mother of God as swarthy lover of God is Our Lady of Montserrat.

The image is one of the Black Madonnas of Europe, hence its familiar Catalan name, La Moreneta (“the little dark-skinned one” or “the little dark one”). Believed by some to have been carved in Jerusalem in the early days of the Church, it is more likely a Romanesque sculpture in wood from the late 12th century.

Legend has it that the monastic community that developed on the mountain could not move the statue to construct the monastery, choosing to instead build around it. The statue’s sanctuary is located at the rear of the chapel, where an altar of gold surrounds the icon, and is now a site of pilgrimage.

The hymn to the Virgin of Montserrat, known as “el Virolai” and sung at noon each day by the Escolania de Montserratboys’ choir, begins with the words: “Rosa d’abril, Morena de la serra…” (Rose of April, dark-skinned lady of the mountain…). Therefore, this image of the Mother of God is sometimes also known as the “Rosa d’abril” as her feast is kept on April 27.

“Kiss Me With the Kisses of Your Mouth”

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An illumination of Christ kissing the bride in the Song of Songs.

In the Song of Songs, the bride begs the groom, “Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth.” (Song of Songs 1:3) In the plain text of the Old Testament, this is the beginning of an erotic love song; I remember as an undergraduate, a roommate was writing a paper about the “four loves” as they appear in the Bible and was frustrated that there seemed to be no text that illustrated Eros. He was shocked and delighted that he could finish his paper once I introduced him to the Song.

But the Song is so much more than simply an erotic encounter between a bride and groom. It has been read as an encounter between God and the Church as well as a personal encounter between Christ and the believer. (In theology, an “individual” is always cut off from others, grasping and striving only for himself, isolated and alone. Lost. Damned by their own choice. But a “person” and everything about them that is “personal” is in communion with others, is reaching out to encounter the Other. A person is growing and is in the process of being saved; an individual is frozen, static, dead.)

Many have preached on how this “kiss” might be understood in the context of an encounter between Christ and the believer. Bernard of Clairvaux says that God’s “living, active word (Hebrews 4:12) is to me a kiss… an unreserved infusion of joys, a revealing of mysteries, a marvelous and indistinguishable mingling of the divine light with the enlightened mind, which, truly joined to God, is one spirit with him” (1 Cor. 6:17). He goes on to say that “the mouth that kisses signifies the Word who assumes human nature; the nature assumed received the kiss; the kiss however, that takes its being from both the giver and receiver, is a person that is formed by both…. A fertile kiss is not a mere pressing of mouth upon mouth; it is the uniting of God with man.”

This communion of divine and human is the goal of theosis, salvation understood as deification, coming to be by grace everything is Christ is naturally (2 Peter 1). The kiss is the beginning and the goal of this uniting of God and human, the Uncreated and the creature. In the kiss we move from being a collection of individuals, each in their own isolated desert, and become persons who are united with the divine Lover and each other, becoming what we were created to be: a communion of persons who find salvation in our experience of the Other.