THE PERFUME OF COMPASSION

The pure pleasure of reading Sr Emmanuelle Billoteau's meditation on Bernard of Clairvaux' interpreting the Song of Songs made me translate it for you. 

In his Sermons on the Song of Songs, St Bernard (1090-1153) describes three perfumes of the “Bride”, which remind us of the “fragrance of Christ” (II Cor. 2:15) which we are all called to spread where we live.

In the Song of Songs, i.e. the song par excellence, according to Origen, perfumes are often mentioned: that of the (male) Beloved, identified by Jewish and Christian tradition as God or as Christ (SS 1:3); that of the (female) Beloved, understood as the type of Israel, of the Church, or of the individual soul (SS 1:12).

            St Bernard (12^th century) identifies three kinds of perfume relating to the “Bride”. “The first is that of contrition, which covers a multitude of sins . . . the second is that of fervour which contains a multitude of blessings”. As for the third, it is the “perfume of compassion”. While the first two touch our relation to God, the third perfume includes the other. In this, Bernard is faithful to the dynamic of the Song: the latter does speak of an eminently personal and intense relation to God, but never conceives that relation as intimist or exclusive, without the presence of a third party and of an openness to the universal – for instance, to those who do not share the same faith.

           

Contrition, fervour and compassion

The first of the perfumes, then, relates to sins, to our lack of love. “The soul,” says our author,  “gathers them, piles them and grinds them in the mortar of its conscience . . .then it burns them, as it were, in the fire of repentance . . . in the vessel of its flaming heart.” In other words, even our failures can be integrated into the offering of ourselves that we make to God.

            The second perfume is made up of nobler essences. “They are the blessings which God grants to the human race.” These will be “crushed” and “ground . . . in the mortar of the heart by the pestle of frequent meditation, and cooked all together on the fire of a holy longing.”  While God does not despise a broken and a contrite heart (Ps 51:19), he is honoured by the sacrifice of our praise (Ps 50:23).

            Nevertheless, for St Bernard the perfume most precious in God’s eyes is that of compassion. “It is made up of the indigence of the poor, the anguish of the oppressed, the distress of the afflicted, the faults of sinners, and in sum of all the pains of the unhappy, whoever they are, even our enemies.” He points out that while the essences of which it is composed may be “contemptible”, the resulting perfume “overgoes all scents”. It is a perfume that everyone may exude in one way or another: directly through concrete actions on a larger or a smaller scale; indirectly through prayer.

A spiritual life

           So let us not hesitate to practice patience towards those close to us, to comfort those who cross our path, to practice mercy, to show generosity . . . In all of this, what we are dealing with is a spiritual life, i.e. a life moved by the Holy Spirit who is “the love of God poured out in our hearts” (Rom. 5:5). Bernard shows us Biblical characters who have exuded this last perfume: Paul saying “Who is weak, and I am not weak?” (II Cor. 11:29); Job who says that he has been “eyes to the blind and feet to the lame” (Job 29:15-17); Joseph who forgave his brothers (Gen. 43:30); David sparing Saul who had tried to kill him (I Sam. 24) and weeping at his death (II Sam. 1:17-27) . . .

            Bernard, then, suggests to us a way of life based on the Scriptures, read not according to the letter but according to the spirit. Thus he initiates us into a fragrant reading which grows with time, with acquired familiarity, and with the deepening of conversion’s way.

A FRENCH HERMIT ON A GALILEAN LOCUST-EATER

Piero della Francesca, Baptism of Christ

From time to time I have had occasion to cite, to quote, and to express my admiration for, Sœur Emmanuelle Billoteau, a Benedictine hermit from Provence who periodically provides comments on the daily readings in that admirable French booklet Prions en Eglise.  This Sunday, the first after Epiphany, I found her meditation on the reading from the Gospel of John instructive enough to translate it here.

AND I KNEW HIM NOT

John I:29-34

“The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me. And I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water.’ And John bare record, saying, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God.’”

The story of John the Baptist is that of a revelation received from God. John has been able to recognise him whom it was his mission to announce. The text bears the mark of wonder, the fruit of a lived experience. As a privileged witness, John is the spokesman of the Evangelist.

Observation

John’s verses provide a key for reading the whole of the gospel. They contain a teaching of great density concerning this Jesus who comes to John. In citing the faith in the pre-existence of the Word, “before I was, He was”, the Baptist embraces equally the time of Jesus’ earthly life and its beyond, with the evocation of the Paschal mystery, the gift of the Spirit, and the glorification. A sequence we can follow by means of the names given to Jesus: “Lamb of God”; he who “baptises in the Spirit”; “Son of God”. The first of these titles refers us back to the sacrificial ritual of the Temple, with its burnt offering, to the Paschal lamb the blood of which protected the children of Israel at their departure from Egypt, and to the triumphant lamb of the Jewish apocalypses of the inter-testamentary period (from the 5th century BCE to the 1st century CE).

Meditation

In pointing us back to the Paschal mystery, the highest point of the revelation of God’s love, John the Evangelist reminds us that strength is deployed in weakness. Thus the royalty of Christ, the triumphant Lamb, is not conquered according to the usual human modalities, through force and violence. The way God has chosen for the establishing of his Kingdom, which “is not of this world” (Jn 18:36), is that of humility, of the love that proposes and exposes itself. It is in the self-humbling of the Son that the Spirit revealed himself by resting upon Him. And it is the Spirit, the gift of his Passover, who gives us access to the confession of His sonship by the renewal of our intelligence. Which allows us to pass from a partial knowing to an ever more profound knowing of the mystery of the Son, our discovering of which is never-ending. So we should do well to beg the Father to make us open ourselves to the Spirit, so that he may guide us to the whole and entire Truth.

KINGS FOR A DAY?

I have from time to time in this blog translated meditations by the French Benedictine hermit Sr Emmanuelle Billoteau; and I found her remarks on this Sunday's Epiphany celebration particularly perceptive. So I offer them here in my own translation, in the hope that others will find them as helpful as I do.

Matthew 2:1-12

THE OFFERING THAT PLEASES GOD

The Epiphany liturgy gives us a coherent collection of prayers and readings to meditate, centred on Christ, the light of nations. It invites us to note the universality of salvation, which is the basis of our unconditional acceptance of ourselves and others.

Preparation

‘You wanted neither offering nor sacrifice, you have opened my ears: you asked for neither holocaust nor victim, so I said, ‘Here I am: I come.’ (Ps 40:7-8)

Observation

Let us look at the Magi’s response to the proposed salvation discerned in the sign of the star, to the hope it awoke in them, to the point of committing them to an adventure upon unknown roads. Men of open mind, seekers after truth, humble enough to ask men far less cultured than themselves for what they did not know, they are not unlike a fair number of our contemporaries in their quest.

            Their gesture of adoration and offering particularly draws our attention. The diversity of their gifts represents the unique something that each person can bring to God. And let us not forget the Church Fathers’ interpretation which identifies the gold, the frankincense and the myrrh as the recognition of, respectively, the royalty, the divinity and the humanity of a Christ destined to death.

Meditation

Let us ask ourselves what we offer the Lord and in what spirit we do it. Are we Christians who are rooted in the thankfulness of being in the world, conscious of receiving everything from God and having only loving to do? Or are we like those who want to lay hands on him, to justify themselves in his eyes – and in their own --, proving to the whole world their value and their superiority like the Pharisee in Luke’s Gospel (Lk 16)? Are we able to give ourselves to the Lord just as we are, in the truth of our being at the same time sinners and made in his image: clay vessels bearing a treasure, the valuable mixed with the vile? If our response is negative, let us not be discouraged. Let us rather ask to be granted the inward freedom of those who know themselves unconditionally beloved in their singularity and who, consequently, are able to receive others with that goodness of which the wellspring is in God.

Prayer

‘Blessed be the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! He has blessed and filled us with the blessings of the Spirit in Heaven, in Christ.’ (Eph. 1:3)