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
(12th 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.
