Беседа 8. Толкование на Песн. 4:8–9

Song 4:8. Come from Lebanon, O bride, come from Lebanon, come and pass from the beginning of the faith, from the head of Sanir and Aermon, from the fences of the lions, from the mountains of Pardale. Song 4:9. You have attracted our heart, my sister bride, you have attracted our heart with one from your sight, one, a monist of your neck. The Great Apostle, who described great visions to the Corinthians, when, as he said, he became perplexed about his nature, whether it was a body or a thought, during the secret teaching in paradise, testifying to this, he says: “I have not attained to myself, but” I am still “stretching myself into the foregoing,” consigning to oblivion what preceded (Phil. 3:13), that is, and after it. the third heaven, which he cognized alone (because Moses did not tell anything about it in the book of the world), and through the ineffable hearing of the mysteries of paradise, he extends to the highest and does not stop ascending, not putting the acquired good as a limit to lust, and thus, as I think, teaching us that, although a lot of this blessed nature of goods is always acquired, it is nevertheless constantly acquired in an infinite number multiply greater is that which is even higher, and this always happens to the one who partakes of good things, due to the continued increase of greater and greater blessings in the participants throughout the eternity of centuries. For the pure in heart, according to the undeceitful word of the Master, sees God (Matthew 5:8) always, to the best of his ability, receiving as much understanding as he can accommodate. The indefinable and elusive in the Divinity remains beyond all comprehension, because the splendor of glory “has no end” (Psalm 145:3), as the prophet testifies. The Divinity is always identical and completely imagined at the same height, just as the great David, who placed good “ascents” (Psalm 83:6) “in the heart” and always ascended “from strength to strength” (Psalm 83:8), cried out to God: “You are the highest forever, Lord” (Psalm. 91, 9), with this saying, as I think, making it clear that throughout the eternity of the endless century, he who strives for You, although he constantly becomes greater and higher than himself, in proportion to this, always increasing in the ascent of goods; but You are the same Highest, abiding forever, and can never seem to ascend upward, as if You had become lower for them, because You are always equally higher and superior to the power of those who are exalted. So, this, according to our concept, the Apostle teaches about the nature of ineffable goods, saying that the eye does not know this good, even if it constantly saw it, because it sees not how much there is, but how much the eye can accommodate, and the ear does not hears in full what is signified, even if it is by hearing and constantly perceiving the word; and it does not enter into the heart of a person, even if he is pure in heart and has always seen as much as possible, because, although what is newly comprehended is greater than everything comprehended before, it does not determine by itself what is sought, but the end of what is acquired serves as the beginning for those ascending to the acquisition of the highest. And the ascendant never stops, borrowing from one beginning another beginning, and the beginning of a greater one always does not end in itself, because the desire of the ascendant does not stop at what is known, but the soul, as a result of another even greater desire, ascending in order to a new higher one, always moves from higher to higher to infinity. But after such an explanation of these concepts, it is time to add an overview of the divine words: “come from Lebanon, bride, come from Lebanon, come and pass from the beginning of faith, from the head of Sanir and Aermon, from the fences of lions, from the mountains of Pardale” (Song. 4, 8). Therefore, what do we notice in this? The Source of blessings always attracts those who are thirsty to Himself, as This Source says in the Gospel: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink” (John 7:37). In these words, the Lord did not set a limit to thirst, nor to the desire for Him, nor to the enjoyment of drinking; on the contrary, without setting a specific time in the command, He thereby gives advice to continually thirst, and drink, and have a desire for Him. And for those who have already tasted and known through experience, “that the Lord is good” (Psalm 33:9), this tasting becomes like a kind of conviction to partake of more. Therefore, the advice offered to him never fails for the ascendant, always attracting him to more. For let us remember the prompting of the Word, which, in what was said before, it repeatedly does to the bride: “Come, my neighbor,” It says; and again: “Come, my little dove”; and: “come covered with stone” (Song 2:13–14). And other similar appeals that encourage and attract to the desire for greater good, making the soul; Having testified that the soul ascending to Him is already blameless in everything, saying: “You are all good and there is no vice in you,” so that, being proud of this testimony, it does not encounter obstacles in ascending to something greater, again with this convincing voice he commands you to ascend, desiring lofty blessings, and says: “Come from Lebanon, bride.” And the meaning of what was said is this: you followed Me perfectly in the time preceding this, says the Word, and came for Me “to Mount Humble”: because “you were buried by Me in baptism into death” (Rom. 6:7); accompanied Me to the “hill of Lebanon”; for she was united with Me and exalted in the communion of the Divinity, to which the name of Lebanon indicates. Ascend from them and to other mountains, succeeding and exalting yourself with clear knowledge. Therefore, “come from Lebanon,” says the Word (not only the discouraged one, but already the “bride”), “for it is impossible for Me to cohabit with one who has not been changed into the divinity of Lebanon by the peaceful death. Since you have already reached this height, do not stop in your ascent, as if through this you have already achieved perfection. This Lebanon, which you joined through the resurrection, serves as the beginning of your faith, but also as the beginning in the procession to the highest blessings. Therefore, “from” this “beginning”, which is faith, “come and pass”, that is, now continue to walk, and, constantly continuing the procession, do not stop such ascents. Literally it reads like this: “come and pass from the beginning of faith, from the head of Sanir and Aermon.” This points the Word to the mystery of being born again. For from here, as they say, flow the springs of the Jordan; behind them lies this mountain, divided into two ridges, to which these names are given: Sanir and Aermon. So, since the stream formed from these sources has become for us the beginning of deification, therefore the bride hears from those who call her to Himself these words: “Come from Lebanon, from the beginning of faith, from the head” of these heights, from where the sources of the sacrament flowed for you. Very opportunely, the Word adds a mention of lions and leopards (or pardals) in order to make the enjoyment of what is more pleasant by adding sorrow. amuses. Man, having laid aside the once Divine image, in the likeness of dumb nature, changed into a beast, due to his crafty intentions, becoming a leopard and a lion. For whoever is carried away by the lion that lies in wait in the fence, as the Prophet says (Psal. 10:30), and is humble in his net, he, as soon as he overcomes the nature of the beast, is transformed into his nature, according to what was said: “Let those who create be like them, I, and all who trust in her” (Psalm 113:16). And like this, the one who has stained his soul with everyday defilements becomes a leopard. So, since there was a time when humanity was in this state, kept in error by idolatry, Jewish deception and the various malice of sinners, and after Jordan, Smyrna and Lebanon exalted to the point that it was already walking with God in a very high way, then for this reason the Word increases the joy brought by real blessings by adding a description of the former sorrows, which The soul felt before Lebanon and the beginnings of faith, before we knew the Jordanian mysteries. Just as a peaceful life is more pleasant after a war, delighting in sad stories, and just as the blessings of health delight the senses of our body more, if nature returns to itself again from some painful state, so the good Bridegroom, arranging for the blessings of joy for the soul coming to Him to receive greater strength and become more numerous, not only shows the bride her beauty, but also reminds in a word of the terrible animal form, so that she will enjoy it all the more with real kindnesses, having found out by comparison what it was changed from and into. Or it may be that with this some other benefit is providentially prepared for the bride. Because the Word desires that we, changeable by nature, should not be carried away by our changeability into evil, but on the contrary, while constantly growing in the best, we should turn this changeability into assistance for ourselves when ascending to the highest, so that, according to the changeability of our nature, we would advance in unchangeability into evil. remembrance of the beasts that once possessed us, so that, with aversion from the worst, we may advance steadfastly and unchangeably in goodness, not stopping when turning to the best, and not turning to evil. Therefore, the Bridegroom commands the bride to come from Lebanon, reminds her of the fence of lions in which she settled, and describes in words the mountains of leopards on which she stayed when she fed with the animals. But since the voice of the Word is always the voice of power, just as during creation the light shone with the command, the firmament was also formed together with the utterance of the command, and likewise the rest of all creation appeared together with the creative Word, so now, when the Word commanded the soul, which had become better, to come to Him, the soul, brought into force by the command, immediately becomes pleasing to the Bridegroom - having transformed into the Divine, and from the glory in which it was, being transformed by a good change into the highest glory, so that it becomes a miracle for the face of the Angels surrounding the Bridegroom; and everyone reverently turns a voice of surprise to her: “You have attracted our heart, our sister, our bride” (Song. 4:9). For the trait of dispassion, equally shining in her and in the Angels, brings her into kinship and brotherhood with the disembodied, even though she had already succeeded in dispassion in the flesh. That is why they say to her: “You have attracted our heart, our sister, our bride.” Called by both names in the proper sense, you are our sister by dispassionate affinity, and bride by union with the Word. What is meant by the words: “thou hast attracted the heart,” as we think, is the same as what is expressed by the word: “thou hast animated.” Friends of the Grooms seem to say this to the bride: you have put your heart into us. But for the sake of clarity, so that what has been said becomes even more understandable to us, let us take the Divine Apostle as an assistant in the interpretation of these mysteries. For in one place of his words, writing to the Ephesians, when he depicted the great dispensation of the Epiphany perfect for us in the flesh, he says that not only the human race was taught by the Divine this mysteries of grace, but also the manifold wisdom of God, revealed by the dispensation of Christ among men, was made known to the Principalities and Powers of heaven. Literally, this place reads like this: “let the manifold wisdom of God be revealed as the Beginning and Authority on the heavenly Church: according to the proposal of the ages, He created in Christ Jesus our Lord, in Him the Imams were bold and brought to the hope of His faith” (Eph. 3:10-12). For, indeed, the multifarious wisdom of God, which performs great miracles through the opposite, is reflected in the Church to the worldly Powers. How did life come from death, righteousness from sin, blessing from oath, glory from dishonor, and strength from weakness? In the times preceding this, the worldly powers knew one simple, unique wisdom of God, which, in accordance with nature, performed miracles. And there was no diversity in what they saw in the fact that the nature of God is power, with power it accomplishes every creature, with a single movement of the will bringing into being the nature of beings, and that which only flows from the source of goodness, creates “great good” (Gen. 1:31). They are now clearly taught by the Church this manifold type of wisdom, consisting of an interweaving of opposites, taught why the Word is made flesh, why life enters into communion with death, why He heals our ulcer with His own ulcer, why the strength of the enemy overcomes the weakness of the Cross, why the invisible appears in the flesh, how He redeems the captives, Himself being a merchant, and Himself serving as payment for the purchase; because He gave Himself for us as the ransom price of death; just as he is given over to death and does not abandon life, just as he participates in slavery and remains King. For all these and similar ones, truly varied and not simple works of wisdom, the friends of the Bridegroom learned from the Church, and were attracted by their hearts, realizing in the sacrament another distinctive feature of God’s wisdom. And if it is not bold to say, even they, with the help of the bride, saw the beauty of the Groom, and were surprised, perhaps, at what is invisible and incomprehensible to all beings. For He Whom “no one has seen anywhere” (1 John 4:12), as John says, “no one can see” (1 Tim. 6:16), as Paul testifies, he made the Church his body and by the multiplication of those who are being saved he builds it up in love, “until we attain all things to perfection, according to the age of the fulfillment of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). Therefore, if the Church is the body of Christ, and Christ is the Head of the body, and according to His distinctive features forms the face of the Church, then perhaps the friends of the Bridegroom, with the help of one seeing the other, were attracted in their hearts, because in the Church they see the Invisible One more clearly. Just as those who are not able to see the very circle of the sun look at it with the help of a ray from water, so they too: looking into the face of the Church in a clean mirror, they see the Sun of Truth, understood by what they see. For this reason, friends have repeatedly said to the bride: “You have attracted our heart,” that is, you have invested in us a certain soul and meaning for the understanding of the light, but they say the same word again, by repetition giving credibility to what was said. For, repeating the same thing, they say: “You have attracted our hearts alone from your sight” (Song. 4:9), that is, this most of all produced in friends a wonderful disposition towards the bride. Since the visual activity of the soul is twofold: one sees the truth, and the other wanders around the vain, then, since the pure eye of the bride is open to one nature of good, her other eye, without a doubt, remains inactive, therefore, the friends themselves will sing the praise of the “single” eye, with which one contemplates the One, I mean this One, in the unchangeable and eternal the nature of the co-integrated, true Father, Only Begotten Son and Holy Spirit. For in the true sense, what is intuited in one nature is one, so that difference according to hypostases does not produce any separation or alienation. Meanwhile, others, with different eyes, sophisticated to their detriment to the point of seeing what does not exist, in the ideas of perverted eyes, divide the one into many natures. These are the so-called multi-seeing people who, because they have a lot in mind, see nothing. And all those who, although they now look to God, are again misled by material ideas, are unworthy of angelic praise, as they madly imagine something that does not exist. And whoever is sharp-sighted for one Deity is blind to everything else, to which the eyes of many are turned. Therefore, the bride creates a miracle for her friends with one eye. Just as the many-eyed one is blind, who looks at vanity with many eyes, so is keenly sighted and perspicacious, who looks at one thing with one spiritual eye - at the good. Who this one is, or what the monist of the bride means, is not difficult to conclude from what has been studied, although the reading seems somewhat unclear due to the connection of speech. For the Scripture says this: “You have attracted our heart with one from thy sight, one, a monist of thy neck” (Song. 4:9), so the word “one” corresponds to the expression “one from thy sight”, because we mean it with the addition: one soul. For there are many souls in each of the ignorant people, in which passions, due to their possession, take the place of the soul, transforming its distinctive properties into sadness, pleasure, irritability, fear, timidity, insolence. The one who is turned to the Word in the uniformity of a virtuous life is testified to live with “one” soul. Therefore, speech should be divided in such a way that the word: “one” is conceptually connected with the previous one, and, in our understanding, means either one soul, or one disposition of the spirit, and the following expression: “a monist of your neck” has a different meaning. Why would another, translating the whole speech into a clearer one, could say: You have one eye, because it looks at one thing, and one soul, because it is not divided into different dispositions, has the perfection and position of Your neck, which has taken upon itself the Divine yoke. Therefore, “in the monist of your neck” we see the yoke of Christ, and in the disposition towards what is truly good we see one eye and one soul. And for this reason we confess that you have attracted our hearts with your miracles, showing one eye and one soul “as a monist and your monist,” while the “neck” of a bride, as it is said, is a yoke. So, this is the praise the Angels gave to the beauty of the bride; for we understand that the friends of the Bridegroom are Angels. And lest anyone think that their praise is reckless and sinful, the judgment of friends about the beauty of the bride confirms the Word with His verdict, and in witnessing the beauty He Himself adds even greater miracles, describing in His speech the beauty visible in the very members, which God will give, and which we will present in the future, if with the assistance from above we have the strength to understand the mysteries, to know the beauty of the Church and to praise the glory of God’s grace about Christ Jesus. To him belongs all glory forever! Amen. You might be interested in: