Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.

SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with the Venerable S. Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.

The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.

A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.5

I am black but beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem. Like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon. Do not think to consider me, for I am swarthy because the sun has discolored me. My mother’s children have fought against me and made me keeper of the vineyards; my own vineyard I have not kept. Show me, You Whom my soul loves, where You pasture your flock, where You lie down at midday; lest I begin to wander after the flocks of Your companions.

A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede

Because holy Church has testified that she is indeed comely on the inside with respect to her faith and virtues, but made swarthy on the outside by persecutions, it then remains for her to show from whom she will suffer the fury of the first persecution. There follows: “My mother’s children have fought against me and made me keeper of the vineyards; my own vineyard I have not kept.” This is the voice of the early Church, which endured wards of tribulations from the very same synagogue from which she took her fleshly origin, as the Acts of the Apostles very thoroughly teaches. The first thing we should note in this verse is that the Bride of Christ justly declared herself to have been discoloured by the sun, as she was accustomed to work outdoors cultivating or keeping her own vineyard. Now there was in Jerusalem one vineyard of Christ, namely the early Church, which was consecrated by the coming of the Holy Ghost on the Day of Pentecost (that is, on the fiftieth day after the Lord’s Resurrection). At that time the apostles themselves were her keepers. And afterward, when persecution arose in the times of the blessed martyr Stephen and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria, it came to pass that there were more vineyards (that is, there were churches of Christ in more places) because those who were scattered here and there were preaching the word. Surely it was through the action of Divine Providence that the very scattering of the Jerusalem church was the occasion for the founding of more churches. For this reason it is appropriate that while our Latin codices (or manuscripts) say that they “were scattered,” in the Greek it says “diesparesan” (that is, “they were disseminated”) throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, and a little later, “Those who had been disseminated even about preaching the word of God” (Acts 8.4), because the persecutors were intended to drive the Church out of Judea, but unwittingly they were spreading the seedbed of the word more widely, and by persecuting one church in Jerusalem they were unwittingly causing many churches to come into existence in other places. Therefore, after it had been said that the early Church would be dark with afflictions because the children of her mother (that is, of the parricidal synagogue) were going to fight against her with hatred, it immediately went on to tell how much she was going to profit from the attacks of those same afflictions, adding in the persona of those to whom the office of preaching was entrusted: “They have made me keeper of the vineyards; my own vineyard I have not kept,” as if to say openly, “The harshness of the persecutions was beneficial and useful for me in that I became the keeper of many more vineyards (namely, the churches of Christ) after their tempest scattered the original vineyard (that is, the church that I at first undertook to plant and to keep in Jerusalem). Now, the statement that she had not kept the vineyard must be understood as referring not to her disposition, but to the place. For surely there was a considerable portion of the church that withdrew from Jerusalem at that time which nevertheless retained the full integrity of the faith in a heart firmly fixed, or even took up the office of preaching with a devoted voice, as we have already indicated.

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