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, 1.8

If you do not know yourself, O fairest among women, go forth and follow the tracks of the flocks, and pasture your kids by the shepherds’ tents. I have compared you, my friend, to my company of horsemen among Pharaoh's chariots. Your cheeks are beautiful as turtledove’s; your neck as jewels; we will make you necklaces of gold, inlaid with silver.

A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede

Because this same bride (that is, the Church of Christ), when she had sought the help of His presence in the midst of tribulations, had gone on to say in the persona of the fainthearted, “Lest I begin to wander after the flocks of Your companions,” He at once responded to her anxiety with kindly rebuke like that saying in the Gospel: “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Mt 14.31). For there follows: “If you do not know yourself, O fairest among women, go forth and follow the tracks of the flocks.” He asks, “How can you talk as if I could on any account forsake you in the time of trial, and how can you complain that you have been blackened by too much heat as if from the noonday sun while you were keeping our vineyard? Through the washing of regeneration I have previously made you the fairest among women (that is, among the synagogues of other doctrines), but I have arranged for your beauty to be restored through the great ordeal of tribulation. But if by chance you neither know these things, nor remember that no one “is crowned without contending according to the rules” (2 Tim 2.5), then “go forth” from my company “and follow the tracks of the flocks” (that is, imitate the erratic deeds of those who go astray), although I myself have resolved that you are truly the keeper of my one flock, for which there is “one sheepfold and one shepherd” (Jn 10.16).

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