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

This same Bridegroom (that is, Christ the Eternal Word of God), continues by saying, “And pasture your kids beside the shepherds’ tents,” that is to say, “Feed the lost disciples who have abandoned the words that are given by the one Shepherd through the council of prudent teachers and followed after the doctrines of foolish teachers, for surely I have commanded you that if you love Me, you will indeed pasture, even feed, my sheep (that is, the souls who serve Me in simplicity and innocence) with the word of salvation, and it is My will that you should attend to this duty with so much care that you would prefer to suffer every misfortune and even to undergo the anguish of death rather than to leave off feeding them. How can you not know that you have been betrothed to me Me under the condition that you are to pasture your kids (that is, those who have associated with erring teachers) rather than to wait on the wanton and proud, who are rightly called both “kids” and “your kids,” namely those who are to be positioned on the left hand at the judgment, but they are yours since they have not been instructed according to the rule of my commandments but rather according to your errors (that is, the ones in which you were held fast before you were united with Me).” Now the Lord is not saying these things by way of commanding but rather by way of threatening and insinuating what would happen to those who separate themselves from the unity of ecclesiastical peace because they cannot bear the misfortune of trials, as in the Gospel when Our Lord says, “Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit” (Mt 12.33), He is not commanding us to do evil, but He is teaching what reward awaits those who do evil.

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