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 the Lord does not want holy Church to be ignorant of her true self, but that she should readily desire to learn what gifts she has received from Him and what she ought to suffer and to do for the sake of His love, He consequently indicates what her status is when He goes on to say: “I have compared you, my friend, to my company of horsemen among Pharaoh’s chariots.” Surely His “company of horsemen” is what He calls the host of the children of Israel whom He freed from slavery in Egypt. Leading them through the Red Sea into the desert, He eventually brought them into the land promised to the m as an inheritance. The chariots of Pharaoh, who were pursuing them because Pharaoh wanted to drag them back into servitude, He caused to sink into the same sea. Now He calls them a “company of horsemen” from then on, because just as a charioteer is accustomed to preside over a company of horsemen, the Lord Himself then ruled over that same people in such a way as to take charge of it, and guided it in such a way to lead it along the way of salvation. Clearly the one being compared to this company of horsemen is His Church, which He made His friend through the water of regeneration, for He has taught her that when persecutors threaten she should always have faith in His help, just as that former people was certainly terrified and very fearful when Pharaoh’s chariots came upon them but was saved at that time by heavenly protection. For it happened then that a fiery pillar gave light for the people of God but thickest darkness covered the Egyptian hordes so that all through the night they were unable to come near to one another, and this constantly happens also in the night of this world when Divine Providence uses meticulous discernment to separate the righteous from the reprobate, illuminating the righteous with His grace and leaving the reprobate in blindness as they deserve. But since it also happened that when they came to the Red Sea the children of Israel were delivered by the parting of the waves, but the waters returned upon the Egyptians and they were drowned along with their horses and chariots, is it not evident that the very stream of death that will come upon all mortal beings carries away the wicked to destruction while for the pious it opens up the way to salvation? And so far all the rest of the things that we read as having happened to that same company of God’s horsemen (that is, to the Israelite people) in the time of the Egyptian persecution, the more diligently they are examined the more clearly are they found to have anticipated in figure the holy Church of which this people was a portion. And since this verse teaches how the Lord protects the Church in the midst of misfortunes, it remains to be shown how much the Church herself preserves the love of the same Lord and Protector when misfortunes occur.

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