Evenings With Bede 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 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, 1.1

Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His mouth: for Your breasts are better than wine, the glowing ardor of the best ointments. Your name is oil poured out: therefore the young maidens have loved You. Draw me: we will run after You to the odour of thy ointments. The King has brought me into His storerooms: we will exult and rejoice in You, remembering Your breasts more than wine: the righteous love You.

A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede (p. 41)

“Therefore,” the synagogue says, “the young maidens have loved You.” Those the synagogue calls “young maidens” are the souls reborn in Christ who have cast off the uncleanness of the old self. The more they cling to the love of their Creator, the more they know it is only by His grace that they receive the remission of sins and the gifts of the Spirit by which they make progress in virtue. Hence they openly profess and say: “The love of God [namely, the source of all virtues] has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 3:5). Now we should not doubt that the Saints of old who loved the Lord with perfect charity and also the bands of their pious companions can mystically be called “young maidens,” who by faith in the truth scorned the examples of the ancient sinner and ran after the rewards of new life with undoubting hope. Hence one of them who was already certain of future blessings speaks of his own soul, saying: Your youth is renewed like the eagle’s (Ps 103). But even more aptly do these things apply to the heirs of the New Testament, who are properly said to be begotten by God through the washing of grace as children of adoption. The more they love Him, the more of His gifts do they obtain, so that as soon as their flesh has been dissolved, if they have lived rightly, they mount up to the joys of heaven.

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