Of emeralds, and of flowers
In the early morning gathered,
We will make the garlands,
Flowering in Thy love,
And bound together with one hair of my head.
THE bride now turns to the Bridegroom and addresses Him in the
intercourse and comfort of love; the subject of the stanza being
the solace and delight which the bride-soul and the Son of God
find in the possession of the virtues and gifts of each other, and
in the exercise thereof, both rejoicing in their mutual love.
Thus the soul, addressing the Beloved, says that they will make
garlands rich in graces and acquired virtues, obtained at the
fitting and convenient season, beautiful and lovely in the love He
bears the soul, and kept together by the love which it itself has
for Him. This rejoicing in virtue is what is meant by making
garlands, for the soul and God rejoice together in these virtues
bound up as flowers in a garland, in the common love which each
bears the other.
‘Of emeralds, and of flowers.’
2. The flowers are the virtues of the soul; the emeralds are the
gifts it has received from God. Then of these flowers and emeralds
‘In the early morning gathered.’
3. That is, acquired in youth, which is the early morning of life.
They are said to be gathered because the virtues which we acquire
in youth are most pleasing unto God; because youth is the season
when our vices most resist the acquisition of them, and when our
natural inclinations are most prone to lose them. Those virtues
also are more perfect which we acquire in early youth. This time
of our life is the early morning; for as the freshness of the
spring morning is more agreeable than any other part of the day,
so also are the virtues acquired in our youth more pleasing in the
sight of God.
4. By the fresh morning we may understand those acts of love by
which we acquire virtue, and which are more pleasing unto God than
the fresh morning is to the sons of men; good works also, wrought
in the season of spiritual dryness and hardness; this is the
freshness of the winter morning, and what we then do for God in
dryness of spirit is most precious in His eyes. Then it is that we
acquire virtues and graces abundantly; and what we then acquire
with toil and labour is for the most part better, more perfect and
lasting than what we acquire in comfort and spiritual sweetness;
for virtue sends forth its roots in the season of dryness, toil,
and trial: as it is written, ‘Virtue is made perfect in
infirmity.’ [241] It is with a view to show forth the excellence
of these virtues, of which the garland is wrought for the Beloved,
that the soul says of them that they have been gathered in the
early morning; because it is these flowers alone, with the
emeralds of virtue, the choice and perfect graces, and not the
imperfect, which are pleasing to the Beloved, and so the bride
says:
‘We will make the garlands.’
5. All the virtues and graces which the soul, and God in it,
acquire are as a garland of divers flowers wherewith the soul is
marvellously adorned as with a vesture of rich embroidery. As
material flowers are gathered, and then formed into a garland, so
the spiritual flowers of virtues and graces are acquired and set
in order in the soul: and when the acquisition is complete, the
garland of perfection is complete also. The soul and the
Bridegroom rejoice in it, both beautiful, adorned with the
garland, as in the state of perfection.
6. These are the garlands which the soul says they will make. That
is, it will wreathe itself with this variety of flowers, with the
emeralds of virtues and perfect gifts, that it may present itself
worthily before the face of the King, and be on an equality with
Him, sitting as a queen on His right hand; for it has merited this
by its beauty. Thus David saith, addressing himself to Christ:
‘The queen stood on Thy right hand in vestments of gold, girt with
variety.’ [242] That is, at His right hand, clad in perfect love,
girt with the variety of graces and perfect virtues.
7. The soul does not say, ‘I will make garlands,’ nor ‘Thou wilt
make them,’ but, ‘We will make them,’ not separately, but both
together; because the soul cannot practise virtues alone, nor
acquire them alone, without the help of God; neither does God
alone create virtue in the soul without the soul’s concurrence.
Though it be true, as the Apostle saith, that ‘every best gift,
and every perfect gift, is from above, descending from the Father
of lights,’ [243] still they enter into no soul without that
soul’s concurrence and consent. Thus the bride in the Canticle
saith to the Bridegroom; ‘Draw me; we will run after thee.’ [244]
Every inclination to good comes from God alone, as we learn here;
but as to running, that is, good works, they proceed from God and
the soul together, and it is therefore written, ‘We will run’–
that is, both together, but not God nor the soul alone.
8. These words may also be fittingly applied to Christ and His
Church, which, as His bride, says unto Him, ‘We will make the
garlands.’ In this application of the words the garlands are the
holy souls born to Christ in the Church. Every such soul is by
itself a garland adorned with the flowers of virtues and graces,
and all of them together a garland for the head of Christ the
Bridegroom.
9. We may also understand by these beautiful garlands the crowns
formed by Christ and the Church, of which there are three kinds.
The first is formed of the beauty and white flowers of the
virgins, each one with her virginal crown, and forming altogether
one crown for the head of the Bridegroom Christ. The second, of
the brilliant flowers of the holy doctors, each with his crown of
doctor, and all together forming one crown above that of the
virgins on the head of Christ. The third is composed of the purple
flowers of the martyrs, each with his own crown of martyrdom, and
all united into one, perfecting that on the head of Christ.
Adorned with these garlands He will be so beautiful, and so lovely
to behold, that heaven itself will repeat the words of the bride
in the Canticle, saying: ‘Go forth, ye daughters of Sion, and see
king Solomon in the diadem wherewith his mother crowned him in the
day of his betrothal, and in the day of the joy of his heart.’
[245] The soul then says we will make garlands.
‘Flowering in Thy love.’
10. The flowering of good works and virtues is the grace and power
which they derive from the love of God, without which they not
only flower not, but become even dry, and worthless in the eyes of
God, though they may be humanly perfect. But if He gives His grace
and love they flourish in His love.
‘And bound together with one hair of my head.’
11. The hair is the will of the soul, and the love it bears the
Beloved. This love performs the function of the thread that keeps
the garland together. For as a thread binds the flowers of a
garland, so loves knits together and sustains virtues in the soul.
‘Charity’–that is, love–saith the Apostle, ‘is the bond of
perfection.’ [246] Love, in the same way, binds the virtues and
supernatural gifts together, so that when love fails by our
departure from God, all our virtue perishes also, just as the
flowers drop from the garland when the thread that bound them
together is broken. It is not enough for God’s gift of virtues
that He should love us, but we too must love Him in order to
receive them, and preserve them.
12. The soul speaks of one hair, not of many, to show that the
will by itself is fixed on God, detached from all other hairs;
that is, from strange love. This points out the great price and
worth of these garlands of virtues; for when love is single,
firmly fixed on God, as here described, the virtues also are
entire, perfect, and flowering in the love of God; for the love He
bears the soul is beyond all price, and the soul also knows it
well.
13. Were I to attempt a description of the beauty of that binding
of the flowers and emeralds together, or of the strength and
majesty which their harmonious arrangement furnishes to the soul,
or the beauty and grace of its embroidered vesture, expressions
and words would fail me; for if God says of the evil spirit, ‘His
body is like molten shields, shut close up with scales pressing
upon one another, one is joined to another, and not so much as any
air can come between them’; [247] if the evil spirit be so strong,
clad in malice thus compacted together–for the scales that cover
his body like molten shields are malice, and malice is in itself
but weakness–what must be the strength of the soul that is
clothed in virtues so compacted and united together that no
impurity or imperfection can penetrate between them; each virtue
severally adding strength to strength, beauty to beauty, wealth to
wealth, and to majesty, dominion and grandeur?
14. What a marvellous vision will be that of the bride-soul, when
it shall sit on the right hand of the Bridegroom-King, crowned
with graces! ‘How beautiful are thy steps in shoes, O prince’s
daughter!’ [248] The soul is called a prince’s daughter because of
the power it has; and if the beauty of the steps in shoes be
great, what must be that of the whole vesture? Not only is the
beauty of the soul crowned with admirable flowers, but its
strength also, flowing from the harmonious order of the flowers,
intertwined with the emeralds of its inumerable graces, is
terrible: ‘Terrible as the army of a camp set in array.’ [249]
For, as these virtues and gifts of God refresh the soul with their
spiritual perfume, so also, when united in it, do they, out of
their substance, minister strength. Thus, in the Canticle, when
the bride was weak, languishing with love–because she had not
been able to bind together the flowers and the emeralds with the
hair of her love–and anxious to strengthen herself by that union
of them, cries out: ‘Stay me with flowers, compass me about with
apples; because I languish with love.’ [250] The flowers are the
virtues, and the apples are the other graces.
NOTE
I BELIEVE I have now shown how the intertwining of the garlands
and their lasting presence in the soul explain the divine union of
love which now exists between the soul and God. The Bridegroom, as
He saith Himself, is the Ôflower of the field and the lily of the
valleys,’ [251] and the soul’s love is the hair that unites to
itself this flower of flowers. Love is the most precious of all
things, because it is the ‘bond of perfection,’ as the Apostle
saith, [252] and perfection is union with God. The soul is, as it
were, a sheaf of garlands, for it is the subject of this glory, no
longer what it was before, but the very perfect flower of flowers
in the perfection and beauty of all; for the thread of love binds
so closely God and the soul, and so unites them, that it
transforms them and makes them one by love; so that, though in
essence different, yet in glory and appearance the soul seems God
and God the soul. Such is this marvellous union, baffling all
description.
2. We may form some conception of it from the love of David and
Jonathan, whose ‘soul was knit with the soul of David.’ [253] If
the love of one man for another can be thus strong, so as to knit
two souls together, what must that love of God be which can knit
the soul of man to God the Bridegroom? God Himself is here the
suitor Who in the omnipotence of His unfathomable love absorbs the
soul with greater violence and efficacy than a torrent of fire a
single drop of the morning dew which resolves itself into air.
The hair, therefore, which accomplishes such a union must, of
necessity, be most strong and subtile, seeing that it penetrates
and binds together so effectually the soul and God. In the present
stanza the soul declares the qualities of this hair.