Reflections on the Song of Songs – “Young maidens loved You”
Reflections on the Song of Songs
“Young maidens loved You… In truth they love You”
Our subject tonight is the saying of the Bride:
“Your name is ointment poured forth; therefore the virgins love You.
Draw me after You, let us run… We will rejoice and be glad in You.
We will remember Your love more than wine. In truth they love You” (Song 1:2–4).
“Young maidens loved You… In truth they love You”
The first phrase is said by the priest to the Lord in the Vespers incense prayer:
“Your holy name is ointment poured forth”… “And in every place incense is offered to Your holy name, and a pure sacrifice.” All this shows us the importance of the Lord’s name in the life of the believer. Thus we pray in the praise:
“Your name is sweet and blessed in the mouths of Your saints.” And we say in the Psalm, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.”
The person who loves the Lord loves His name and repeats it continually…
He meditates on it day and night, speaks about it with people, and sings of it in his solitude. The Lord’s name to him is like ointment poured forth, whose fragrant scent spreads in every place. Many contemplate the names of God and His attributes. Their repetition of God’s name is evidence of love and attachment.
“The virgins love You”:
By this the Bride of the Song boasts. It is a proof of the spirituality of love. For bodily love is selfish and possessive. But the love of the spirit includes all.
If the Song were merely a hymn of bodily love between a girl and her beloved—as some enemies of the Book think—she would not boast saying, “The virgins love You.” Rather, she would be possessed by intense jealousy because of the virgins’ love for him, and she would not be able to say, “We will rejoice and be glad in You.”
Leah was not able to endure her sister Rachel when she was her rival, but said, “With great wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister.”
Believe me, I marvel how Solomon lived with the thousand!!
Do you think each one of them was angry with him because of his love for the other, and that he saw from them nothing but vexation? Thus he said, “One man among a thousand I have found, but a woman among all these I have not found.” For such is bodily love—entirely jealousy.
But in the Song of Songs we see a love in which the Bride rejoices and is glad, because her Bridegroom is surrounded by the love of the virgins, and in truth they love Him!
If a person loves God, he wants everyone to love Him. He invites all to love Him and rejoices in the Lord’s love for everyone. Likewise, if a person loves a saint, he rejoices whenever he finds many loving that saint. Such is the nature of divine love and spiritual love.
But bodily love contains possession and monopoly and jealousy. It is absolutely not the love of the Song—“We will rejoice and be glad in You”—in the plural form.
“Your name is ointment poured forth; therefore the virgins love You…”
Let us contemplate the names of God that made hearts love Him…
Your name is compassionate and gracious, longsuffering, abundant in mercy; therefore the virgins love You. Your name is forgiving and merciful; Your name is love… Truly as David said, “Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods? O Lord, who is like You?”
Let us contemplate how the saints loved the Lord and ran after Him…
They left family and friends, homeland and all learning; they left all the lusts and temptations of the world and followed the Lord in deserts and clefts of the mountains, and endured even to death for His sake…
For His sake they forgot everything, even themselves, and God became to them all in all. “The virgins love You; in truth they love You.”
But what is the meaning of the word “virgins”? Does it mean the celibates, or everyone?
The married woman has given herself to another; but the virgin has no such other to whom she gives herself, so she gives herself to the Lord.
The meaning here is virgins in the spiritual sense, not the bodily—that is, the virgin soul that has not given itself to another, even if her body is under the authority of a man, yet her spirit is not for another.
Hence the word “virgins” means all the members of the Church. In this sense the Apostle Paul said, “I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Cor 11:2). And the Lord described all the souls that will be saved as “five wise virgins” (Matt 25:1). The phrase “virgins” here includes men and women, married and unmarried, and widowed.
The virgin souls are those that have not given their love to another besides God.
Ask yourself, “Is your soul a virgin?” Or does it have another to whom it gives its love? That other may be money, the body, the world, fame, or beauty, etc.
Here we set the body aside—whether married, single, or widowed—and speak about the spirit in its love, affections, and preoccupations.
The soul occupied with another cannot love God.
Therefore the Scripture says, “Friendship with the world is enmity with God. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” And the Lord Christ said, “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.”
He wants virgin souls not occupied by anything or anyone… Virgin souls have no rival to God in their hearts and no obstacle.
They are souls that have been loosed from all to be bound to the One…
“Therefore the virgins love You.” They have not given their heart or mind to another, nor their time or preoccupation to another. They can fulfill the commandment of the Scripture: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind” (Deut 6:5).
Virgin souls are those that discovered the beauty of God, so that everything became in their sight rubbish. Thus they renounced everything and devoted themselves to God alone.
If there are things that occupy us away from God, then our souls are not virgins. Virgin souls— all their spiritual, emotional, and intellectual energy is firstborn, wholly for the Lord. Nothing draws them away from Him…
But as for me, O Lord, I am not like that; there is what draws me away from You. Therefore, that I may come to You, draw me after You and we will run.
Draw me after You, and we will run
You have drawn many to Yourself before… The initiative was from You. You began with them. So draw me after You as You drew them…
Peter and Andrew were fishing, and You said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Matthew was at the tax office, and You said to him, “Follow Me,” and You drew him after You. Saul of Tarsus was leading men and women to prison; You appeared to him on the road and said, “It is hard for you to kick against the goads,” and You drew him after You.
Make me as one of these and draw me after You—even by force!
Even against my will. Like a person who fell into a well and cannot get himself out, needing someone to draw him; or like the sick man who had no one to put him into the pool.
Like a piece of iron in a magnetic field, unable to escape, needing a power to bring it out of that controlling field.
It was said of Joshua that he was “a brand plucked from the fire” (Zech 3:2).
A piece of wood that fell into the fire and ignited has no power to save itself, except to cry and say, “Draw me after You.” I have no power to come out of these flames. Stretch out Your hand and rescue me.
In the same way one of the seraphim stretched out his hand, took a live coal from the altar, and touched Isaiah’s lips, and he was purified (Isa 6).
The greatest obstacle in the path of our repentance is the lack of our prayers and our walking alone without divine help. Thus Saint Isaac was truthful in saying:
“He who thinks he has another way to repentance besides prayer is deceived by demons.” So cry out, “Draw me after You.”
Do not leave me, O Lord, to my human arm, to my determination, intelligence, and cunning. Rescue me as a brand from the fire. Draw me after You.
Isaac was bound upon the wood, and the knife was over him. He had no power to save himself, nor did the dearest person to him, his father Abraham. There was nothing but the prayer, “Draw me after You,” and the Lord drew him and he was saved…
There are sins that stand before us—“God overcomes them, not man.”
Sometimes the will refuses to move, and God intervenes and draws the person—even by force—to bring him out of destruction, as He did with Lot and his family.
How many means the Lord used to draw people to Himself:
He drew Abba Anthony by a verse from Scripture; He drew Abba Paul the first hermit by the sight of a funeral; He drew Abba Paul the Simple by a family problem; He drew Abba Pachomius by love and good example. So draw me, O Lord, by any means… Draw me after You and we will run.
And we will run:
The spiritual life does not know slowness. It is continual running toward the goal. In this the Apostle says, “Run that you may obtain.”
Thus the Virgin of the Song says, “Draw me after You and we will run.” I will run, and all those who know me will run with me. I will take with me all the virgins, and we will run in the way of the Spirit to attain the prize…
Saint Augustine was an example of those who ran…
He began his life with the Lord late, but by successive leaps he moved from a life of repentance to holiness to service, and became an example to many and a spiritual guide to generations and generations.
Be certain that even if you ran all your life, it would not be enough to attain the life of perfection the Lord asks of you.
Pray then and say, “Draw me after You and we will run”… Put your hand in the Lord’s hand and run with this “One leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills”…
“Draw me after You and we will run.” The Lord says, “And I, if I am lifted up, will draw all to Myself.” Then we shall run with the Lord above the clouds, fulfilling His pure promise: “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in El-Keraza Magazine – Year Seven (Issue Twenty-Nine) – 16-7-1976
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