Your Name Is Poured-Out Ointment
Your Name Is Poured-Out Ointment[1]
We contemplate today the words of the Virgin of the Song to the Lord: “Your name is a poured-out ointment, or your name is poured-out perfume” “Therefore the virgins have loved you. Draw me after you, and we will run. The King has brought me into His chambers. We will rejoice and be glad in you; we will remember your love more than wine. They rightly love you” (Song 1:3, 4).
Because of the Church’s admiration for this expression, she mentions it in the Raising of Incense of Vespers: “Poured-out perfume is Your holy name. And in every place they offer incense to Your holy name and a pure oblation.”
The name of the Lord has a pleasant fragrance that refreshes souls, and spreads everywhere, just as perfume spreads. Therefore the virgins loved Him.
The name of the Lord is a sweet name, with which the children of God rejoice. Therefore we say to Him in the Psalmodia, “Your name is sweet and blessed, in the mouths of Your saints.” And the Prophet David says to Him in the Psalm: “Beloved is Your name, O Lord, for it is my recitation all the day.”
That is, because of my love for Your name, I keep repeating it throughout the day… exactly as when a person loves someone, so he keeps talking about him, repeating his name on every occasion, and finds pleasure in repeating his name…
This name fills his mind, thought, and senses, and does not leave his lips…
Because of the sweetness of the name of the Lord, we say to Him, “Your name is a poured-out ointment.” And the Psalm says: “The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runs to it and is protected.” He seeks Him in every distress, and takes refuge in Him.
The name of the Lord terrifies the demons, and gives the saints peace…
Thus we see the Prophet David when he stood before the mighty Goliath. He said to him, “You come to me with a sword and spear, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts.” The mere entrance of the name of the Lord is capable of defeating Goliath… And in the same way Peter said to the lame man at the gate of the temple, “I have neither gold nor silver. But what I have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk”… And in the name of the Lord he rose and walked, just as in His name David triumphed over Goliath.
Therefore, we use the name of the Lord in all our works and our life:
In eating, in studying, in work, in our going in and coming out, we begin all this in the name of God. We place the name of the Lord in every work, so that this work may be blessed in the name of God.. And by this you feel that God is continually before you.
The name of our Lord is frightening to sinners because “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of God.” But for the saints, the name of the Lord is beloved.
Your name, O Lord, is music to my ears, sweet in my mouth.. It is in our prayers, in our worship, in our reading, in our daily life…
In the story of Cyprian the magician, the mere name of Justina caused the devil to be dissolved and depart. How much more, then, the name of God, its influence and its power..!
Your name is a poured-out ointment, therefore the virgins have loved You.
And the phrase “the virgins have loved You” indicates that the love mentioned in the Song of Songs is divine love and not human or sexual love.
Worldly love, sexual love, bodily love, is governed by selfishness and the desire for possession. Therefore, if a woman loves someone, she may become very jealous of him; if she sees another girl loving him, she dies of jealousy… But here in the Song she says to Him, “The virgins have loved You”… All of them love You… “We will rejoice and be glad in You…” “They rightly love You,” that is, all people love You. And I rejoice in this.
Indeed, the soul that loves God desires that everyone love Him,
The spiritual person wants everyone to love God together with him… The Samaritan woman, when she came to know Christ, went calling the people, “Come, see a Man who told me all that I ever did,” and filled the city with talk about Him, and brought people to Him… And likewise the apostles, when they loved Christ, filled the world with preaching in His name.
And Paul the Apostle, when he knew the Lord, tried through many journeys and with greater labor than everyone, to save some by all means..
And so all the virgins who loved the Lord. Who are the virgins?
The virgin is the soul that loved the Lord, and there is no other in her heart occupying her. She was united with God alone, and there is no other occupying her…
Thus Paul the Apostle said about the Church, “I have betrothed you to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” Thus the word “virgin” became a title for the Church. For this reason also we see that all those who attain salvation have been likened by the Lord to five wise virgins.
These five virgins are a symbol of all the chosen ones, men and women, celibates and married.
In the virgin Church there are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the married.
They were married, but their souls were virgins… because they did not give themselves to another, they do not love anything beside God.
The virgin soul loves God with all the heart and with all the mind…
There is no one beside God competing with Him in her heart, and there is no other love within her that conflicts with the love of God.
Therefore the word “virgin” was also used metaphorically in poetry, so one of them said about his hopes that had not occurred to anyone else’s heart:
Virgin hopes that have not crossed the mind
And some of the hopes of people are a fixed virgin
Virgin hearts are those that have devoted themselves to the love of God alone…
Some may ask: Does not every person love his father, mother, children, friends, and disciples? We say that it is love within the love of God, which does not conflict with it, compete with it, or diminish it… The virgins have loved You, because they smelled from Your name the fragrance of perfume…
Likewise, we see that the spirits of the saints have a pleasant fragrance. A person’s spirit may ascend and the place becomes filled with the fragrance of incense, so people feel that it is a pure spirit… Likewise, the prayers of the saints ascend as a fragrance of incense to the Lord. And the burnt offerings also were a pleasing fragrance to the Lord… like poured-out perfume…
If it is a pleasing fragrance, how much more is God Himself…
When the bride is led to her bridegroom, they perfume her with fragrances, “as a bride adorned for her bridegroom.” And in the Book of Esther we hear that the queen was perfumed with ointment and fragrances for a whole year before they presented her to the king.
The body is perfumed with ointment. But the soul is perfumed with virtues.
As for the name of God, it is not perfumed; rather, it is the perfume itself. Perfume is not poured upon it; rather, it itself is poured-out perfume. Everyone upon whom this name is called becomes perfumed, and his fragrance spreads.. Therefore the virgins have loved You.. So what does this phrase mean?
The spiritual life in all its details is centered on the phrase “the virgins have loved You”.. And the kingdom is souls that are virgins, loving God alone…
There is nothing in the spiritual life except love… Some think that religion is worship. And some think that the spiritual life is faith, or it is works of mercy, or it is purity of heart… But I say that the spiritual life is love and nothing else… “God is love: he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”
If you have not loved God, then you are not yet living in the Spirit…
If you occupy your day and night with prayer, while you do not love God, then your prayer is nothing. And if you fill the world with preaching, service, and teaching, while you do not love God, you have become sounding brass and a clanging cymbal… And if you live an ascetic life and surrender your body even to be burned without tasting the love of God, you are nothing.
God wants nothing but love, from virgin souls..
You say to Him, “I love You, O Lord, and I love the world with You,” He says to you: “Your soul is not a virgin, because whoever loves the world does not have the love of the Father.”
But the soul that loves the world, the flesh, matter, the devil, and the self is not a virgin; rather, she is joined to five husbands… And the love of the world bears many children from various lusts…
Before you, then, are two questions: Do you love God, and is your soul a virgin? If your soul is not a virgin, how can it become so? It becomes so by your saying:
Draw me after You, and we will run… Draw me, and I will run, and everyone will run…
I will not walk behind You, but I will run, with all my strength, as the Apostle Paul said, “Run in such a way that you may obtain.” And I will not run alone, but I will bring with me thirty, sixty, and a hundred…
What matters, O Lord, is that You draw me after You, instead of this dust from which I was taken drawing me, because perhaps I will return to the dust. So draw me, to Your love and to Your service. Say to me, “Come after Me,” as You said to Peter and Andrew… And undoubtedly Your word will have an amazing power that my heart cannot resist…
When God said to Matthew, “Follow Me,” it was not merely a command or a call, but an amazing drawing power that pulled him away from the place of tax collection.
So he rose and ran after Him, just as all the disciples ran after Him.
The word of the Lord is powerful and effective, and like a two-edged sword, it was able to cut all the bonds that connected him to the world, and he found himself leaving everything, even his responsibilities at the place of tax collection.
Draw me, O Lord, after You, by Your grace, by Your Holy Spirit, by Your power, by Your angels, by all the spiritual means that You have…
And I will run as Augustine ran, who was transformed from an atheist into a holy bishop, and like many sinful women who were transformed all at once, not merely into repentant women, but into saints…
When the Lord Christ drew the twelve disciples to Himself, they ran after Him, and with them on the first day three thousand, then after the miracle of healing the lame man He drew five thousand, then multitudes of men and women joined the Lord. Then cities and villages joined the faith. And the number of churches continued to grow and increase, and the Lord added to the Church every day those who were being saved… The first Church was running on the path of the kingdom, because the Lord had said: “And I, if I am lifted up, will draw all to Myself…”
[1] An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III in El-Keraza Magazine, Ninth Year, Issue 11, March 17, 1978.For better translation support, please contact the center.
