The Movement of Love

Beneath the sequence of songs runs one same movement, that of love itself: the desire that seeks, the joy of meeting, the pain of absence, the happiness of reunion, and the rest of mutual belonging. The Song does not define love, it makes it live, with its surges and its nights. And in this movement, tradition has recognized the way of every soul toward God: to seek, to find, to lose, to seek again, until one can say at last: I am his, and he is mine.

Desire and the search

Everything begins with desire. The bride aspires to the one her heart loves, she names him, calls him, seeks him. This desire has nothing shameful about it: it is the very surge of love, which does not rest in the absence of the beloved. The beloved woman is not content to wait; she sets out in quest, active, stretched toward the one she wants to find. Yet this desire is not a fever to be slaked any way at all: a refrain runs through the poem to keep its right measure. “I charge you, daughters of Jerusalem: do not stir, do not awaken love until it please.” Song of Songs 8:4 Love has its hour, which is not to be forced; to hurry it or counterfeit it is to betray it. The mystical tradition has read in this thirst for the beloved the thirst of the soul for God, that desire which he himself has placed in the heart of man and which finds its rest only in him.

The call of spring

Then comes one of the most beautiful pages of the book, where the beloved calls the beloved outside, into the light of spring: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Song of Songs 2:10 Around them, all of nature is reborn and becomes an accomplice of their love: “the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come.” Song of Songs 2:11-12 The fig tree gives its first fruits, the vine breathes its fragrance, the turtledove is heard. Love is not cut off from the world: it accords with the awakening of creation, as if the springtime of the earth and the springtime of the heart were one. The beloved does not command, he invites: arise and come, come out of winter toward life.

Separation and the search in the night

But love also knows the night. In a poignant scene, the bride seeks the beloved who is no longer there: “Upon my bed at night I sought him whom my heart loves; I sought him, but did not find him.” Song of Songs 3:1 She rises, goes about the city, the streets and the squares, questions the watchmen, until she finds him at last. This absence is not an end, but a trial that sharpens desire: one measures the presence of the beloved only when it is missing. Spiritual tradition has made of this nocturnal quest the image of the times when God seems to withdraw, when the soul seeks him in the darkness without feeling him, and when love, far from going out, is purified and grows in the very search.

I am my beloved’s

At the end of these comings and goings returns, like a refrain, the word of mutual belonging: “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” Song of Songs 2:16 This is the summit of the movement of love: no longer the desire that lacks nor the quest that seeks, but the reciprocal gift of two beings who entrust themselves to each other. Each belongs to the other, not as one possesses a thing, but as one gives oneself to a person. This formula says all true love, which is neither the seizing of one alone nor the fusion that abolishes, but the exchange of two freedoms. Tradition has heard in it the summit of the covenant, where God can say to his people: you are mine, and where the soul answers him: I am yours.