My Lenten reading is the collected sermons on the Song of Songs by St. Bernard (no, not the keg-collared canine from unkenneled cantons but the cantankerous crusader-collaring cowl from Clairvaux) and when I ran across this, I thought it a good shot of joy to help through the long days’ journey into a hard day’s night which make up these forty days…
…my advice to you, my friends, is to turn aside occasionally from troubled and anxious pondering on the paths you may be treading, and to travel on smoother ways where the gifts of God are serenely savored, so that the thought of him may give breathing space to you whose consciences are perplexed. I should like you to experience for yourselves the truth of the holy Prophet’s words: “Make the Lord your joy and he will give you what your heart desires” (Ps.36:4). Sorrow for sin is indeed necessary, but it should not be an endless preoccupation. You must dwell also on the glad remembrance of God’s loving-kindness, otherwise sadness will harden the heart and lead it more deeply into despair. Let us mix honey with our absinthe, it is more easily drunk when sweetened, and what bitterness it may still retain will be wholesome. – Sermon 11:2
There’s almost 100 of these suckers. So I’m hoping and praying hard I’m going to be all loved up by the time Easter comes around…
Up next: “The Necessity of Godsbody: a Provocative Cisterican Argument.”
JOB,
I have been making my way through these sermons over the past couple of month. Many more marvelous metaphors on the mystical life await.
Sweet, thanks. I like that lenten Beatles mash-up, too.
Is that so? Well great minds forget a like and all that.
Good to hear. It’s contagious stuff.
And so – are you counting down the days, boyo?
JOB
Nice message.
Thanks, Winston.
JOB
86 1/2
The necessity of Godsbody? Now he tells me. I killed Godsbody just to get into the Kollektiv…
Well, Matthew, it’s not like I haven’t been warning you…
…in verse and praise and prose and flattery.
But to no avail!
JOB
You may have killed it, but now it has been resurrected within the Kollektiv. Godsbody lives!
Thanks JOB, you’re a warrior poet.
Viva November!