Reflection on May 30, 1984 – (paragraphs 3 – 5)

https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb109.htm

I can see why people might have a hard time reading Song of Songs and grasping its full beauty and meaning. First, poetry, at least for me, has always been difficult. Second, it is poetry from before Christ, so much of the imagery is not a context that we understand. Thirdly, and the one that I think I gleamed from SJPII during this section, is that this appears to be written between a bride and groom that have no stain of concupiscence, in other words, written by Adam and Eve after Eve’s creation and before the fall. Over and over SJPII points out that the words of Song of Songs reflect back on the attitude that would have been or are divulged in Genesis 2 between Adam and Eve. The sharing that the bride and groom have in Song of Songs is almost beyond our comprehension because it comes from a love that we don’t understand. It is one that we should strive for, but not one that we have experienced, or at least we have not experienced in its full sense, and so we cannot relate. Give us a romantic comedy in which two people fall in love, but both have issues, ups and downs, but stay together in the end. We get that. This is a relationship of two completely unselfish, or “disinterested”, givers and receivers.

But, like Revelation, just because this is difficult to understand or really soak up does not mean we shouldn’t try. I read through Song of Songs this weekend, and I didn’t feel that I got anything new from it. But, even with going over what we have, I am not sure I read it in the correct light. I am going to give it another try (it is not terribly long) and read it as Adam and Eve conversing after Eve’s creation. This is how they saw each other in the beginning. This is what Christ was pointing to when He spoke on divorce when He says “in the beginning it was not so”. When we try to understand the language of the body and try to figure out what that language is, without all the mistranslating we have because of concupiscence, this book is our guide.