 Scott apparently has been speaking to my wife because last time I checked I only had eight Did she call you this morning with an announcement for me It's all good It's all good If you have five or more you have a hard time remembering how many you have much less than what your friends have So I totally feel you Scott That's that's fine But praise be to God it's so wonderful to to be here with you this morning I was reflecting this morning and what a what a privilege and an honor it is to share this stage With with Scott and with Ted and and so many others who have done so much for scripture education in the country and to be with these fine colleagues and And to be able to present to you as a real honor and it's an honor to be with you because you are on the front lines of Biblical teaching and the spreading of the gospel and the new evangelization and your parishes around the country You know at least I get paid for this You guys are doing this out of the you know the the goodness of your heart at your own expense and And You know not a professional Bible scholar, but you're putting your talents at the at the use of the church and of God in such a self-sacrificial way and I salute you I honor you and Such a privilege to be able to be here with you and share something that maybe you'll find useful I hope in your ministries in the different parts of the country where you have come from so we have up above me the the title of this talk here love is the highest wisdom and We're gonna be talking this morning about an odd wisdom book. It's been alluded to already By dr. Han and others the song of songs. It's a it's an odd book. It's it's kind of like the West Virginia of Biblical books, you know, it's like what do you do with West Virginia? Really? It's not the Midwest It's not really the South, you know, they didn't join the Confederacy. It's not the East Coast You know, so you can't you can't plug it into any category. It's like it's there, you know, like You know, you can't don't know what to do with it, you know, it's not a great lake state really doesn't touch the great lakes So, you know, you can't you can't figure out what to do with West Virginia song of songs is like that It's like what do you do with this book? It's it's ascribed to Solomon, but it's not like Proverbs. It's not like the other wisdom literature Little bit like Psalms, you know like Psalm 45, but aside from Psalm 45, you know, not so much like the other Psalms It's not history. It's not law, you know So song of songs it can defy our Categories, but I'm going to argue that it really does belong with the wisdom literature You know, because people ask the question, you know, what what is this book? I'm sorry. What do we got here going on? All right. I'm trying to coordinate things All right, there we go Okay. All right We'll just have to run with this my Animations are not working on the Screen that you have displayed before you so yeah, so, you know the song of songs, you know You read it like this seems like a bunch of cringy, you know love poetry Like it's all thrown together, but but maybe I'm supposed to do something with this, you know, maybe these are like Biblically endorsed pickup lines, you know, this is that's That's how I encourage my men's my male students to look at this and say guys, you really got to try this, you know, yeah got it Trust me going down to the JC Williams You see that cute theology major that you'd like to get to know better All you got to do is go up to her and say um, excuse me I couldn't help notice but your your hair is like a flock of goats descending Mount Gilead This is really how I foster vocations to the priesthood But I'm like no, no, it really it really works, you know, I know from personal experience, you know, my wife loves it, you know Yeah, she's sitting there doing doing dishes at the kitchen sink, you know, and I come up and you know Do that sidle up, you know arms around the waist thing and I kind of lean in next to her ear and I whisper Honey, your belly is like a heap of wheat Tell you she just swoon's that I mean That's how you keep the home fires burning after 25 years and eight children Tell you it's a song of songs gentlemen Just don't know what you're missing But more seriously the the song of songs is a collection of ancient love homes That's true. It is and sometimes we don't always appreciate the imagery, you know Your neck is like the Tower of David or you know, your eyes are like the pools of heshpahn, but But there's actually theological significance to that We may get a chance to talk about some of that But these different love poems have been brought together and arranged with a loose kind of plot so You know scholars wonder, you know, what is You know doesn't belong really belong with the wisdom book as I alluded to earlier It's it's not didactic like Proverbs or sirac, you know with instructions like go to the ant thou sluggard or something like that teaching Fortitude you don't find that kind of Genre in the song of songs and yet it's associated with Solomon and in both in Judaism and within Christianity It's often been read as kind of the culmination of the wisdom literature as the highest of the wisdom books Like the famous rabbi Akiva Says all scripture is holy, but the song of songs is the holy of holies in some sense this ancient rabbi had and the the Conviction that this book was the highest of a certain trajectory that was going on in ancient Scripture So let's talk about the structure of the song of songs. It basically has a A chiastic structure. This is a little term that you can take back to impress your friends What did you learn at Francisco? I learned about chiasms Sure did What is a chiasm CHI ASM Chi is the Greek word for X. So Chiasm is an X shaped structure that kind of Moves towards a middle point and you often find this in biblical literature and In the song of songs you find that there's these successive frames like the beginning of the end balance and you move in and The second and the second to last balance and so on towards a middle point so the opening of the Song of songs is what we call a colloquy a colloquy is a section of a play or a Drama where most of the players have a speaking part So you can you can view the song of songs as a as a play a theatrical production even something like a musical where you have Song or spoken parts for different actors and the three main voices in the song of songs are the bride The groom and the chorus which is a group called the daughters of Jerusalem They're a group and they chime in periodically with you know kind of a You know a harmony number to the melody of the bride and the groom but in the first Chapter roughly and bleeding into the second chapter of the song of songs You get a colloquy where everybody comes out on stage the bride the groom the chorus and they all have speaking parts And they dialogue with each other After that's over. You have a kind of an interlude where the bride I said excuse me the groom essentially Bounds down out of the hills and invites the bride to run off with him That's song to Versus 8 through 17 It's interesting. We I don't know if anybody knows When in the church's lectionary we read song to but it might not Be what you'd expect. It's full of springtime imagery with flowers and birds and you know this invitation to run off to the hills together and So you might think well that would fit maybe in the springtime of the year somewhere Maybe an Easter after Lent or what have you but actually we read it around December 21 or 22nd Just a few days before Christmas like what why read this springtime? Love poem Okay, in the coldest time of the year when it's almost the darkest it's gonna get and just before Christmas Where we're not thinking about marriage and stuff, but we're thinking about babies and you know this little child born to us and so on Well, the reason we do use this this as it were engagement poem Just before The birth of our Lord is that the church fathers saw Christmas as a kind of marriage it was the marriage of divine nature with human nature in one person and Isn't Marriage where the two become one right where you got one person of the two and So the groom bounding down out of the hills that was seen as the second person of The trinity who comes to wed himself to us human nature as his bride And he makes of divine nature and human nature one person in this baby So Jesus is a wedding in a person right there. He's a marriage right there in the manger and The unit the union of of human and divine so beautiful thing. So that's the second Section of the song of songs we move into the next section and we have the first of two major dream sequences that we find in this poem where the bride is asleep at night and she Has a bad dream where her groom is missing and so she goes out into the city and she searches around for him and Eventually finds him and then the center of the song of songs is a vision of Solomon coming up into Jerusalem in his bridal litter or the technical term as a palanquin Which is a kind of a room on? Poles that was carried by Soldiers, you know for kings and emperors and so on kind of the the ultimate sweet ride It's like you're you know your luxury Cadillac of Of the Bronze Age, okay, so he comes riding into Jerusalem in this in this elaborate luxurious You know room on a on on poles and the way I interpret the song of songs after you see this vision of him being Carried up you actually go inside the room. I think this is what song for is chapter 4 You go inside this bridal litter where Solomon and his bride are being carried into Jerusalem And they're having a conversation and he's telling her how beautiful she is You know she's as fair as the doves and you know these these wonderful visual descriptions And she responds and you have that dialogue between bride and groom that finally ends in chapter 5 verse 1 Then you start backing out in the structure of the book and you get the bride's second dream sequence It's the same basic plot as in chapter 3 1 through 5 but now told at much much greater detail and Then in the Second to last section of the book you get a kind of a correspondence to the second section because You know in in chapter 2 the groom comes and says the bride run off with me and then in Chapter 611 he actually shows up with a chariot and tells her hey, baby jump in so she does and they roar off I don't know what it is about guys and and means of transportation You know But I is this old you know when I was a kid in in high school, you know You wanted to have a like a dodge duster some kind of muscle car. That was really cool That was the way to you know get girls, you know It's all it's as old as Jane Austen I don't know if anybody watches Jane Austen films and stuff like that But you watch these romances and the guys are always bragging about I've got a barouche, you know And that's apparently that was like a really cool carriage in 1804 You know in England you have to have a barouche, you know And then you go you go back to the song of songs and the guy's got a chariot, you know Buckle up, so anyway that happens 611 he shows up at his chariot. She jumps in they ride off and And he tells her how great she looks today Etc. And they have a dialogue and then finally we have a concluding colloquy Everybody comes back out on stage and the bride the groom and the chorus all have a speaking part at the at the end of the Book so that's the structure. Well question is, you know, what does the song of song have to do with the rest of the Bible? You know, how does this how does this point to Jesus? We're talking about wisdom too in this conference and so we want to tie that in we know that Christ is our ultimate wisdom So somehow the song must connect to Christ, but you leave a read a lot of commentaries and you know, you know These commentators don't know what to do with this what to do with this book and Even some of the commentators will say well, you know, it's essentially ignored by the New Testament But that's not true. The song of songs is not ignored by the New Testament it's particularly Drawn on by the Gospel of John and We're gonna look at that and see what the Gospel of John does with the song and this is gonna lead us into uniting the song with the Wisdom tradition the wisdom literature and ultimately seeing the song as the Climax of the wisdom literature So we're gonna begin with one example of how the Gospel of John uses This song of song and applies it to Jesus and that's in terms of the Brigham's body And I don't want to give too much to waste. We're just gonna Go through this but this is now from the second dream sequence of the song of songs I want to read a little passage here This is where the bride is going out at night and she's searching for her beloved and she finds her Girlfriends to give her a hand to find her her beloved and the girlfriends are like, yeah Why should we waste our time looking for your your guy? You know, why is he so special? So here we get some words in the in the mouth of the daughters of Jerusalem, what is your beloved more than any other beloved O'Farrist among women? What is your beloved more than any other beloved that you thus a juror us a juror us to help you find him and The bride is only too happy to go into a description of what her Groom to be looks like My beloved is all radiant and Rudy Distinguished among ten thousand his head is the finest gold. That's the image there His locks are wavy black as raven His eyes are like doves beside springs of water bathed in milk fitly set His cheeks are like beds of spices Yielding fragrance his lips are lilies distilling liquid mur His arms are rounded gold set with jewels His body is ivy work encrusted with sapphires His legs are alabaster columns set upon bases of gold His appearance is like Lebanon choices the cedars his speech is most sweet and he is all together desirable This is my beloved and this is my friend. Oh daughters of Jerusalem now Unfortunately my animations aren't working here out a couple images that we're gonna flash on the screen there But as we look at this description, you know the beds of spices and this fragrance the liquid mur But then the rounded gold set with jewels the ivy work the sapphires Alabaster columns bases of gold cedars of Lebanon. Do you recognize what is being described in ancient Israel in This description of her bridegroom's body. You know, where are all these items found? That's right, I think I hearing it the temple That's right. Okay, the temple is where you're gonna find Columns on bases of gold the temple is where you're gonna find rounded gold encrusted with jewels The temple is where you're gonna smell the murr and the other Fragrances in the incense that was used to sense the holy of holies She is describing the body of her groom as if he were the temple in Jerusalem that is the point His body is sacred. His body is a temple But then if you look at this imagery as well, and you think hmm when in my religious experience as a Catholic Do I ever sent smell the sense of frankincense and murr? When do I behold something that's made of rounded gold and set with jewels that has maybe other precious materials worked in and encrusted with Sapphires and built on a a column of gold on a base of gold. When do I ever experience this and You are probably thinking with me, you know He has given them bread from heaven Having all sweetness within it Right worth this is the imagery of like solemn benediction, right and I Have a monstrance up on the screen Okay, which is like a column of gold encrusted with jewels And it's not that we as Catholics like, you know, we're so Exegetically self-conscious that we went back to Psalm You know the song of songs, you know chapter six or five and and and got this imagery and decided to incorporate it But there's something deep in our nature that we know that when we build a monstrance or building something That's for the adoration of the body of our brygroom And so it's just instinctive to use the most precious materials possible And we end up as it were reinventing the wheel and using the same materials that the ancient Israelites used to adorn the home of their God Right in the temple in Jerusalem, but there's this profound connection and this by the way is an excellent text To be used here in this is from song five this is an excellent text to be used in Eucharistic adoration Alright, so where do we see this in the New Testament? Well again the gospel of John Let's think of an episode that maybe might not Immediately occur to us, but the temple cleansing in John chapter two We know how that goes our Lord makes a whip of cords and he drives out all the money changes from the temple And of course the Judeans are not real happy about this And so they say to him what sign have you to show us for doing this and he answered them Destroy this temple and in three days. I will raise it up Then the Judean said it has taken 46 years to build this temple and you're gonna raise it up in three days But he spoke of the temple of his body Wow What an image and then we go searching well What would prepare the people of God to receive a man whose body is a temple? And there's a couple of trajectories in scripture that actually lead in this direction But one of the more important ones is what we just looked at in the song of songs Solomon the royal bridegroom. He is described by his bride as One with a temple body and indeed that's what our Lord is as well the temple of his body Harks back in part to this imagery from the song of songs What else does the New Testament do with the song in particular the gospel of John? Well, there's also the motif of the anointing of the reclining king We see this in the song of songs chapter one We have this dialogue going on and up on the screen have divided the dialogue between the different speaking parts here So you can see what lines belong in the mouth of the groom and what belong in the mouth of the chorus and what in the Bride if this is clear in Hebrew because Hebrew has Gendered endings on the nouns and the verbs Etc and you can see the gender of who's being addressed and and who's speaking etc But in any event so in verse 1 9 There's a dialogue going on between the groom and the bride and he says to the his bride I compare you my love to a mare of Pharaoh's chariots Little digression here. It's a little bit of a humorous comment. That's going on. You see Pharaoh did not have any mares among his chariots. Okay, the Egyptian cavalry consisted entirely of stallions Why is that? Well, one reason is stallions are a little bit larger and better for battle than mares But secondly, you cannot mix mares and stallions in a fighting force Okay, in fact, if you were even to lead a mare past The Egyptian cavalry all those war horses would quickly lose all thought of combat and Become solely interested in that one mare Okay, and become completely unruly and uncontrollable and you could not maintain military discipline Among these horses. So there were no mares Okay, within the Egyptian cavalry and so I compare you my love to a mare of Pharaoh's chariots This is a little subtle joke. It's like you Arouse such passion in me, you know that I can't think about anything else and I become Disorganized and all I want to think about is is you that's What that what the groom is saying your cheeks are coming with ornaments your neck with strings of jewels then the chorus the daughters of Zion or Jerusalem chime in and say we will make you ornaments of gold studded with silver and then the bride Responds while the king was on his couch My Nard gave forth its fragrance my beloved is to me a bag of myrrh that lies between my breasts My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of a getty These are some henna blossoms here on the image. Okay, so beautiful image But let's look at that line in verse 12 while the king was on his couch my Nard gave forth its fragrance Are you having a little bit of a prejavu? With that verse Have you seen that later in the Bible? Indeed you have Because you're all familiar with John 12, right in John 12 We get the gospel account of the anointing at Bethany and Mary took a pound of costly ointment of pure Nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair And the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment St. John says huh So that in case we missed it in case we momentarily forgot that the only other book of the Bible That mentions Nard is The song of songs and if case that wasn't enough to clue us into the deeper significance John emphasizes the fragrance filled the whole house, and we as the readers are so like why is he mentioning that? Oh Well the king was on his couch My Nard gave forth its fragrance. Okay, so what Mary is doing to the Lord is unwittingly identifying Jesus as the new Solomon as the new Royal brygrim come to wed himself to his people which was prophetically foreshadowed in the song of songs and Then The account goes on and we know that Judas protests why wasn't this sold and the money given to the poor Etc. Although he didn't really care about the poor, but then Jesus says let her alone okay, let her keep it for the day of my burial and That statement seems to imply that She did not use up all the Nard yet that there's some of the Nard is still left in the bottle And so we might fill it in by saying let her keep the rest of it. Okay for the day of my burial And I find that very significant because what Jesus is doing is taking this This nuptial perfume. Okay, this Nard Is this in this romantic? Fragrance, you know comparable to you know Chanel number five or you know One by Dolce Gabbana or other things that you can't afford in the duty-free shop in the in the in the Airport right I always find that ironically ever wonder about that like well big whoop that it's tax-free Like yeah, oh wow, I'm gonna really save money now I don't have to pay taxes on this $200 for five ounces like oh, I'm saving money here. You know, I don't have to pay taxes Save at least 15 bucks on this $200 purchase like I mean, I don't know it's duty-free anyway I Just find that ironic like oh, I'm gonna save money. Yeah anyway But but that the Nard is this a very expensive fragrance like high class and associated with romance and associated with marriage and So Jesus takes all that imagery and say, you know what everything that this Nard symbolizes the reference to the great love poem of The Bible, which is the only other book that uses Nard that is more appropriate at my burial like really Lord Wedding imagery is appropriate to your burial Lord weddings and funerals are different. Okay, they're like, you know, one is match. The other is dispatch You know, you don't you don't mix the two. Okay Wasn't there a movie like three weddings in a funeral or something like that? I was like, yeah, don't you know Keep those apart, you know, that's kind of weird But no as we're gonna see our Lord's Burial ends up being his mystical wedding So we've seen the the brygrines body, you know in the body the temple body of our Lord We've seen the anointing of the reclining King and then there's the motif of the royal wedding crown in song three the beginning of the longest section of the book where Solomon is being brought up into Jerusalem in his Palin Quinn or his like room on poles Here's a here's an ancient one up on the screen to give you an idea of, you know How it might have looked likes a little bit What is that coming up for the wilderness like a column of smoke perfumed with myrrh and frankincense? Behold it is the litter of Solomon about it are 60 mighty men of the mighty men of Israel all Girt with swords an expert in war each with his sword at his thigh Okay, so here comes Solomon. He's Perfumed up, you know, he's got so much cologne on you could see the column of you know cologne vapor You know where it's so much Stetson you could smell it from like about 10 miles away like What's that? Oh that's Solomon coming, okay Oh Here he comes up from Jericho, you know up the road into Jerusalem He's smelling wafted on the breezes and here's that litter of Solomon. He's surrounded by soldiers Okay, and then it goes on King Solomon made himself a Palin Quinn from the wood of Lebanon So he's being carried up on the wood, right? Made its post of silver its back of gold its seat of purple Go forth though daughter's a Zion and behold King Solomon with the crown with which his mother crowned him on the day of his wedding On the day of the gladness of his heart Okay, so he's wearing the nuptial crown the crown of his wedding. We don't know for sure, but We suspect that this would be a like a crown of foliage of vines and flowers to represent the the joy of the royal wedding Similar to you know the laurel crowns that the Greeks and the Romans used for a victor or For a triumphant person or for some great public celebration You know it celebrates joy and nature and all of that good stuff. So Here's an ancient Engraving with with a hero, you know guard with one of these foliage crowns So how does that relate to our Lord? Where is that imagery taken up in the Gospels? I can't prove this But I suspect here Then Pilate took Jesus and scourged him and the soldiers plated a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple rope So here we have the son of David Surrounded by soldiers, right? Just like the song of songs describe Solomon each with each with his sword at his side Here our Lord in a very ironic way Surrounded by soldiers and these soldiers make him a crown of foliage Okay, that's a crown of thorns And they put that in his head hail king of the Jews and they also provide a wooden vehicle for him to ride on That we call the cross So we've got that vehicle of wood. We've got the soldiers surrounding. We've got that that crown Can't be proven exegetically but at least in the level of lexio We can meditate on the crown of thorns as the nuptial crown of our Lord as he goes to give his body for his bride In the passion So we've looked at three images so far in the song that are taken up in the Gospel of John Let's look at a fourth motif the garden and the virgin bride So here we go to the heart of the song of songs in chapter four Which the context for which I believe is we are like a fly on the wall Inside the bridal litter of Solomon and his he's seated on One side on his couch and she seated maybe facing him on a couch and they're being carried up by By the soldiers into Jerusalem with royal pomp and great celebration and we listen to the dialogue as they they exchange terms of endearment and Solomon says of his bride a garden locked is my sister my bride a garden locked a fountain sealed And of course these images of being locked and sealed. This is because she's kept herself Exclusively for her royal bridegroom. She's never been with anyone else So she is as it were a virgin garden Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates with all choices fruits Hena with Nard Nard and saffron There we get the Nard again Calamus and cinnamon with all trees of frankincense myrrh and Allows especially notice the myrrh and allows there with all chief spices a garden fountain a well of living water and flowing streams from Lebanon and Then she responds to her groom and says awake Oh north wind and come oh south wind blow upon my garden Which is her body and let its fragrance be wafted abroad let my beloved come to his garden and eat its choices fruits And it's it's it's beautiful in the song of songs that as the curtain drops on this central scene as bride and groom are approaching for For the nuptial embrace the curtain drops and the chorus chimes in eat and drink deeply Oh lovers that's what the daughters of Zion say As they approach one another isn't that beautiful that in the song of songs the embrace of husband and wife is described in Culinary imagery okay as eating and drinking one another Hmm. I wonder where that's going Okay Where do we have you know the celebration of a wedding feast? Where the consummation of the bodies really takes place through an act of eating and drinking? Well, you know where we're going with that and that's why the song of songs speaks to us really about the mass But where does it go in the gospel of John? So we had that garden imagery that virgin imagery garden locked fountain sealed Okay, we had We had that the the the mention of mur and allows as these Fragrances that adorn the bodies of the lovers back there in song for now look at this episode This is the burial remember how Jesus said let her save the gnarred for my burial Okay, so here we're back our Lord himself suggested all that imagery belongs appropriately at my death Well, here it is. Here's his death and burial Nicodemus also who had at first come to him by night Came bringing a mixture of mur and allows Wow Now did you know that mur and allows are only used in the Old Testament in marital contexts They're used in a scene in a frankly a seduction scene in Proverbs 7 mentions mur and allows The Royal Wedding Psalm in Psalm 45 Mentioned mur and allows and then the only other place where mur and allows are mentioned is the song of songs So the only association of mur and allows in the Old Testament is with romance Okay, so here comes Nicodemus bringing this mixture of mur and allows about a hundred pounds Wait, okay. That's a lot All right What what a how our murder, you know how but what unit of measure is usually used for selling colognes and perfumes Ounces right, okay, so five ounces is like 50 bucks, you know in the duty-free shop That's tax-free, okay, right But what unit of measure are we are we using here? Pounds right Pounds a hundred pounds There's eight pounds in a gallon you could do the math and figure out how many gallons is it? This is like Chanel number five in the 15 gallon keg Open the tap there glugluglugluglugluglugluglugluglugluglugluglugluglugluglugluglugluglugluglugluglugluglugluglugluglugluglugluglug This is this is Literally a burial fit for a king really fit for an emperor Okay, and there's a backstory to this. We know Nicodemus family. There's an archeological record He was a very wealthy Pharisee. Okay. This is his put this is probably his family's whole stash of of myrrh and aloes that was expected to cover all major life events for the family for generations, you know, all weddings and burials, et cetera, for the whole Nicodemus family. And he clears out the whole storage room and brings everything he's got and just smothers it over the body of Jesus. This was a social statement about what he thought about this teacher of Nazareth. Remember, Nicodemus was the guy protesting the legal proceedings that were going against Jesus. Like, hey, wait, wait, wait, you know, point of order, point of order. You know, we gotta call the guy in and interview him and he's just getting shouted down by the rest of the Congress, right, the Sanhedrin there. And so he protested this. And so he brings out his whole store of myrrh and aloes and remember that Calvary was in no secret place nor was the garden where our Lord was buried. It was right beside the most public road into Jerusalem, one of the main entrances, because the Romans crucified people in public so that everybody got the point. This is what happens to you when you disobey Roman authority. So Nicodemus is pouring out this myrrh and aloes in front of, you know, who's ever coming past the main road. And Nicodemus is a nationally known figure. He's like a major senator, you know, like Marco Rubio or, you know, Rick Santorum or, you know, somebody else that maybe is not the president, but is a major player and would be a nationally known name. So here's Nicodemus and he is doing this in public. I tell you, you find out who your friends are when you're dead, okay? Who shows up to help you out when you're dead, okay? That's when your true friends are revealed. And I'm always moved by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus because these two guys show up when Jesus is dead. Everybody else runs away, even the apostles, you know? These men's faith, you know, to be there with the Lord. And sometimes that's how it feels with the church, doesn't it? Just like, how can it get any worse some days? You know, you think confusion, feels like we're close to schism. The gospel is obscured by things that are said in public. You know, people think that all religions are the same. You don't have to come to Jesus for salvation. Like, you know, confusion about sexual identity and all this kind of stuff. I'm like, oh, Lord, you know? How can the gospel get out through all this mess that is the church, you know? And just feel like our hopes are lost. But that's the time for faith, okay? That's the time for sainthood. That's the time to be with Jesus even when it seems like he's dead because we are resurrection people, amen? And what's true of our Lord is true of his church, amen? And we will rise to a new evangelization, amen? So take courage from Joseph of Arimathea. Take courage from Nicodemus. Be identified with Jesus and his body, which is the church. This is what Nicodemus is doing. He's identifying himself with Jesus as his body. And we know that Jesus' body is the church. Even when Jesus' body looks like it's dead, you know? And there's some parts of the country where it feels like the church is dead, you know? Where just there's been disasters, there's been scandals, and it feels like nobody's coming to mass and you got all these empty buildings. Okay, pray to Saint Nicodemus. And don't be ashamed to be identified with the body of Lord because guess what? That body's coming back, okay? So be bold, be bold. So here he is. But he comes bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes. That's our imagery back from song four. And binds it with the linen cloths. Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden. Well, that's providential, okay? Huh, it in the garden, a new tomb where no one had ever been laid. Huh, well, if nobody's ever been laid in it, then it is a virgin tomb, right? And as the tomb is close at hand, they lay Jesus there. These are these motifs from song four coming back, the myrrh and aloes, the pleasant sense, the garden, the virginal tomb. The tomb of our Lord, the Holy Sepulchre is a mystical representation of the body of Christ. It's a mystical representation of the church, okay? In a sense, the Holy Sepulchre is the mother church of Christianity. Another sense of St. John Lattern is, but we can view the Holy Sepulchre as a kind of mother church as it all starts there. And think about the relationship between the Holy Sepulchre and the blessed mother and her womb. Let's think about womb and tomb. So our Lord comes down from heaven, bounds down from heaven, like in song two, and takes flesh in the virginal womb of the mother. And then at the end of his life, he gives his flesh into the virginal tomb of the Holy Sepulchre. And the womb of the blessed mother gives birth to him on Christmas. The womb of the Holy Sepulchre gives birth to him on Easter. There's this mystical correlation, and lest you think that I'm just drawing on the rhyme of womb and tomb in English, let's remember that the womb and the tomb are associated again and again in the Old Testament. Does not Job say, naked I came forth from my mother's womb and naked I shall return, right? Is he gonna literally return to his mother's womb? No, he's gonna be put in a hole in the ground, he's gonna be put in a grave, but somehow this grave is a return to the womb. Psalm 139, the great pro-life Psalm, right? My frame was not hidden from you when I was knit together in my mother's womb, when I was formed in the depths of the earth. That's what Psalm 139 says. How can you be formed in the depths of the earth and also be knit together in your mother's womb? Well, I don't know, but it's this mystical like womb of mother earth concept. But the Psalm 139 both describes as being formed in the ground and also being formed in our mama's womb. So it associates the two, okay? And Ecclesiastes also says naked we come forth and naked we shall return. So the Old Testament itself associates the womb of the mother with the tomb of the earth. And this is what we see in the Gospel of John. And so very appropriately, as he's returning to the womb of the mother in his death, our Lord is placed in a virginal tomb which is a mystical symbol of the body of Christ who is embodied in the blessed mother, right? Do we not say that she is an icon of the whole church? But then here's the kicker. Who is it that places Jesus in the Holy Sepulchre after smothering him with a hundred pounds of myrnellos? It's Nicodemus, right? Okay. What did Nicodemus ask our Lord back in John three when they had that dialogue at night? How can a man return for a second time to his mother's womb? And he's the one there preparing the body as Jesus returns for a second time to the virginal womb where he's going to be reborn. But that's a sign of baptism because baptism is a participation in the death and burial of Christ, Roman six. Do you not know that you were buried with him in baptism? So each one of us returns to the mother's womb through baptism. We go back and we're buried and we go into the womb of Mother Earth as in where we experience a sacramental death and then we rise from the waters as on Easter and we participate in Christ's rebirth through resurrection. And that's the deeper meaning. This is how that's applied to us. So this is beautiful imagery about Jesus being buried. So what does it mean to me? This is about your baptism, brothers and sisters. This is what you undergo, what you have undergone and marks your whole life because our baptism is renewed every day. Our whole life is lived under the sign of our baptism. Okay, so the burial of our Lord draws from the imagery of the song. But then also our Lord's resurrection carries that motif of the bride's nighttime search. We've talked about this before and you might be even more aware of this because earlier this week, I believe it was on Monday, it was the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene and song three was the first reading or the first option for the first reading if you went to Daily Mass on her feast day. And in song three, verse one, we have one of these two dream sequences in the song and the bride says, upon my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves. I sought him but found him not. I called him but he gave no answer. I will rise now and go about the city in the streets and in the squares. I will seek him whom my soul loves. I sought him but found him not. The watchman found me as they went about in the city. Have you seen him whom my soul loves? Scarcely had I passed them. When I found him whom my soul loves, I held him and would not let him go until I had brought him into my mother's house into the chamber of her that conceived me. I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles of the hinds, gazelles are the hinds of the field that you stern it up nor awaken love until it pleas. Well, let's look at how this comes to play at the end of the gospel of John. In John 20, verse one, we read, now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark. If it's still dark, then in my categories, it's still night, okay? Still night and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. What does the song say? Upon my bed by night, I sought him whom my soul loves. So out in the night here is Mary Magdalene searching for the one whom her soul loves. She does not find Jesus at the tomb so she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved and said to him, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb. And what does the song say? I'll rise now, go about in the city, in the streets and squares, I will seek him. So she's running around trying to find help to seek him. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb and as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb. She saw two angels in white where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the feet. In the song, she encounters the watchers who found her as she went about the city. Have you seen him whom my soul loves? And the relationship is even stronger if you're an ancient Jew in the first century because one of the terms for angels in first century Judaism was the watchers, the watchers of heaven. Okay, so she encounters the heavenly watchers. And they said to her, woman, why are you weeping? She said to them, because they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him. Saying this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing but did not know that it was Jesus. Scarcely had I passed them when I found him whom my soul loves. So no sooner does she see the angels, she turns around, there is Jesus. Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek? Supposing him to be the gardener, she said, sir, tell me where you've laid him, I will take him away. Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned and said to him, Rabonai. And Jesus said to her, do not hold me for I have not yet ascended to the Father. If Jesus has to say to her, do not hold me, what is that implying? That's right, she's grabbing onto him and doesn't wanna let him go, as it says in the songs. Scarcely had I passed him, I found him whom my soul loves. I held him and would not let him go. But Mary has to learn that Jesus is the spouse for all and she cannot hold onto him. She needs as all, as we all do, to share our Lord as the spouse of the whole church. Yes, he comes for each one of us personally, but not for each one of us alone. He comes for all. He is the bridegroom of each of our souls. So this is what the gospel of John does with the song of songs. It describes Jesus using these powerful romantic images from the song, presenting Jesus as our bridegroom. But this is the same gospel that also portrays our Lord as the other gospels do as well as the embodiment of wisdom. I mean, from the very beginning of the book, the word, the logos, logos is this idea of rationality of like the philosophical principles that undergird the fabric of reality in the Greek tradition, the logos became flesh and dwelt among us. And likewise in John 14.6, I am the way. I am the truth. And that's what the wisdom tradition sought after, sought after truth that sought after hochma wisdom, which is grasping reality as it is. So this gospel identifies Jesus with these bridegroom images from the song of songs, but also as truth and as wisdom and as logos. Well, what is the song of songs in light of the gospel of John telling us about wisdom? Well, some of these things have already been mentioned before as Dr. Shree just said in his talk, truth is a person. That's why the song of songs should be read as the climax of the wisdom literature. The wisdom literature is an intellectual journey toward God by learning the principles of creation and life and how to live. But that journey does not culminate in a formula. It culminates in a person. And this is where contemporary intellectuals go wrong. I have an avocation for science. I love to watch science videos and keep up with science literature. You know, I've read stuff by Stephen Hawking, by Isaac Asimov, by Robert Jastrow, the great rocket scientist of the 20th century. Some of these names may be familiar to you. I love their work and their scientific investigations of the fabric of the universe, but where all these guys go wrong is they're all seeking a grand unified theory. They want something like E equals MC squared that explains all of reality, maybe with more variables and some more functions involved in that formula. But they're basically looking like for a formula that's gonna describe reality. And I'm sorry, gentlemen, you're not going to find it. A formula, a grand unified theory does not finally undergird reality. What undergirds reality is a person. And that person in particular is the second person of the Trinity, who is the divine rationality that is not only E equals MC squared, Jesus is that, but he's also your spouse of your soul. And that's why some of the great intellectuals of the 20th and 21st century, it's kind of sad because they die without encountering the person who is the truth. And that's another point, reality is ultimately personal. They've even found this out to be true from quantum physics. I can't go into this right now, but when you get to the very smallest, most basic level of reality, you begin to see that mind controls matter and mental decisions of the researcher dictate how the particles are gonna behave. I know it sounds wild. You're like, really, is that really true? It is true. It's been confirmed by so many experiments. I wish this was wider known. I wish it was taught in high schools. Why do you think it's not taught in high schools? Yeah, that's right. Because the high school system, our public education system has a vested interest in teaching kids that matter and energy is all there is and there's no meaning and so on and there's no ultimate personal or mind, et cetera. But what the science actually shows is there's a mind at the basis of reality when you get down to the very basis of it, which is the same thing that the scriptures are telling us that there was a mind and a person before there was any matter. And then that mind and that person said, let there be light and then matter came into existence. The Song of Songs also teaches us the limitations of words. A lot of the songs is just visual description. Three times the groom just looks at the body of his bride and describes what he sees. And once the bride just looks at the groom and describes what she sees as she's looking at him. So for a lot of the Song of Songs, they're really just looking at each other. Does that give you a kind of prejavu? Okay. What do we talk about like the ultimate act of looking? We don't call it the beatific conversation, folks. Okay. We call it the beatific vision. And the Song of Songs is a very visual book where the lovers gaze at one another in the gaze of love and that's what we're going to do for eternity. You see, because after 10,000 years, we're gonna get it all talked out, right? We're gonna find out why it was you fell off your high chair when you were three years old. You're like, how is that in God's providence? You know, you're gonna find out why you broke down in Albuquerque when you were 22, trying to drive across country. Like, I never, that seems like a disaster. I was wondering why Jesus willed that way. We're gonna find out all that. We're gonna get all worked out, like, explain, okay, this is why everything happened and oh, we're happy that we're all now in heaven, like, and what do we talk about now? Well, even when we run out of things to talk about, we will gaze in love at Jesus, our spouse. Just like that old couple sitting on the park bench holding hands and looking at each other. They're both like 85 and there's nothing left to say. They've already discussed the kids to the, you know, there's nothing more to say about the kids. They don't wanna talk about politics, you know? There's nothing to say about that, you know what? They're still in love. So when you're 85 and you're sitting on the park bench with your spouse and you hold hands, you know what? I can't think of a darn thing to say, but I still love you. That's the beatific vision, okay? There are things that go beyond words, that go beyond discourse. Philosophy ultimately falls silent and then there's just the gaze of adoration. I'm gonna just skip to the end here. The gaze of adoration. That's what the song of songs is all about. It's all about adoration. We saw that already when she looks at her bridegroom and he looks like a monstrance, right? Gold and encrusted jewels and all that, right? Think of this word adoration, I love it. It's the perfect word for the songs because on the one hand we got adore. Like, oh, she's adorable or I adore her. We use it as a word for love or for romance. But then adoration is also a word for worship. And so the word captures just that right balance of love and worship. That is what the quest for wisdom ought to lead to. That's what the quest for wisdom led the three guys that we call the wise men in scripture, right? The three wise men, they were the scientists of their day and they come and they look for truth and they find truth in a person, in fact, in a baby and then they bring gifts along, right? Gold, frankincense and myrrh. Did you know all three of those are mentioned heavily in the song of songs? And did you know frankincense and myrrh are mentioned together only in the song of songs? So these three wise men, the wisest men in the Bible in a sense, these great scientists of their day, they fulfilled their quest for truth by finding it in a person and ending on their knees in an act of adoration. May we be wise men and women too. Let's go to Lord in prayer, the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen. Heavenly Father, we're thankful for the beauty of what you revealed in scripture. Now bless us as we meditate on it throughout this conference. May all our growth in understanding lead us to a growth of love and worship of you. We ask this through Christ our Lord, amen. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. Thank you so much.