Letter 75

From: Ambrose, Bishop of Milan To: The Church at Milan Date: ~380 AD Context: A mystic-allegorical sermon in letter form on the Song of Songs, read through the lens of Isaac's marriage to Rebekah, treating both as figures of Christ's love for the Church and the soul's yearning for God. Ambrose to the faithful. "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth" (Song of Songs 1:2). This is the voice of the Church longing for her bridegroom. It is also the voice of every soul that has tasted God and wants more. The Song of Songs has puzzled readers from the beginning. On its surface, it is a love poem — sensuous, vivid, and apparently unconcerned with theology. What is it doing in Scripture? The answer: it is the most theological book in the Bible, because it reveals the nature of God's love for his people, and their love for him, in the only language adequate to the subject. The language of desire. The language of longing. The language of intimacy. When the bride says "I am lovesick" (Song of Songs 2:5), she speaks for every saint who has experienced the presence of God and then experienced his absence. The mystic life is not a steady state of peace — it is an alternation of presence and absence, of ecstasy and desolation, of finding and losing and finding again. Isaac waited for Rebekah and did not know when she would come. He went out into the field in the evening and looked up (Genesis 24:63) — and there she was. That is the posture of prayer: going out, looking up, waiting in the twilight between this world and the next. Do not be embarrassed by the desire for God. It is the highest desire a human being can have, and it uses the language of the deepest human experience — the love between man and woman — because no lesser language will do. Seek the bridegroom. Wait in the field. Look up. He is coming. Farewell.

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