Song Of Songs Of Solomon

Though the primary sense of this verse refers to the ever-blessed Mary and the universal Church, still, as there is nothing attributed to the church as a mystical body, which is not proportionately true of souls as its members, especially when they are perfectly pure; so it may be said that there are souls in every age whom God has elected in a very peculiar manner. He here declares, then, that this soul, in whom the marriage has been consummated by her total annihilation and absolute loss, is a dove in simplicity, and but one, for there are few that resemble her; she is also but one, for she is restored in God to the perfect unity of her origin. She is perfect, but with the perfection of God, and because she is freed from self and disengaged from her hard, cramped and limited nature, from the time that by her entire renunciation she entered into the innocence of God. She is perfect in her interior, by the loss of all self-seeking whatever.

It is to be remarked here, that whatever praises the Bridegroom may have hitherto bestowed upon the Spouse, He has never called her one and perfect until she had entirely sunk into His Divine Unity; for these qualities are only to be found in God when the soul is perfected in Him in, a permanent and enduring state.

She is the only one of her mother, because she has lost all the multiplicity of nature and become separate from everything that is natural. She is the choice one of that wisdom that bare her in order that she might be lost in His bosom.

The most interior souls have beheld her; for God ordinarily permits such souls to be a little known, sometimes bestowing some discernment of their state upon other deeply spiritual souls, who are delighted with the sight, and, admiring their perfection, pronounce them blessed. The queens, who are souls high in the esteem of every one, and also those other common souls inferior in merit, contribute also great praises, because they feel the effect of the grace communicated to them.

Though this may seem to contradict what has been said a little way back, there is, in fact, no inconsistency; what is here said to be understood of the Apostolic state of Christ which He received both as King and Savior, on the very spot where a little while after He was executed as a felon.