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| That Passage of David Explained; What the Harps Hung Upon the Willows Signify; The Willow a Symbol of Chastity; The Willows Watered by Streams.
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Chapter III.—That
Passage of David Explained;2616
| 2616
“By the waters of Babylon,” etc. [He passes to the
next psalm.] |
What the Harps Hung Upon the Willows Signify; The Willow a Symbol of
Chastity; The Willows Watered by Streams.
But not to pass away from our subject, come, let us take
in our hands and examine this psalm, which the pure and stainless souls sing
to God, saying:2617
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Ps. cxxxvii. 1, 2. [Here is a transition to Psalm
cxxxvii., which has been the source of a confusion in the former
chapter. This psalm is not Eucharistic, but penitential.] |
“By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down; yea, we wept, when
we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the
midst thereof,” clearly giving the name of harps to their bodies
which they hung upon the branches of chastity, fastening them to the
wood that they might not be snatched away and dragged along again by
the stream of incontinence. For Babylon, which is interpreted
“disturbance” or “confusion,” signifies this
life around which the water flows, while we sit in the midst of which
the water flows round us, as long as we are in the world, the rivers of
evil always beating upon us. Wherefore, also, we are always
fearful, and we groan and cry with weeping to God, that our harps may
not be snatched off by the waves of pleasure, and slip down from the
tree of chastity. For everywhere the divine writings take the
willow as the type of chastity, because, when its flower is steeped in
water, if it be drunk, it extinguishes whatever kindles sensual desires
and passions within us, until it entirely renders barren, and makes
every inclination to the begetting of children without effect, as also
Homer indicated, for this reason calling the willows destructive of
fruit.2618
And in
Isaiah the righteous are said to “spring up as willows by the
water courses.”2619
Surely, then, the shoot of
virginity is raised to a great and glorious height, when the righteous,
and he to whom it is given to preserve it and to cultivate it, bedewing
it with wisdom, is watered by the gentlest streams of Christ. For
as it is the nature of this tree to bud and grow through water, so it
is the nature of virginity to blossom and grow to maturity when
enriched by words, so that one can hang his body2620
| 2620
ὄργανον. The word used
for harp above, and here employed with a double meaning.
[“Body” here = "man"’s physical system.] | upon it.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
