I sought him
1 By night on my bed I sought him whom
my soul loves.
I sought him, but I did not find him.
2 I will rise up and go about the city,
through the streets and squares, seeking
him whom my soul loves.
I sought him, but I did not find him.
3 The watchmen found
me as they made their rounds through the city.
Have you seen him whom my soul loves?
4a No sooner had I passed them than I
found him whom my soul loves.
When was the last time you searched for something? Was it a material search, or rather a spiritual one? The search described in this excerpt from the Old Testament hymn, the Song of Songs, depicts a deep longing that drives the act of searching. Reading these lines, it feels as though you yourself are walking alongside the seeker through the streets and squares:
It is night. A woman is dreaming. She lies on her bed and cannot sleep properly, for she dreams of searching for the one she loves. Her longing for the man fills her with such restlessness that, sleepwalking, she pursues her desire. Her longing and her will are stronger than the obstacles symbolised in the song by the watchmen. Her dream comes true – at least in her dream. She finds ‘the one my soul loves’.
It is liturgically prescribed that this passage from the Song of Songs be proclaimed on 22 July, the feast of St Mary Magdalene. This is no coincidence. For Mary Magdalene’s Easter message: ‘I have seen the Lord’, can be read in parallel with the message of the woman who found ‘the one my soul loves’. It is intentional that the two (female) voices, those of the Old and New Testaments, are linked together.
The quest of both women stems from an inner longing for encounter. Both love in different ways: one erotically, the other as a friend. The difference is this: Mary’s encounter with the risen Jesus Christ on Easter morning is not a dream, but reality. (See John 20:11–18.) But her human bewilderment at the open tomb she finds early in the morning shows that she perceives everything as if in a dream, because she is overwhelmed by her own grief. The angels who appear at the tomb are a typical motif of dreams. Just as in the poetry of the Song of Songs the woman speaks to the guards, so too does Mary first ask the angels, then the supposed gardener, about Jesus Christ, her friend, teacher and Lord. “No sooner had I passed them than I found him whom my soul loves.” (Song of Songs 3:4a) The sentence could also have come from Mary. The act of passing by, which in the Greek text alludes to Passover and marks the transition from death to (eternal) life, is a deliberate choice. In the Song of Songs, it stands metaphorically for the obstacle blocking access to the Beloved. Only by overcoming this obstacle does one reach him. A parallel structure is found in the account of Mary Magdalene in the Gospel of John: only after she turns around – from the inner despair of missing him and the pain of losing the centre of her life, towards the reality that makes her realise the tomb is not the end point but the turning point – does her life regain the meaning it had lost for a moment. Ultimately, it is Jesus himself who opens her heart, and he does so with just one word: ‘Mary’ – her name.
Miriam Pawlak