Leaping Across the Hills
I have been a priest almost fourteen years. Sometimes I should check but, on the average, I have been blessed to be involved with well over a hundred weddings. I am not like most priests. I love doing weddings compared to others preferring funerals. Their complaint is future mothers-in-law and mothers of the bride. For me I enjoy them. Why is for another story. Today it about a particular wedding where the bride had chosen this reading from Song of Songs as her first reading. She confided that it was this first that she fell in love with.
“Hark! my lover–here he comes
springing across the mountains,
leaping across the hills.
My lover is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Here he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattices.”
Now to understand, her husband’s name was Ben. He was over six feet tall and must have weighed nearly three hundred pounds. Hardly a gazelle image leaping and springing over the hills. But in this bride’s heart she recognized her lover’s heart and his love for her as a leaping, springing stag. What a romantic image. What a love poetically described.
When we use poetry to describe our feelings, the love we have in our hearts for someone, we discover physical attributes have no bearing in describing love. Rather it comes from the heart. In loving God, it is our desire to be with Him. Perhaps you have discovered that love in your heart that words cannot explain. Perhaps with your spouse, a newborn baby, or a fond memory of love. What words would you use?
May the Lord bless you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen