SOURCE: "The First Homily," in Commentary on the "Song of Songs," translated by Casimir McCambley, Hellenic College Press, 1987, pp. 43-56.

In the following allegorical interpretation and explanation of its "mysteries," St. Gregory advises that the Song of Songs is a literary embodiment of the purity and chastity of Christian love. This essay is believed to have been written toward the end of the fourth century

Those of you who, according to the advice of St. Paul, have stripped off the old man with his deeds and desires as you would a filthy garment and have wrapped yourselves by the purity of your lives in the bright garments of the Lord which he displayed upon the mount of transfiguration; you who have put on the Lord Jesus Christ with his holy robe and have been transformed with him into a state which is free from passion and more divine...