The myrrh on the lock

"Open me, my sister, my friend, my dove.... I have put off my tunic, how shall I put it on ? I washed my feet, how would I dirty them ? My beloved advanced his hand through the wicket ... I stood up to open to my beloved and my hands dripped myrrh and my fingers the limpid myrrh on the handles of the bolt. I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had withdrawn ..." Song of Songs 5. 2-6

This girl is ardently loved by her fiance, and yet she does not answer when he knocks at her door. She has just prepared for the night and hesitates to dirty her feet to open it. When at last she reacts, her beloved disappears, leaving a sign of her passage to awaken her love: drops of myrrh on the handles of the bolt; it is the image of a wounded love, for this fragrant resin came from a tree that had been cut.

This scene evokes our relationship with God. The love of God was hurt by the attitude of Adam and Eve. God provided for their food, he sought a close relationship with them ... but they disobeyed the only commandment given by God. But was not the activity of God to seek Adam and Eve, to make them the promise of a deliverer, "myrrh on the bolt," the moving testimony of wounded love ?

It is the same with Israel, the beloved little people of God, the object of his constant care ... and who refuses to come to Him in spite of the calls of the prophets. God fills the measure of His love by giving the Messiah to His people. New refusal of his beloved people. But here too, through the work of the cross, did God not deposit "myrrh on the bolt," or give a touching testimony of "his wounded love" ?

Today, our Lord often says "Open Me". He solicits our activity for Him, the gesture of remembrance (in the Last Supper), our listening to His Word ... in short our love. Sometimes, too, we refuse ... but know that he will always deposit "myrrh on the lock," the testimony of his wounded love. Let us hope that the Church and ourselves will know how to see it. If this is the case, as the beloved of the Song of Songs, we will open it (v. 6), we will seek it, we will call it (v. 6), and we will thus render it a wonderful testimony (v. 9-16).

Source (To pleasing the Lord)