This was the golden name the ancient Church loved to give her Lord in her moments of deepest joy. When springtime came, when the birds began to sing and the doves cooed in the land, her love song was sweeter than all of them: "My beloved is mine and I am his; he feeds his flock among the lilies." All through the Song of Songs, she calls him by that beautiful name: "My beloved!"

Even in the long winters, when idolatry had withered the Lord's garden, the prophets would pause from pronouncing judgment just long enough to sing. Isaiah himself declared, "Now let me sing to my beloved a song about his vineyard." Think of it! Though the saints had never seen his face—though he had not yet taken on flesh, nor dwelt among us, nor had any human eye beheld his glory—yet he was Israel's consolation! He was the hope and joy of all God's chosen ones, the "beloved" of everyone who walked uprightly before the Lord.

And we who live in the Church's summer days? We too speak of Christ as our soul's best beloved. We know him to be precious beyond words—the chiefest among ten thousand, the altogether lovely one! The Church's love for Jesus runs so deep that Paul dares the entire universe to try to separate us from Christ's love. He declares that persecution has tried and failed. Distress, affliction, danger, the sword... all have failed! More than that, he shouts with joy: "In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us!"

O that we knew more of you, ever-precious One! "My sole possession is your love; In earth beneath, or heaven above, I have no other store; And though with fervent prayers I plead, And importune you for what I need, I ask you nothing more."