Our latest library additions include several approaches to the Song of Songs, considered for centuries the most direct expression of the deepest religious life, “where in love it is the same to give all, and receive all, and keep all forever.”

• In our Sacred Audio Collection we have an original Hebrew recitation by Fr Abraham Shmuelof (1913-1994).

• We have a selection from the sermons by St Bernard of Clairvaux on the Song, with helpful explanations on “The Various Meanings of the Kiss”, “Intimacies of Divine Love”, “The Breasts of Bride and Bridegroom” and “The Loves of Angels”.

A kiss, not indeed an adhering of the lips that can sometimes belie a union of hearts, but an unreserved infusion of joys, a revealing of mysteries, a marvelous and indistinguishable mingling of the divine light with the enlightened mind, which, joined in truth to God, is one spirit.

• An audio lecture on “Recovering the Song of Songs as a Text of Devotion”, by Stephanie Paulsell, with valuable insights on the Song and our times.

We too might turn to the Song looking for a path to cross the distance between ourselves and God, between ourselves and others, between ourselves and the world… In prayer we try to cross the distance between ourselves and God with language, and then (…) God breaks in upon our prayer before we have even finished uttering it…

• We also have a new addition to our articles by René Guénon, with his classic introductory essay on “The Reform of the Modern Mentality”.

Modern civilisation appears in history as a veritable anomaly; of all those we know about, our own is the only one which has developed in a purely material sense, and is also the only one which is not supported by any principle of a higher order.