“Although you foresee trials that menace you like thorns or thistles, let not your heart be afraid…”
‘As a lily among thorns so is my love among maidens.’ O shining lily! Tender and delicate flower! Unbelieving and seditious men surround you: see that you tread with care among the thorns. The world is full of thorns. They are in the earth, in the air, in your flesh. To live among them and not be harmed is the fruit of God’s power, not of your virtue. But he said: ‘Have confidence, for I have overcome the world.’ Therefore although you foresee trials that menace you like thorns or thistles, let not your heart be afraid, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us’. Consider the lilies of the field, how they thrive and bloom amid the thorns. If God cares so much for the grass that today is alive and tomorrow is cast into the oven, how much more will he care for his beloved and dearest bride? In short, ‘the Lord preserves all who love him’. ‘As a lily among thorns so is my love among maidens.’ It is no small proof of virtue to live a good life among the wicked, to retain the glow of innocence and gentleness of manners among the malicious; above all to show that you are peaceful with those who hate peace and a friend to your very enemies. That will clearly lay your claim in a special way, with a certain proprietary right, to the likeness of the lily, which does not cease to embellish and beautify with its own brightness the very thorns that pierce it. And in this way does the lily not seem to you somehow to achieve the perfection of the Gospel, by which we are commanded to pray for our calumniators and persecutors, to do good to those who hate us? Do likewise, therefore, and your soul will be the Lord’s own friend and he will praise you for what you are, saying that ‘as a lily among thorns so is my love among maidens’.
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs 48:2 —
