Wounded I Sing

God revealed His benevolence toward man in the form of a spousal covenant with Israel. This condescending love was believed to find its most sublime expression in the Old Testament’s Song of Songs, which sings in strange, earthly tones of the transcendent, pursuing love of YHWH for His beloved and the returning devotion it was to elicit in her. For the Christian reader, this ardour, hymned in sensuous language, evokes no mortal, transient passion but an unconditional divine love fulfilled, historically and sacramentally, in Jesus Christ, the One “in whom the love of God was made manifest” (1 Jn. 4:9). This is a love made flesh, encountered in the pierced heart and broken body of the Messiah who “loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20). With the help of the Church Fathers, St. Thomas Aquinas, and modern authors, Timothy Kelly explores the secret of the nuptial mystery declared in King Solomon’s enigmatic poem and perfected “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3)—in the crucified and Eucharistic love of the incarnate Lord.

Praise for this book

“Rarely will you see a book that brings biblical, dogmatic, and mystical theology together so artfully and lucidly as this remarkable and readable synthesis does. Timothy Kelly refreshingly resets the entire question of the Song’s literal and spiritual meanings.” —Scott Hahn

“Although woefully neglected in the modern lectionary and in theological discourse, the Song of Songs once enjoyed favored status among Old Testament books as a subject for commentary by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.  Kelly brings the full resources of the Catholic faith and a self-consciously maximal theological method upon the Song of Songs to produce this exquisite contemporary reading of the book, which I hope will contribute to returning the Song to its rightful and central place within Catholic biblical theology.” —John S. Bergsma

“Writing with a poet’s sensitivity to language, Dr. Kelly shows us how the Nuptial Mystery of Christ and His Church, of which the Song of Songs speaks with the authority of divine and prophetic inspiration, stands at the very centre of the Catholic faith.” —Fr. John Saward

“Wounded I Sing shows that the Song ‘comes into its own’ with the Incarnation and Passion of Christ, for here, at last, is God become bridegroom in the flesh, to be wholly united in marital covenant with each redeemed soul. An illuminating guide to a sublime and mysterious book.” —Stephen K. Ray

“This is, quite simply, a beautiful book, and Timothy Kelly is to be commended for giving us a text that illuminates Solomon’s Song as few others in recent times have done. It deserves a place on the bookshelf next to Origen and St. Bernard.” —Addison Hodges Hart

Timothy Kelly is Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the International Theological Institute in Trumau, Austria, and Research Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford.