Does St. John Chrysostom's reading of Song of Songs 2:4 foreshadow the Mass?
A viewer asks whether Song of Songs 2:4, 'He brought me to the banqueting house and his banner over me was love,' as read by St. John Chrysostom, foreshadows the Mass.
Answer
No. If you have no boundaries around your allegorizing, you could say almost anything foreshadows the Mass, and you have to be very careful, because other people can open the Bible just as well as you and see something totally different in the same figurative language. The Song of Songs is a romance, about the beloved and the lover; yes, you might find symbolic language in it that echoes other places in Scripture, and it may be there, but you do not know, so you cannot speculate, because you may be throwing onto Scripture something that is not in it. This is the danger that came out of the Alexandrian school of allegory, where even good saints began treating Scripture like a toy and competing to see who could produce the most spiritual allegorization. God wants you to read Scripture for what He actually said and to obey it; He does not need it flowered up. Allegory belongs where Scripture itself signals it, as in Daniel, Ezekiel, the Apocalypse, and the parables, not imposed on a plain historical or poetic text.