17
No longer does man and woman walk in the protected garden with God and with each other;
instead, paradise is closed and they are sent out into a hostile world.
St. John Paul II asserts that the paradise in the Garden of Eden is a theological backdrop
for the “enclosed garden” referenced in the Song of Songs. 60 As the Holy Father teaches, “it is
not possible to reread [the Song of Songs] except along the line of what is written in the first
chapters of Genesis, as a testimony of the beginning…” 61 He further describes the words of the
text as a “prism” or lens through which the language of the body reveals the language of the
heart. 62 In the verses of the Song, however, the Genesis imagery plumbs a new depth, and the
garden is personified as the woman; in fact, the garden is the woman in the same way that the
woman is her body:
A garden locked,
Is my sister, my bride,
A fountain locked,
A fountain sealed. 63
60
John Paul II, “Return to the Subject of Human Love in the Divine Plan,” Vatican.va, May 23, 1984, sec.
1, accessed May 27, 2018, https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/audiences/1984/documents/hf_jp-
ii_aud_19840523.html.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid., sec. 2.
63
Song of Sol. 4:12 RSV.