From this point, nothing else seems lovely to me, but I have turned away from all things that were thought noble before. My judgment of what is noble no longer errs so as to deem anything lovely besides you: not human approval, not glory, not celebrity, not worldly power. For these things are tinged with a show of nobility for those whose attention is focused on sense perception, but they are not what they are reckoned to be. For how should something be noble when it lacks entire reality? That at which is honored in this world, after all, has its being only in the heads of the people who make the judgment, but you are truly beautiful— | not only beautiful, but the very essence of the Beautiful, existing forever as such, being at every moment what you are, neither blooming when the appropriate time comes, nor putting off your bloom at the right time, but stretching your springtime splendor out to match the everlastingness of your life—you whose name is love of humankind. Since, then, you have risen upon us out of Judah, and the Jewish people is brother to the people that comes to you out of the Gentiles, you have rightly, on account of the manifestation of your Deity in the flesh, been named the kinsman of the one who desires you.
– St. Gregory of Nyssa (Homilies on the Song of Songs, 4)
