Images that it is perhaps best not to use in modern sermons, no 238435.

[tree_and_leaf]

From sermon 71 in the St Georgener Predigten in the Rieder edition (1908, MTU 10), on the joys of heaven, translation mine.

"(God) shares Himself so fully with the souls that they do not desire anything other that what they have, that is God, the highest (or: excessive) good. Now you should know that Our Lord has two breasts from which the souls in heaven suck both delight and joy: that is, His pure humanity and His lovely divinity. He moves the soul from one breast to the other: if she want milk, He gives her the breast of his humanity; if she want wine and honey, He gives her the breast of His sweet divinity. Of which the prophet has said, 'Open your mouth that you may suck your fill'."

Um, yeah. (Also, what on earth is kipper win?)

Comments

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Interesting... It's not that it doesn't work as metaphor, because it's a nice clear image. It's just. Um.

Assuming the kippers to be in English, can you provide some sort of context? The OED is not helping me.

[tree_and_leaf]

It's a perfectly good metaphor, it's just that modern congregations are liable to snigger, partly because of mentioning breasts, and partly because a fairly large section is likely to find the gender-bending offensive.

The kippers are in German - the win is clear, it means wine, so kipper must be an adjective. I jsut can't find it, and I can't think of anything it's likely to be a copyists error for. The -pp- is extremely rare in German, at least of that dialect, so I'm assuming it is a mistake, but for what I do not know.

[tree_and_leaf]

I think it's the bit about each breast symbolising something different that pushes it over the edge, myself; but then I am coming to think that reading so much mediaeval theology has done something weird to my mind....

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I can cope with the differently symbolising breasts (though obviously if I were in a congregation I'd probably snigger along with the non-offended half), it's just that I'm picturing the author as a sort of earnest NCT type in the meeting room upstairs at the GP's surgery.

[tree_and_leaf]

Heh. Now that hadn't occurred to me, but it makes far too much sense!