In Sacred Marriage the words of Nicholas Ayo and the paintings of Meinrad Craighead combine in an enchanting exploration of the Song of Songs, surely the most controversial book of the Bible. It has been said that love is a work of art created with imagination. The Song of Songs consists of love poems celebrating courtship, the human body, sexuality, harmony between a man and a woman, and sensuousness. Ayo, who teaches at the University of Notre Dame, presents a multidimensional commentary that is at once physical and spiritual, erotic and mystical, profane and sacred, realistic and romantic, literary and theological. The text of the Song of Songs is given in both a contemporary and a King James version.
As Ayo points out, this Old Testament book is a meditation of a woman's heart and it stands as "a remarkably free and uninhibited expression of female desire." In the blossoming of love that unfolds before us, we hear and see intimations of the Beloved's yearning for us and for our welfare. With its visual and verbal riches, Sacred Marriage enables the beauty and the spirituality of the Song of Songs to shine brightly.