For we are unto God a sweet fragrance of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish:
All Commentaries on 2 Corinthians 2:15 Go To 2 Corinthians 2
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ. Or, according to the Latin, a sweet odour. We scatter by word and example a good report of Christ to the honour of God. A good odour is exhaled from special kinds of herbs and such things as sweet spices. Such was the fame of the Apostles and of their preaching, such was the glory and honour that sprang from their virtues and was due to their merits. Hence the bride, i.e, the Church, in Song vii1 , compares herself to a garden of sweet spices in which there is to be seen the beauty, pleasantness, and fair order of the growing herbs and sweetly scented flowers which exhale their delicious fragrance. This is what Christ orders in S. Matt. v. i6, where by another metaphor glory and good name are called the splendour that flows forth from the light of good works.
S. Bernard (Serm. xii. in Cantic.) says excellently: "Paul was a chosen vessel, truly a sweet-smelling vessel, filled with pleasant odours and with every fair colour for the painter, for he was a good odour of Christ in every place. Truly, far and wide was the fragrance of his abundant sweetness scattered from that breast which so anxiously and for all the Churches. For see what spices and aromas he had stored up within: "I die daily," he says, "for your glory," and, "Who is weak and am I not weak?""
Observe again that, as the more spices are crushed the greater is the fragrance they exhale, so is it with Christ, His Apostles and Martyrs, and all the Saints: the greater the persecutions and tribulations that pressed them and, as it were, crushed them, the sweeter was the odour that their virtue gave forth.
Cf. Ambrose and Anselm, and S. Bernard (Serm71in Cantic.), who discourses of the spiritual colour and odour of virtues from the text, "I am the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the valley." He says: "The character has its colours and its odours; odour in the good report it bears, colour in the conscience within. The good intention of your heart gives its colour to your work; the example of your modesty and virtue gives it its odour. The righteous is in himself a fair lily, to his neighbour he is full of sweet odours. To our neighbour we owe it that we maintain a good reputation, to ourselves that we are careful to have a conscience void of offence." S. Jerome also, alluding to the same passage, says: "The life and conversation of a Bishop, pastor, or teacher ought to be such that all his goings out and comings in, and all his works should be redolent of heavenly grace."
Heathen writers also employ this image of odour in rebuking evil livers. Martial, e.g, says that "he smells not sweet who always smells sweet," implying that that man"s chastity was to be suspected who was always endeavouring to overwhelm the foulness of his own shameful disease by some artificial scent. Certainly we read of the virgin Catherine of Sienna, that she was wont to close her nostrils when she met any one that was impure, as though the smell of his wickedness was grievous to her, God giving this most chaste virgin perception of such things. S. Basil ( Ephesians 175) relates that some bird-catchers were wont to dip the wings of tame doves in some sweet liquid which was pleasant to other doves, so as to allure them and catch them. So must the Christian do: by the sweet odour of his virtues he must allure the lost and bring them to Christ. So did the virgin Cecilia win to Christ her spouse Valerianus, by causing him, on the first night of their marriage life, to smell the most fragrant odour of her chastity, as though it were the scent of spring roses.
