These words [“To-day ye shall know that the Lord will come”], indeed, have in Holy Writ their [historical] location in place and time; but not incongruously have they been adapted to the vigil of the Lord’s Nativity by mother Church—the Church, I say, she who has with her the counsel and spirit of her Spouse and God.... When, therefore, she changes or shifts words in Holy Writ, her combination (_compositio_) has more weight than the passage in its original place, the more, perhaps, the greater the distance between figure and fact, between light and shadow, between mistress and handmaid. St. Bernard, _In Vigilia Nativitatis Domini_, III. 1; PL 183: 94. His second sermon for Advent carries out the prefiguration of the rod, or stem (_virga_).[32] From these passages I think it now manifest what is the stem proceeding from the root of Jesse, and what is the flower on which reposeth the Holy Spirit. For the Virgin Mother of God is the stem, her son is the flower, flower indeed the son of the Virgin, flower white at once and ruddy, the chosen from thousands (Cantic. v. 10), flower that angels desire in their visions, flower at whose fragrance the dead have revival, and, as he himself beareth witness, flower of the field (Cantic. ii. 1), not of the garden. Flowereth the field without human ministry, not by sowing of any one, not upturned by spading, not from without made fertile. So entirely, so the Virgin’s womb hath flowered; so inviolate, unimpaired, and chaste the body of Mary as the pasture of the eternal vigor hath burgeoned its flower, whose is a beauty beyond corruption, whose a glory unfading forever. O Virgin! stem of the highest, to what a summit thou liftest on high thy holiness! even to him that sitteth on the throne, even to the Lord in his majesty. Nor is that a great marvel, since thou has sent so deep the roots of thy meekness. O truly celestial plant, that art precious above all and holy above mankind! O true tree of life, which alone was worthy to bear the fruit of salvation! _De Adventu Domini_, II. 4; PL 183: 42. The symbolism of his sermon in the Epiphany octave on the marriage at Cana is specifically moralized.