A Holy Kiss
Faith&Culture offers this selection from St. Francis de Sales’s Treatise on the Love of God (1616) as part of its ongoing reflection on the nobility of the human face.
In a delightful and admirable way, Solomon describes the love of the Savior and the devout soul in that divine work called the Song of Songs. And so that we might more easily consider the spiritual love brought about between God and us when the movements of our hearts correspond with the inspirations of his divine majesty, Solomon employs the metaphor of the love of a chaste shepherd and a modest shepherdess. Making the spouse or bride to speak first, as though surprised by the shepherd’s love, he has her exclaim: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!” (Song 1:2) Notice how the soul, in the person of this shepherdess, has but one aim: a chaste union with her spouse. She protests that it is her only goal, the one thing for which she longs. What else would this sigh mean? “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!”
In every age and as by natural instinct, a kiss has been employed to represent perfect love, that is, the union of hearts, and not without good reason. We express and make known our thoughts and emotions by our eyes, eyebrows, forehead, and the rest of our countenance. “A man is known by his appearance” (Sirach 19:29), says the scripture. And Aristotle explained why ordinarily it is only the faces of great men that are painted in portraits: it is, he said, because the face shows who we are.
Yet we do not pour out the thoughts which proceed from the spiritual portion of our soul—the part we call reason, which is what distinguishes us from the beasts—except by words, and thus by means of the mouth. Indeed, to pour out our soul and to open our heart is nothing else but to speak. “Pour out your heart before him” (Ps 62:8), says the Psalmist, that is, express and pronounce the affections of your hearts by words. And when she had been praying so softly that one could hardly discern the motion of her lips, Samuel’s pious mother explained, “I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord” (1 Sam 1:15).
We kiss in order to show that we long to pour out one soul into the other, to unite them in a perfect union. For this reason, at all times and among the saintliest men of the world, the kiss has been a sign of love and affection, and such use was universally made of it amongst the ancient Christians as St. Paul testifies, when, writing to the Romans and Corinthians, he says, “greet one another in a holy kiss” (Rom 16:16; 1 Cor 16:20). And as many declare, Judas in betraying our Savior made use of a kiss to manifest him, because the divine Savior was accustomed to kiss his disciples when he met them—and not only his disciples but even the little children whom he took lovingly in his arms, as he did the child by whose example he so solemnly invited his disciples to the love of their neighbor (see Mark 9:36).
