|
A Holy Kiss
"Greet one another with
a holy kiss"
(Romans 16.16)
What
exactly, many wonder, is a holy kiss?
A holy kiss is a chaste pressing of one's lips upon
the face of another which
communicates the love of God. It is, essentially, not
your kiss, but the kiss of God ... in which you are
instrumental in conveying not your own love, but the love of
God. You lend your lips to God.
That is to say, it is
the love of God that comes through you --- and not a
gratuitous gesture of your own personal affection. That
belongs to you ... not God. That is giving something unsolicited to
another, with the presumption that you yourself are giving
something greater to another, of greater value to another, than God
is attempting to give through you. It is the "gift" of yourself ...
not the gift of God. One clear characteristic of a "holy kiss"
is that it is completely devoid of any sinful desires, any attempt to awaken another to intimacy.
It is a pure gift not so much from one person to another, as
through one person to another; "pure" in that it is possessed
of nothing invested with desire in you. It is a communion between
persons in the shared love of God, that love of God that binds you
in a holy communion, a holy sharing of that same love for the same
God..
The closer a person is to God the purer the expression of a holy
kiss.
To kiss another, or to hold them in all purity, is a gift of God. The
pure heart seeks nothing for itself, but wishes only to express its love
for, and
communion in, God with the other who loves Him likewise.
It is a tragic reality that in the world we now know, purity of heart is rarely seen as a virtue. It is far more
often regarded as the possession of the Consecrated, or more likely
still, as as
state of sterility ... even a morbid pathology. Not so..!
It is all too often presumed that any form, any expression of
affection, is, at least implicitly, sexual in nature, or invariably
suggestive of it. But this is not so.
The attaining of a genuinely pure heart is a long, long, struggle – more so
for some than others. It is a purgation of sorts. We must be cleansed by God of all
that would distort and deform love, all that would pervert it into
becoming manipulative, the mere using of another for ones own
selfish gratification.
It is so very sad that nowadays any demonstration of love --- and
here we speak of holy love, the love that is the communication of
God's own love between His people --- is
often subject to suspicion, to prurient criticism, a criticism that
speaks far more of what festers in the heart of the critic than what
obtains between the holy love binding two people together in God. This is so sad. The
sinful heart
can no longer distinguish between sin and sanctity but views
everything through the miasma of sin. It is blind to the
possibility, let alone the reality, of a genuine,
holy, sincere, deep and authentic love between two women, or
two men, between friends, between a man and a woman, even between an
adult and a child ... a love that does not implicate sex, that
is not rooted in, or expressed through, the flesh. It is cognizant
only of love as sensual ... which is to say, it is not cognizant of
love at all. There is no mutual love, only mutual gratification. We
are not to scold such souls, but to pity them. It is the perception
of love as a commodity traded in pounds of flesh. This is not sad.
It is deeply tragic.
.
A love that seeks fulfillment through chastity and purity is painfully
beautiful --- and it is already a foretaste of Heaven! And both are
unseen by the world, cannot be comprehended by the world any more
than the God Who Is Love is comprehended by the world! It
truly is a deep share in the Divine Love, a pure love uncorrupted by
license and sensuality.
.
For those who experience it, chastity is a blinding beauty, a
beauty that can consume the soul totally ... for it comes from God
and returns to Him.
Many, coming to realize this beauty, look back upon their lives with
such deep regret for the choices
they had made, for the sins they had committed – and are
discouraged or dissuaded from this beautiful path to God! But
purity of heart can be regained, reacquired!
We can become like little children again: not by
our own efforts, as long we've since learned, but by God's grace,
which even now, upon your reading this very line, He holds out to
you!
In a stunning rebuke to
the world that equates love with sensuality--- Christ revealed more
than the true nature of love. He revealed Whom Love Is, and Who
loved first --- ever before flesh was created --- and then assuming
that flesh, infused it with love and lived as Love among us ... like
unto us all in everything, except sin (Hebrews 4.15).
|
