LOVE TENDS TO UNION
The great [king] Solomon describes with delight and admiration the love between the Saviour and the beloved soul in this divine work. We call it the Song of Songs for its charm and beauty. He aims at raising us very gently to the meditation of this spiritual love. Such love is practised between God and us through the complementarity of the movements of our hearts with the inspirations of his divine Majesty. He makes use of a permanent symbol of the loves of a chaste shepherd and a modest shepherdess. He [Solomon] makes the bride speak first. As if overwhelmed by love, he makes her first cry out: Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth. (Song 1:2). Do you see, Theotimus, how the human spirit whom the shepherdess represents, by the first wish seeks only a chaste union with her bridegroom. It is like protesting that it is the unique goal to which she aspires and for which she breathes. I ask you, what else could this first sigh mean: Let him kiss me with a kiss of his mouth.
The kiss, as if by natural instinct, is used at all times to symbolize perfect love, that is, union of hearts. It is not without reason. We give expression to and show our passions and instincts that we have in common with animals by our eyes, the eyebrows, our forehead and the rest of our face. We know a person by the face (Sir 19.29), says Scripture. Aristotle gives the reason why we usually make portraits only of the face of great persons: “It is because the face shows what we are.”
We call the spiritual part of our soul reason. It makes us different from the animals. We give learned lectures and express thoughts which proceed from reason only by words and as a consequence by the mouth. So to open one’s heart and pour forth one’s soul is nothing else than to speak. Pour forth your heart before God, says the Psalmist (Ps 62:8). It means that you express and give vent to the affections of your heart through words. The devout mother of Samuel was so beautifully saying her prayers but one could scarcely see the movement of her lips: I have poured out, she says, my soul before God (1 Sam 1:13,15). Thus when we kiss, we apply our mouth to another to show that we desire to pour out our spirit mutually into each other to unite ourselves with a perfect union. Due to this reason, and at all times, and among the most holy persons of the world, the kiss has been the sign of love and affection. So, it was most commonly used among the first Christians. The great St. Paul bears witness to it when he tells the Romans and Corinthians: Greet mutually one another with a holy kiss (Rom 16:16; 1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12). Many testify to it: Judas, at the arrest of our Lord, made use of a kiss to make him known (Mt 26:48-49) because our divine Saviour usually kissed his disciples when he met them. He kissed not only the disciples but also little children whom he took lovingly in his arms (Mk 10:16). Similarly, he took in his arms the child by whose example, he solemnly invited his disciples to the practice of charity towards neighbour (Mt 18:1-10, Mk 9:35). Many think that this child was St. Martial as the Bishop Jansenius declares.
The kiss, then, is a lively sign of the union of hearts. The spouse in all her efforts seeks only to be united with her Beloved: Let him kiss me, she says, with a kiss ofhis mouth. It is as if she exclaimed: So many sighs and ardent glances which my love unceasingly casts [at him] will they never obtain what my heart desires? I run well: will I never gain the prize towards which I soar up, that is, to be united heart to heart and spirit to spirit with my God, my Bridegroom and my life? When will it be that I will be able to pour my soul into his heart and he will pour out his heart into my spirit? Thus joyfully united, inseparable, we will live.
When the divine Spirit wishes to express perfect love, almost always he uses words that imply union and cohesion: Among the multitude ofbelievers, says St. Luke, there was only one heart and one soul (Acts 4:32). Our Lord prayed to his Father for all the faithful that they might all be one (Jn 17:21). St Paul warns us that we should be careful to maintain the unity of spirit in the bond of peace (Eph 4:3). These unions of the heart, of soul and spirit mean the perfection of love which unites many [human] spirits into one. So it is said that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, meaning, as the Scripture adds, he loved David as his own soul (1 Sam 18:1). The great Apostle of France,[1] to express his opinion and that of his disciple Hierotheus, wrote, I think, a hundred times in one chapter alone, of the Divine Names:[2] love is unifying, uniting, gathering together, binding, combining and bringing things together into unity. St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. Augustine say that their friends were one spirit with them. And Aristotle approves already in his own time this way of speaking: “When we wish" says he, “to express how much we love our friends, we say: His soul and my soul are only one." Hate separates us, love brings us together. The goal of love, therefore, is nothing else than union of the lover with the beloved.
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[1] The great apostle of France is actually St. Denis, first bishop of Paris and patron of France. It is beleived that he was sent from Rome to evangelize France. He was beheaded during the persecution of Valerian around 258 CE (New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, COM-DYS).
[2] Regarding the author of Divine Names see footnote 11a in Book I, Ch.14.