WE CANNOT ACHIEVE PERFECT UNION OF LOVE WITH GOD IN THIS MORTAL LIFE
All rivers flow continuously. As the Wise Man says, they return to the place from which they came (Eccl 1:7). The sea which is the place of their origin is also the place of their final rest. All their movements tend only to unite them with their source. St Augustine says, “O God, you have created my heart for yourself and it can never rest except in you!". But what have I in heaven beside you, O my God, what else do I desire upon earth? Yes, Lord, you are the God of my heart, my lot and my portion forever (Ps 73:25, 26) Nevertheless this union to which our heart aspires cannot reach perfection in this mortal life. We can begin our love in this life, but we can complete it only in heaven.
The heavenly lover expresses it gracefully. Finally I found him, she says, whom my heart loves. I hold him, and I will not let him go until I bring him to my mother’s house and into the chamber of her who bore me (Song 3:4). Thus she finds him, her Beloved, for he makes her aware of his presence by a thousand consolations. She clings to him, because this feeling produces strong affections by which she clasps and embraces him. She affirms that she will never leave him. These affections turn into eternal resolutions. Yet she does not think of kissing him with a nuptial kiss until she is with him in her mother’s house (Song 8:1, 2). That, as St. Paul says, is the heavenly Jerusalem (Gal 4:26). But see Theotimus, how this spouse thinks of nothing less than of keeping her Beloved at her mercy as a slave of love. Therefore she imagines that it is she who is to lead him at her will and introduce him into the happy abode of her mother. Nevertheless she will be led by him just as Rebecca was led by her dear Isaac into Sarah’s chamber (Gen 24:67). The spirit urged by loving passion always gives some privileges to his loved one. The Spouse himself confesses that his beloved has captured his heart and that she has bound him by a single hair of her head (Song 4:9). He acknowledges himself as her prisoner of love.
This perfect union of the human person with God will take place only in heaven. There, as the book of Revelation says, the marriage of the Lamb shall be made (Rev 19:7-9). Here in this mortal life, the human person is truly espoused and betrothed to the immaculate Lamb (1Pet 1:1-19), but not yet married to him. The pledge and promises are given, but the marriage ceremony is deferred. Hence there is always place for us to withdraw, even though there is no reason. Our Spouse is faithful and never abandons us unless we oblige him to do so by our disloyalty and treachery. In heaven, however, after the marriage of our divine union is celebrated, then the bond of our heart to its supreme principle shall be indissoluble for all eternity.
It is true, Theotimus, that we are waiting for the great kiss of indissoluble union. We shall receive it from the Spouse in glory above. He gives us a few intimations of it by means of a thousand feelings of his gracious presence. Unless the human spirit received this kiss, it would never be drawn. It would never run to the fragrance of her Beloved’s perfumes. Hence, according to the simplicity of the Hebrew text and in the translation of the Seventy interpreters, the human person longs for many kisses, saying, Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. All these little kisses of the present life are related to the eternal kiss of the life to come. They are samples, preparatory efforts and pledges of it. The sacred Vulgate edition has in a holy way reduced the kisses of grace to that of glory. It expresses the desires of heavenly love in this manner: Let him kiss me with kiss of his mouth as if to say: “Among all kisses, among all favours that the Friend of my heart, or the heart of my soul, has prepared for me, ah, I neither sigh after nor aspire to any other but that great, solemn nuptial kiss which must endure forever. In comparison with it no other kiss deserves the name of kiss. It is because they are signs of the future union between my Beloved and me rather than the union itself."