There are those among us who may have a distorted idea of God. They might think that God cannot show affection. That God, somehow, is so removed from our everydayness of life that it is rather impossible for him to show what he feels for us. Logically speaking, this is certainly erroneous thinking. How can God, who created us the way we are, not feel what we feel? Any limited degree of rationality would acknowledge that God knows and feels what we feel. To say the least, the Bible presents him so (see Exod 2, 24-25; 3, 7).

Moreover, Sacred Scripture portrays God as a lover of his people. In his Second letter to the Corinthians Saint Paul says: “I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I betrothed you to Christ to present you as a pure bride to her one husband” (2 Cor 11, 2). The God proclaimed by the prophets is one who is totally committed to his loving relationship with the people he elected for his heart. He welcomes and celebrates in the presence of his beloved ones. “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Isa 62, 5).

In the Song of Songs, the woman wants to be with her beloved because his kisses are for her an assurance that he loves her. Analogically understood, the soul seeks the kiss of God. With the bride of the Song it says, “O that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth!” (Song of Songs 1, 2). And like the psalmist the soul pleads to God in her distress when she feels separated from him: “O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is” (Psalm 63, 1). God’s kiss is for the soul his very powerful presence. In commenting on Songs 1, 2 Honorius of Autun explains with extraordinary conviction. “It pertains to allegory that Solomon is Christ, and the daughter of the Pharoah is the Church, which answers his messengers, the prophets, by saying, ‘He who has for a time kissed me by consoling me and promising peace through your mouth – let him himself now kiss me with the kiss of his mouth – that is, let him who has promised become incarnate now after all this time and kiss me with his presence, and with his own mouth speak to me the peace that was once lost and is now restored’”.

Would you allow God to kiss you with the kiss of his mouth? With his loving and peaceful presence? Don’t you think that his kiss is the kiss your own being has been longing for ages in order to live and not merely to exist?