kiss

Opening Prayer: I feel your love as you hold me to your sacred heart, my beloved Jesus, my God, my Master, but I feel, too, the need I have of your tenderness, and your caress because of my infinite weakness. ~Charles de Foucauld

Scripture:  Song of Songs 1:2

Journal: What is God’s invitation to you today?  How is he drawing you into more and more intimacy with himself?

Reflection: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—for your love is more delightful than wine.” 

"You have seen the way we must follow, the order of procedure.  First we cast ourselves at his feet, we 'kneel before the Lord, our maker,' deploring the evil we have done.  Then we reach out for the hand that will lift us up, that will steady our trembling knees.  And finally, when we shall have obtained these favors through many prayers and tears, we humbly dare to raise our eyes to his mouth, so divinely beautiful, not merely to gaze upon, but--I say with fear and trembling--to receive his kiss; for Christ the Lord is a Spirit before our face.  And we who are joined to him in a holy kiss become, at his good pleasure, one spirit with him." (On the Song of Songs by Bernard of Clairvaux)

Through the centuries the saints and the poets who came before us understood something about God that most of us are only beginning to discover: At his core, God is a lover.  For we were created out of the overflow of Divine Love, in order to experience the very love that God had within himself—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  And even after we had turned away and pursued other lovers, God did not give up on us, but came to earth in pursuit of his beloved.  Even to the point of giving himself, in the person of Jesus, so that he might redeem us, win back our hearts, and be reunited with us in love once again.  In order that we might live all of our days on earth in loving union with him and spend eternity basking in the warmth of his Great Affection.  For what God wants more than anything is loving union with us—his beloved.  And he will stop at nothing in order to make that a possibility. 

Prayer

Closing Prayer:

O living flame of love

That tenderly wounds my soul

In its deepest center!  Since

Now you are not oppressive,

Now Consummate! If it be your will:

Tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!

O sweet cautery,

O delightful wound!

O gentle hand!  O delicate touch

That tastes of eternal life

And pays every debt!

In killing you changed death into life.

O lamps of fire!

In whose splendors

The deep caverns of feeling,

Once obscure and blind,

Now give forth, so rarely, so exquisitely,

Both warmth and light to their beloved.

How gently and lovingly

You wake in my heart,

Where in secret you dwell alone;

And in your sweet breathing,

Filled with good and glory,

How tenderly you swell my heart with love.

—John of the Cross