Sermons on the Song of Songs

“Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His Mouth.”

Whenever I reflect, as I very often do, on the yearning and ardent desires of the fathers for the presence of Christ in the flesh, I am filled with grief and confusion. Even now scarcely can I restrain my tears, so great is the shame I feel at the thought of the tepidity and sloth of these miserable times. For is there one amongst us, my brethren, who derives a satisfaction from the actual fruition of this grace, proportionate to the longing excited in the holy men of old by its mere promise? What multitudes, for instance, will rejoice on the anniversary of the Saviour’s Birth, which we shall soon be celebrating? But would to God the cause of their joy were the Divine Nativity, and not rather worldly vanity! It is something of the fathers’ yearning and holy expectation I now find enkindled in my soul by those words, “Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His Mouth.” Such few spiritual persons as could be found in those pre-Christian times, well knew in spirit what grace would be “poured abroad on His Lips.” This is the reason why they exclaimed, speaking in the desire of their souls, “Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His Mouth.” They longed, namely, with an eager longing, for admission to some share in such overflowing sweetness. In truth, every perfect soul under the old dispensation may be supposed to have complained to God somewhat as follows: “Wherefore dost Thou offer me these ‘babbling’ lips of the prophets? Rather let Him Who is ‘beautiful above the sons of men’—‘let Him kiss me with the kiss of His Mouth.’ ‘I will not now hear Moses,’ for he is become to me ‘of a more stammering tongue.’ Isaias is a ‘man of unclean lips.’ Jeremias ‘knoweth not how to speak, for he is a child.’ All the other prophets, too, lack the power of utterance. Him, Him of Whom they prophesied—let Him speak, ‘let Him kiss me with the kiss of His Mouth.’ No longer in them, or through them, let Him speak to me, since ‘dark are the waters in the clouds of air,’ but ‘let Him,’ in His own Person, ‘kiss me with the kiss of His Mouth,’ whose grace-giving contact and streams of heavenly doctrine may become in me ‘a fountain of living water, springing up into eternal life.’ Surely I may expect a more abundant outpouring of graces from Him Whom the Father ‘hath anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows’—if only He will condescend to ‘kiss me with the kiss of His Mouth.’ For His word, ‘living and efficacious,’ is to me as a kiss, not indeed a contact of lips, which sometimes deceives in falsely signifying a union of hearts, but an infusion of joy, a revelation of secrets, a marvellous, and, in a sense, indistinguishable intermingling of the Light Supernal with the enlightened soul.”

Hence, my brethren, that expression of the Apostle, “He that adhereth to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” With good reason, therefore, do I refuse visions and dreams; with reason do I decline figures and parables. Even the loveliness of the angelic spirits fails to content me, as falling infinitely short of the comeliness and beauty of my Jesus. It is He, then, Himself, and none other, whether angel or man, that I ask to kiss “me with the kiss of His Mouth.” But I am not so presumptuous as to want to be kissed with His Mouth—for that is the incommunicable happiness and the singular prerogative of His assumed Human Nature. My request is more humble: to be kissed with the kiss of His Mouth. This is the privilege of many who can consequently say, “And we all have received of His plenitude.”

Now, my brethren, I want your best attention. Let us consider the Word assuming to be the Mouth that kisses; let the Nature assumed be the Mouth that is kissed; and let the Divine Person, subsisting in two Natures, the Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus, be the Kiss in which both Mouths co-operate. In this sense, none of the saints would ever presume to say, “Let Him kiss me with His Mouth,” but only “with the kiss of His Mouth,” for they reserved the higher privilege to Him to Whom, solely and once and for all, the Mouth of the Word then impressed a kiss when the whole plenitude of the Divinity poured Itself into Him “corporally.” O happy Kiss, marvel of infinite condescension, whereby there is not mere pressure of mouth upon mouth, but God is united to man! The contact of lips signifies the embrace of loving hearts; but this union of natures brings together the divine and human, “making peace as to the things on earth and the things that are in heaven”—“For He is our peace Who hath made both one.” It is for this Kiss, therefore, that is, for Christ, that every saint of the Old Testament yearned, because they foreknew that His was the inheritance of joy and exultation, that in Him “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge were hidden,” and they desired for themselves a participation in His fulness.

I believe this interpretation commends itself to you, dear brethren. Now, listen to another. Even the saints who lived before the coming of Our Saviour were not unaware that God entertained thoughts of peace towards the race of mortal men, for He would not accomplish any of His designs on earth without revealing it to His servants the prophets, as He Himself declared. Yet this Word was hidden from many; faith was then not easy to find in the world, and even in the case of most of those who were still “looking for the Redemption of Israel,” hope had grown exceedingly weak. Now, the prophets, who foresaw that Christ was to come in the flesh bringing with Him peace, began to proclaim these things. Thus one of them said, “And there shall be peace in our land when He comes.” What is more, under divine inspiration, they predicted with all confidence that through Him men were destined to recover the grace of God. John, the Precursor, acknowledged that this prophecy was fulfilled in his own day, saying, “Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” And now every Christian beholds its fulfilment in his own experience.