Spiritual Friendship: Learning to Be Friends with God and One Another

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Spiritual Friendship

a good which natural law instituted as a sign of the good things I just mentioned. So greatly do they befoul the kiss with their shamefulness, that to be kissed by one of these people is nothing less than to be corrupted. Every honest person knows how this is to be hated, abominated, fled, and opposed. 17 The Second Kiss: A Blending of Souls Making One (2.26) 26. Further, the kiss of the spirit is proper for friends who are bound under one law of friendship. For it comes about not through physical contact of the mouth but through mental affection not by a joining of the lips but by a mingling of two spirits; 18 and from the Spirit of God that purifies all things and imparts a heavenly savor from its participation in the act. It would not be inappropriate for me to call this sort of kiss the kiss of Christ, although he offers it not from his own mouth but from the mouth of another, inspiring that most holy affection in those who love one another, so that it appears to them as though one spirit indwells many different bodies. So they may say with the prophet, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” (Ps 133:1). 17 For similar warnings about the dangers of a holy kiss in church becoming poluted, see Apostolic Tradition 18.2–4 (c. 400) and Clement of Alexandria (d. 215), Christ the Teacher , 3.81.1−82.1. 18 The wording here is similar to Aelred’s wording when giving a eulogy for his friend Simon: “How have you been torn from my embrace, withdrawn from my kisses, removed before my eyes? I embraced you dear brother, not in the flesh but in the heart. I used to kiss you not with a touch of the lips but with attachment of mind. . . . You . . . linked with me . . . in the inner depths of your soul.” Aelred of Rievaulx, The Mirror of Charity 1.34.109.