🕃 The Holy Paul, Archbishop of Constantinople, Confessor.
Saint with Six Stichera. Abstention from meat and foods that contain these ingredients.
1 Thessalonians 5:9-13, 24-28; Luke 12:2-12.
Read 1 Thessalonians 5:9-13, 24-28
On December 22, 1914, amid the suffering of the First World War, a chaplain named Connor prayed beside a young soldier. Then he offered something simple: “I’ll give you your mother’s kiss.” The soldier asked to give the kiss himself, and kissed the chaplain.
Far from home, surrounded by war, that young man encountered the tenderness of home through another human being.
“Greet all the brethren with an holy kiss,” Saint Paul tells the Thessalonians.
We might pass over those words as an ancient custom. Yet Paul understood something we easily forget: love must become tangible. The lonely need someone to approach them.
And God will not be outdone by the best human examples when it comes to inspiring us. His death on the Cross is the intimacy of God writ large on the cheek of every sin-stained soul.
Already in Paul’s day, Christians expressed God’s love through the greeting of a holy kiss. Later, their enemies accused them of incest and scandalous feasts. Were these brothers and sisters guilty of debauchery? No. (newadvent.org) Christianity had grasped something profound: the Gospel is most persuasively shared through love expressed concretely and personally. Arguments have their place, but people need to encounter the love those arguments proclaim. Faith cannot be bought with bribes.
We do not remember Nietzsche or Mao for greeting followers with a holy kiss. Paul explicitly commanded it.
“Comfort yourselves together, and edify one another.”
Do not reduce Christianity to a philosophical system, a dogmatic system, or a collection of rituals. Its doctrines teach us whom we love; its worship brings us into communion with Him. Christianity is the love of God for men and women, revealed in Jesus Christ.
And the Cross is that kiss upon our collective cheek.
Let someone experience His love through yours today.