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Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth!


 
“Even clad in my form, how beautiful you are, Lord Jesus!” (SC 25:9). This is St Bernard’s cry of joy and
admiration to the One who, beautiful in his own right, renounced his beauty and majesty for you and me to become one of us. Bernard cries out with even greater joy than Adam when he saw his Eve for the first time. Why? Because if Adam recognized himself in Eve, even more so did Bernard in Christ. In Christ Bernard found all that is familiar to us when He embraced suffering and death on the Cross. But he also found the response to his deepest desire: an unimaginable love that can transform and rise us up till we become one with God in the Spirit. Bernard understood that Christ had embraced all that is ours, the highest and the lowest, everything except sin, and clad in the humility of human form saved us and showed us the love that casts out fear.

This is why today, at evening prayer, we begin to celebrate the feast of our Father St. Bernard. Many historians consider him the most influential man of the twelfth century, but it’s not that we celebrate. No, what remains, what fills us with joy and shows us the path of the fulfillment of our own longing is his love for Christ, so full of confidence and hope. Today, we join St Bernard in his most daring request, the request with which he began his Sermons on the Song of Songs, “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth” (Song 1:1). As we pray, Bernard will be interceding for us and all who long for Christ. 

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