The Kiss of God

Dear Friends,

When I was a child, a couple named Fran and Mike lived upstairs from my parents and me. Fran was a heavy smoker from her teens. Mike worked in one of those loosely regulated chemical plants north of Buffalo. The best medical wisdom of that time offered them no hope of ever having children of their own.

When a girl down the street became pregnant with no husband in sight, Fran and Mike approached her. They would take, adopt, and love her child. So Johnny came to live upstairs when he was a few days old. He grew up much loved, doted upon, but Fran and Mike made one mistake. They never told Johnny he was adopted. For whatever reason, they held that information as a closely guarded secret. One day, when he was 25 or so, someone told him.

Johnny’s reaction wasn’t pleasant. He could not accept that this largely uneducated couple chose him in love. He felt betrayed, alone, without roots. Johnny raged at his adoptive parents and finally cut off ties with them. Mike died without ever seeing Johnny again. Eventually, Johnny became reconciled with Fran, but the scars remained.

Mike and Fran had no enlightened guides in their life process with Johnny. They simply chose him, not knowing his personality, talents, or potential. They simply embraced him.

This story is a fit for today’s feast, as our Church worldwide celebrates Trinity Sunday. Today, we celebrate no abstract, distant unfeeling God, no solitary monolith in the sky ready to roll down judgment to crush us.

No, Paul tells us in today’s second reading (Romans 8.15) that we are children of God. God chooses us and in baptism, gifts us with the spirit of adoption. We are adopted into the family of God.

Unlike Fran and Mike, who kept Johnny’s adoption a secret, our faith tradition from the earliest New Testament writings on proclaims we are adopted. We belong to the family of God.

We walk with God and in God. God is the Source of our being. We belong to our Creator God, our Father/Mother. We also belong to Jesus, our brother, the one who put himself in harm’s way so that we might live. We belong to God, the Spirit, our sustainer and comforter. God is the only one who most profoundly satisfies our hungers and brings us to completion. Today, we celebrate God, our kin.

The Norwegians tell a Viking legend to their children. The story is short but touching.

Before their souls became one with their bodies in the womb, God kissed their souls. All of life, the Norwegians say, is living the memory of that kiss.

Our own Christian tradition does not believe that there are unembodied souls waiting to be joined to bodies and be born. We believe that the whole person, body, soul, and spirit begins in the womb. But whether we are Viking or Christian, before the womb or in the womb, let’s think of the kiss of God being upon us.

Be still for a moment now and let’s bring up from our deep unconscious, the tender kiss of God. Savor it on this Trinity Sunday.

~Sister Joan Sobala