The Holy Kiss

Today when I dropped YaYa off at church she gave me a Holy Kiss. She goes at 9am and gets picked at 11:30 when she wants to go out for coffee (cafe society) 

Growing up a protestant Methodist like Hillary Clinton we failed to deliver Holy Kisses like Italians and Greeks do, so we must not have been following scripture. 

It was the widespread custom in the ancient western Mediterranean for men to greet each other with a kiss.[1] That was also the custom in ancient Judea and practiced also by Christians.

However, the New Testament's reference to a holy kiss (en philemati hagio) and kiss of love (en philemati agapēs) transformed the character of the act beyond a greeting. Such a kiss is mentioned five times in the New Testament:

Romans 16:16 — "Greet one another with a holy kiss" (Greek: ἀσπάσασθε ἀλλήλους ἐν φιλήματι ἁγίῳ).

I Corinthians 16:20 — "Greet one another with a holy kiss" (Greek: ἀσπάσασθε ἀλλήλους ἐν φιλήματι ἁγίῳ).

II Corinthians 13:12 — "Greet one another with a holy kiss" (Greek: ἀσπάσασθε ἀλλήλους ἐν ἁγίῳ φιλήματι).

I Thessalonians 5:26 — "Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss" (Greek: ἀσπάσασθε τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς πάντας ἐν φιλήματι ἁγίῳ).

I Peter 5:14 — "Greet one another with a kiss of love" (Greek: ἀσπάσασθε ἀλλήλους ἐν φιλήματι ἀγάπης).[2]

The writings of the early church fathers speak of the holy kiss, which they call "a sign of peace", which was already part of the Eucharistic liturgy, occurring after the Lord's Prayer in the Roman Rite and the rites directly derived from it. St. Augustine, for example, speaks of it in one of his Easter Sermons: