The subject of love consumed Bernard's attention... completely... His commitment was contemplative, and his life was lives as a testimony to the love of God...
For nearly twenty years... He used this fascinating and puzzling Hebrew ode to love [the 'Song of Songs'] as the inspiration for a mystical contemplation of divine and human love... He describes [the mystical marriage between the Bridegroom and the beloved] in the vivid figures of the three kisses... the purgative, illuminative, and unitive stages of the contemplative life.
THE THREE KISSES
It is not given to everyone to say, 'Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His Mouth' (Song of Songs, 1:2); but he who has... received that spiritual kiss... is urged by the experience... A soul like mine, on the other hand, laden with sins, enslaved by fleshly passions and lacking experience of the sweetness of the Holy Spirit... can make no smallest claim to such a grace...
Do not presume to lift yourself so high... but lie along with me before the Feet of the Lord most stern, afraid... to lift your eyes to heaven, lest you be blinded by excess of light. It is not for you, soul of this sort, whoever you may be, to scorn the place where once that holy sinner laid down her sins and put on holiness... You, O unhappy soul, if you would cease to be unhappy, must imitate this happy penitent, prostrate upon the ground, kissing His Feet and washing them with tears. Nor must you dare to lift your shamed and tear-strained face until you also hear, 'Arise, arise, O captive daughter of Zion. Shake thyself from the dust!' (Isa. 52:1-2)...
Kiss His Hand. And notice why, If Jesus shall have said to me, 'Thy sins are forgiven thee' (Matt. 9:2), what good is it, unless I cease from sinning? Long have I wallowed in the mire of vice; if I fall back therein, when once escaped, then I shall be in worse case than before.
So what I need is this: that He Who moved my will to penitence should further give me power to persevere. For woe is me indeed if He, without Whom I can do nothing, should suddenly withdraw His Hand, even while I repent! ... His Hand, which first must cleanse you and then raise you up. How shall it raise you up? By giving you the grace of self-control, the fruits of penitence, which gifts will of themselves incite you to aspire to blessings greater still. And, in receiving these gifts from His Hand, you ought to kiss it--that is, give glory to His Name, not to yourself... One kiss because He has forgiven you; another, for the virtues that He has bestowed...
So this, then, is the way, the order we must follow. First we fall at the Lord's feet and bewail to Him Who made us [over] the wrong things we have done. Next, we seek His Hand to lift us up and strengthen our weak knees, that we may stand upright. And, when we have won these two graces by many prayers and tears, we may at last, perhaps, dare to lift up our heads to that all-glorious Mouth, not only to behold it but to kiss. For the Spirit Whom we thus behold is Christ the Lord, Who deigns to make us of one spirit with Himself..."
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