THE GESTURE OF AGAPÉ

David W. T. Brattston

Every time we shake a hand in church, we carry on an ancient sign of love commanded in the Bible and hallowed by the practice of the earliest Christians. In three places, Saint Paul commanded Christians to “Greet one another with a holy kiss” [1]  (2 Corinthians 13.12 (Romans 16.16; and 1 Corinthians 16.20). In his first letter to the Thessalonians, he exhorted his readers to, “Greet all the brethren with a holy kiss” (5.26). In addition, in Saint Peter’s first letter, written to the Christians in Asia Minor, he wrote, “Greet one another with the kiss of love” (5.14).

The earliest generations of Christians did this literally. Around A.D. 246 the Church Father Origen noted, “the custom has been handed down to the churches for brothers to welcome each other with a kiss after the prayers”.[2] In describing a typical Christian worship service, Justin Martyr around A.D. 160 narrated that worshippers regularly exchanged a kiss.[3]  In the early third century, the Church Father Tertullian exhorted that this kiss should take precedence over private devotions and concerns, and he held that “no prayer is complete if divorced from the ‘holy kiss’”.[4] A later Church Father, and Bishop, Eusebius, recorded three instances a century later of Christians saluting others with a kiss.[5]

Formally, the ritual Kiss of Peace was given was given with the mouth. Concerned with the dangers of abuse, Athenagoras of Athens, commented, “Therefore the kiss, or rather the salutation, should be given with the greatest care, since, if there be mixed with it the least defilement of thought, it excludes us from eternal life”[6] The Apostolic Constitutions ordered a rigid separation of the sexes (8,11). This separation ended in the thirteenth century, when the kiss was replaced by the “osculatorium” also called “instrumentum” or “tabella pacis” (peace tablet) — a plate with a figure of Christ on the Cross stamped upon it, kissed first by the priest, then by the congregation.

Presently, a handshake substitutes for the Kiss of Peace. In our time and in Western culture, a handshake rather than a kiss that is the customary sign of friendship, acceptance and agapé. A kiss does not convey the same meaning and purpose as it did in ancient times. In fact, it is scandalous and repugnant to most people for a man to kiss another man or another man’s wife, especially in church. Kissing has changed its significance over the centuries, with shaking hands now more accurately representing the meaning it had for early Christians. It was therefore necessary and expedient for Church authorities in our time to replace one form of gesture with another so that the people may better understand and follow the meaning and purpose of the apostles and their early disciples.

The Pax was first given before the offertory, later on after the Pax Domini and finally came to occupy its present position after the consecration and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.

Whatever the form, we should remember the statement of Tertullian that no prayer service is complete if separated from the holy kiss or handshake, and we should also remember that the motives and spirit of this sign of love are to be as Origen described: it should be without the hypocrisy of the kiss of Judas, and “have peace and sincerity in itself with unfeigned love.”[7]

Used with permission of the author.

[1] Scripture quotations in this article are from the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition of the Bible, © copyright 1946, 1952 and 1957 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA.  Used by permission.

[2] Origen Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans 10.33 translated by Thomas P. Scheck (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, © copyright 2002).

[3] Justin Martyr 1 Apology 65.

[4] Tertullian On Prayer 18.

[5] Eusebius Martyrs of Palestine 11.20, 11.24, 11.25.

[6] Athenagoras, A Plea for Christians, 32.

[7] Origen loc. cit.