PUNISH ME WITH A KISS

Most of us, truly all of us, every human being, are hardwired to do what is right and good and just. It is part of our DNA, children/creatures of our all-loving God that we are. The Old Testament, filled as it is with one law, one regulation after another commanding and demanding what to do and what not to do, nevertheless puts it very simply: when push comes to shove and we ask ourselves what we are to do, we already know the answer. We do not need any law. The answer is already written in our hearts; the words we are to say are already on our lips. We simply have to do and say what is there.

When we say or do otherwise, when we say or do that which we know in our hearts is wrong, when we commit a sin, we know it immediately. In fact, even before we act, we know we will be doing wrong. Sinful and selfish acts are never accidental. They are always intentional, knowingly intentional. No one has to tell us that we have gone against who we are, against who we were created to be. No laws are needed. We know in our hearts and heads even before we act.

Even more, after we have gone against the grain, if you will, after we have done what we knew ahead of time we should not, afterwards there is no running away from or denying the truth. Our conscience will not allow that to happen even as much as we wish it would. What happens next, often almost immediately, is that guilt sets in. We ask ourselves why we were so selfish to act that way, why we were so foolish to say what we should not have said. We feel terrible.

We cannot undo the harm that we have done. We cannot take back the deed or the words. Redress and apology may soften the hurt but won’t make it not to have happened. That only worsens the pain. What we long for, even if we are reluctant to admit it, is some form of punishment. Somehow we seem to believe that if we are punished for our sinfulness, for our selfish and hurtful words and actions, we can be relieved of the guilt and forgiven for our sins.

In fact, the greater the sin, the greater the punishment we seem to desire, not just for our own sins but for those of others. Our civil laws set standards of punishment according to the crime committed. Yet, even after we have paid for our crimes, the punishment did not undo the crime that was the cause for our punishment. The internal punishment that a guilty conscience imposes does not remove the sin.

The truth is that often the harshest punishment another can inflict on us and we can inflict on another seems like no punishment at all. Saint Therese of Lisieux, small-timer sinner that she was, used to pray to God to, as she said, “punish me with a kiss”. The harshest punishment a convicted and admitted criminal receives is to be forgiven by the victim or the victim’s family, to be, as it were, punished with a kiss.

To give or be given that kiss of forgiveness is often the most difficult action for us to bestow on another or for another to bestow on us. It is indeed and in deed a very hard way to learn a lesson but often the only way as well. Pucker up!