The text of the Gospel is nothing less than a poetic event analogous to and inseparable from the fleshly Incarnation of the Lord. Here as elsewhere, but here in particular, words, these revealed words, do not simply have an abstract sense that can, with impunity, be disengaged from their "body" in order to be homogenized and transposed into some other neutral medium of expression, such as philosophical or moralistic or political discourse. Words have, besides a "ghostly meaning," a sound, a texture, a color, a flavor: in short, a body that, in the Bible, reveals to us the Face and the Heart of God.
Is there any other reason why, after the solemn proclamation of the Gospel during the liturgy, the celebrant kisses the book? As Hans Urs von Balthasar has expressed it: we may feel through clothing for the true contours of the body within; but only that body itself is the person we seek, and that body is nothing other than the living, though material, aspect of the revelation, the incarnate Word. Clothing may be shed without violating the integrity of the person; but if we try to go through the body to reach the allegedly "purer" and more transcendental sanctuary of the soul, we will lose both and commit a crime in the process.
— ERASMO LEIVA-MERIKAKIS, Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, now known as Brother Simeon, is a Cistercian monk of Saint Joseph's Abbey, Spencer, MA. He is the author of fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word, a three-volume commentary on Matthew's Gospel.
— Magnificat, Vol 14, No. 9, November, Pp. 265-266.
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