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Stop Kissing Me: Reading Mother Teresa with Bonaventure's Help
Davies, Rachel
Davies, Rachel
Author
Abstract
[Extract] Writing some 750 years ago, the great Franciscan Bonaventure spoke of a kiss between two mouths – one that festered and stank with wounds, another endued with life-giving grace.
In the story, Francis of Assisi is met by a man ‘whose mouth and cheek were being eaten away by a certain horrible disease’. Overcome with devotion, the man tries to kiss Francis’s footprints, but Francis, embracing him, kisses the putrid mouth. As Bonaventure recounts, Francis ‘touched that horrible sore with his [own] holy mouth, and suddenly every sign of the disease vanished and the sick man recovered the health he longed for’.
Keywords
Date
2019
Type
Book chapter
Journal
Book
Suffering and the Christian Life
Volume
Issue
Page Range
95-104
Article Number
ACU Department
Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
Faculty of Theology and Philosophy
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Open Access Status
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Controlled