The importance of hugs

Don't confuse celibacy and chastity with a lack of physical affection.  Courtship as it is supposed to be as well as friendship and relations between family members is full of physical displays of affection.  So thus is a religious community, being sisters after all.  Hugs are numerous as are warm two handed handshakes and squeezing someone's hand as a token of affection.  Just as in a happy family in North America, so too among these sisters.

The kiss of peace during the Catholic match is, in most parishes, a few minutes of hand-shaking and peace wishing among people who may or may not be acquainted.  But in the sister's chapel, everyone knows everyone else and the kiss of peace takes forever, and I mean several minutes, during which time the sisters greet anyone in their vicinity, and cross the chapel to greet sisters who have been away on travel.  With, of course, a warm hug and a few words of well wishing and peace sharing.

This didn't use to be the case among religious.  One sister told me that back in the habit wearing days, or pre-Vatican II days, such things were discouraged as perhaps too ebullient given that sisters were supposed to be models of decorum and reserve. 

But something tells me that warm displays of affection were somehow lost along the historical line, and that St. Francis himself would approve of them.  After all, the first outward sign of his inner conversion was in fact the time that he not only gave coins to a leper, but got down from his horse to embrace and kiss him.

Hugs are official among male clergy in the church as well, and are routinely administered during ordinations, the kiss of peace, and to the newly elected pope during the last moments of a conclave.

A big hug for you, dear reader, today.