Annotatio CCXV
”Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.” — Canticle 1:1
Bernard, in the fifth sermon on the Canticle of Canticles, seems to teach that the Angels are corporeal,1 when he says: “Now, that even the super-celestial spirits have need of bodies, let that true and truly divine sentence make us most certain: for ‘all are ministering spirits, sent to minister for them who receive the inheritance of salvation.’2 In what manner, then, do they fulfil their ministry without a body — especially among those living in the body? Finally, to run about, and to pass from place to place, belongs only to bodies: which that the Angels frequently do, an authority as undoubted as [it is] known proves. Hence it is that they were also seen by the Fathers,” etc. See above, Annotation 8, on the first chapter of Genesis.