"These are the words of the holy Council of Trent, in which the Catholic Church infallibly teaches that without an interior movement of the indwelling Holy Spirit no act of the soul can be meritorious of heaven. This doctrine, embodying the plain sense of Holy Scripture and the unbroken teaching of the Church in all ages, bases human justification on an interior impulse of the Third Person of the Divine Trinity. This impulse precedes the soul's acts of faith, hope, and love, and of sorrow for sin: the first stage in the supernatural career, then, is the entering of the Holy Spirit into the inner life of the soul. The process of justification begins by the divine life of the indwelling Spirit taking up into itself the human life of the soul.
"Nor is this to the detriment of man's liberty, but rather to its increase. The infinite independence of God and his divine liberty are shared by man exactly in proportion as he partakes of God's life in the communication of the Holy Spirit.
"If it be asked how the Holy Spirit is received, the answer is, Sacramentally. 'Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' As man by nature is a being of both outer and inner life, so, when made a new man by the Spirit of God and elevated into a supernatural state, God deals with him by both outer and inner methods. The Holy Spirit is received by the sacramental grace of baptism and renewed by the other sacraments; also in prayer, vocal or mental, hearing sermons, reading the Scriptures or devout books, and on occasions, extraordinary or ordinary, in the course of daily life; and when once received every act of the soul that merits heaven is done by the inspiration of that Divine Guide dwelling within us. Even though unperceived, though indistinguishable from impulses of natural virtue, though imperceptibly multiplied as often as the instants are, yet each movement of heaven-winning virtue, and especially love, hope, faith, and repentance, is made because the Holy Spirit has acted upon the soul in an efficacious manner.
"It is not to induce a strained outlook for the particular cases of the action of the Spirit of God on us, or the signs of it, that these words are written. The sacraments, prayer and holy reading, and hearing sermons and instructions, are the plain, external instruments and accompaniments of the visitations of God, and are sufficient landmarks for the journey of the soul, unless it be led in a way altogether extraordinary. And apart from these external marks, no matter how you watch for God, his visitations are best known by their effects; it is after the cause has been placed, perhaps some considerable time after, that the faith, hope, love, or sorrow becomes perceptibly increased—always excepting extraordinary cases. Not to 'resist the Spirit' is the first duty. Fidelity to the divine guidance, yielding one's self up lovingly to the impulses of virtue as they gently claim control of our thoughts—this is the simple duty.
"Having laid down in broad terms the fundamental doctrine of the supernatural life, it is proper to say a word of the natural virtues and of their relation to the supernatural. It has been already intimated that the goodness of nature is often indistinguishable from the holiness of the supernatural life; and, indeed, as a rule, impulses of the Holy Spirit first pour their floods into the channels of natural virtue, thus rendering them supernatural. These are mainly the cardinal virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. Practised in a state of nature, these place us in our true relations with our nature and with God's providence in all created nature around us; these are the virtues which choice souls among the heathen practised. They are not enough. When they have done their utmost they leave a void in the heart that still yearns for more. It is the purpose of the Spirit of God to raise our virtue to a grade far above nature. The practice of the virtues of faith hope, and love, which bring the soul into direct communication with God, and which, when practised under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are supernatural, following upon the practice of the cardinal virtues under the same guidance, place the soul in its true and perfect relation with God—a state which is more than natural.
"Let us, if we would see things clearly, keep in sight the difference between the natural and supernatural. In the natural order a certain union with God was possessed by man in all ages in common with every creature. The union of the creature with the divine creative power is something which man can neither escape from nor be robbed of. But in the case of rational creatures this union is, even in a state of nature, made far closer and its enjoyment increased by a virtuous life—one in which reason is superior to appetite; a life only to be led by one assisted, if not by the indwelling Holy Spirit peculiar to the grace of Christ, yet by the helps necessary to natural virtue and called medicinal graces. The practice of the four cardinal virtues—Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance—in the ordinary natural state gave to guileless men and women in every age a natural union with their Creator. Although we maintain that such natural union with God is not enough for man, yet we insist that the part the natural virtues play in man's sanctification be recognized. In considering a holy life natural virtues are too often passed over, either because the men who practised them in heathen times were perhaps few in number, or because of the Calvinistic error that nature and man are totally corrupt.
"And we further insist on the natural virtues because they tend to place man in true relations with himself and with nature, thus bringing him into more perfect relation or union with God than he was by means of the creative act—a proper preliminary to his supernatural relation. Who will deny that there were men not a few among the heathen in whom Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance were highly exemplified? They knew well enough what right reason demanded. Such men as Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius had by the natural light of reason a knowledge of what their nature required of them. They had faults, great ones if you please; at the same time they knew them to be faults, and they had the natural virtues in greater or less degrees. Thus the union between God and the soul, due to the creative act, though not sufficient, never was interrupted. The Creator and the Mediator are one."
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