Wednesday after Pentecost

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

We will to-morrow continue our meditations upon the Holy Spirit; we will study His actions in the soul, and we shall see: 1st, how He illumines our understanding; 2d, how He raises our hearts; 3d, how He perfects our acts. We will then make the resolution: 1st, often to ask ourselves during the course of the day, Is it indeed the Spirit of God who animates me at this moment, who makes me perform this action, say these words, makes me dwell on this thought? Is there nothing human in my intentions and aims? We will make, 2d, the resolution to keep ourselves on our guard against being occupied with desires or attachments which would prevent us from listening to the Holy Spirit. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the prayer of the Church: “Come, Holy Spirit, and visit the soul of those who belong to Thee.”

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore the Spirit of God as the supreme and universal Director of souls. He fills heaven and earth with His holy inspirations, and there is not a single soul which escapes His action, excepting in so far as it wills to do so (Ps. xviii. 7). Oh, how greatly does He merit through this title all our praise and all our love!

FIRST POINT

The Holy Spirit Illumines the Understanding

It is the Spirit of God, it is written, “who teacheth all truth” (John xvi. 13); it is His unction “which instructs the soul in everything” (I. John ii. 27). The purely natural knowledge of God leaves us insensible and says nothing to the heart, but let the Holy Spirit only shed His light and His unction upon this knowledge, and we are immediately ravished; we are overwhelmed with admiration and love, and certain souls have been known to spend whole hours in dwelling with ecstasy on one sole word, My God. It is the same with all religious truths, to such a point that the proofs of faith, even those which are the most victorious of them, never decided a man to believe, unless the Holy Spirit, the great Enlightener of the understanding, did not Himself show them to him; so that even the beginning of faith is a grace, as the Church has defined it. It is the same with ourselves and with all things. Without the Spirit of God we are blind, we know nothing; hence our pride and our presumption; we do not see the nothingness, the falsity, and the danger of the seeming goods of this world; hence our attachments and our passions; we know neither what we ought to do nor what we ought to say; hence imprudences and daily faults. But with Thee, O Divine Spirit! O most blessed Light! we see our nothingness and our misery, our malice and our ignorance, all the reasons there are for despising ourselves, for keeping ourselves always very humble, for mistrusting ourselves, for flying from occasions of evil, and for praying to Thee without ceasing: “Come then to our aid, O Holy Spirit; send down from heaven a ray of Thy light.”

SECOND POINT

The Holy Spirit Raises the Heart

The Spirit of God, when He possesses a heart, raises it above all the things of this world; riches, for such a great heart, lose their splendor, pleasures their tastes, honors their false brilliancy, the “what will they say” its empire. It exclaims, with St. Ignatius, What nothingness the earth seems to him who looks up to heaven! If it has to suffer, it rejoices; it is glory and honor. “They went away rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer for Jesus Christ” (Acts v. 41), it is said of the apostles. And this it is which has determined during the last eighteen centuries, and which still continues to determine so many souls, placed in brilliant positions, to abandon everything and to devote themselves to the austere and obscure life of the cloister. It is thus that the man who has the Spirit of God raises himself above all that passes away; he raises himself even up to God, and unites himself with Him in prayer. Oh, how well he prays! how recollected, tender, and impressed he is! It might be said of him that he is already in heaven, amongst the saints and angels. How he makes to ascend to the heart of God those ineffable sighs which alone the Holy Spirit can bring forth in the soul (Rom. viii. 26), those tender effusions of a wholly filial piety which makes it cry out to heaven, “Abba, (Father)” (Rom. viii. 15). How, lastly, is contracted that love of prayer and of union with God which becomes the happiness of life (Acts vi. 4). A wonderful effect of the charity of God which the Holy Spirit infuses into all the powers of the soul! It is thus that are formed noble hearts and great souls capable of all kinds of sacrifices, ready for all holy works. O Holy Spirit, Author of all that is good, come and take possession of my poor heart; come and create within me a new heart, a generous heart, a heart which no longer beats except with love for Thee, and for my brethren through love for Thee and with the desire to please Thee.

THIRD POINT

The Spirit of God Perfects our Acts

When we possess the Spirit of God, we do all things well, for we perform them not through fear and servitude, but in love and by love. Then nothing costs us aught, or, if it does cost us sacrifices, it is an enjoyment. Then we no longer act mechanically and without an object, from habit and routine, still less from humor and caprice, from frivolity and want of reflection, or from the false wisdom of the world; but we always propose to ourselves the elevated aims of faith; and, in order the better to attain to them, we reflect before we act; we consult the light of prayer, rather than the calculations of human wisdom; and in the course of acting we proceed maturely, without giving way to the impulses or the haste which obscure the understanding and lead to imprudences. We act with humility, gentleness, and patience, aided by wisdom from on high, which guides all to a good end. It is thus that, where the human eye sees only darkness, the light of God shows us what we must do; and with it, there where the wise men of the world go astray, we perform marvels. Witness the Vincent de Pauls, the Ignatiuses, the Francis Xaviers, whose super-eminent wisdom has surpassed the wisdom of the world. It is that, lastly, which makes men of God capable of performing all kinds of good; it is that which perfects all their acts and renders their life holy. Let us aspire with our whole souls to have in all things the Spirit of God, and not the spirit of man.

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.