The Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost

I have, therefore, in this present volume, spoken of the universal office of which every living man has shared, and does share at this hour: and I have tried to draw the outline of our individual sanctification. Nobody can be more fully aware how slender and insufficient are both these books. They are only put out as provocations, in the hope of rousing you to fill up the outline. It is my hope that some of you may be stirred up to edit, in one volume, the treatises of S. Didymus, S. Basil, and S. Ambrose on the Holy Ghost; and also certain portions of S. Bonaventure, S. Thomas, S. Dionysius the Carthusian, and S. Bernardine of Sienna on the Graces and Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost and on the Beatitudes which spring from them. These united would make a precious store for students and for preachers. They are the direct antidote both of the heretical spirit which is abroad, and of the unspiritual and worldly mind of so many Christians. The presence of the Holy Ghost in the Church is the source of its infallibility; the presence of the Holy Ghost in the soul is the source of its sanctification. These two operations of the same Spirit arc in perfect harmony. The test of the spiritual man is his conformity to the mind of the Church. Sentire cum Ecclesia, in dogma, discipline, traditions, devotions, customs, opinions, sympathies, is the countersign that the work in our hearts is not from the diabolical spirit, nor from the human, but from the Divine. S. Ambrose, S. Francis, S. Philip, S. Teresa, had an ardent devotion to the Holy Ghost. S. Teresa in her Life tells us that one day after Mass, on the vigil of Pentecost, in a very retired place where she often used to pray, she was reading a work on the Feast of Pentecost by a Carthusian. I have always thought and hoped that it may have been the work of Dionysius, from whom I have quoted in these pages. His spiritual treatises are of singular beauty and depth; uniting the subtilty and accuracy of a scholastic with the spiritual light and sweetness of a mystical theologian. It would seem to mo that the development of error has constrained the Church in these times to treat especially of the third and last clause of the Apostles' Creed: 'I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints.' The definitions of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, of the Infallibility of the Vicar of Christ, bring out into distinct relief the twofold office of the Holy Ghost, of which one part is His perpetual assistance in the Church, the other His sanctification of the soul, of which the Immaculate Conception is the firstfruits and the perfect exemplar.