Point 24. The Gift of the Holy Spirit
1. With one and the same movement of soul, the Phalangist believes “ in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints ”. Because it is to the Church He founded, and to none other, that Jesus announced the sending of the Holy Spirit from the Father in order to continue His work and to extend it to the whole world throughout all centuries. This presence of the invisible Spirit of God in the visible Church – which is an object of faith – is clearly made known by the truly miraculous and tangible fruits of His unique power.
Just as no one can go to the Father except through the Son, outside of whom there is no salvation, so no one can be assured of being a disciple of Jesus Christ, if he does not belong to the Church He founded and to which He gave His Spirit. For, though it is true that the Holy Spirit blows where He wills and is prevented by no one, and though the infinite perfection of His divine nature is limited by nothing, yet, as the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, proceeding from the Father and the Son as from a single principle, He is – following the Incarnation – the very Spirit of Jesus, sent by Him to His friends to continue His work without division, distortion or rupture.
2. The Phalangist, therefore, could not oppose the Spirit to the Church, for he recognises the Spirit in the Church as her divine soul, as He who has raised, protected and extended her influence at all times and in all places, and who for this reason has organised, hierarchised, strengthened, and sanctified her without measure, making of her the communion of saints, outside of which there is no salvation.
It is He who is the bond of love, in Christ, between brothers, living and dead. It is He who has made of all the redeemed a true social body with Christ as its head, a new humanity become the Son of God’s mystical bride, in the likeness of the Virgin Mary who was, before and beyond any other woman, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the Spouse of the Word, and the dearest daughter of the Heavenly Father.
The Phalangist recalls these words of Saint Cyprian: “No one has God as his Father who has not the Church as his mother. ”
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