Point 28. The Holy Spirit, Soul of the Phalange
1. If the Phalangist is against all Protestant illuminism – recognised by its latent or declared hostility to ecclesiastical, hierarchical, and clerical authority – he nevertheless knows that the Holy Spirit is given to the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, in all her living members. Each member of the faithful receives the Spirit and the abundance of His gifts. Already through baptism the Christian is illumined from on high that he may believe in the Church, in her living Tradition and in the Sacred Scriptures, which she explains to him, so that he may recognise the Church as the manifestation of Jesus Christ and His Father and receive from her the life of the sacraments and every supernatural help.
2. But desiring to understand, to love and to assist even more, the Phalangist wished to receive confirmation from the Church and, with this gift of the Holy Spirit, the necessary light and energy for a more dedicated commitment to the service of the Church and the service of his brethren. Thenceforth, he is not only a practising Catholic, seeking to gain sanctifying grace and eternal life, but an active Catholic in the communion of saints or… ecclesial co-responsibility, taking his part in the concerns, labours and perils of the Church Militant.
3. The Phalangist loves to rediscover this initial enthusiasm and to “ rekindle the gift of God that is within him through the laying on of the hands ” of the apostle, that is to say, of the bishop who confirmed him (2 Tim 1:6). Certain officially instituted sacramental rites, such as the priest’s blessing, signify this call to a new, deeper and more generous commitment, by virtue of the gift of the Spirit, for there is no function or “ charism ” that does not come from the Holy Spirit for the service of the Church. It is because they have forgotten this that too many Christians today regard the Holy Spirit as the “ great unknown ” and elude His inspirations.
4. From this awakening of the Holy Spirit within himself through the sacramental rites of the Church, the Phalangist will find his constant sanctification; he will receive from this same Spirit his place in the great Church, as an organ endowed with precise and useful activities in the heart of the Catholic organism whose life is the Holy Spirit.
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