God reveals and speaks. Do we look and listen?

Book 1, Chapter 2

-Part 11-

Continued:

_{“Jesus has given us a master to whom we do not listen enough.” (Page 36)}

          How God’s everything is applied to us (or we to it) is done as a work of the Holy Spirit. The mystery of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers continues; although, as Father C suggests here, the attention that is due to this mysterious indwelling is not paid.

Jesus was abundantly clear that he would send Another Helper – in the Greek, “another one just like me in every way.” (See John 14:16)

“Still, I am telling you the truth: it is for your own good that I am going, because unless I go, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go I will send him to you.” (John 16:7. See also John 14, 15 and 16.)

The Incarnation (the Son of God becoming a man) told us that God delights in becoming a man. Pentecost told us that God delights in indwelling mankind – and that not as a generic life force, but a special indwelling brought about by grace through faith that indicates a personal relationship of love between persons.

To say that God is everywhere does not have the same meaning as when Paul says, “Yet, it is no longer I, but Christ living in me.” (Galatians 2:20)

The word to describe God being everywhere is “omnipresent.” The word describing God indwelling his people is “love.” God is with us because he loves us. If you just barely grasp the trailing, frayed threads of this truth, it would change your life.

It should be obvious to us that in the Apostle’s Creed, the third section, speaks of all of the Holy Spirit’s works: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”

In the Nicene Creed the Holy Spirit is called “the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”

The church is the church because of the Spirit of God. We are spiritually attached to all other believers (dead or alive) by the Spirit. Forgiveness, resurrection and life eternal are all provided and sustained by the Spirit.

Indeed, Paul says that our bodies are “a temple of the Holy Spirit.” (I Corinthians 6:19)

It is the Holy Spirit who is present to us in every moment. It is he who applies to us all the benefits purchased for us by Christ on the Cross. Caussade is contending that we have very little conversation with this truth. What we have by virtue of the Holy Spirit is not valued enough by us.