Chapter 17. Devotion to the Holy Ghost
fi»wu0e you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of His Son into you hearts, crying, Abba, Father. GAL. iv. 6.
In closing what I have said on the work of the Holy Ghost, it would seem to me that our thoughts would be incomplete if we were not to conclude by speaking of the devotion and adoration we owe to the Person of the Holy Ghost Himself.
We will, therefore, take this last point, and with it end our subject.
Now Saint Paul says to the Galatians, that because we are sons by adoption in Baptism, therefore " God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts." In these words he speaks to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, the Three Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity They are all engaged simultaneously in our sanctification. And it has always seemed to me to be both strange and wonderful that whereas we worship the ever -blessed Trinity — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost — in consubstantial unity; and whereas we worship the Person of the Father with a special and daily adoration every time we say the Lord's Prayer, and whereas we worship the Person of the Son by concluding all our prayer*
CMft through His Name, and by adoring Him in the ever blessed Sacrament; nevertheless, we rarely worship and adore w ith a distinct and special adoration the Person of God the Holy Ghost. Why is this? I believe it to be for this reason. / The conception of the fatherhood of God and of our sonship to Him is a conception altogether natural to our hearts. We learn it in our home from our earliest consciousness in the relation we bear to our earthly father. The Incarnation of the Son of God brings Him also within the sphere and range of our intelligence and of our heart; so that we conceive of Him as Man incarnate, visible upon earth, and invested with all our sympathies, and with the love of His Sacred Heart full of compassion for usJ These two conceptions are, I may say, within the range of nature. They come to us at once. But the Holy Ghost, a Spirit that has never been seen, has never been in car nate, inscrutable, present everywhere, never manifest except by the operations of His power — this is a reality, like the motion of the earth, which we know in our reason, but cannot detect by any sense; or it is like the circulation of the blood, which we know as a fact, but never perceive all the day long. So the indwelling and the work of the Holy Ghost in the soul is a divine truth, BO altogether inscrutable, so impalpable, so insensible, that we pass it by. Therefore we do not so often adore the Author and Giver of all grace vdth a special worship.
I will endeavor, then, to draw out, «s tar a? aow 1 can, the motives which ought to awaken in us a special devotion to God the Holy Ghost.
Saint Paul declares to the Galatians, that rt when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons f* that is to say, all the prophecies of the Old Testament were a prelude to the advent of the Son of God into the world: in like manner I may say t7:at all the prophecies of the Son of God when He came were especially pointed to the ad vent of the Holy Ghost. He said: " It is expedient for you that I go; for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him unto you."f " I will ask the Father, and He will send you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever."J And on the day of Pentecost, as we read in the Acts, that prophecy was fulfilled: the advent of the Holy Ghost was accomplished. And Saint Augustine calls the day of Pentecost Dies Natalis Spirit us Sancti — the nativity of the Holy Ghost, parallel to the nativity of the Son. Saint Paul draws out the contrast between the dispensation of the Old Testament and the dispensation of the New in this manner. He calls the Old Testament the Ministry of the Letter, and he calls the New Testament the Dispensation of the Spirit. We are, therefore, under the dispensation of the Spirit, that is, under the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. And yet, with the New Testament in our hands, many are still unconscious, as I said before, of the intimate personal relation in which we stand to the Third Person of the ever-blessed Trinity, under "Whose immediate action we arf eor our sanctilication, and by Whose divine voice we a*e guided in oui faith. I can easily understand that a man ignorant of the Scripture history might travel through the Holy
• Gal. iv. 4. f S. John xvi. 7. $ Ibid, xiv 16.
Land, and pass through all the sacred places, without being conscious of where ke was or of the supernatural history attaching to anything he saw. Another man, whose mind was full of the thought of Jesus of Nazareth, who had the sacred geography of the land consecrated by the footsteps of the Son of God in his heart, in going through Judaea and Samaria would see memorials and admonitions of our Divine Saviour on every side. In like manner, any man who takes the New Testament into his hands, without the realization of the personality and presence of the Holy Ghost, would perhaps read it from end to end and not perceive the special relation in which we stand to the Holy Ghost. But any one who will read the New Testament, bearing this truth in mind, cannot fail to perceive what I will call the footsteps, the traces, and the marks of the coming and of the working of the Holy Spirit in the Church and in our souls. He will find the New Testament to be full of this main idea of the Gospel — namely, that through the Incarnation of the Son of God, the Holy Ghost has come, by a special mission and with a special office, to dwell personally in the midst of us. The Apostles received the Holy Ghost when Jesus breathed upon them; for the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, and in time from the Son Incarnate. The Holy Ghost dwells in the mystical Body, and in every member of the same who is united to the Incarnate Son. "We are related to Him, and He dwells in us, and it is through Him that we have union both with the Son and with the Father. Let UP, therefore, now go on and review the motives which ought to prompt us to a special adoration of the Divine Person of God the Holy Ghost. In a word, these reasons are the glory of His own Person, the glory of His office, and the special and vital work of salvation which He accomplishes in eveiy one of ns. These are the three chief motives.
- Let us take, first, the glory of His Person. Every Whitsunday the Church brings this mystery before us every time we say the Gloria Patri we declare Him to be co-equal with the Father and the Son; every time we make the sign of the Cross we make an act of faith and, at least, an implicit act of adoration to the Holy Ghost. All the works of God in creation, though they are works of the Holy Trinity, are in a special sense the works of the Holy Ghost, because it is the Third Person of the ever-blessed Trinity Who is in immediate union with all creatures. The titles of the Holy Ghost declare His divine glory. He is the Term, or the Complement, of the Holy Trinity, because the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son; but there the Holy Trinity rests complete. No divine person proceeds from the Holy Ghost. He is the last of the three Divine Persons, and therefore He is the Complement, the Perf ecter, and the Term of the ever-blessed Three. He is, so to speak, the Bound of the boundless nature, which is unlimited. Again, He is called the Perfecter for this reason. God the Father is uncreated being, God the Son is uncreated intelligence, and God the Holy Ghost is uncreated love; and the uncreated being, intelligence, and love of God are God. God without intelligence would net be perfect; and God without love would not
84- S DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST.
'_>e perfect; and as we can conceive nothing bo} ond being, intelligence, and love, God the Holy Ghost, "Who is the love of the Father and the Son, perfects the mystery of the ever-blessed Trinity. But, inasmuch as He is the Term of the Divine Persons, and after Him and beyond Him there is no other divine personality; it is He "Who is in immediate contact with all creatures. In the Holy Ghost the infinite nature of God has ita fullness, and by Him the finite nature of creatures begins to exist. All the creatures of God are therefore from the Holy Ghost; they are His works; He is therefore the Creator Spiritus^ the Spirit Who made all things, the Spirit Who impresses law, and order, and perfection upon all the works of God. And as He has created all things, so He is Himself the Giver of all things. He is Dator munerum, as we say in the sequence of the Holy Mass at Pentecost — " the Giver of all gifts." In the Veni Greater Spvritus — a hymn which is a litany made up of the titles of the Holy Ghost — we call Him " Creator," " the Gift of the Most High God," "the Living Fountain," or "the Fountain of Life," "the Fire," "the Paraclete," "the Sevenfold Gift," " the Spiritual Unction." All these are titles of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, describing not so much what He is as what He does. But what He does He is; for He is the gift of God to us, and in Him we have life, light, sanctity, and all things. Therefore I say we ought to adore Him with a special divine adoration; and to give Him His glory, co-equal, coettfl-nal with the Father and the Son, with Whom, in His distinct personality, He is to be adored and glorified with praise and thanksgiving, with submission and obedience. Such, then, is the first motive- -the glorj of His person.
- And the second motive is the glory of His office. 1 have already said that the first creation of God was a work of the Holy Ghost; and the Spirit of God, as we read, brooded or moved upon the face of the wateis when the world was without form and void, a deep and iark abyss of God's omnipotence. And as He was the Author of the first creation of nature, so in a far more eminent way He is the Author of the second, or new creation of grace. For, when sin and death had smitten the first creation of God, He sent forth His Spirit, and recreated all things. A new creation began to rise. And as in the beginning God first created the light and then both night and day — f or the day is light measured by the sun; so before the new creation of God arose there was a day-spring, a dawn of twilight, a prelude of the brightness of the coming noon. The morning light was the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God — the first-fruits of the full and pertect sanctifying grace of the Holy Ghost. She was the first and the last in the natural lineage of the children of Adam in whom sin had no place. The Mother of the Incarnate Son was sheltered and preserved from the inheritance of original sin, so that never for a moment was so much as a shadow cast by sin upon her spotless soul. In her was no privation of grace. From the first moment of her existence she wa^ full of the Holy Ghost. The most perfect work oi sanctification that the world has ever seen, purchased by the Precious Blood of the Son of God Himself, and given out of free and sovereign grace, ig the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of
God. Such was the aurora before the sun. Next caine the day, the Incarnation of the Eternal Word.
The efficient author of the Incarnation was the Holy Ghost: " The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee; and therefore the Holy that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God;" * and therefore we say in our baptismal Creed, Conceptus eat de Spiritu, So/ncto — " He was conceived of the Holy Ghost." The work of the Incarnation, then, was the work of the Holy Ghost. And as the Incarnation was His work, so also was the sauctification of the Incarnate Son. The unction of the Holy Ghost rested upon Him. And the seven gifts dwelt in Him in all the plentitude of sanctifying grace, of which He is the fountain to us. Even His resurrection from the dead is ascribed to the Holy Ghost. He is declared to be the Son of God in power, " by the Spirit of sanctification " f which raised Him from the dead; and " if the Spirit which raised up Jesus from the dead be in you, God shall also quicken your mortal bodies;":£ so that the whole work of the new creation is also the work of the Holy Ghost. He is the efficient cause of all grace. And as the natural body which the Son of God took was fashioned by the omnipotence of the Holy Ghost, so is His mystical Body. We read in the Gospel of Saint John that " the Holy Ghost wai not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified "§— that is, He must needs ascend into heaven before th< Holy Ghost could descend upon earth: as He HimseU had said, " It is expedient for yor that I go; for if I g»
not, the Paraclete wLl not come."* Therefore He ascended; and He ascended, as the prophecy declares, "that He might receive gifts for men."f What are those gifts? It was the Gift which contains all gifts. It was the Donum Dei which He poured out on the day of Pentecost — the Holy Ghost Who is given to us, and His personal presence to be with us forever. When' the Holy Ghost descended from heaven on that day, He came down upon each of the Apostles; and yet not as upon twelve men separately taken one from another, but upon twelve men as united in one body. They be-came the centre and the germ of that mystical Body, which consists of all who are united with the Head in heaven by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And the fellowship or society created by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the faithful is the Holy Catholic Church, /or the mystical Body of Christ. Saint Paul says: " As the body is one, and hath many members, so also is Christ " J — Christ the head, and you the members united to Him and to one another, inhabited by one divine life, that is, by the Holy Ghost Himself, Who is indissolubly united to that collective body, and endows it with imperishable life, with immutable faith, and with inexhaustible sanctity. The Sanctifier, then, dwells in the Church as the fountain of sanctification to all the members of the mystical Body. The note of sanctity by which the Church in the world is known is the supernatural manifestation of the presence of the Holy Ghost. And as the Holy Ghost is the Creator aud Sanctifier of the Church, He is also its Guide and its Light. The presiding Intelligence which preserves • St. John xvi. 7. f Epb. iv. 8. $ 1 Cor. xii. 12.
it in the way of truth is the mind of the Spirit. and the voice cf the Church is the voice of the Holy Ghost. When men deny the infallibility of the Church of Jesus Christ, they do not know — at least so I trust — that they are denying the office of th? Holy Ghost Himself. And as the Church is His work, so all of us who are bora again by Baptism, and grafted into that Church, become thereby the firstborn and the first-fruits of the Holy Ghost. He dwells in us, as Saint Paul said to the Galatians, because we are the sons of God; " God hath set forth His Spirit, the Spirit of His Son, into our hearts, whereby we cry, Abba, Father."3
The Apostle has said: " Know you not that the Spirit of Christ is in you, except you be reprobates 1 If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His." f And again: " Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, Which is in you?" i Why does he say " your body? " Because the soul is in the body, and the soul is the seat of the indwelling presence of the Holy Ghost. Again he says: " What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man that is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God." § As no man knows the things of the Spirit of God unless the Spirit of God dwells in him, so also no man knows the personal experience and the hidden consciousness of any other man, but only the man himself. And once more, Saint Paul says: " The Spirit also beareth testimony with our spirit that we are the sons of God." [ And therefore, as we have, every one of us, the Consciousness that we g 1 Cor. ii. 11. I Rom. viii. 18 have a soul endowed with intelligence and will, and as we are intimately conscious of the inward foots which pass within us, and of the inward acts of our thoughts and of our volitions, so they who have the Spirit of God dwelling in them have, or ought to have, a consciousness of that divine presence and a knowledge of the facts of His grace within them, and of the supernatural acts of faith, hope, and charity which they make by His power.
Shall I say it then, dear brethren, plainly? We are not spiritual, we are not supernatural. We live in the world and converse with it until we become worldly in the habit of our lives. We do not keep alive by mental prayer, and by recollection of the divine presence without us and within, this great, primary, and vital truth of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. And therefore it is that there is so little true, loving, earnest charity among us, This consciousness of a divine presence it is which, if the times required it, would make mei martyrs; this it is which would make men confessors, ready to lay down a1! things in the world for conscience' sake; and this it is which would make men who are never called to be martyrs or confessors deny themselves all the day long. If only we were conscious that we could thereby glorify God, and better correspond with the operations of grace within us, instead of living our tardy laggard lives we should Se guileless and fervent disciples of Jesus Christ.
- Thirdly, weigh what you owe to the person of the Holy Ghost. Saint Paul says: " The charity of God is poured forth into our hearts by the Holy Ghost, Who is given to us."4 The personal Charity of God is poured forth into our hearts. There is in you, as there is i« the Church itself, the Living Fountain; the fountain of the waters of life is in you, God the Holy Ghost, the Charity of God, by Whom you are united to the Son and to the Father. And that fountain of living water is always rising, and, in the measure in which our hearts expand to receive it, our hearts are enlarged; but in the measure in which our hearts are narrowed by self-love, and the love of the world, and the things of the world, the love of God has not room to spread and to dilate our hearts. When the Psalmist savs, " I
«/ j will run the way of Thy commandments when Thou hast enlarged my heart,"* he means precisely this: " I will speed with fervor and energy in Thy law when my heart is enlarged, when it is dilated by the love of God within me." Ever since your first consciousness — ay, even from your Baptism, when you were unconscious — the Holy Ghost has been within you; all through your growth, in your childhood, in every age, in all your spiritual life, the Holy Ghost has been with you, springing up as a fountain of grace. You have been encompassed and enveloped by the love of God. Even if you have fallen from baptismal innocence, it is He that stung your conscience and brought you back to Himself. And all the while how unconscious have we been. And more than thisy how we have wearied ITis patience. If His patience were not divine, if His long Buffering were not infinite, where should we have been long ago? We should have been cast out of His love for ever. How we have provoked Him by mortal sins, with ou? eyes open; by venial sins, committed in mul * Ps. cxviii. 32.
titudes that no man could number, committed deliberately and habitually, morning and night, day by day, hour by hour, year by year. And how we have provoked Him by coldness and neglect, hiding our faces from Him, turning onr backs upon Him, even when He has been calling us to Himself with the tenderness of Hie love and pitv.
Once more, what generosity does He show us. As I have said before, the light of the sun, the showers that water the earth, are not so abundant as the graces of the Holy Ghost, as the lights and inspirations which He has poured into our hearts. "We have been wasting the grace of God all our life long, and there has been a hand unseen pouring in oil, lest the light of the lamp should die out. If there had not been a perpetual ministration of the grace of God, of which we were unconscious, who knows whether I should be here to speak to you or you to hear me? He has given yon strength, which you have oftentimes neglected, oftentimes resisted, oftentimes refused. In every duty that you have had to do, and even in every duty that you have failed to do, He has helped you. When you have thought that you could do nothing, He has always given you strength, even at the moment when you were giving way; when you had lost all hope, you have found that you had strength enough to do His will; in eveiy temptation under which you have been falling there has been a sudden and strong help, which has carried you through all hindrances. You have felt that it was not your own victory, but that God had carried you over a gulf and set you upon a rock. Under every cross, which you have said was so sharp that yon could bear it no longer, there has been grace given from moment to moment. When you were sinking, it bore you up. The words which He spoke to the Apostle He has been speaking to yon: "My grace is sufficient for thee, foi power is made perfect in infirmity."* So He has been ever ministering strength to you all your life long — in childhood, youth, and manhood — to this day. And at times, when you least hoped for it, what sweetness fie has poured out into your hearts. You have not even looked to see from whence it came, but what peace, what joy, what aspirations have lifted you up towards heaven, and filled you with gladness. Who gave all this to you, even when you forgot Him?
Hear the words of Holy Scripture: " How great is the multitude of Thy sweetness, which Thou hast hid for those that fear Thee."f The rain which comes down in a flood is a multitude of drops, but the multitude of the sweetness of God is as the waves of the sea. The Giver of all sweetness is within you, waiting only for you to ask it of Him. He has shed it abroad in your hearts even when you have not asked it; when you have been unconscious of the gift, and have thought that it came from some solace of friends or kindred. And in times of sorrow, of mourning, of affliction, consolations have come over you, like the soft breath of the evening, and like the sweet fragrance of the field that God has blessed, and you have rejoiced, and have returned to a peace sensibly above all earthly happiness. Perhaps you traced all this to natural sources. You have not said to yourself, " This is the gift of the Holy Ghost" If you had said so, and had turned to Him, » 8 Cor. rlL 9. f Pf, xxx. »0.
id blessed Him, and adored Him, for what He was ioing in your heart, He would have multiplied that gift sevenfold.
Now here we have, I may say, the three motives of devotion to the Holy Ghost — namely, the glory of His Person, of His office, and of His work of love and grace which He has been accomplishing in you all youi fife long.
We owe Him, then> two things. First, we owe Him adoration. We must adore Him as we adore the Father; we must adore Him as we adore the Son; and in order so to do we must realize with a clear recognition of faith His Divine Personality as co-equal and.'io-eternal with the Father and the Son in all the splendor and glory of the ever-blessed Trinity. And, next, we must have a more lively conception of His presence within us. As He is present in the Church of God, ti be its infallible Light and Guide, so He is present in oui souls as our Sanctifier, the source of all light and grace He has been so present in us from our earliest consciousness. And, lastly, we must realize and have a perception that He is at all times bearing " testimony in oui hearts that we are sons of God." We must in turn speak with Him, and love Him, and praise Him, and glorify Him, both by inward acts of adoration in our «oul and by outward acts of obedience in our lives.
And the other debt we owe Him is to make Him reparation — reparation for our own many sins; sins ot commission, sins of omission, sins of thought, word and action, sins against the Commandments ol God, sina against our conscience, sins against His light and grace; for, as the Apostle says, We may grieve Him, and we may rt^ist Him, and we may quench His light. It may he that some who hear me may have done all this, and yet have been restored by His life-giving grace. We therefore owe Him a reparation for the multitude of our sins; and not for ours only, but likewise for the sins of other men. Look abroad upon the world round about yofi, and tell me is it governed by the Spirit of God Who made it, or is it governed by the spirit of Satan who is the god and destroyer of this world? For the sins of all who have been born again of water and the Holy Ghost in Baptism, and yet have offended against Him, we ought to make reparation, and that reparation ought to be made in this wise: first, by promptness in following His inspirations; next, by proportionate correspondence, so that when He bestows a great grace upon us we correspond in the measure of that grace; not niggardly, not burying the trust that has been given us in a napkin, so that when He gives us a grace of a thousand to make Him a return of ten: and yet this we are doing all the day long; thirdly, by serving Him in great purity of heart; and by purity of heart I mean two things: not only the absence from the heart of all that defiles it, but the absence from the heart of all that makes it double, such as the love of the world, and of creatures, and of self. These sins blot out the love of God and overpower the grace of the Holy Ghost. Such, then, are some of the many ways in which we may make reparation. And to make this advice still more definite, I will give you two short counsels that you may easily put into practice. The first is to hunt down and slaj your little faults; he that is faithful in that which is the least is faithful alao in that which ii greater; and they will hunt down, and slay, and exterminate their little faults, be sure of it, will never willingly commit greater sins. The other counsel is this: do your little duties, which most men make light of, with great exactness: for if you will faithfully do your lesser duties, your greater duties, I may say, will take care of themselves.
Now to conclude all that I have been saying. There is a conflict in the midst of which we are, a warfare the more perilous because invisible. There are three spirits always contending together; there is the Spirit of God, the spirit of Satan, and our poor human spirit in midst of this strife of life and death. These three spirits are on a battlefield, and the " whole life of man is a warfare upon earth." If you " are led by the Spirit of God, you are the sons of God;" and if you are led by the spirit of the god of this world, you are his servants; and if you are led by your own spirit, yon are his slaves.
Try your spiritual life in this balance. If you know your dangers, the gift of holy fear will be very dear to you, and wisdom will counsel you what to do in every danger and in every trial. To some my words may eeem strange, remote from our daily life, theoretical, and even fantastic. Why? If the Spirit bears testimony in your hearts, and if you are the sons of God, you will understand what I say. Saint Augietine, who, before he knew God, was the type of a man of the nineteenth century — intellectual, cultivated, eloquent, scientific, full of philosophy — sought God everywhere, but never found Him. When he had learned the reason ot hia failure, he said: " Thou, 0 God, wert within me, and I knew it not. I was seeking Thee outside of my self. I sought Thee everywhere, but could not find Thee, because I did not seek in my own soul, where Thou art to be found." So it may be perhaps to some who hear me now. They have bp^n turning over the pages of books, they have been straining their intellect with science, they have been listening to the pompous dogmas of the wise men of the world, they have read modern metaphysics, they have enveloped themselves in the illuminisrn of Germany, they have studied the leading articles of the newspapers, and they have not found God; nay, even the existence of God is doubtful to them. Why? Listen to Saint Augustine once more; " Thou didst call me, and, after a long time, Thou didst break through my deafness. Thou didst shine round about me, Thy light was within me, and only at length didst Thou open the eyes of my blindness. Thou didst send forth Thy fragrance upon me, and when I perceived it I was glad. Thou didst at last touch me, and then I broke forth like a flame into Thy peace."
Now, it may be that some who are here listening to me at this time have never yet made this discovery. In all the sciences of the nineteenth century, this spiritual science is the last that n. en cultivate. And I will say to you all, however much you know of God, you have all of you need to open your ears more wistfully to His words, to open your eyes more widely to His light, to put forth your hands still more eagerly to feel the hand of God, to unfold the spiritual life which is in you, and to unite your hearts and your souls still more intimately with Him. Therefore, in order to do this, I wou^d ask you from this day to the end of your lives to oifer every day some act of adoration and of reparation. Make up your mind now that not a day shall pass from this day to your last without some act of adoration to the Person of the Holy Ghost, without some act of reparation made to Him for your own sins and for the sins of other men. Say day by day the majestic hymn of the Church, the Vent Creator Spiritus, or that other, equally beautiful, and even more full of human tenderness, Yeni Sancte Spiritus; or say every day seven times the Gloria Patri, in honor of the Holy Ghost, to obtain His seven gifts; or make some prayer of your own; raise up your hearts to God, and make, each of you, some short act of reparation and adoration out of the fullness of your soul; or say day by day, " O God the Holy Ghost, Whom I have slighted, grieved, resisted from my childhood unto this day, reveal unto me Thy personality, Thy presence, Thy power. Make me to know Thy sevenfold gifts: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and fortitude, of knowledge and piety, and of the fear of the Lord; and make me to be of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord. O Thou Who art the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, O Thou Who art the love of the Father and the Son, O Thou Who baptizest with fire, and sheddest abroad the love of God in our hearts, shed abroad Thy love in iny heart. One thing have I desired of the Lord: that will I seek after: not wealth, rank, power, worldly home, worldly happiness, or any worldly good, but one drop of that holy flame, one drop of that heavenly fire, to kindle me and set me all on fire with the love of my God. Let that holy flame burn up and consume in me every gpot and soil of the flesh and of the spirit. Purif y 16
DEVOTION TO THE HOLT OH08T.
me sevenfold with the fire of Thy love. Consume me as a holy sacrifice acceptable unto Thee. Kindle me with zeal, melt me with sorrow, that I may lire the life and die the death of a fervent penitent."
Footnotes
Chapter 18 of 18