September 23
Daily Gleanings of the Saintly LifeTenth Monday after Trinity
The Spirit giveth life. 2 Corinthians 3:6.
IT is the Spirit that quickeneth. He does not merely prescribe, He transforms. He is perpetually asserting His presence by His spiritual transformations. He makes the feeble strong, the melancholy bright, the cold-blooded fervent, the irascible gentle, the uninstructed wise, the conceited humble, and the timid unflinching. And now, as of old, He filleth the hungry with good things, but the rich He hath sent empty away. He has but a scant measure of endowments to bestow on those who find in the things of sense, in the pursuit or worship of wealth and rank and reputation, their deepest and most solid satisfaction. He gives Himself most fully to those who ask for Him secretly and often. O blessed gift, so bounteously given in Baptism, and then again and again repeated, of the Spirit of Christ! We seek Him without, and we find Him within us; we seek Him in great assemblies, and we find Him in solitude; we seek Him in the understanding, we find Him in the heart. He enters the soul when all the doors of sense are shut; He gives His benediction to each and all of its faculties, "Peace be unto you." The soul hears Him, it sees Him not; the soul feels Him, yet as if insensibly, and His presence is itself that peace of God which passeth all understanding.
Ah, sweet Consoler! though we cannot Love Thee as Thou lovest us, Yet if Thou deign'st our hearts to kindle, They will not be always thus.
Holy Ghost! come upon Thy children, Give us grace, and make us Thine; Thy tender fires within us kindle, Blessed Spirit! Dove Divine!