By Very Rev. THOMAS S. PRESTON, V.G.,
The sphere of the operations of the Holy Ghost is, then, the visible church, which is His temple.
If our divine Redeemer has founded a church to represent Him on earth, and administer to successive generations His grace; if the eternal Spirit has come upon earth to dwell in this church with the fullness of a substantial union ; then it is manifest that in and through the church the souls of men are to be sanctified. Else His work would be to no purpose, and the miracles of redemption in vain. Christ could not have founded a church, if in His plan of mercy the church were not a necessity. The Holy Spirit could not have come in flaming glory to dwell in this church, unless it were to be the sacrament of union with Him, and the sphere of His sanctifying energies. Thus, the facts of the Gospel being admitted, they who would drink of the Spirit of life must come to the fountains of salvation opened in the church. The Spirit fills the universe with His immensity, but He dwells with the gift of substantial union only in the body which is His temple. Let us see how the Holy Scripture speaks of this great and momentous truth, and how it draws the comparison between the humanity of Jesus Christ and the church which is His mystical body.
"All these things one and the same Spirit worketh, dividing to every one according as He wills. For as the body is one, and hath many members; and all the members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body; so also is Christ. For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body; and in one Spirit have we all been made to drink."
"As many of you as have been baptised in Christ, have put on Christ." "The church of which Christ is the head, is His body, and the fullness of Him, who is filled all in all." J "Christ is the head of the church: He is the Saviour of His body. Christ loved the church and delivered Himself up for it, that He might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life ; that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle. Because we are members of His body, of His flesh and His bones." "In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead corporally: and you are filled in Him, who is the head of all principality and power. Buried with Him in baptism, in whom also you are risen again by the faith of the operation of God."
These passages of Holy Scripture confine the gifts of redeeming grace, according to the ordinary economy of salvation, to union with the body of which Christ is the head, whence pardon and life flow. In this body the Holy Spirit . dwells; and by His energy the fallen children of Adam are adopted into this body, and by regeneration in baptism put on Christ, and are joined to His life-giving humanity. The Holy Ghost is the agent in this work. He is the worker of regeneration. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." This union to the humanity of Christ makes the regenerate a member of the body of Christ, and so "partaker of the divine nature." There is, therefore, a likeness between the body of Christ which He took of Mary in hypostatic union with His divinity, and the mystical body which of many human members is made one by vital union with Him.
We have seen how the eternal Spirit had a special care of the sacred humanity of the Word Incarnate. It was conceived by His operation in the womb of His immaculate Mother. It was anointed by the special and infused gifts of the seven-fold Spirit. So when He came to Nazareth after His temptation, under the guidance of the same Spirit, He entered the synagogue, and, opening the inspired prophecy, He read these words of Himself: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, wherefore He hath anointed me, to preach the Gospel to the poor He hath sent me, to heal the contrite of heart, to preach deliverance to the captives, and sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bound, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of reward. And when all eyes were fixed upon Him, He began to say to them: This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." These words are to be understood in a literal sense, as they were directly applied by our Lord Himself. In the nature which He assumed He was anointed by the Holy Ghost, both by the substantial union of the human nature with the Word, and also by the accidental unction by which all gifts were poured upon His humanity. Thus says the prophet: "The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him: the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of fortitude, the Spirit of knowledge and of godliness. And He shall be filled with the Spirit of the fear of the Lord." "So St. Peter tells how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power." As the Son of man He was anointed and sent to the work of redemption.
