1. We have taken it for granted that God then is present somehow
in the soul by grace. We have now to consider what sort of a
presence this really is. Do we mean absolutely that God the Holy
Ghost, is truly in the soul Himself, or do we, by some metaphor or
vague expression, mean that He is merely exerting Himself there in
some new and especial way? Perhaps it is only that by means of the
sevenfold gifts He has got a tighter hold of us and can bring us
more completely under the sweet dominion of His will. All that is
true, but all that is not enough, for we do absolutely mean what
we say when we declare that by grace the Holy Spirit of God is
present within the soul. Scripture is exceedingly full of the
truth of this and is always insisting on this presence of the Holy
Ghost. St. Paul, especially, notes it over and over again, and in
his epistle to the Romans repeats it in very forcible language:
"But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if so be that the
spirit of God dwell in you" (Romans 8.9), and he goes on in that
same chapter to imply that this presence is a part of grace.
2. To some it will seem curious to find that the Fathers of the
Church in earliest ages were not only convinced of the fact of
this presence, but appealed triumphantly to it as accepted even by
heretics. When, in the early days, a long controversy raged as to
whether the Holy Ghost was really God or not, the Fathers argued
that since this indwelling of the Spirit was acknowledged on all
hands, and since it was proper to God only to dwell in the heart
of man, the only possible conclusion was that the Holy Ghost was
Divine. The value of the argument is not here in question, but it
is interesting to find that this presence was so generally
believed in as part of the Christian Faith. In the acts of the
martyrs, too, there are frequent references to this, as when St.
Lucy declared to the judge that the Spirit of God dwelt in her,
and that her body was in very truth the temple and shrine of God.
Again, Eusebius relates in his history that Leonidas, the father
of Origen, used to kneel by the bedside of the sleeping boy and
devoutly and reverently kiss his breast as the tabernacle wherein
God dwelt. The child in his innocence and grace is indeed the
fittest home on earth for God.
3. This presence, then, of God in the soul is a real, true
presence, as real and as true as the presence of Our Lord Himself
in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. We look on all that
mystery as very wonderful, and indeed it is, that day by day we
can be made one with God the Son by receiving His Body and Blood;
we know the value to be got out of visits to His hidden presence,
the quiet and calm peace such visits produce in our souls; yet so
long as we are in a state of grace the same holds true of the Holy
Spirit within us. We are not indeed made one with the Holy Ghost
in a substantial union such as united together in the Sacred
Incarnation God and man; nor is there any overpowering of our
personality so that it is swamped by a Divine Person, but we
retain it absolutely. The simplest comparison is our union with
Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist, wherein we receive Him really and
truly and are made partakers of His divinity. By grace, then, we
receive really and truly God the Holy Ghost and are made partakers
of His divinity. If, then, we genuflect to the tabernacle in which
the Blessed Sacrament is reserved and treat our Communions as the
most solemn moments of our day, then equally we must hold in
reverence every simple soul in a state of grace, the souls of
others and our own.