“These are the words of the holy Council of Trent, in which the Catholic Church infallibly teaches that without an interior movement of the indwelling Holy Spirit no act of the soul can be meritorious of heaven.  This doctrine, embodying the plain sense of Holy Scripture and the unbroken teaching of the Church in all ages, bases human justification on an interior impulse of the Third Person of the Divine Trinity.  This impulse precedes the soul’s acts of faith, hope, and love, and of sorrow for sin:  the first stage in the supernatural career, then, is the entering of the Holy Spirit into the inner life of the soul.  The process of justification begins by the divine life of the indwelling Spirit taking up into itself the human life of the soul.

“Nor is this to the detriment of man’s liberty, but rather to its increase.  The infinite independence of God and his divine liberty are shared by man exactly in proportion as he partakes of God’s life in the communication of the Holy Spirit.

“If it be asked how the Holy Spirit is received, the answer is, Sacramentally.  ’Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.’  As man by nature is a being of both outer and inner life, so, when made a new man by the Spirit of God and elevated into a supernatural state, God deals with him by both outer and inner methods.  The Holy Spirit is received by the sacramental grace of baptism and renewed by the other sacraments; also in prayer, vocal or mental, hearing sermons, reading the Scriptures or devout books, and on occasions, extraordinary or ordinary, in the course of daily life; and when once received every act of the soul that merits heaven is done by the inspiration of that Divine Guide dwelling within us.  Even though unperceived, though indistinguishable from impulses of natural virtue, though imperceptibly multiplied as often as the instants are, yet each movement of heaven-winning virtue, and especially love, hope, faith, and repentance, is made because the Holy Spirit has acted upon the soul in an efficacious manner.

“It is not to induce a strained outlook for the particular cases of the action of the Spirit of God on us, or the signs of it, that these words are written.  The sacraments, prayer and holy reading, and hearing sermons and instructions, are the plain, external instruments and accompaniments of the visitations of God, and are sufficient landmarks for the journey of the soul, unless it be led in a way altogether extraordinary.  And apart from these external marks, no matter how you watch for God, his visitations are best known by their effects; it is after the cause has been placed, perhaps some considerable time after, that the faith, hope, love, or sorrow becomes perceptibly increased—­always excepting extraordinary cases.  Not to ‘resist the Spirit’ is the first duty.  Fidelity to the divine guidance, yielding one’s self up lovingly to the impulses of virtue as they gently claim control of our thoughts—­this is the simple duty.