@Sabé This raises a challenge: if the Spirit is inherently pure, how could it need cleansing?
Thank you for not repeating an argument that I already addressed. I will now address your question.
Only humans are made in God's image and after His likeness: God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness [...]
" (Gen. 1:26), and in
Gen. 1:27 it states that man was created by God in God's image and after His likeness.
In
Gen. 2:7, we read that God "breathed upon his (man's) face the breath of life". The act of having "breathed the breath of life upon" indicates
giving man something. In
Jn. 4:24, we read, "God is Spirit", and thus the "breath of life" in Gen. 2:7 is the breath of God which is the spiritual soul, the soul as life. It is the breath of the Spirit of God that becomes a living spirit
in man:
God's image and likeness (
Gen. 1:26-27). This wonderful thing which is a soul, a thing created by God to give man His image and likeness as an unquestionable sign of His Most Holy Paternity, shows signs of the qualities characteristic of Him Who creates it.
It is therefore intelligent, spiritual, free, immortal, reasons, and so on, like the Father Who created it. It is also the reason we speak, have morals, reason, judgement, and so on. Other animals don't. The soul is also, like God, eternal from the moment that it is created, whereas God is the Most Perfect Eternal Being, and thus has no beginning in time and will have no end. The soul is the lucid, intelligent, spiritual work of God.
The
soul is perfect when it originates from the divine thought and in the instant of its creation it is identical, for a thousandth of an instant, with the soul of the first man: a perfection which understands the Truth through free gift. A thousandth of an instant. Then, once it is formed, it is stained by
original sin. To make it clearer for you, I will say that it is as if God were pregnant with the soul which He creates and the creature, in being born, was wounded by an indelible mark. If the following is your understanding of what I've just said then you are correct:
While the soul is thought it is perfect. The creating thought lasts a thousandth of an instant. The thought then becomes actual fact and the fact is subject to the law brought about by Sin.
At bottom, what was
original sin? An act of disobedience. Adam and Eve
wanted to disobey the Father Creator, instigated to perform this act of lovelessness by the supreme Disobedient One, who became a demon by having refused loving obedience to the Supreme God.
Baptism, a sacrament instituted by Jesus in place of the baptism of John the Precursor, cancels out original sin, but it does not annul the toxin left to us by sin.
This toxin, or poison, lies hidden in our blood, and only a constant will on our part makes it unable to harm our spirit mortally. It is even easier to carry out a sacrifice, make an offering, or practice a work of mercy than to be obedient
constantly to the will of God. This presents itself to us minute by minute like water flowing and passing by, bringing other waves of water and, behind these, still others. And we are like fish immersed in the Will of God flowing over us. If we want to emerge from it, we die.
It is our vital element. Nor is there a drop of it which does not proceed from a loving purpose. Believe this.
Baptism contains in itself all the elements to lead you to holiness. It gives you
Grace, and whoever has Grace has everything. But there those who do not take Grace into account and cast it aside as a useless gift.
While Baptism cancels out the stain of original sin on our spiritual soul, we can still actively commit sins.
One sins when one consciously rebels against the order given by God and says: "I know that what I am doing is wrong. But I want to do it just the same." God is just. He cannot punish one who does the wrong thing thinking that he is doing the right one. He punishes those, who being able to tell Good from Evil, choose the latter and persist in it. Jesus also instituted the sacrament of
confession by giving the apostles and their successors authority to forgive and retain sins in God's name, because sins affect not only our physical bodies, but more importantly our spiritual soul. When we are forgiven for the sins we commit in God's name through His priests we receive Grace and purification of our soul through this sacrament of confession.
Grace is to possess the light, power, and wisdom of God in ourselves—that is, to possess intellectual likeness to God, the unmistakable sign of our filiation in God.
Without Grace, we would be little more than beasts, that act by instinct alone and, in reality, surpass us quite often in their way of acting.
Grace is thus a sublime gift, the greatest gift that the Father could give us. And He gives it to us freely, for His love as a Father, for us, is infinite, as He Himself is infinite. If we wanted to state all the attributes of Grace, it would require writing a long list of adjectives and nouns, and we would still not explain perfectly what this gift is.
Remember this alone:
Grace is to possess the Father, to live in the Father; Grace is to possess the Son, to enjoy the infinite merits of the Son, grace is to possess the Holy Spirit, to benefit from His seven gifts. Grace, in short, is to possess the one Triune God, and for our mortal person to be surrounded by the hosts of angels who worship Them in us.
A soul that loses Grace loses everything. The Father has created her to no avail; the Son has redeemed her to no avail; the Holy Spirit has infused his gifts into her to no avail, the Sacraments exist for her to no avail. She is dead. A rotten branch which, under the corrosive action of sin, becomes detached and falls from the tree of life and in the end rots in the mud.
If a soul were able to preserve herself as she is after Baptism and after Confirmation—that is, when she is literally soaked with Grace—that soul would be only a little less than God. Let this tell you all.
When we read the prodigies of God's saints, we are astonished. But, there is nothing to be astonished about.
His saints were creatures who possessed Grace; they were gods, therefore,
for Grace deifies you. Did Jesus not state in His Gospel that His followers would work the same prodigies as He did?
But to be His, it is necessary to live by His Life—that is, by the life of Grace.
If we wanted to, we could all be capable of prodigies
—that is, of holiness. Indeed, God would like us to be, for that would mean that
His Sacrifice had been crowned by victory and that He had really torn us away from the empire of the Evil One, banishing him to his Hell, and riveting hell's mouth shut with an irremovable stone, and placing upon it the throne of His Mother, the Only One Who kept Her heel upon the dragon, who was powerless to do Her harm.
Not all the souls in Grace possess grace in the same measure. Not because the Holy Trinity infuses it to different degrees, but
because we manage to preserve it in ourselves in different ways. Mortal sin destroys Grace; venial sin causes it to crumble; imperfections make it anemic. There are souls, not entirely bad, that languish in spiritual consumption because, by their inertia, which spurs them to commit continual acts of imperfection, they increasingly thin Grace out, turning it into a most slender thread, a fading little flame. When it should be a fire, an intense, lovely, purifying blaze.
The world is collapsing because Grace is collapsing in almost all souls and languishing in the others.
Grace yields different fruits to the extent that it is more or less alive in our hearts. The richer a terrain is in elements and the more it is helped by the sun, the water, and the air currents, the more fertile it is. There are sterile, meager plots of land which are sprinkled with water to no avail, warmed by the sun, traversed by the winds. The same holds for souls. There are souls that with all application take on vital elements and thus manage to benefit one hundred percent from the effects of Grace. The vital elements are
to live according to God's Law—chaste, merciful, humble, loving God and one's neighbor; it is to live by 'living' prayer. Then Grace grows, flourishes, sinks in deep roots, and rises up into the tree of eternal life. Then the Holy Spirit, like a sun, inundates you with His seven rays, His seven gifts; then the Son, penetrates you with the divine rain of His Blood; then the Father looks at you with pleasure, seeing His likeness in you; then Mary caresses you, clasping you to Her breast, which bore Jesus, along with Her little children who are lesser, but very, very dear to Her Heart; then the nine angelical choirs crown your soul, the temple of God, and sing the sublime 'Gloria';
then your death is Life and your Life is blessedness in God's Kingdom.
There's more to be said about our spiritual soul, but this'll do for now.
