Whitsunday. The Gospel. John 14. v. 23. Tuesday Meditation Plaine Path-way to Heaven ~ THOMAS HILL 1634

 

Tuesday Meditation

His feast being the Feast of the Holy Ghost, and the proper office and effect of the Holy Ghost being to give grace, it may be called the Feast of Grace. Therefore this Meditation shall be of the grace and gifts of the Holy Ghost.First: what thing grace is. Secondly: in what manner it is given, on the part of the Holy Ghost, the giver thereof. Thirdly: upon what preparation or disposition on our part, who are the receivers.Of the two first in this Meditation, of the third in the next.

For the first: Grace is a quality or habit inherent in our souls, given us by the Holy Ghost, moving and inciting us to all goodness and diverting us from all badness. This is done for the love of God and a desire to enjoy Him, He being infinite Good and the supreme ultimate end whereunto we are created and ordained.

This, if it be not a perfect definition of grace, yet it may pass for a description thereof. And because the motive for which we are moved to good and diverted from bad is the love of God, grace may be called the love of God towards us, as well as our love towards Him.

For there is this difference between our love and the love of God: we love things because they are already good and pleasing unto us, but God, in loving us, makes us good and consequently makes us love Him again. For “we love not God first, but He loved us first” (cf. 1 John 4:10), and in loving us, makes us to love Him again.

This grace or love of God towards us is the life of our soul. For even as our body is dead when the soul is departed out of it (which gave it life and motion), so is our soul dead when it is bereaved of grace. For grace, being that which moves and inclines us to goodness and diverts us from badness, and sin (moving and inclining us to depravity and badness, and diverting us from goodness) being quite contrary — and the nature of contraries being one to expel the other — sin expels grace.

By reason whereof, such sins as are of the greater sort (and not such as for the littleness thereof we call venial) we call mortal or deadly, because they expel grace and are the spiritual death of the soul. And as a body without a soul, being dead, will soon putrefy and stink so that no man can almost endure it, so does a soul, being dead by mortal sin, putrefy and stink before Almighty God and His Angels and Saints — especially our good Angel that is always attending upon us.

Of this putrefaction and stink the Prophet David, speaking not only in his own person but in the person of every sinner, says thus (Psalm 38:5): “My wounds [to wit, of sin] have putrefied and are corrupted, and stink through my folly.” And this not only before God and His Angels and Saints in heaven, but even to good people here on earth.

For if, according to St. Paul, the good by their good example are a good odour of Christ, then sinners by their ill example are an ill odour. Which is so true that some holy people here on earth, knowing by revelation from God the secret enormous sins of some in whose presence they have been, have withal sensibly smelt a horrible and noisome stink, which they were hardly able to endure.

Thus much concerning Grace, the life of our soul.Now, in what manner it is given.