A Meditation on the Paraclete from Cardinal Newman

From today's commentary in DailyGospel.org. Pretty intense meditation.

My God, I adore thee, O Eternal Paraclete, the light and the life of my soul. Thou mightest have been content with merely giving me good suggestions, inspiring grace and helping from without. Thou mightest thus have led me on, cleansing me with thy inward virtue, when I changed my state from this world to the next. But in thine infinite compassion thou hast from the first entered into my soul, and taken possession of it. Thou hast made it thy temple. Thou dwellest in me by thy grace in an ineffable way, uniting me to thyself and the whole company of angels and saints. Nay, as some have held, thou art present in me, not only by thy grace, but by thy eternal substance, as if, though I did not lose my own individuality, yet in some sense I was even here absorbed in God. Nay—as though thou hadst taken possession of my very, body, this earthly, fleshly, wretched tabernacle—even my body is thy temple (1Cor 6,19). O astonishing, awful truth! I believe it, I know it, O my God!

O my God, can I sin when thou art so intimately with me? Can I forget who is with me, who is in me? Can I expel a Divine Inhabitant by that which he abhors more than anything else, which is the one thing in the whole world which is offensive to him, the only thing which is not his?... My God, I have a double security against sinning; first the dread of such a profanation of all thou art to me in thy very presence; and next because I do trust that that presence will preserve me from sin... I will call on thee when tried and tempted... Through thee I will never forsake thee.

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