Page:Meditations For Every Day In The Year.djvu/305

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Holy Ghost. Learn to appreciate these fruits, and beg God to make you acquainted with them. Remember the admonition of St. Paul, " If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit., (Gal. v. 25.) The Holy Ghost cannot exist in our souls without displaying Himself in our external actions.

III. One of the principal dispositions requisite for our receiving the Holy Ghost, is to cherish a pure intention of serving God in all things, for His own sake, and not from worldly respects; " for," as the Wise Man says, " the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee from the deceitful., (Wis. i. 5.) Endeavor, therefore, to please God in all things, and conform yourself to the discipline requisite for your calling or situation, and do not suffer this conformity to be an effort of the exterior man only, but sanctify it with purity of intention.

SATURDAY.

The Life which the Holy Ghost Inspired the First Christians to Lead.

I. " They were persevering in the doctrine of the Apostles, and in the communication of the breaking of bread, and in prayers." (Acts ii. 42.) By these three means is our spiritual life preserved and nourished: 1. By hearing or reading the word of God. 2. By frequenting the sacraments, and particularly the sacrament of the altar. 3. By continued prayer. These were the means that the first Christians employed to increase in virtue and perfection, and by these alone can you hope to emulate their example.

II. They lived in common. "All they that believed were together, and had all things common." (Acts ii. 44.)