Theological Foundations new file

108 Theological Foundations self. The world loves everything that flatters the senses, and rejects the Spirit of Christ and the matters of God. The Spirit of Christ is the Truth, and the spirit of the world is a lie. There exists a contrast and conflict between the Spirit of Christ and the spirit of the world: their goals, inten- tions and attributes are different, therefore there is no reconciliation between them. “I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him” (Jn 14, 16-17). Once the world did not receive Christ, hence today it does not receive His Spirit. 33 People are attached to the foolishness of this world, to its comforts, to themselves; they do not have the courage to follow God’s inspirations and His voice which warns, admonishes, and impels them to give up and divest themselves of earthly attachments, to deny themselves. This voice calls upon them to be zealous in the service of the Lord and to reform their lives, but people do not listen to it. They oppose the truth they already recognize. They would like the Spirit as Comforter to dwell in them, but they do not want to give up the consolations offered by this world. This moves them away from the Spirit and makes them unwor- thy. Herein lies the reason why so very few attain perfection. Many hear the voice of the Lord, but they do not follow it, because what He demands is difficult and inconvenient for them. 34 Our resistance to God’s grace is disastrous for us because it is a source of confusion and spiritual discouragement. Meanwhile, we could attain a high degree of holiness and receive many gifts and graces if only we surrendered ourselves faithfully to the Holy Spirit. We experience moments in our lives when we are visited by the Holy Spirit and such moments decide our fate. There is nothing more important than to be able to recognize these moments. They require that we reject the spirit of this world and the flesh in us, for it is only then that we can become vessels of the Holy Spirit. “The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2, 14). 35