“Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” – 1 Corinthians 3:16
The second part of this statement might be shocking to you: God the Father sent Jesus to save us and prepare The Way (John 14:6) to heaven for us; He sent the Holy Spirit to dwell inside us and become a piece of heaven here on Earth. We who are baptized and in a state of grace are blessed with the divine indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This means that God lives deep within our hearts. St. Paul taught that “God’s Spirit dwells in you” (1 Corinthians 3:16). Likewise, St. Peter taught that through Christ we are “participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). In other words, God’s nature becomes a part of us.
Through the grace of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in a mysterious way, we can become like God: “The Word became flesh to make us ‘partakers of the divine nature’: ‘For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.’ ‘For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.’ ‘The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods’” (CCC 460)
St. Augustine taught, “we become gods not by nature, but by grace.” We have the ability to be “partakers of the divine nature” through love made manifest in our obedience to God: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth…You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you” (John 14:15-17). Truly–and this is crucial–this is no work of our own, but only by God’s grace through the power of the Holy Spirit who accomplishes this work within us: “The Spirit of the Lord…accomplishes the sanctification and divinization of man” (St. Pope John Paul II).
Come Holy Spirit, may I abide in You and You in me. Let Your Holy Presence possess my whole being so that I might bear Your Presence in the world.