The Spirit (with the Father and the Son) is the origin and support of all creation.

The Spirit breathed by God into human nostrils instills life. The Spirit incarnates and stamps in human beings the image of God.

Man has been created in the image and likeness of God. The Trinity in some way is already present in the work of the creation of man.

HUMANITY IS SPIRITUAL BY THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT AND IN THE SPIRIT

Man is alive due to the current action of the Holy Spirit. Thus each human is "spiritual," a "life in the Spirit."

By grace, the Holy Spirit belongs to the "spiritual" structure of each person. In this sense the Holy Spirit is "the soul of the human soul."

The Holy Spirit is always a gift, a grace given to humanity by God the Father. How? By making man capable of seeing God (likeness). By giving him a desire to communion-vision with God. It is the Holy Spirit who acts to allow humanity to freely respond to the free gift of God.

THE SPIRIT IMPRINTS THE IMAGE OF GOD IN HUMANITY

Man is made in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26; 2:7). Each person is the image of God. But the true image of God is Christ (Col 1:15-18). Humanity is thus the image of Christ, who, in turn is the incarnate image of the Father.

Humanity, despite its likeness to God, is in itself different from God. When people try to organize their existence on the false image of their unconditional autonomy, they think of themselves as gods unto themselves and think of God as a projection of themselves.

Jesus reveals that only in the encounter with the triune God can each human being achieve self-understanding as a person in the dimension of sonship, in which the secret of reciprocity and of grace is found. Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, of being someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession, and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. He is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead (CCC 357).

If the human individual is structured in this fashion, it is because Christ is like this. Everything that human beings are, derives from their nature as images of God in Christ.

The image of each person came out of God's hands pure, was disfigured  by sin, but has been restored by Christ with his death and resurrection. Redemption, in fact, means restoration of the divine image of humanity. The Church, the sacraments, and disciplines aim to transform people into the image of Christ, to

transform them more into the "new creature" in Christ. He is the savior  of humanity because he frees from sin and perfects each person's image as a symbol of God.

The Holy Spirit stamps the image of God in each individual. He is the "iconographer" (painter) of the image of God in each human because, with Christ as model, he paints the living image of the Redeemer in each person and thus Christifies the faithful. God becomes present in each individual through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit; each human is the image of God because each  is called to communion with God, and the Spirit is the one who causes the communion. Humanity since creation is called to this communion, which means "to be called to the image of God" through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. (Participation in the divine nature-holiness of God).

The visible world is created for man, therefore the world is given to man. That same man in his humanity receives as a gift a special "image and likeness" to God. This means not only rationality and freedom as constitutive properties of human nature, but also, from the very beginning, the capacity to have a personal

relationship with God, the capacity to have a covenant, a call to friendship and participation on the part of man.

CONCLUSION

God as Spirit is not only close to this world but present in it and giving it life from within.

The truth about each person: to be made in the image of the Trinity, able to receive God, open to relationships with oneself, others, and God.

This means that each person is not free unless living in communion with God. In this divine encounter human existence experiences envelopment in an unconditional love. The Holy Spirit is the resting place of human freedom, the interpreter of hope inscribed in the heart.

In this mystery, humanity discovers that being called to freedom is the great gift of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit - accomplished in the exercise of charity. Authentic human dignity is not a contractual object but a free choice between the truth of God and the false affirmations of history. The dignity of this life is linked not only to its beginning, to the fact that it comes from God, but also to its final end, to its destiny of fellowship with God in knowledge and love of him. Become a true man and see how you will find the true God.

To live in the Spirit is to welcome life as a gift and to make room for the life of others. Even minimizing this relationship is an attack on the vital integrity of human beings.

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Last Updated: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 09:30:39 PM