Cultivating the Highest Spirituality

There is a further very great advantage that will result from this awareness of the Church: namely, the best type of spirituality, nourished by the reading of Sacred Scripture and the Church's holy Fathers and Doctors, and by everything else that can foster this awareness in the Church: systematic catechetical instruction, an active participation in the sacred liturgy-an incomparable school of spirituality, with its words, signs and prayers-fervent, silent meditation on heavenly truths, and determined effort to cultivate the prayer of contemplation.

Indeed, the cultivation of Christian perfection must still be regarded as the richest source of the Church's spiritual strength. It is the means, so peculiarly its own, whereby the Church basks in the sunlight of Christ's Spirit. It is the Church's natural and necessary way of expressing its religious and social activity. It is the Church's surest defense and the cause of its constant renewal of strength amid the difficulties of the secular world.