Redeemed by Christ and made a new creature by the Holy Spirit, man is called upon to love the whole of creation and see it as given to him in trust by the Creator. He receives all in gratitude and uses it in a spirit of poverty and freedom. Revealing this plan of shared-life, Christ asserts the divine origin of love and its availability to all. This divine love is the essential element in human perfection and world transformation. If men will accept this proffered love, their hopes for universal brotherhood will not be in vain.
Divine love is at work always, even in the ordinary circumstances of daily life.
Through him the Holy Spirit of Love is implanted in us and we are wonderfully endowed. There is in all this combined divine and human activity carried out in freedom a gradual integration of earthly resources into human life so that humankind at the end with Christ and its Head will become the perfect sacrifice of praise to God and the ultimate union will be achieved. In the sacrament of the Eucharist Christ left us himself as sacrificed Victim to be both the pledge of our future union with God and food for the journey. The Eucharist in its communion of God with men and women is already a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. Earthly progress is not to be equated with the gradual development of union with God which is the kingdom of God, but earthly progress is, nevertheless, a vital concern insofar as it can contribute to a better ordering of the kind of human society in which spiritual values may flourish. 39b.