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Dear catholic.com visitors: This Catholic Answers website, with all its free resources, is the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices. We receive no funding from the institutional Church and rely entirely on your generosity to sustain this website with trustworthy, accessible content. If every visitor this month donated $1, catholic.com would be fully funded for an entire year. If you’ve never made a gift, now is the time. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar this week only. Thanks and God bless.
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Q&A

Are we born with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit?

Question:

My RCIA instructor stated, "Jesus says that we are all born with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit." Where is that supported?

Answer:

We are not born with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “The human body shares in the dignity of ‘the image of God’: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit” (CCC 364, emphasis added).

Perhaps your instructor was speaking of baptismal birth: “Baptism not only purifies from all sins, but also makes the neophyte ‘a new creature,’ an adopted son of God, who has become . . . a temple of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1265).

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