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In the last issue of Restoration, I introduced the traditional understanding of the seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. I wrote about how these gifts are given to us so that we live, not just a good human life, but a divine life: life in Christ, as Christ, for Christ, and with Christ.
I explained how each of these gifts heals something broken in our fallen humanity, each takes a human virtue—a way of being a good human being—and elevates it to the divine level, and how each bears fruit in empowering us to live the life of Christ, as embodied in the Beatitudes.
I went into all that last month, and then talked about the first three gifts—Fear of the Lord, Fortitude, and Piety. This month, we’ll look at the last four gifts.
Counsel
Counsel is the guidance of the Spirit to do all that leads to our salvation and the fulfillment of God’s plan with confidence and assurance. It is a gift we can exercise day by day, moment by moment—what is the plan, God? What are we to do, now? And now? And again, now?
Counsel is all about knowing, by the power of the Spirit, God’s will for us right now. It is a matter of seeing the immediate useful thing to move towards our goal—not the various limited goals of human life—but that of God. As such, it perfects the virtue of prudence, that wonderful human virtue by which we see and do the next right thing.
Counsel heals the wound of stupidity regarding spiritual things and lack of common sense in matters pertaining to the spiritual life. It is a gift which heightens our sensitivity to the Spirit, here and now.
Many of the saints, as you can see when you come to know their stories, exercised this gift in abundance, doing things that by human reckoning might seem foolish, but which bore fruit beyond their own capacities.
The beatitude that corresponds to the gift of counsel is ‘blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” Mercy is love that is moved by the need of the other, that pours itself out for the good of, for the use and help of, the other.
Counsel is all about making useful decisions, choices that will be profitable in obtaining the goal. So it bears fruit in lives of mercy, where we dispose all the goods at our disposal to wherever they are most needed, according to the will of God.
And of course the reward here is to receive his mercy. As we dispose all things in our life according to the needs of others and God’s will, we experience his total disposition of himself towards us, his own mercy, and we delight in it.
Knowledge
Knowledge is the gift of the Spirit that enables us to look at created things correctly. By knowledge, the Spirit gives us a sure judgment about all creatures in the light of faith, and their proper use.
Above all, by knowledge we come to see all human beings and most especially ourselves in God’s light. To see ourselves as we truly are, as God sees us. Not horrible, not evil, not wretched – no, indeed! God made us, and we are good. It is by knowledge that we see this truly, and see it in other people, too, even the most wretched or broken.
This gift heals the wound of ignorance in us, and perfects the natural human knowledge we attain by our own intellectual abilities. Divine knowledge picks up where human knowledge leaves off and reveals all creatures to us in ways our own minds could never attain.
The beatitude that flows from this gift is ‘blessed are those who mourn.’ As we see our lives in the light of the Holy Spirit, we see both our basic goodness, but because of that we see clearly how lamentable our brokenness and sin are.
No one cares if a cheap plastic mass-produced item gets broken or soiled, but we are disturbed if that happens to a precious heirloom. Well, you are more precious than a Ming vase or an original Rembrandt.
And so, the gift of knowledge leads us to mourn at our brokenness and at the brokenness of our brothers and sisters. And the reward of this beatitude is to be comforted.
That is, we will see our life restored to its goodness, and from this we can have hope for all our brothers and sisters, for all people. The Spirit convicts us of the power of God to make all things new, and from this conviction we have a deep cosmic tenderness, a gentle, loving spirit towards all creatures. All of this comes from the gift of knowledge
Understanding
This gift pertains to the mysteries of faith, healing the darkness of our minds concerning God. The light of the Spirit shines in our minds to illuminate Scripture, sacraments, the dogmas of Church, so that we not only have a good human understanding of them, but we also come to know them somewhat as God knows them.
This gift perfects the virtue of faith, which is itself a gift from God, which illumines our minds with a human knowledge of the truth of God. Now the Spirit shines divine light upon the truths of faith, so that we see them in depth.
This gift has nothing to do with theological education or natural intelligence. Some of the most penetrating theological verities I have ever heard were from people with little or no formal education. The Spirit is our teacher, really.
The beatitude which this gift engenders in us is “blessed are the pure in heart.” As we understand, as we know God more and more fully, we are enraptured by his beauty more and more.
Because of this, all the false goods (false gods) we were attracted by before and that corrupted our hearts, have nothing to offer us. The reward: purified vision, in which we see God in everything.
Wisdom
In this final gift of wisdom, the wound of folly is healed, and the infused virtue of charity is brought to completion. This is the divine flowering of charity in us.
By the Spirit’s gift of wisdom, we are conformed to God who is Wisdom Itself. The Logos, the Word who is Christ, is the uncreated Wisdom of God. The Spirit’s gift of wisdom gives us an intimacy with God in Christ.
By this gift, we come to experience God, as opposed to having knowledge or ideas about God.
This is the supreme grace of contemplative prayer. And by this intimacy, this interior conformity to love, we come to see all reality in the light of love. We come to know that the cause and explanation and source of everything is love, and that even evil and sin and the brokenness of creation is met by love at every turn.
Wisdom makes this not just words or ideas, but a living reality that we can taste. We speak of the dwelling of the Trinity in us by baptism. This is another way of describing the gift of wisdom.
The beatitude that flows from this is “blessed are the peacemakers.” Wisdom puts all things in order, and peace is the tranquility of God’s order. Love orders everything, and this is peace, which comes from our interior being and God’s life there.
Wisdom perfects all our relationships, and from this gift all our actions go towards establishing peace with others. And the reward is to be sons of God—identification with Christ, oneness with Christ, and through him, oneness with all humanity.
Conclusion
So, does all this sound pretty good? All of this is what we mean by “holiness,” by “divinization.” And it is offered to us in baptism, given to us in seed there. And everything we do in our spiritual lives—all the praying, the penances, the works of mercy, are to give these seeds of God’s life water, warmth, and light to grow by.
All of this is our home, our destiny, our true self. And the Holy Spirit, the very life of God, is given to us to bring us there, confirm us in it, and ultimately confer it upon us forever. Thank you, God! Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Holy Spirit. Amen.
The End
