Friday, May 29, 2015

Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit - A Gift for Each Day


Come Holy Spirit

Penetcost Sunday leads off a daily discernment of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. (See 'A Gift for Each Day' for full post from Vultus Christi)

Pentecost Sunday: Wisdom
Monday: Understanding
Tuesday: Counsel
Wednesday: Fortitude
Thursday: Knowledge
Friday: Piety
Saturday: Fear of the Lord


The Gift of Wisdom sets one seeking for the things that will make us truly happy, not with a fleeting, deceptive happiness, but with the happiness that comes from being in right relationship with God. 

The Gift of Understanding opens the mind and heart to the splendor of the truth. 

The Gift of Counsel enables one to make choices in harmony with the providence of the Father, the mind of Christ, and the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

The Gift of Fortitude aligns one’s trust in the strength that comes from the grace of Christ.

The Gift of Knowledge is a way of seeing to the core of things. It is that occasional pulling back of the corner of the veil that gives one just a fleeting glance into the inscrutable mysteries of God.

The Gift of Piety unites the soul to the inner dispositions of Christ delivering one from that oppressive sense of obligation that makes all things burdensome and tedious. 

The Gift of Fear of the Lord is the antidote to pride and the beginning of the humility by which the soul arrives at union with God. One graced with Fear of the Lord knows that, hidden in the secret of the Face of Christ and assumed into His filial and priestly prayer to the Father, there is nothing to fear.