When the Holy Spirit descends on us, He never enters our hearts unaccompanied. He always brings with him his sevenfold gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord. According to X. Ducros, “a gift is sanctifying and ordered towards the perfecting of its recipient”. Hence, the gifts that the Holy Spirit bestows on those who are completely docile to his sanctifying action are intended to make holy the individual per se.
A further development of the theology of the Holy Spirit’s gifts has been manifested by the valid contribution of St Gregory the Great. For the latter, it is the whole people of God who are the recipient of the sanctifying gifts of the Holy Spirit. Thanks to this Western Church doctor, we have a harmonious blending of both the personal and ecclesial dimension of these gifts.
“For by means of fear we rise to piety; through piety to knowledge; through knowledge we gain fortitude; from fortitude we come to counsel; with counsel we progress towards understanding and with understanding we move towards wisdom, and these upward stages, through the sevenfold grace of the Spirit, the door to eternal life is finally opened to us” (Sermons on the Eucharist, II.7.7). What is interesting in St Gregory’s theological analysis is the way one gift leads to another until all gifts lead the recipient to that eternal union with God.
The eminent Eastern representative on the subject, St Maximus the Confessor, chose the same path undertaken by St Gregory so as to elucidate how the human person can attain that everlasting rapport with God. “These spiritual gifts work in particular ways: by fear, we reject evil; with fortitude, we do good; with counsel, we are able to discern what is against us; through piety we gain a genuine knowledge of what we rightly should do; with knowledge, we come to an actual understanding and perception of the virtues, that is, of what is divinely right; understanding brings a transport of the whole soul towards the things that are known; and wisdom leads to that union with God that is wholly beyond comprehension although, in those who are found worthy of it, the desire for it already becomes the fulfillment” (Various Chapters, III.38).
The gifts of the Holy Spirit are interrelated to one another. No gift is completely and essentially isolated from the rest of the group. By means of these gifts we are given flexibility and the necessary power to follow the way the Holy Spirit shows us in our lives. Thanks to them, we are greatly empowered to reach that noble existential goal that our being craves: holiness. In his encyclical on the Holy Spirit, Pope Leo XIII arrives at the conclusion that “with these gifts… the Holy Spirit encourages us and supports us on our way to experience the beatitudes of which we learn in the Gospel”.
Let us ask the Holy Spirit to fill us with his impulses, his powerful gifts, so that He will lead us, both as individuals as well as God’s people, to bear witness to Christ via Spirit-filled actions that foster faith, hope and love amid the joys and sorrows of the people of Malta and Gozo.
Fr Mario Attard
OFM Cap
San Gwann