So what are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit? Where do they come from and what do they mean? So the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord.
So they originally are taken from the book of Isaiah, which reads from Isaiah chapter 11 verses 1 and 2, a shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, a branch shall grow out of its roots. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord."So most of these gifts are mentioned in that scripture passage. They're also taken from St. Thomas Aquinas, who writes about the gifts of the Holy Spirit in great length. And these three points about the significance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit are taken from the Catechism, number 1831, and also drawn from the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. And St. Thomas Aquinas said that the significance of the gifts are that they sustain the moral life, and they complete and perfect the virtues. So, St. Thomas wrote quite a bit about the virtues, especially the virtues of faith, hope, and love, as well as the cardinal virtues and other virtues. And he said that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were needed because we can't live a virtuous life without the help of God. We need the Holy Spirit's gifts to be able to become a virtuous person. good, virtuous people. So the gifts of the Holy Spirit allow us to become, what the catechism says, docile, or students of the Spirit. So the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, some of them have very similar meanings. Wisdom, understanding, and knowledge may be confused as meaning somewhat of the same thing, but they're a little bit different. The gift of wisdom refers to the fact that we can think deeply about something. The depth allows us to make certain decisions. Understanding refers to our ability to be able to be aware and open to what others think and feel. We can have compassion for others, putting ourselves in other people's shoes. Knowledge is about information, but a little bit more than that. How do we look at information and make good decisions or understanding the meaning of information? That's a gift of knowledge. So understanding we might call compassion. information in plus for knowledge and that depth for wisdom. Counsel, also somewhat similar, is also called, sometimes, right judgment. because we can make good decisions if we have this gift of counsel. We can know what is right and what is wrong. Fortitude, which could also be referred to as courage, is that ability to resist fear and overcome obstacles by being courageous and strong. Piety and fear of the Lord, also very similar to each other. Piety is also called... Sometimes reverence. This is that ability to worship God, the gift that we have to place our reliance upon God in prayer and worship. Fear of the Lord sounds a little scary, but it's not as if we're afraid of God. It's also referred to as wonder and awe. We can be in awe of God, in awe of God's creation, if we have this gift of the fear of the Lord. St. Thomas Aquinas talked about it as being similar to the fear of separation that a child feels for their parents. so you'll often see maybe young children or babies crying when their parents are leaving them. This is very similar. If we have this fear of the Lord, we're afraid of losing our God. We're afraid of being separated from God. So we feel a wonder and awe of God and want to always be with Him. So those are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Of course, this is popularly known as the effects of the sacrament of confirmation. Confirmation gives us the gifts of the Holy Spirit, completes baptism in which these gifts were initially distributed through the water and the oil. So just a quick tutorial on what the gifts of the Holy Spirit are, are different, where they come from, of course the