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The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit is an enumeration of seven spiritual gifts originating with patristic authors, later elaborated by five intellectual virtues and four other groups of ethical characteristics. They are: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord (wonder).
Contents
Book of Isaiah
The source of the enumeration of "seven" gifts is often given as Book of Isaiah 11:1-2, where the Biblical passage refers to the characteristics of the awaited Messiah, genealogical descendant of the "David" identified by Christianity as Jesus Christ. The passage uses the term "Spirit of the Lord".
In the Hebrew Masoretic text the "Spirit of the Lord" is described with six characteristics (wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, fear of the Lord), and then the last characteristic (fear of the Lord) is mentioned a second time.
In the Greek Septuagint the first mention of the fear of the Lord is translated as "spirit of [...] godliness" (πνεῦμα [...] εὐσεβείας).
The seven Latin terms are then:
- sapientia
- intellectus
- consilium
- fortitudo
- scientia
- pietas
- timor Domini.
In Christianity
The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit is one of several works in Christian devotional literature which follow a scheme of seven. Others include the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer, the beatitudes, the seven last words from the cross, the seven deadly sins, and the seven virtues.
The seven gifts were often represented as doves in medieval texts and especially figure in depictions of the Tree of Jesse which shows the Genealogy of Jesus. For Saint Thomas Aquinas, the dove signifies by its properties each gift of the Holy Spirit.
Roman Catholicism
Although the New Testament does not refer to Isaiah 11:1-2 regarding these gifts, Roman Catholicism teaches that initiates receive them at Baptism, and that they are strengthened at Confirmation, so that one can proclaim the truths of the faith:
"The reception of the sacrament of Confirmation is necessary for the completion of baptismal grace."[88] For "by the sacrament of Confirmation, [the baptized] are more perfectly bound to the Church and are enriched with a special strength of the Holy Spirit. Hence they are, as true witnesses of Christ, more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith by word and deed."[89]The seven gifts of Holy Spirit
The Catechism of the Catholic Church lists the seven gifts as follows:
Relation to the Virtues
Saint Thomas Aquinas says that four of these gifts (wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and counsel) direct the intellect, while the other three gifts (fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord) direct the will toward God.
In some respects, the gifts are similar to the virtues, but a key distinction is that the virtues operate under the impetus of human reason (prompted by grace), whereas the gifts operate under the impetus of the Holy Spirit; the former can be used when one wishes, but the latter operate only when the Holy Spirit wishes. In the case of Fortitude, the gift has, in Latin and English, the same name as a virtue, which it is related to but from which it must be distinguished.
In Summa Theologica II.II, Thomas Aquinas asserts the following correspondences between the seven Capital Virtues and the seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit:
To the virtue of temperance, no Gift is directly assigned; but the gift of fear can be taken as such, since fear drives somebody to restrict himself from forbidden pleasures.
The Rev. Brian Shanley contrasts the gifts to the virtues this way: "What the gifts do over and above the theological virtues (which they presuppose) is dispose the agent to the special promptings of the Holy Spirit in actively exercising the life of the virtues; the gifts are necessary for the perfect operations of the virtues, especially in the face of our human weakness and in difficult situations."