Jesus promises to give us the Holy Spirit. Along with the Father and the Son,
the Holy Spirit dwells in the hearts of all who are in the state of grace.
Indeed, it is right to say that, when the Holy Spirit comes to us, he bestows sanctifying
grace on the soul, which includes the three theological virtues of faith, hope and love.
At the same time, the Holy Spirit also brings further and higher gifts to us, which enable us to
act in a higher mode than the theological virtues. Following the text of chapter 11 of the prophet
Isaiah, the Christian tradition identifies seven of these, which it calls Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
These seven gifts dispose us to be inspired and moved by the Holy Spirit himself.
What are these gifts of the Holy Spirit, and how are they different from the theological virtues?
A virtue is a stable disposition of soul. That means that, if you possess a virtue,
you can use it at will. A virtuoso singer has the ready capacity to sing beautifully whenever she
decides to do so. And it works something like the same way with the virtues. If you have a
virtue you’ve acquired by repeated action, like for example being truthful (which is a part of
the virtue of justice), you can engage in an act of that virtue – you can actually be truthful
by speaking the truth – at will, whenever you judge it to be the right place and time for it.
This is also true for the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. God supernaturally
infuses those virtues into the soul of every person who is in the state of sanctifying grace,
but it remains in a certain sense up to each person actually to use those virtues under the
promptings of God’s grace. If you have the virtue of charity, then you have a stable disposition
by which you yourself can act – for example, you really can make an act of love for God,
in a moment of prayer, or by doing some kindness for your neighbor.
In other words, you freely decide when to use or deploy your virtues,
when to make an act of virtue. You do this according to the best lights you have,
as you make a judgment about what is the right thing to do here and now.
In a certain sense, then, the free capacity to use a virtue is placed in our hands.
But the Christian tradition testifies that there is also the real possibility that God
might move you directly, in a higher way than this, according to a higher reason
than your mind can grasp, even when it is enlightened by the virtue of faith.
And here, we are in the realm of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Of course, every grace or gratuitous favor that God bestows on us can be called a gift.
But as we’re now using it, the generic term “gift” has come to have a special meaning:
it refers to a perfection that God bestows on the soul in a state of sanctifying grace,
that makes the soul docile to the inspirations and promptings of the Holy Spirit.
St. Thomas Aquinas has a refined and insightful account of these gifts, which he sometimes also
calls “spirits” or “inspirations.” He says that they are not acts themselves,
but rather the gifts of the Holy Spirit are PRINCIPLES OF ACTION. They are not the same as the
passing helps of grace (what sometimes are called actual graces or impulses of divine motion that
set our faculties to functioning). Rather, the gifts are stable dispositions given to the soul,
which make it ready to be inspired by God who moves it from above.
You might think of them like seven sails of a ship. The sails themselves are not the same as the
wind that moves the ship. Raising the sails does not guarantee that the wind will blow, but it does
make the ship ready to move by the wind’s power, when it does blow. God bestows the seven Gifts
of the Holy Spirit on every soul that receives sanctifying grace, so that every Christian is
thus made ready to act according to the impulse of the Holy Spirit whenever that divine wind arrives.
This helps us understand how the gifts of the Holy Spirit are distinct from the theological virtues.
The virtues dispose you to act well as your mind judges best,
but the gifts are higher perfections that dispose the soul to be moved divinely,
by God himself, according to God’s higher plan and his higher wisdom.
Aquinas thinks that everyone who has sanctifying grace receives these seven gifts or dispositions
to be moved by God. In fact, he thinks the gifts are necessary for our salvation,
because even when our minds are elevated by the theological virtues, they will still only
be able to judge about what is right to do insofar as the power of reason guides us.
But the path that leads to heaven transcends the horizon of this world. If we’re to follow
that path – if we are to conform our lives to God’s divine plan – we need
to be ready for the Holy Spirit to move us, to lift us up, and to lead us there.
According to St. Thomas, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit listed in Isaiah 11 PERFECT the
virtues. The gift of Wisdom perfects the virtue of charity; the gifts of knowledge and understanding
perfect faith; the gift of counsel perfects the virtue of prudence. The gift of fortitude
perfects the virtue of courage or of fortitude. The gift of piety perfects the virtue of justice.
And the gift of the fear of the Lord perfects the virtues of hope and of temperance.
HOW does the Holy Spirit move us through these gifts? St. Thomas offers a marvelous insight here.
He says that, through the gifts, we receive the divine promptings of the Holy Spirit, in matters
when the prompting of reason is not enough.” Now, the Latin word Aquinas uses there is “instinctus”,
which instead of being translated "prompting" could even be translated
“instinct.” That is, the gifts ready us to follow well a “divine instinct.”
What does this mean? Think of honeybees. They act by instinct, which is to say, bees seem to
have a kind of natural impulse or desire to act in a certain way. When we look at this behavior
of bees, OUR MINDS grasp that bees are engaging in highly systematic and purposeful activity,
but the bees themselves don’t think about that, nor do they deliberate about or choose what they
are going to do. They don’t have minds capable of understanding. But it remains true that, THROUGH
its natural instinct, each honeybee and the whole hive is directed towards an end, according to a
plan. At the highest level, it’s true to say that God is the ultimate author of that plan, and that
each bee acts according to it through the natural impulse or instinct that the bee has by nature.
The gifts of the Holy Spirit are a bit like this, but on a much higher and supernatural level. Much
more than a honeybee, a person who is growing in the life of the Spirit does understand something
of what he does and why. But he will still not perfectly grasp God’s plan for his salvation,
and for the salvation of the whole world. That plan is as infinite as divine providence itself.
Through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, God gives him a divine instinct
that leads him to act according to the God’s plan, according to God’s mind. The Christian
who is moved by God through the gifts still acts freely, using his powers and his virtues,
but the impulse and the direction of his action comes from God who is above him.
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