The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit - Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you. Friends, for this second Sunday of Advent, we have this magnificent reading from Isaiah chapter 11, and it's this description of the Messiah's arrival, but coming from the root of Jesse. And then coming to full expression in the Messiah are the gifts of the Holy Spirit. You know, I was just at Shard Cathedral last summer filming, one of my favorite places in the world, and on the western front, there's a depiction of this, just gorgeous. shows Jesse asleep and then coming up from his loins is this great tree and then these various figures on it, the ancestors of Jesus. At the top of the tree, kind of as its flower, is the figure of Christ. And around his head are the seven doves, symbolic of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. So that image from medieval France goes all the way back to ancient Israel. And this passage that's our first reading, on that day, the great day of the Lord, a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, so from the root of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.

1:03 The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. So Isaiah is anticipating the Messiah, the Mashiach, the anointed one, that will come from the line of David. And he'll have these gifts, namely, a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a spirit of counsel and of strength, the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord. This is the root of this great tradition, which comes up now from the Bible into the fathers and through the great theologians. Think Gregory the Great, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, all of them speculate upon these gifts of the Holy Spirit. And you want to trace it even further, come up to the last confirmation homily I gave, which would have been just a few weeks ago as we record these words. And I talked to the kids about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Because we say at confirmation, when they are confirmed with the presence of the Spirit, I always tell them the Spirit never comes empty-handed, but he comes bearing gifts.

2:00 Well, that sermon goes all the way back through the great tradition, all the way to Isaiah chapter 11. So, as an Advent reading, as we're anticipating again the coming of the Messiah, the one who comes bearing these gifts, the one who calls us, listen now, into his life so that we might share these gifts. It's good for us to be reflecting on these seven. So, the first gift of the Holy Spirit in the great tradition is wisdom. Sapientia in Latin, Sophia in Greek. What's wisdom? I've always loved Thomas Aquinas' characterization. Wisdom is not just scientific knowledge or insight. Wisdom is the view from the hilltop, he says, which is to say, from the standpoint of the highest or first cause. So I can look at my world with scientific eyes and economic eyes, political eyes, I can take in what's around me.

3:01 But to see the totality of my experience from the standpoint of the highest cause, to see it, use that old phrase, subspecie eternitatis, from the aspect of eternity, to see it as God sees it, that's wisdom. You know, I often think about this when I take off in an airplane, and you're on the ground, you're looking around, and the plane takes off, and so quickly you get up. And let's say you're leaving a major city, and you can see the whole city, and you take it in from a whole different perspective. You see the whole city. Well, wisdom is like that. It's seeing your life as God does. And you know, everybody, this is kind of a rare thing. It truly is a gift to have that vision. Because most of us, we kind of schlep our way through life, looking at what's right in front of us.

3:58 But to look at the whole of your life from the standpoint of God, that's wisdom. Okay, next we have—they're usually coupled together— understanding and knowledge. I often tell the confirmation kids, when you receive these gifts, it doesn't mean automatically you'll understand all of trigonometry. They have to do, Aquinas tells us, with insight into holy things. Insight into the meaning of holy things. That's understanding and knowledge. Again, most of us go through life and we're knowing all sorts of things. We're using our minds, our reason, to make our way economically or politically or in our relationships or whatever. I mean, fine. But how much time do we spend delving into the meaning of really holy things? The Eucharist, the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, the incarnation that God becomes one of us, the meaning of the cross, that by the blood of his cross, Jesus saves us from our sins.

5:04 What does that mean? The Trinity, the Father sent the Son all the way to God-forsakenness so that we might be gathered into the love of the Holy Spirit. Okay, that's about as deep as it gets. What do these things mean? Do we search them out? Do we spend time seeking to understand them and then savoring what we understand? My guess is, rarely. and I can see even as I list those, I can see people maybe rolling their eyes like, hey, you know, Bishop, I got enough to preoccupy me in this life without worrying about those things. Yeah, but think about something. Politics, economics, friendship, relationships, yeah, those preoccupy us for the few decades that we're here on earth. But the really holy things will preoccupy us for all eternity.

6:02 What's more important? What's more important to think about? See, which is why these gifts of understanding and knowledge are a sort of foretaste of heaven. Heaven is an eternity of searching out the deep and mysterious and holy things of God. We will leave behind all these particular things that preoccupy us in this life. Why would I ever say, well, those are the important things. They're not. They're not. Relatively speaking, they're very unimportant things. Knowledge and understanding order me, orient me toward what really matters. They're a gift of the Holy Spirit. Next, we have the gift of counsel. Counsel, what's that? Well, it's a practical gift. So if wisdom is a contemplative attitude, I'm going to see the world from the standpoint of God.

6:59 Knowledge, understanding, I'm going to search out the meaning of divine truths. Okay, those are more speculative. Counsel, it's practical. Thomas Aquinas refers to what he calls recta ratio adjubilium. That means, with his typical scholastic understatement, right reason in regard to things to be done.

7:24 How do you know what's the right thing to do? Well, look, in different areas of life. Let's say you're a carpenter. Let's say you're an economist. You're a financier. You've got a feel for the right thing to do in those areas, the right move to make. But what's the right move to make when it comes to our relationship to God, the deepest, most important relationship we have? What's the morally right thing to do? What would God want me to do in this situation? Counsel is a kind of practical feel for them. You know, I'm a very bad golfer, like almost all amateurs. I'm kind of happy when I take a swipe of the ball and it kind of advances down the course. I'm pretty happy with that. But think of a pro golfer, and they talk about course management.

8:20 The great golfers are thinking their way through a course. They know exactly how far they can hit their driver. They know for the second shot, it's best on this hole to be positioned on the right side of the fairway. And you've got to get over that bunker. If you're in front of that bunker, you're not going to make it in two. And then approaching that green, well, it's got a slope from left to right. So I don't want to get on the wrong side of that slope. Or there's trouble to the right, so the miss is to the left. Again, I'm just kind of hitting the ball, hoping it gets off the ground. But a real golfer is exercising a sort of form of practical reason. Now, apply that to the moral order. If we think golf is complicated, which it is, and having a kind of skill at that is something admirable, how much more to have a skill in regard to what matters the most? My relationship to God, living according to God's plans.

9:17 Think here of the little flower's little way, to find the path of love in the present moment. Well, that's someone who has counsel, that has a feel for what the most loving thing to do would be. That's a gift of the Holy Spirit. Next one, fortitude. Look in every superhero story.

9:41 Every superhero requires courage or fortitude. Why? Because it'll be otherwise in the next world. But in this world, to do the right thing will always be difficult. And I say that the older I get, the more I believe it. I say that without fear of contradiction. To do the right thing in this fallen world, this fallen conflictual world, will always cost. It'll always involve something like struggle. Someone's going to stand to thwart you, trust me. And the more you walk the path of the Lord, the more you should expect that opposition. And therefore, everyone that tries to live according to God's will needs the gift of courage, of fortitude. I tell the confirmation kids that all the time. Confirmare in Latin means to strengthen. It's a strengthening sacrament and fortitude. That's the courage we need to walk the path of the Lord.

10:40 Next one is piety. This one I think is most often written off because pious has a bad sort of overtone in English. Oh, that person is very pious. it seems to indicate a kind of fussy, superficial religiosity, like Dana Carvey's church lady is pious. Who wants to be called pious? But pious is a very strong word, actually, in our tradition. Think of Aeneas in the great Aeneid. His adjective is pious, is pious. Now, what does it mean here? It means something like a keen sense of what is owed to God. Thomas Aquinas says that religion is a virtue of justice. Why? Because religion is giving to God, namely worship and praise, what is owed to him. See, justice is rendering to each his due. That's the classical definition.

11:34 But what's due to God, who created us, who sustains us in being? What's due to God is praise. That's why the fact that, what, 75% of my fellow religionists, fellow Catholics, aren't going to Mass on a regular basis, that's a failure of piety. That's a failure of religion, which means a failure of justice. The pious person knows what is owed to God and enters with enthusiasm into the act of worship. The last one is my favorite, actually. It's called the fear of the Lord. Timor Domini, the fear of the Lord. And again, it doesn't mean you're afraid of God. What does it mean? I'll put it this way. Fear of the Lord means I'm more afraid of not doing God's will than I am of any danger in the world.

12:33 So doing the will of God, that means you're not going to be popular. I don't care. I'm more afraid of not doing God's will. Doing God's will means they're all going to hate you. You're going to lose your job. You're going to lose your reputation. Yeah, I know. But I'm more afraid of not doing God's will or pushing out of the extreme. Doing God's will means they're going to kill you. Look at every martyr in our tradition. Extraordinary number of martyrs. In fact, 20th century had more martyrs than all the previous centuries combined. Martyrdom is part of Catholic and Christian life. What does a martyr say? I'm more afraid of not doing God's will than I am of being killed. You know what that is, everybody? That's called fear of the Lord.

13:26 That's fear of the Lord, and that's a gift of the Holy Spirit. Okay, Isaiah chapter 11. Take a look. Get out or Google it. Look up the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They come with the Messiah They come with him And so as we await the arrival of the Messiah Christmas We're longing for these gifts The best thing we can do Watch for them Wait for them Pray for them