Pope’s helpful definitions of Holy Spirit’s 7 gifts

“The Holy Spirit constitutes the soul, the life blood of the Church and of every individual Christian: He is the Love of God who makes of our hearts his dwelling place and enters into communion with us.” This is how Pope Francis defined the Holy Spirit during the general audience of April 9, 2014. That day he began a catechesis series dedicated to the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.

In light of Pentecost on Sunday, Aleteia summarizes the Pontiff’s thoughts and reflections on these gifts that enable Christians to live their lives in closer proximity to God. 

Wisdom as a gift of the Holy Spirit is “the grace of being able to see everything with the eyes of God” and is received through intimacy with Him, Pope Francis explained on April 9, 2014. “Sometimes we see things according to our liking or according to the condition of our heart, with love or with hate, with envy.... No, this is not God’s perspective. Wisdom is what the Holy Spirit works in us so as to enable us to see things with the eyes of God," he said.

The Holy Spirit "makes the Christian 'wise.' Not in the sense that he has an answer for everything, [...] but in the sense that he 'knows' about God, [...] he knows when something is of God and when it is not of God,” the Pope reflected.

The Holy Spirit allows us to “hear with God’s ears, love with God’s heart, direct things with God’s judgment,” he continued, citing as an example a mother who instead of simply scolding her child when he does something wrong, takes the time to explain the issue. 

However Francis also underlined that wisdom is not something we can “invent” or “obtain by ourselves” but it is a gift that God gives to those who have “intimacy” with him and “make themselves docile to the Holy Spirit.”

The second gift of the Holy Spirit is “understanding” which the Pope defined as “the ability to go beyond the outward appearance of reality and to probe the depths of the thoughts of God and his plan of salvation.” He explained that this gift is “closely connected” to having faith. 

“This of course does not mean that a Christian can comprehend all things and have full knowledge of the designs of God,” the Pope said. “However, as the very word suggests, understanding allows us to 'intus legere,' or 'to read inwardly.'” 

Although it may seem similar to wisdom, this gift is more about “understand[ing] things as God understands them” and it makes “us sharers in the plan of love which He has for us.” The Pope for example cited the episode in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus appears to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and he explained that the Holy Spirit allowed them to understand Christ’s death and resurrection. 

The Holy Spirit helps us “to understand the teachings of Jesus, to understand his Word, to understand the Gospel, to understand the Word of God,” the Pope highlighted. “When the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts and enlightens our minds, he makes us grow day by day in the understanding of what the Lord has said and accomplished.”

Counsel “is the gift through which the Holy Spirit enables our conscience to make a concrete choice in communion with God, according to the logic of Jesus and his Gospel,” the Pope explained, adding that for this gift, prayer is especially crucial. 

“Ask the Lord: 'Lord, help me, give me counsel, what must I do now?' And through prayer we make space so that the Spirit may come and help us in that moment, that he may counsel us on what we all must do. Prayer! Never forget prayer. Never!” 

“In intimacy with God and in listening to his Word, little by little we put aside our own way of thinking, which is most often dictated by our closures, by our prejudice, and by our ambitions, and we learn instead to ask the Lord: What is your desire? What is your will? What pleases you?” the Pope reflected.

As an example of the gift of counsel he mentioned a mother who told her son who had a difficult problem to ask Our Lady what to do. “Here is a woman who had the gift of counsel. She did not know how to help her son out of his problem, but she indicated the right road,” the Pope said, highlighting that the Lord speaks to us also through our fellow Christians. 

The fourth gift of the Holy Spirit is fortitude which “comes to sustain us in our weakness,” the Pontiff explained. This gift is more than just physical or emotional strength, as it allows us to overcome difficult situations with a peaceful heart and frees us from obstacles.

To explain it, Pope Francis recounted the parable of the sower in the Gospel, where not all the seeds that he sows bear fruit as it depends on the ground they fall on. “This sower represents the Father, who abundantly sows the seed of his Word,” the Pope explained. “The seed, however, often meets with the aridity of our heart and even when received is likely to remain barren. However, through the gift of fortitude, the Holy Spirit liberates the soil of our heart, he frees it from sluggishness, from uncertainty and from all the fears that can hinder it.” 

Francis then highlighted in fact how fortitude can save us in “difficult moments and extreme situations,” and remembered the “everyday saints" who persevere in the face of adversity. “The Church shines with the testimony of so many brothers and sisters who have not hesitated to give their very lives in order to remain faithful to the Lord and his Gospel,” he said. 

However, the Pontiff also underlined that the gift of fortitude is not “necessary only on some occasions or in particular situations” but should be part of our “ordinary daily routine” in whatever difficulties we may face, big or small. 

The fifth gift of the Holy Spirit, knowledge, “leads us to grasp, through creation, the greatness and love of God and his profound relationship with every creature,” Pope Francis said. 

“When our eyes are illumined by the Spirit, they open to contemplate God, in the beauty of nature and in the grandeur of the cosmos, and they lead us to discover how everything speaks to us about Him and His love,” the Pontiff highlighted. “The gift of knowledge sets us in profound harmony with the Creator and allows us to participate in the clarity of his vision and his judgement.”

He also explained how the gift of knowledge allows us to not fall into the error of “considering ourselves the masters of creation” but to remember that we must “guard it, for if we destroy creation, creation will destroy us! Don’t forget that.”

Highlighting that this gift is often “misconstrued or treated superficially,” Pope Francis defined the gift of piety as “a bond that gives meaning to our life and keeps us sound, in communion with [God], even during the most difficult and tormenting moments.” 

The Pontiff explained that this gift is not simply “having compassion for someone” or “feeling pity” or “to pose like a picture and pretend to be a saint.” Piety “is synonymous with the genuine religious spirit, with filial trust in God, with that capacity to pray to him with the love and simplicity that belongs to those who are humble of heart,” Francis said. 

However, he also acknowledged that the “relationship with the Lord is not intended as a duty or an imposition. It is a bond that comes from within. It is a relationship lived with the heart” and that generates “gratitude and praise." Once this gift allows us to understand our relationship with God we can “pass this love on to others as well and to recognize them as our brothers and sisters.”

“The gift of piety means to be truly capable of rejoicing with those who rejoice, of weeping with those who weep, of being close to those who are lonely or in anguish, of correcting those in error, of consoling the afflicted, of welcoming and helping those in need.”

Firstly, the gift of the fear of the Lord “does not mean being afraid of God; we know well that God is Father, that he loves us,” the Pope said. “Fear of the Lord, instead, is the gift of the Holy Spirit through whom we are reminded of how small we are before God and of his love and that our good lies in humble, respectful, and trusting self-abandonment into his hands.”

This awareness of our limitations helps us place our “every care and expectation in God” and feel “enfolded and sustained by his warmth and protection, just as a child with his father,” the Pontiff explained. This gift “takes on the form of docility, gratitude and praise, by filling our hearts with hope” even when “we frequently fail to grasp the plan of God.” 

The gift of the fear of the Lord “does not make of us Christians who are shy and submissive, but stirs in us courage and strength!” the Pontiff reflected. “We are moved and conquered by his love! To be conquered by the love of God!"

However, Pope Francis also underlined that the fear of the Lord can be an “'alarm' against the obstinacy of sin.”

He for example cited those who manufacture weapons or work in human trafficking or slave labor. “May fear of the Lord make them understand that one day all things will come to an end and they will have to give account to God.”