Gifts of the Holy Spirit

The essential rite of the Sacrament of Confirmation occurs when the celebrant anoints the recipient with chrism and says, “Name, be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Isaiah told us the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: Is 11:2 “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 the fear of the Lord.”

They are: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. These seven gifts, part of sanctifying grace, complete and perfect the virtues of those who receive them. They make us docile in obeying divine inspirations without need for reflection but always with full consent.

When we compare the gifts of the Holy Spirit with the virtues, we find that the highest of all are the theological virtues: 1 Cor 13:13 "Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love [Greek: agape]." The gifts of the Holy Spirit are in service to faith, hope and charity. They are gifts of docility to help us be moved directly by God, and they come increasingly into play the more we grow in holiness. Their purpose is to enable the life of faith, hope, and charity to flourish through docility to divine inspirations. The gifts are higher than the infused moral virtues in that the gifts make us docile to be moved directly by God, whereas the infused moral virtues make our appetites docile to being moved by reason enlightened by faith. The theological virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the infused moral virtues work together and complement each other, under the queenship of love.

Some Scripture publications translate the Greek agape as "charity." It means essentially the same thing, the perfect love we give to God entirely for His happiness.

We are to pray to the Holy Spirit and ask for one of these gifts. If He gives us a gift, we may ask for another, and so on.

The practice of virtue, enabled by the gifts seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, bring us the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit.

St. Thomas Aquinas makes clear the different purposes of the seven Is 11:2 Gifts in contrast with the 1 Cor 12:8 charisms. These purposes are keys to the distinctions between them.

When the Church speaks of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, she ordinarily means the gifts revealed to Isaiah. But there were also seven gifts revealed to St. Paul. 1 Cor 12:8 “To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.”