The Twelve Days of Christmas Day Seven
The Seven Swans-Swimming,
according to the legend, represent the seven gifts of the Holy-Spirit. Your
seven gifts today are seven statements which will send imposter syndrome packing and keep you creating in the studio. You can download them here.
Following is the deeper dive into the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Wisdom
is the first and highest gift of the Holy Spirit because it is the
perfection of the theological
virtue of faith.
Through wisdom, we come to value properly those things which we believe through
faith. The truths of Christian belief are more important than the things of
this world, and wisdom helps us to order our relationship to the created world
properly, loving Creation for the sake of God,
Understanding
is the second gift of the Holy Spirit, and people sometimes have a hard time
understanding (no pun intended) how it differs from wisdom. While wisdom is the
desire to contemplate the things of God, understanding allows us to grasp,
at least in a limited way, the very essence of the truths of the Catholic
faith. Through understanding, we gain a certitude about our beliefs that moves
beyond faith.
Counsel,
the third gift of the Holy Spirit, is the perfection of the cardinal
virtue of prudence.
Prudence can be practiced by anyone, but counsel is supernatural. Through this
gift of the Holy Spirit, we are able to judge how best to act almost by
intuition. Because of the gift of counsel, Christians need not fear to stand up
for the truths of the Faith, because the Holy Spirit will guide us in defending
those truths.
While
counsel is the perfection of a cardinal virtue, fortitude is both a gift of the
Holy Spirit and a cardinal
virtue. Fortitude is ranked as the fourth gift of the Holy Spirit because
it gives us the strength to follow through on the actions suggested by the gift
of counsel. While fortitude is sometimes called courage,
it goes beyond what we normally think of as courage. Fortitude is the virtue of
the martyrs that allows them to suffer death rather than to renounce the
Christian Faith.
The
fifth gift of the Holy Spirit, knowledge, is often confused with both wisdom
and understanding. Like wisdom, knowledge is the perfection of faith, but
whereas wisdom gives us the desire to judge all things according to the truths
of the Catholic Faith, knowledge is the actual ability to do so. Like counsel,
it is aimed at our actions in this life. In a limited way, knowledge allows us
to see the circumstances of our life the way that God sees them. Through this
gift of the Holy Spirit, we can determine God's purpose for our lives and live
them accordingly.
Piety,
the sixth gift of the Holy Spirit, is the perfection of the virtue of religion.
While we tend to think of religion today as the external elements of our faith,
it really means the willingness to worship and to serve God. Piety takes that
willingness beyond a sense of duty so that we desire to worship God and to
serve Him out of love, the way that we desire to honor our parents and do what
they wish.
The
seventh and final gift of the Holy Spirit is the fear of the Lord, and perhaps
no other gift of the Holy Spirit is so misunderstood. We think of fear and hope
as opposites, but the fear of the Lord confirms the theological
virtue of hope.
This gift of the Holy Spirit gives us the desire not to offend God, as well as
the certainty that God will supply us the grace that we need in order to keep
from offending Him. Our desire not to offend God is more than simply a sense of
duty; like piety, the fear of the Lord arises out of love.
Source-ThoughtCo.
"The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit." Learn Religions, Aug. 28, 2020,
learnreligions.com/gifts-of-the-holy-spirit-542143.