THE TRADITION
Later, the Fathers of the Church frequently commented on these texts of Scripture, and, from the third century, Tradition explicitly affirms that the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit reside in all the just (2).
Pope Saint Damasus, in 382, speaks of the Septiform Spirit that rests on the Messiah, and enumerates the gifts (3).
But it is above all St. Augustine who explains this doctrine, commenting on the Sermon on the Mount (4). He highlights the coincidence of the Beatitudes with the seven gifts. Fear represents the first degree of spiritual life; wisdom is its crowning glory. Between the two extremes, Saint Augustine distinguishes a double period of purification that disposes wisdom: a remote preparation through the active practice of the moral virtues, which corresponds to the gifts of piety, strength, science and advice; then the immediate preparation, in which the soul is purified thanks to a faith more enlightened by the gift of intelligence, to a hopemore strenuous, sustained by the gift of strength , and a more ardent charity . The first preparation is called active life, the second, contemplative life (1), because moral activity is here subordinated to faith enlightened by contemplation, which ends one day, in peaceful and docile souls, with perfect wisdom ( ").
As for the actual teaching of the Church, let us remember that the Council of Trent, sess. VI, c. VII, says: "The efficient cause of our justification is God, who, in his mercy, purifies and sanctifies us (I Cor., v, 11) by the anointing and seal of the Holy Spirit, which has been promised to us and is pledge of our inheritance (Eph., 1, 13)" (3).
The catechism of the Council of Trent (4) specifies this point, enumerating the seven gifts according to the quoted text from Isaiah, and adds: "These gifts of the Holy Spirit are for us like a divine fountain from which we drink the living knowledge of the commandments of the Christian life, and through them we can know if the Holy Spirit dwells in us." Saint Paul wrote, in effect (Rom. vm, 1.6): "The same Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God." He gives us this witness through the filial love that inspires us and through which he makes himself felt in a certain way in us (5).
One of the most beautiful testimonies of Tradition about the gifts is given to us by the liturgy of Pentecost. In the mass of this day we read the sequence:
Come, Holy Spirits,
Et emitte coelitus
Lucis tue radium..
"Come, Holy Spirit, and send from heaven a ray of your light. Come, father of the poor, giver of all grace. Come, light of the heart. Exalted Comforter, Guest of our souls, refreshing Sweetness. Rest in fatigue , Cool in the heat.
Of tears and crying, sweet Comforter."
O lux beatissima,
Reple cordis intima
Tuorum fidelium.
"Oh most blessed light, flood your poor children's heart and soul with clarity... Fill those who are cold with fervour. Let him return to the path, who departed from it..."
Give your fidelibus
In you confidentibus,
Sacrum septenarium.
"Give your faithful, who have trusted you, the seven sacred gifts. Give them the merit of virtue. Give them a happy end. Give them eternal joy."
In the Veni Creator it is also sung:
Your septiformis munere...
Access lumen sensibus
Infuse amorem cordibus...
"You are the Spirit of the seven gifts... Enlighten our spirit with your light, and fill our hearts with your love."
Finally, the testimony of Tradition is admirably expressed in Leo XIII's Encyclical on the Holy Spirit (2), where it is said that we need, to complete our supernatural life, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: "The just who lives by the life of grace and who operates through the virtues, as with so many other faculties, has absolute need of the seven gifts which are most commonly called the gifts of the Holy Spirit By these gifts the spirit of man is elevated and qualified to obey more easily and promptly the promptings and promptings of the Holy Spirit.Likewise, these gifts are of such efficacy that they lead man to the highest degree of holiness; they are so excellent that they will remain entirely in heaven, although in a more perfect degree. Thanks to them the soul is moved, and led to the attainment of the evangelical beatitudes, those flowers that spring sees open, as precursory signs of eternal bliss... "Since the gifts are so exalted ," Leo XIII continues, "and they manifest so clearly the immense goodness of the Holy Spirit towards our souls, they force us to witness to him the greatest effort of piety and submission. We will achieve this easily, by striving more and more to know him, love him and invoke him... It is important to remember clearly the countless benefits that continually flow from a efficacitatis ut eum ad fastigium sanctimoniae adducant, tantaeque excellentiae ut in caelesti regno eadem, quanquam perfectius, perseverent .
Ipsorumque ope charismatum provocatur animus et effertur ad appetendas adipiscendasque evangelical beatitudes , quae, perinde ac flores verno tempore erumpentes, Indices ac nuntiae sunt beatitatis perpetuo mansurae.
This text demonstrates: 1st, the need for the gifts: "opus plané est"; 2nd, their nature: they make us docile to the Holy Spirit; 3rd, its effects: they can lead us to the summit of holiness.
We must love the Holy Spirit because he is God... and also because he is the first, substantial and eternal Love; and nothing is more lovable than love... He will gift us with the abundance of his heavenly gifts, and all the more so since, if ingratitude closes the hand of the benefactor, on the contrary, gratitude makes it open... We have to ask him assiduously and with great confidence to enlighten us more and more and inflame us in the fire of his love, so that, supported by faith and charity, we embark with ardor on our march towards eternal reward, since he is the pledge of our inheritance."
Such are the main testimonies of Tradition, on the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Let us briefly recall the clarifications that theology gives us on this matter, and above all the doctrine of Saint Thomas, which in substance has been approved by Leo XIII in the Encyclical whose main passages we have just transcribed and where the Angelic Doctor is frequently cited.
THE GIFTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT ACCORDING TO SAINT THOMAS.
The holy Doctor teaches us above all three things: 1st, that the gifts are permanent habitual dispositions (habitus), specifically different from the virtues; 2°, that they are necessary for salvation; 3° that they are connected with charity and increase with it.
"In order to distinguish the gifts from the virtues," says the saint, "it is necessary to follow the manner of speaking of Scripture, which calls them not precisely gifts, but spirits. Thus it is said in Isaiah (XI, 2 ): « He will rest upon him the spirit of wisdom and understanding... etc.” These words clearly imply that the seven spirits enumerated there are in us by divine inspiration or an external (or superior) motion of the Holy Spirit. It must be taken into account, in fact, that man is acted by a double principle . motor: one is internal, and is reason, the other, external, and is God, as has been said above (I, II, q. 9, a. 4 and 6), and as Aristotle himself said on the Morale to Eudemus (i. VII, c. XIV, from Good Fortune).
"It is manifest, moreover, that everything that is moved must be proportionate to its motor; and the perfection of the mobile, as such, is the disposition that allows it precisely to be well moved by its motor. Likewise, when the motor is more perfect, more perfect must be the dispositions that dispose the mobile to receive its influence.To receive the lofty doctrine of a great teacher, it is necessary to have a special preparation, a proportionate disposition.
"It is evident, finally, that the human virtues perfect man insofar as he is directed by reason , in his external and internal life. It is necessary, then, that he possess superior perfections that dispose him to be divinely moved, and these perfections are called gifts; not only because they are infused by God, but because, through them, man becomes a subject capable of easily receiving divine inspiration (1), according to the words of Isaiah (1, 5): «The Lord has given me open my ears to let me hear his voice; whatever he says to me, I no longer resist him, nor do I turn back." And Aristotle himself teaches, in the place cited,that those who are moved by divine instinct no longer need to deliberate, as human reason does, but are forced to follow inner inspiration, which is a higher principle. For this reason, some say, that the gifts perfect man by disposing him to acts superior to those of the virtues."
It is seen from these words that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not actual acts, motions or temporary aids of grace, but, rather, qualities or permanent infused dispositions (habitus), which make man docile without resistance to divine inspirations . . And Leo XIII, in the Encyclical Divinum illud munus, which we have quoted extensively, has approved this way of understanding the gifts. They thus dispose man ad prompte obediendum Spiritui Sancto,to promptly obey the Holy Spirit, as the sails dispose the ship to follow the impulse of the favorable winds; and by this passive docility, they help us to produce excellent works known by the name of beatitudes. The saints are, in this sense, like great sailing ships, whose unfurled sails meekly receive the impulse of the winds. The art of navigation teaches how to unfurl the sails at the right moment, and to extend them in the most convenient way to receive the impulse of the favorable wind.
This image was provided to us by the Lord himself, when he said (John, m, 8): "The wind blows when it pleases; you hear its voice, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; thus it happens to one who has born of the Spirit and is docile to its inspiration. We do not know clearly, says Saint Thomas, where the wind that blows was formed, nor how far it will be felt; in the same way we do not know where exactly a divine inspiration begins, nor to what degree of perfection would lead us if we were completely docile to it.Let us not be like those sailboats that, not taking care to observe the favorable wind, keep their sails up, when they should have them unfurled.
Following these principles, the vast majority of theologians teach, with St. Thomas, that the gifts are really and specifically different from the infused virtues, just as the principles that direct them are different: the Holy Spirit and reason enlightened by faith. These are two regulatory directions, two different rules that constitute two different formal reasons. Now it is a fundamental principle, that habits are specified by their object and their formal motive, as sight by color and light, and hearing by sound.
The human way of acting is born from the human rule; the superhuman mode, of the superhuman or divine rule, of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; " modus to mensura causatur".
This is how the same infused prudence proceeds by discursive deliberation, in which it differs from the gift of advice, which disposes us to receive a special inspiration of a supradiscursive nature . Faced with an indiscreet-question, p. For example, the same infused prudence remains in suspense, not knowing very well how to avoid lies and keep secrets, while a special inspiration of the Holy Spirit gets us out of the predicament, as Jesus announced to his disciples (Matt., x, 19).
In the same way, while faith simply adheres to revealed truths, the gift of intelligence allows us to search their depth, and the gift of wisdom makes us savor them. The gifts are thus specifically distinct from the virtues.
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(1) They are found cited in St. Thomas, dealing with each of the seven gifts.
( 2 ) Cf. A. .1. GARDEIL, OP, Dictionnaire de Théologie catholique, art. Dons du Saint-Esprit, t. iv, col. 1728-1781.
(3) DENZINGER, Enchiridion , n9 83.
(4) De sermone Domini , 1. I, c. 1-4. — De doctrina christiana, 1. II,
c. l.—Sermo 347.
(Or Cf. De Trinitate, 1. XI1-XIV.
( 2 ) Cf. FULBERT CAYRÉ, A . A . The Augustinian Contemplation , c.
1 and n2, where it is proved that contemplation, according to St. Augustine, is a supernatural Wisdom. Its principle, like faith, is a supernatural action of the Holy Spirit, which gives, in a certain way, touch and taste God.
(3) Ibid., no. 799.
(4) Catechism of the Council of Trent, part I, c. ix, § 3: "I believe in
the Holy Spirit."
(5> Cf. SANI 'o TOMÁS, ÍTI Epist. ad Rowia7iosy VIII, 16,
(1) A great contemplative must have been the composer of such a beautiful prayer. It matters little to know his name; it was a voice of God, like the stranger who composed the Dresden Amen, found in a score by Wagner and in a work by Mendelssohn.
(2) Encyclical Divinum illud munus, May 9, 1897, circa fine: "Hoc amplius, just homini, vitam scilicet viventi divinate gratíae et per congruas virtutes tanquam facultates agenti, opus plani est septems illis quae proprie dicuntur Spiritus Sancti donis. Horum enim benefici instructur animus et munitur ut ejus vocibus atque impulsioni facilius promptiusque obsequatur; haec propterea dona tantae sunt.
( 1 ) Cf. SAINT THOMAS, in III Sentent., dist. 34-35; I, II, q. 68; II,
II, qq. 8, 9, 19, 45, 52, 121, 139; see his commentators, especially CAYETANO and JUAN DE SANTO TOMÁS, in I, II, q. 68.
It will also be very useful to consult SAINT BUENAVENTURA, whose doctrine differs in certain minor points from that of Saint Thomas; see Brevilochium, part V and VI, and to J. FR. BONNEFOY: Le Saint-Esprit
et les dons selon saint Bonaventure. Paris, Vrin, 1929, and Dict. De Spiritualite, art. Bonaventure.
See also DIONISIO EL CARTUJANO, De donis Spiritus Sancti (excellent treatise); JB DE SAINT-JURE, SJ, L'homme spirituel, I partie, c. iv Des sept dons; LALLEMANT, SJ, La doctrine spirituelle,
IV principe, La docilité à la conduite du Saint-Esprit. — FHOGET, OP, De l'habitation du Saint-Esprit, Paris, 1900, pp. 378-424. — GARDEIL, OP, Dons du Saint-Esprit (Dict.. de Théol. Cath., t. iv, col. 1728-1781);
La structure de l'âme et l'experience mystique, Paris, 1927, t. n, pp. 192-281. By the same author: Les dons du Saint-Esprit dans les samts dominicains (see especially the introduction), 1923, and many others.
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