Gifts of the Holy Spirit Empower Our Adventure: Gift of Understanding

The Adventure of Faith is to share in Jesus’ divine life and to participate in his mission and the mission of the Church. And God equips us with the gifts we need to fulfill our mission. The Gifts of the Holy Spirit empower us to deepen our intimacy with God and to participate in His Divine Life. Three of the Gifts strengthen our will so that we can love God more deeply by choosing His goodness. The other four Gifts enhance our intellect so that we can grow in intimacy with God by receiving His truth. The four Gifts that enlighten the intellect are knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and counsel. Because the Gifts are actually the activity of the Holy Spirit within us, the four Gifts that enlighten the intellect are actually the divine guidance of the Holy Spirit. So as we exercise His Gifts, we are really participating in His divine activity within our souls with the goal of more deeply participating in the truth, goodness, and beauty of the Holy Trinity.

Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Understanding

The Gift of Understanding is the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit about the truths of our faith. We often struggle with the depth and complexity of Divine Revelation as we seek to know God through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. That’s because God is infinite and inexhaustible. We can never know him completely, but we can always know him better. But it can be daunting when we reach the limits of our human intellect. That’s where the Holy Spirit steps in, giving us deeper insights into theological truths so we can know God more completely. Have you ever been reading a bible passage that you had read many times before, and suddenly found yourself thinking – “Oh! That’s what that means!” That’s probably the Gift of Understanding – the Holy Spirit opening you to greater intimacy with God.

What does this mean in practical terms?

1. Greater ease reading the Bible and experiencing God through its pages.

2. The ability to make connections between theological truths to get a better picture of the whole.

3. Deeper prayer as your intimacy with God grows.

4. Being able to explain theological truths to others – perhaps as part of a teaching, evangelizing, or apologetics mission.

5. A greater sense of wonder and awe of our great, infinite God who still wants to make Himself known to you despite your limitations and ignorance.

The Gift of understanding is active in all of us, but it is especially strong in some Christians. Saint Thomas Aquinas had a gift for understanding God in ways that could be systematized into models for teaching. While he obviously had a great natural intellect, Saint Thomas himself said that he learned more in front of the Tabernacle in prayer than he did from any book (though he was still a prolific reader and writer). While many of us may find Saint Thomas’ writings far from easy to understand, he gave the Church a framework for understanding the faith that can be used by modern teachers to make understanding the faith much more simple.

The virtue of understanding is actually one of my strongest Gifts of the Holy Spirit as well. That’s why God has drawn me into the mission of teaching – first as a high school teacher, and now as a teacher of Catholic adults.

Your Challenge

Your challenge is to examine your own life and see how the Gift of understanding is active. In what ways does the Holy Spirit seem to guide your desire to know God more intimately? What insights into the faith have surprised you? Please share in the comments below!

Thank you for joining me on this quest to learn more about the Gifts of the Holy Spirit!

Your Next Action Step

Now that you’ve been learning about the Gifts, I’d like to invite you to take your next step in growing in your faith with From the Abbey. You can learn your faith with our online courses and more educational articles like this one, and you can live your faith with our online spirituality program. Your next step is waiting for you below. Please click the banner and explore it!

Brought to you by Jeffrey S. Arrowood at From the Abbey, dedicated to helping you rediscover the JOY of learning and living your faith so you can grow in intimacy with God.