Gifts of the Holy Spirit: the Gift of Wisdom
The Gifts of the Holy Spirit empower us to deepen our intimacy with God and to participate in His Divine Life. Four of them enhance our intellect: knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and counsel. These gifts enlighten our human understanding with the divine guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Gifts of the Holy Spirit: the Gift of Wisdom
The Gift of Wisdom empowers us to judge divine things or to judge our actions by divine standards. To judge in this case means to judge whether a claim is true or not – to recognize the truth about divine things. The Gift of Understanding helps us to learn and teach the faith more deeply. The Gift of Wisdom helps us to judge things according to our faith. But it is even more powerful than that. Wisdom is having the mind of Christ – knowing how God thinks or seeing the world as God sees it. The source of wisdom is an intimacy with God that is made possible by the Holy Spirit. We know God like a friend knows a friend when they can finish each other’s sentences or know how the other is feeling or what she is thinking.
What does this mean in practical terms?
1. While the Gift of Understanding leads us to greater intimacy with God by deepening our insights into what He has revealed about Himself, the Gift of Wisdom IS intimacy with God in the sense of true friendship.
2. Being able to judge things with the mind of God helps us to see goodness and sin more clearly, helping us to live according to God’s moral law.
3. This wise judgment can also be a great benefit to others as the Holy Spirit can act in your life to give other people counsel. The Gift of Wisdom is akin to the charism of prophecy, though not exactly the same thing.
4. The Gift of Wisdom helps us to bring order into our lives as we live according to priorities instilled in us by God. It therefore also brings a great deal of peace.
The Gift of wisdom is active in all of us, but it is especially strong in some Christians. Saint Francis de Sales is one saint who had a lot of wisdom. His greatest work, “Introduction to the Devout Life,” is really a book of advice to the neophyte looking for a deeper prayer life. He approaches this work – and all of his works – with compassionate wisdom, helping his readers to see themselves as God sees us, and to see prayer as God wants us to see it.
The Gift of Wisdom empowers us to judge divine things or to judge our actions by divine standards.
Your Challenge
Your challenge is to examine your own life and see how the Gift of Knowledge is active. In what ways does the Holy Spirit seem to guide your use of and enjoyment of created goods? Discover ways this gift is active for you and share them in the comments below!
Then examine the opportunity below to work with From the Abbey to build a lay rule of life. Working with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit is one part of a solid and active lay spirituality. Take your next step toward growing in intimacy with God!
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.
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Gidday Linif Adam called’ the one from his bone and flesh wo-man’ (out of man) in Gen 2:24 as a nanmig / authority thing, then what exactly was he doing in Gen 3:20 when we are told, ? Adam named his wife Eve,a0because she would become the mother of all the living. (NIV) ???Interestingly, the first action’ Adam takes after the consequences/curses of the Fall are listed in Gen 3:14-19 is that he DOES name his wife and arguably in this case demonstrate a kind of authority over her. Note scripture doesn’t say he REnames her. But just that he names her cos he hadn’t done’ that yet!When we read Adam’s exclamation to his newly created God-given parter in Gen 2:24 it rings of absolute spontaneous joy and excitement at what he sees not a nanmig’ ceremony! Can we even begin to imagine what this solo’ man must have felt having finally found’ what he could NOT find among the rest of creation. His statement in Gen 2:24 is one of incredible unity and likeness’ not differences or a raising up of him over her. God had already declared he needed help. I reckon after looking at all the animals and seeing no mate, he really understood that for himself (perhaps why God made him go through the nanmig the animals process first?)Any argument made that Adam showed authority’ over the woman by what he exclaimed in 2:24 is pretty weak. The text certainly does not explicitly teach us that Adam had any inate creation order’ authority over this woman created from his side. Any so called implicit’ meaning in the text is shown to be unreliable as an interpretation in the light of his formal nanmig’ in Gen 3:20 which is POST Fall when sadly Gen 3:16 he shall rule over you ..immediately comes into play!i think a word study on the word called’ in Gen 2:24 and named’ in Gen 3:20 would be useful, but i haven’t had time to do that one yet! Anyone else got some helpful info on the Hebrew i’d love to hear what you have to say Any thoughts anyone? i welcome comments!RegardsKerryn
What you are describing is exactly what Saint Pope John Paul II described in Theology of the Body. He calls Adam's awareness that the animals are not creatures capable of loving and being loved "Original Solitude." Adam's cry of joy is a recognition that Eve "completes" Adam by making Adam capable of sharing love with another like him. Adam can now be truly the image of God. We don't see this as a one-way relationship, either. Adam also completes Eve and allows her to be the image of God. The language of Creation is one of LOVE, where equality and inequality don't come into play.
The Fall shifts their relationship from a paradigm of love to a paradigm of power. Now Adam and Eve will struggle for power rather than living for the other.
We do have to be careful, though. For example, in Ephesians 12 Saint Paul does assert that husbands have authority over their wives. But he immediately reminds us what that means in a paradigm of love. God's power and authority is inseparable from His love. Jesus showed His ultimate power and His ultimate love on the Cross. So when Saint Paul tells women to be submissive to their husbands, he is reclaiming a paradigm of love, not of power, where authority is always tied to self-sacrificing love.