Meditations for Layfolk - Gifts of the Holy Ghost

The real difficulty experienced by most of us in keeping up our courage in the unceasing battle of life is that we realize how utterly we depend upon ourselves. Of course it is true that the grace of God will be always with us, that it is never withheld, that there is always a sufficiency of it for us to meet and triumph over every assault of the evil one, yet even so the disquieting thought comes home to us that it is always we ourselves who determine our own actions; so much so, indeed, that if they are worthy of reward, it is we who obtain the reward, but if of punishment, that it is we who suffer. Says Saint Thomas with stimulating paradox: "Not partly by God and partly by man, but altogether by God and altogether by man." That is to say, I have to reconcile these two separate truths: (a) I cannot will anything without God's grace helping me to do it; (b) yet God's help does not take away from me my responsibility in the act, for its moral value will be adjudged to my credit or demerit. It is then, to repeat, just in the second part of the paradox that the difficulty lies. Conscious as I am of my past failure, I can hardly look forward without dismay to future troubles. Consequently I turn to see if there is anything that the Church teaches that can relieve me from the burden of this discouragement. Is there any doctrine that gives me in any way at all an escape from the terror of my own responsibility?

To this the Church makes answer that her doctrine of the indwelling of the Spirit of God by means of the Sevenfold Gifts does go a long way to remove the load from my own shoulders, does suggest to me a perfectly true sense in which my soul is ruled not by me but by another. As far, then, as these things can be stated in human language, we may say that the gifts differ from the virtues in this, that the gifts are moved into operation not by me but by God. When I perform an act of virtue it is obvious that (not excluding God's grace) it is I who perform it, and acquire merit in consequence; but in the movement of the gifts it is not I but God who is the mover. He is the sole mover. In the actual movement of the soul under the influence of the gifts I cannot claim any lot or part, I cannot claim any merit at all. It is He who has His hand on the tiller, who guides, steers, propels. Hence it is He, not I, who has control of my soul. With the four gifts that perfect my intelligence, He illumines my mind; with the one gift that perfects the will, He inflames my desire; and with the two that perfect the passions, He strengthens with His intimate indwelling my emotions of love and fear. By the instrumentality of the gifts the soul is keyed-up to the level of God, tuned to concert-pitch. Or, to vary the metaphor, the soul is made so responsive to the divine influence that, like some delicate electrical receiver, it registers every passing breath of God. I must remember always that it is His doing, not mine.

Must it therefore be admitted that by the gifts I merit nothing? Surely if this be so it would seem as though I had therefore no neeol for them. If their influence on my life was only to leave me no better off than before I received them, I might just as well not have had them at all. If in them God is the mover to the exclusion of myself, then it would be absurd for me to expect any reward for what has been absolutely no work of mine. This is true. I do not merit by the gifts. Yet to this I must also add that I can profit by them. The Holy Spirit lights up my mind and enables me to see, or refines my perception of and responsiveness to His least suggestion. That is His doing so far. Illumination and refinement are entirely His work. But my part comes in later, when I act up to these suggestions or in accordance with this vision. Then I am profiting by the gifts. Suggestion and vision alike are from God. He opens my mind and I see Him everywhere, in a flower, in trouble, in the soul of a sinner. If in consequence of seeing Him in the sinner, I turn to that sinner and speak kindly of the love that never fails, or if I help him even by my sympathy though I speak no word of spiritual significance, then the good that I achieve, or at least the good I am trying to do, becomes my way of profiting by means of the gifts. This indwelling of the Spirit of God, while it takes from me the control of my soul and hands it over for the moment to God, yet gives me something by which I can again love and be rewarded. I do not merit by the sevenfold gifts, but I do merit through them.

- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.