Meditations for Layfolk - The Gift That Perfects Will

This gift is fortitude, which, as we have already stated in general terms, must be carefully distinguished from the virtue of fortitude. This gift is entirely under the direction of God and excludes altogether on my part any action at all in the operation of the gift. This exclusion of all human co-operation seems harder perhaps to understand when the will is in question, as it is in the gift of fortitude. It seems altogether impossible to imagine that God can direct the will and yet that it should not be voluntary. It is clear, indeed, from the Catholic doctrine of grace, that it is possible for God to move the will so powerfully as to determine not merely that the will shall act, but to determine also that it shall act freely. God is so intimate to the will that He can, so to say, save it from within. But this is different from His control of it in the gift of fortitude. In the intellect a light can be present that is none of our own; but in the will how can there be a force that is not itself of the will? In other words, we have to reconcile two ideas apparently contradictory - namely, a will which acts yet which does not merit. I am apparently and actually perfectly free, for God does not compel the will unwillingly; yet with all my freedom under the guidance of the gift I cannot acquire merit. That is what we said was the very character istic of the sevenfold gifts, that they were in their proper operation entirely the work of God.

To grasp the way in which God thus works, we can describe it only as a sense of firmness imparted to the soul by the perceived presence of God. A comparison, however inadequate, suggests to us in what manner this is effected. The mere presence of others gives us a courage that alone we should probably not have experienced. A child having to undergo some slight operation, some test of pain, is usually willing to bear it patiently if only its mother will hold its hand. It is of course not that the pain is in this way rendered any the less, but only that a feeling of bravery is imparted by the mere presence of the mother. So, again, in a still more striking way is it with children in the dark. They are frightened by the loneliness of it; but if another is in the room, though he may not be seen nor heard, without any sensible appreciation of the presence and sustained only by the knowledge of the nearness the child becomes at once reinforced by a courage that springs entirely from the other's proximity. An invalid will grow querulous when he knows that he is alone. The mere presence of an onlooker will nerve us to bravery without a word being spoken or thing done. In some such sense our soul, by the perceived presence of the Holy Spirit, is encouraged, despite its natural or acquired timidity, to persevere. Thus it will be seen that the paradox has been reconciled. The perception of the presence has not been our own doing, still less has the nearness of God been through any merit of our own. But the mere indwelling of the Holy Ghost has itself refined the perceptive faculties of the will so that they are strengthened by the divine friend.

This, then, is the precise purpose of this particular gift - a perception, apart from all the ordinary methods, of the proximity of God to the soul. Not, indeed, as though it meant nothing more than the appreciation that God is everywhere, but rather just one aspect of the appreciation - namely, such an idea of it as will enable the soul to gain courage. Always the gifts mean, according to the teaching of the Church, such a refinement of spirit as shall enable us to perceive the least passing breath of God. So still has our soul become that the slightest stir ruffles the surface with ripples of a passing presence. So delicate is my soul that instinctively I am conscious of the indwelling of the Spirit of God and nerved in consequence by a corresponding strength which is no result of any determined act of will, but is, as it were, forced on me by the very nature of the case. Neither presence and strengthening are in any case my doing, nor do I participate in either. But when I take the further step and proceed to act in consequence of them when in virtue of a strength that is not my own, I banish fear and face resolutely the difficulties of the good life, then has the gift led to the virtue, and out of something that was divine has blossomed something that is human. Surely it will be of the utmost consequence to me to realize this nearness of God, and the courage that its perception will give. In all my trials none are so hard for me to bear as discouragement and depression. How, then, can I now shirk my duty and the disagreeable necessities imposed on me once I have made use of this divine friend, whose hand is always locked in mine?

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