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ANTOINE GARDE1L, O.P.

The Gifts of the
Holy Ghost
In the Dominican
\ Saints

THE BRUCE PUBLISHING COMPANY
MILWAUKEE

Nihil obstat: F. D. McShane, O.P., S.T.Lr.
J. S. Considine, O.P., S.T.Lr.
Imprimi potest: T. S. McDermott, O.P., S.T.Lr., LL.D.,
Prior Provincialis

Imprimatur: ψ Samuel A. Stritch, D.D.,
Archiepiscopus Milwaukiensis
January 16, 1937

Copyright, 1937
Anselm Townsend, O.P·
Printed in the U. S. A.

Contents

Page

ix
Introduction............................................... ·

The Role of the Gifts of the Holy Ghost

·

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost in the Super-

natural Life...........................................·
The Gift of the Fear of God ..·■··
St. Louis Bertrand— St. Vincent Ferrer —
St. Rose of Lima

The Gift of Fortitude................................................. 42
St. Catherine de Ricci —St. John of Gorcum
— St. Peter Martyr
The Gift of Piety............................................... .........
St. Agnes of Montepulciano — St. Pius V —
St. Raymond of Pennafort
The Gift of Counsel................................................. 64
St. Antoninus
The Gift of Knowledge........................................... 76
St. Dominic — St. Hyacinth
vii

viii

Contents
Page

The (rift of Understanding...................................... 88
St. Catherine of Siena
The Gift of Wisdom................................................ wo
St. Th o mas Aquin as

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost in the Most Pure
Heart of the Virgin Mary.............................. i j i

The Gifts in Heaven................................................ 127
The Dominican Pentecost

Introduction
“The Forgotten God” might well be used to
describe the Holy Ghost. It would appear strange
were it not that familiar things are least observed.
The action of the Holy Ghost in our souls is so
quiet and so continuous that it is barely perceived.
The thought of the Father as Creator is over­
whelmingly impressive. The sight of the Crucifix,
the frequent attendance at Holy Mass, keeps the
Redeeming Son ever in our minds. But the Holy
Ghost, the Indwelling God of Sanctification, seems
to be so intimately one with ourselves that we forget
Him. Hidden He is, but that is no reason why He
should be slighted.
Dominicans especially should have a deep vivid
love of the Holy Ghost. He is the Spirit of Truth:
we are of the Order of Truth. He it was who
enlightened Thomas: we are Aquinas’s disciples.
There results a grave obligation upon us to have
a devotion profoundly enlightened toward the
Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. We must
know who it is who acts upon us and how and why.
Thus only can there be, as there should be, an
ix

X

Introduction

intelligent co-operation on our part. So only can we
“work out our salvation” with Him.
It is for this reason that we present as the third
in this Dominican Library of Spiritual Works the
present volume of Père Gardeil. Herein we may see
the operations of the Holy Ghost in the upbuilding
of Dominican sanctity. The saints are not isolated
phenomena of the Order but the excelling types of
that which should be of ordinary occurrence. They
are ourselves as we should be, as we may be under
the inspirations described by Père Gardeil.
The two opening studies require real thought
since they deal with profound mysteries but they
well repay the intellectual effort they demand. They
are deeply theological, as must be any accurate state­
ment of “the deep things of God,” but they are
written with a moving piety which refreshes during
the processes of thought. The subsequent chapters,
in which the author treats of the Gifts of the Holy
Ghost in relation to the individual Saints, are
marked by keen psychological insight, though, of
course, other writers may very possibly differ from
Père Gardeil in his attributions.
The saints, in fact all the just, enjoy all the Gifts
of the Holy Ghost though usually one of them so
predominates as almost to constitute a characteristic.
Certain saints are, however, so multiple faceted that
it is almost a matter of purely personal preference
which prompts the selection of one out of two or

Introduction

xi

more outstanding Gifts as the more controlling. In
this connection, it would be interesting to speculate
upon the characterization which Père Gardeil would
have made of the universal genius of St. Albert had
he been canonized at the time this book was written.
May this little volume contribute to an ever­
deepening devotion to the Sanctifier, the Spirit of
Truth, among the children of the Order of Truth.

Anselm M. Townsend, O.P.,
General Editor

THE GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST
IN THE
DOMINICAN SAINTS

The Role of the Gifts of the Holy Ghost
The existence of the Gifts of the Holy Ghost in
every just soul is a truth universally accepted in the
Catholic Church. If no formal definition attributes
to them an essence distinct from that of the infused
virtues, nevertheless, excepting the theological
virtues, they are presented to us as special super­
natural perfections, superior to the infused virtues.
They are given to us thus in the language of Holy
Scripture and in the writings of many of the Fathers,
the prayers of the liturgy, the growing agreement of
Christian theologians and the voice of the Christian
people.
What, then, is the place of the gifts in the economy
of our spiritual life? This is a question of supreme
interest. Upon its solution depends the knowledge
of what are, perhaps, the most marvelous of the
operations of the Holy Spirit in our souls, the under­
standing of our supernatural duties, the most lofty
as well as the most urgent. Equally dependent
thereon, since God will not justify us without our
consent, are the fruit and happy success of these
divine operations.
3

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

4

Following St. Thomas and John of St. Thomas
who, it would seem, has most profoundly penetrated
his thought on this subject, we shall endeavor to give
an account regarding the Gifts in the faithful soul.
This study will be divided into two parts:
1. What charity would be without the Gifts;
2. What charity is with these Gifts.
What Charity Would Be Without the Gifts
“Verily thou art a hidden God, the God of Israel, the
Saviour.”1

In this word charity we find our entire super­
natural psychology concentrated. God dwells in us
through sanctifying grace. He becomes the Guest of
our soul. Our daily activity He controls by the in­
fused moral virtues. The theological virtue of char­
ity is, as it were, the point of penetration by which
God, already dwelling in the essence of the soul,
spreads over its power, and from this center He
directs the operations of the infused virtues. It is
through the heart, where there is gathered all that is
unfolded in the activity of man, that God begins the
deification of our intellect and will. The infused vir­
tues do no more than govern the good which charity
has placed in the heart. Being the point of contact
between grace and morals, or the seat of the whole
1 Isa. 45:15·

The Role of the Gifts

5

supernatural psychology, charity vivifies the entire
supernatural order.
At first glance, however, charity resembles all the
infused virtues. Like them it is a supernatural habit.
In the natural order, habit arises from repeated
performances of an act and thus the natural virtues
are acquired by the constant exercise of morally
good acts. The supernatural virtues, on the contrary,
are established in our faculties at a single stroke.
God, infinitely powerful, dispenses with human
activity which can do nothing in this regard, and
inserts these divine graftings on the pristine native
stock supplied by our nature. Sustained in being by
the power from which it draws sap, the infused
virtue transforms its activity. It enables our knowl­
edge and our will to tend toward a divine good. Just
as it is the property of a habit so to be at the disposal
of the human will that its fortunate possessor may
use it at will, so it is with the infused virtue. We
freely make use of the Presence of God within us
and of the communication of His own life which
He has given us.
Charity, insofar as it is the proper effect of the
Holy Ghost, surpasses all other virtues. Through
grace the Blessed Trinity dwells in our soul. The
Holy Ghost, who is love, finds a proper dwelling in
the heart of man and it is charity that makes this
abiding a reality. Herein lies the profound mean­
ing of St. Paul’s phrase, “The charity of God is

6

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who
is given to us.”2 The Holy Ghost does not cause in
us the love of God as an exterior agent which be­
comes foreign as soon as it has finished operating.
He produces it as an interior cause dwelling in this
love, for the Apostle says that “He has been given
to us.” His activity is like that of a soul, ever present
in that which it does and whose operation never
ceases. So long as the just soul loves God, it does
not act alone; it has, deep in its heart, the Spirit
of God, and it is this Spirit that causes the soul to
utter, with all truth and efficacy, the name of filial
love, “My Father!”
The soul of man is thus fully rectified by charity
in relation to God, our last end. But it is in the
order of things that the heart should radiate through­
out its whole activity. In fact, the infused virtues, as
faith and hope, prudence and justice, fortitude and
temperance, operate under the influence of divine
love. That is to say, that the Spirit of God, the soul
of our charity, finds in these virtues channels by
which He may spread the love which He inspires
in the hearts of the just through all the parts of
man, intellect or will, and even the passions them­
selves. Inspired by the Holy Ghost the prophet ex­
claims, “Bless the Lord, O my soul. All the powers
of my soul, O bless His Holy name.”3
2 Rom. 5:5.
3 Ps. 102:1.

The Role of the Gifts

7

Here arises a question whose answer will dem­
onstrate the role of the gifts of the Holy Ghost. In
what way does the Holy Ghost, present in our hearts
through charity, act upon our inmost psychology? In
expanding, does it follow the laws of its own being
or does it adapt itself to our Laws? Is its interven­
tion in our action a simple uplifting of our psycho­
logical activity or is it an irradiation of what I may
perhaps be permitted to call its own divine psychol­
ogy? Is the Holy Spirit, present in our souls, the
radiant sun whose rays pierce victoriously the thick
clouds and whose power, directly and of itself, acts
to enliven every creature? Or rather, does He, as
with a cloud, envelop Himself like a beneficent
prisoner in the forms proper to human action?
May we here apply to a subject so lofty the prin­
ciples and laws which govern the natural order?
Yes, for we follow St. Thomas who in many like
cases has done so. In the sublime boldness of his
strong soul in everything, he never thought that the
supernatural order could be opposed to the natural.
He never hesitated to apply to the former the con­
ceptions of the latter, making them undergo only
those modifications required by the perfection of
their new state. First, then, we must answer that
charity and the infused virtues are really and
properly active virtues. Now, the active virtues
essentially appertain to the perfection of the active
human powers, and the Holy Ghost, dwelling with-

8

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

in through charity, acts in us according to the
manner of the human virtues, adapting Himself to
the mode of action of our human faculties.
The just man, enriched with the supernatural
virtues, remains the true and principal author of
his supernatural operations. He alone directs the
movements of his intellect and heart; his reason
continues as the head of his entire supernatural
psychology. As a fire unconsciously warming the
heart, the Holy Ghost is strongly but sweetly spread
abroad in the faculties through the virtues, or as
a hidden light, illuminating without revealing its
source. It is “the fountain of life, the fire, the charity
and spiritual unction.”4 This changes nothing in the
ordinary functioning of our inner world, though
everything is changed in regard to the end toward
which our activity tends and the vigor employed in
aspiring to it. Such is the role of the Holy Spirit
inasfar as His actions are performed by the virtues.
He comes to us as God — yet He is the “hidden God”
of whom Holy Scripture speaks.
From this arises the obscurity of our faith. In this
life we cannot have direct intuitive knowledge of
essences, and, if there is one especially which escapes
our grasp, it is certainly the Essence of God, the
contemplation and love of whom is the very end of
the supernatural order. Through revelation we are
4 Fons vivus, ignis, charitas et spiritalis unctio.

The Role of the Gifts

9

instructed concerning the truths which pertain to
this Essence that, knowing it, we may desire it. But
this revelation is received blindly by our reason
which is certified by hearing, which is to say that it
is through the testimony of God who neither deceives
nor is deceived. From faith arises supernatural hope
and love, which latter are nothing other than the
habitual application of our hearts to the love of the
divine good revealed through faith. Thus charity
itself, entirely filled with the Holy Spirit who ani­
mates it and, as it were, weighed down by the om­
nipotence of the love which God has for Himself,
allows itself to be ruled by the obscure knowledge
of faith. The Holy Ghost is, so to speak, the prisoner
of the imperfection of the love which He inspires.
This constitutes the greatness of the respect which
Providence has for our liberty, so strongly avowed
is this plan of leaving to us, at least in the ordinary
course of life, the merit of our justification.
If the theological virtues are regulated by man’s
narrow and limited mode of comprehension, with
more reason this should be true in regard to the
infused moral virtues. But the rational nature of
man places the perfection of morals in a just mean,
equally removed from the extremes of excess and
default which may be found in the matter of his
activity whether this activity be either exterior
actions or interior passions. The loftiness of the
supernatural end can raise the level of this just

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The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

mode. It will not hinder it from consisting in the
adaptation of human actions and passions to the
supernatural end, which adaptation requires the
reduction of the possible excesses of these human
acts to the just proportion which makes them apt
to reach their end. To find this just mean in
relation to the divine end marked out by faith,
desired by hope and willed by charity, is the role
of infused Prudence. To realize the just mean
already determined by infused Prudence in the
domain of voluntary acts or the passions will be the
roles of the infused virtues of Justice, Fortitude, and
Temperance. Here again the Holy Ghost seems to
sift through a sieve the brilliance of His action.
Our entire practical moral order is governed by
prudence as the order of conscience and the inten­
tions was regulated by faith.
Thus it is apparent that obscurity and the just
mean are the human veils under which the activity
of the Holy Ghost is hidden. Without doubt this
hidden action is infinitely precious to us, for by it
we are ordained to the supernatural end. We ask:
Will not the Holy Ghost, who has gone so far as
to dwell within us, carry out His work to the end?
Why, breaking through the uniformity in the regime
of the virtues, should He not penetrate as Master
into the soul of the just man, His servant? Why
should not His intelligence and His heart, acting
in their own way, neither contrary to faith nor

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prudence but. surpassing them, sometimes become
the immediate regulator of our acts?
We answer: Because it has not sufficed for the
Spirit of God since the creation of the world, to be
borne upon the waters, may the triumphant fiats
shine forth again in the supernatural creation! May
a new seven days arise and may the Gifts mark
upon the foreheads of the just, like a radiant rain­
bow, the progress of the new divine work! Veni,
Creator Spiritus! — Come, Creator Spirit!
What Charity Is with the Gifts

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The Holy Ghost is the interior rule, immediate

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and homogeneous with our supernatural activity.
Such is the ideal which is offered to the aspirations
of the just. But no sooner has he grasped this ideal
than his faith itself obliges him, not to revoke it,
but to limit its extension. Should the divine intelligence become the proximate regulator of our inmost
activity, this would be the unveiling in us of the
Essence of God which is its object. But on earth
we are not allowed to gain that insight which is
reserved for the future life. God cannot on earth immediately regulate our moral world as an intellectual light without prejudice to that which He will
become to us in heaven. It is only by a motivating
influence that He intervenes in our life, and should
the effect of this intervention sometimes be the

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The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

expression of His intellectual life, yet it will be
under the extrinsic form of an impulsive activity
and consequently obscure. He will cause in us these
effects of light under the guise of a secret instinct.
No matter how enlightening divine revelations
may be, faith, governed by charity, remains their
directive light. (Prophecy must be excepted, but
prophecy does not belong to the moral order of
which we are treating.)
Is this direct influence of God upon our interior
activity possible? And, there being nothing opposed
to it, does it exist? And if existing, under what condi­
tions does it realize itself? These questions arise, and
their solution will enlighten us concerning the role
of the Gifts in our mystical life.
The positive character of the Aristotelian ethics
as transferred by St. Thomas into the supernatural
order appears at first glance to forbid every direct
intervention from another world. What would be­
come of the just mean in which morality consists
should Prudence yield its place to the sovereign
movements of external substances? Would it not
lapse into an imaginary world, a revival of that of
Plato, entirely under the immediate sway of Ideas
and Exemplary Causes?
What then are we to think if Aristotle, ever
opposed to Plato on this score, were to have taken
the step? Would we not wonder if, in explaining
certain men proposed as problems, this last disciple

The Role of the Gifts

13

of Socrates, the tutor of Alexander, the rival of
Plato, the admirer of Phidias did not confine him­
self to the ordinary and extrinsic principles of
human character, but transcending reason went to
the Divinity itself to seek the explanation of these
divine men? In his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle
writes of a manner of being which is superior to
human nature, of a heroic virtue which, as it were,
renders a man divine. This same thought he
expresses in the Ethics of Eudemus in the chapter
on Fortune. There are men who, without the
aid of science or prudence, succeed in everything.
How can we explain this? “It is asked,’’ says
Aristotle, “what is the principle of movement in
the soul. It is clear that it is the principle of
the movement of the world: a god. . . . The
principle of reason is not reason but something
higher. But what is there higher than reason which
is not divine? It is not virtue, which is the tool of
reason ... it is not reason itself; the men of whom
I speak did not use it; it is not enthusiasm, that has
not this power. It is, then, without reason that they
are what they are ... it seems that the more the
reason is absent the more scope the principle which
directs them has for action: thus the blind have a
better memory, disengaged as they are from that
which distracts.”
Thus for Aristotle, a heroic virtue, an extraor­
dinary fortune or genius is due to the special and

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14

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

direct influence of the Divinity, the supreme reason
of which the human reason is but a modest partic­
ipation. In such wise be explains the deficiency of
the rational commonplaceness of the morality of the
just mean. His system makes reply to the difficulties
which were raised by the Platonists in reference to
certain personifications of humanity which go
beyond the ordinary laws. Has he, perhaps, expe­
rienced within himself the impressions of the First
Intelligence and does he so speak because he has
felt its divine urges?
Yet, from the standpoint of contact with the
Divinity, what are Socrates, Alexander, Plato, Phid­
ias, Aristotle compared with the just man reformed
by grace? If you are seeking sublime answers which
illuminate as lights the dark depths of your tortured
conscience, don’t ask Socrates but the child who has
just made its First Communion. Does a glorious
ideal fill you with enthusiasm, and do you live in
a dream of conscience? If so, lay aside your Plutarch
and ask that young man of clear and chaste look the
secret of his heroic victories. Do not ask Plato con­
cerning the life to come. He will underscore his
sublime revelation with an enigmatic smile full of
his own irony. Go, rather, and seek that poor woman
who interrupts her work to enter that church; she
will be able to tell you of heaven and what it has
done for her. If you seek works of art, do not they
surpass Phidias who form the resemblance in human

The Role of the Gifts

15

clay of the very Face of God? If Aristotle seems great
because he was twice raised to an understanding of
the direct contact of the soul with the Divinity, yet
what is that compared to the ordinary state of soul
of a St. Augustine or a St. Thomas?
The Divinity inhabits the soul of the just through
grace. It is well if it be a house prepared for the
direct action of the Divinity. The just man is the
natural subject of heroic virtue. Fie is the one pre­
destined to the touches of genius or marked as the
object for divine favors. Hence, it is not astonishing
that St. Thomas, inspired by the Philosopher, has
judged it possible that God, the reason for the
existence of our reason, should make Himself
the immediate rule and inspirer of supernatural
activity.
How can we know certainly whether the Holy
Spirit substitutes Himself as the normal regulator of
our supernatural life? We have only the one means
to enlighten us, namely, the Word of God. The
supernatural order is gratuitous in all its degrees,
and the greatest arguments of fitness are not compa­
rable in value to a single word spoken by God.
This word we have in Holy Scripture. We have
already affirmed the faith of the Church in the
existence of special, distinct gifts superior to the
infused virtues. Holy Scripture gives us the char­
acteristic trait of these Gifts. They are breaths, in­
spirations, spiritus. It is thus that it is said of the

16

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

Messias in the eleventh chapter of Isaias “And the
spirit (i.e., breath) of the Lord shall rest upon
Him; the spirit of Wisdom and of Understanding,
the spirit of Counsel and of Fortitude, the spirit of
Knowledge and of Godliness, and He shall be (died
with the spirit of the Fear of the Lord.”5 Is not this
language, which is habitual in Holy Scripture,
clear,” says St. Thomas, “and do we not therefore
understand that these seven Gifts are in us by
the divine inspiration? ” There is no appreciable
difference between that inspiration which is guar­
anteed to us by Holy Scripture and that instinctive
urge toward good of those “foolish ones who are
pushed on to good” of whom Aristotle speaks.6 The
authority of the Word of God thus coincides with
the bold views of the Philosopher. Scripture says
“divine inspiration” where Aristotle had said “divine
instinct.” As a counterpart the former describes the
state of reason which corresponds to the divine
instinct by the word “foolishness” (stultitiam) while
Aristotle in the same place calls it “irrational”
(άλογοι). Why is there such an agreement? Perhaps
that same Divinity which inspired the prophet Isaias
also inspired the philosopher of Stagira. In any
event, St. Thomas, seeing this agreement between
the two texts, drew from it the doctrine which is
5 Verses 2 and 3.
6 Οί αν όρμησωσι κατορθοΰν άλογοι ovres·

The Role of the Gifts

17

the culminating point, the center of his supernatural
ethics.
Under what conditions does this divine inter­
vention operate? To us our supernatural moral
activity appears to be dependent upon two prime
regulators: reason perfected by faith, and the Holy
Ghost. These two principles harmonize because the
divine reason is the cause of our reason. Neverthe­
less, each acts in its own way, hence, in the presence
of the divine operation, our reason suspends activ­
ity. It is replaced by a higher principle than itself.
Here a question arises. The Holy Ghost dwells in
us through grace as reason does through nature.
From the point of view of acting upon our psychological organism, however, it would seem that reason
surpasses the Holy Ghost — presupposing we are
content with the ideas thus far presented. Reason was
created for the exercise of its activity having every
portion of the psychological organism as permanent
auxiliaries. These permit reason voluntarily and
easily to regulate all its powers, and give it entrance
into our interior world to underlie the moral
virtues. The Holy Ghost, however, is all-powerful
and does not need pre-existing dispositions in

order to operate. He creates the disposition by the
very fact that He acts. With Him everything is
perfect; how is it with us?
It is here, apparently, that St. Thomas goes
definitely beyond Aristotle. The latter had refused

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18

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

to recognize a permanent basis for the special action
of the Divinity in the nature of man. For him., the
entire foundation of Fortune rested on the partic­
ular and unceasing attentions of the Divinity. But
St. Thomas found himself confronted with a man
already possessed of the Divinity, one in whom the
Divinity habitually resides, whose soul, as it were,
the Divinity is. It is the property of the soul to
cause in the being which it vivifies all the organs
of which it has need. Why, then, should not charity
give rise to perfections and habits analogous to
those which make reason’s entrance into the moral
world so easy? Can charity in the supernatural order
refuse to the just man what nature grants to man
in the natural order? Undoubtedly God does not
need these points of contact in order to activate my
life. But for me it is necessary that He establish
these contacts if I am to be as perfect in the order
of divine motions as in the rational order. It is
necessary that the inspirations of the Holy Ghost
be in me habitually just as the dictates of reason
are in me as a habit. I do not wish to give way
violently and as if constrained to God who encom­
passes my soul. I wish to give Him place as the
virtuous man yields to his reason, voluntarily,
readily, with that ease habit alone can give. I wish
to be able to say with the prophet: “The Lord God
opened my ear and I did not resist; I have not gone
back.”7

7 Isa. 50:5.

The Role of the Gifts

19

St. Thomas makes a brief answer: the inspirations
of the Holy Ghost are called “gifts” not only because
God causes them, but because they constitute per­
fections which render man easily susceptible to
divine inspiration. They are similar to those perfec­
tions which dispose him to receive the motion of
reason in regard to his ordinary actions. This is
equivalent to saying: If the direct intervention of
the Holy Ghost in the government of our soul were
merely spontaneous acts, as decrees, motu proprio,
of the Holy Ghost, they would not have that per­
manent and definite character implied by the word
“gift.” Are not the gifts of God without repentance,
like the gifts of man? It is necessary not only that the
Spirit be “given” to us, that is, should be a habit
in our souls, but that His inspirations should also be
given and form for us one of the habits of our souls.
How might this be? We should no longer be the
active principle of these inspirations for they would
remain only the inspirations of the Holy Ghost. On
the contrary, we should be a passive principle, that
is, the gifts should place us habitually under their
dependence. Thus, through them we should have a
permanent right and hold upon the breathing of
the spirit.
Truly this doctrine of the Angelic Doctor is
admirable. For him, the doctrine of the Gifts is
contained in the two words, “spirit,” “gift.” As the
breathings of the Holy Ghost, the Gifts postulate the

2o

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

autonomy o£ their principle. As Gifts, the inspira­
tions of the Holy Ghost have an habitual contact
point in our souls. Actual grace, of course, is needed
to stir up the will to make use of the Gifts. Actual
graces, however, are the breath of the just and
prayerful soul. May God give us the will to make
use of the gift, this new habit of the soul, and may
the Holy Ghost descend when invoked! The Holy
Ghost is ever ready to serve us. “We use the Holy
Spirit,’’8 say the theologians in an energetic phrase.
In reality it is the Holy Ghost who makes use of us,
with all the independence of His way of acting, but
we, predisposed by grace, determine the moment
when He shall take us as an instrument. We are like
a child who receives the image of the sun in a mirror
and can thereby control it at will. He does not
possess the source whence it comes, yet it is at
his service and he makes use of it to cause the
beams of the radiant star to penetrate into places
which escape its direct action and are lighted by
the paler rays of diffused light. Such is the child
of God adorned by the Gifts. Through these God
shines freely across his whole moral and super­
natural life, formerly lighted by the calm light of
the virtues. How happy he is! “And night is my
illumination in delights.”9 Being passive in rela­
tion to the Holy Ghost, he possesses Him and uses
8 Utimur Spiritu Sancto.
9 Et nox illuminatio mea in deliciis meis.

The Role of the Gifts

21

the influence of this Guest as both slave and
free. “Where the spirit of God is, there is
liberty.’’1011“Whoever the Spirit moves, these are
the sons of God.’’11 Such is the strange antinomy
of which the Gifts appear to us to be the divine
solution.
We now see what charity is with the Gifts. It is
not that gentle warmth, that fervor of the virtues
which secretly insinuates itself into our moral organ­
ism and which takes the human forms of our reason
and love. It is the blazing center, making its envelope
glow, radiant as the sun. It is the light of the Face
of our God resplendent in the sevenfold ray which is
his own. Truly it is beautiful! It is the very brilliance
of Thy countenance, O Holy Spirit! This light rests
upon us. “There is signed above us the light of your
countenance, O Lord!”12 Not yet lighting our fore­
head, nor fascinating our gaze as in the Beatific
Vision, it envelops our heart. Like a sun whose rays
come from it ceaselessly, our heart is actuated and
renewed by the action of the Holy Ghost who en­
lightens our whole interior world, our truth, love,
hope, justice, passions, all, that God may reign over
all, directly and according to His own method.
“That God may be all in all things.”13
10 Ubi Spiritus Dei, ibi libertas.
11 Qui Spiritu aguntur, hi sunt filii Dei.
12 Signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui, Domine.
13 Ut sit Deus omnia in omnibus.

22

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

Such is the role of the Gifts according to St.
Thomas. Whence did the Angelic Doctor draw this
teaching, as sublime as it is original? The symbolism
of the Middle Ages regarding him was not in error.
It loved to represent him with the positive, calm, and
serene glance of the Peripatetic for whom the hour
of vision had not yet come, but from his breast
escaped a brilliance as if the divine charity which
fdled his heart could not conceal the divine fire
which it imprisoned. It is the Holy Ghost, who,
through the Gifts, has burst forth in this divine
genius. Deus! Ecce Deus! — God! Behold God!

I
The Gifts of the Holy Ghost in the
Supernatural Life
You, as pious, just, and holy souls, formed in the
school of the Blessed Dominic, aspire to live the
supernatural life. But what is it to live the super­
natural life? In what does this life, which is yours,
differ from your natural life? The difference lies in
the end to which your every thought, action, and
affection tends. The natural life has as its end your
continuance in being, your relations of family, of
friendship, of service. Not that all this cannot be
elevated by grace to a higher end, but, of itself, it is
all limited to earth and must perish with you. The
supernatural life, on the contrary, is exclusively con­
cerned with that which lives beyond the tomb with
God whom we firmly hope some day to enjoy in
eternal vision. In advance, it ordains all our vital
activities to this definite and glorious end. And, since
this end surpasses all the powers of our nature, since
the power of God is absolutely necessary to cause us
efficaciously to tend toward God, it is most just that
«3

24

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

we call such a life supernatural. It is beyond our
nature because of the loftiness of the ideal which it
proposes to us. It is beyond our nature because of
the divine power which it requires, a power which
we have not a single means of causing to descend
upon us and which is a pure gift of God.
To understand this supernatural life, insofar as
it is given us to possess it on earth, we must transport
ourselves in thought into the Beatific Vision wherein
this supernatural life attains its apogee and its
integral realization. Here God is all in all — not the
God of the Philosopher, the First Cause, the Perfect
Being — but God as He is in Himself, God the
Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost. The
blessed behold the wonderful spectacle of the Father
begetting the Son through all eternity. They witness
the Son, the Word of the Father, springing forth
from His bosom like the splendor springing from
a glowing sun without leaving Him, remaining
attached to Him, ceaselessly plunging into Him to
shine again and forever. They see the Holy Ghost,
the mutual love of the Father and the Son. This
love is the fruit of the perfect knowledge the
Source, who is the Father, has of the Splendor,
who is the Son and which the Son, who is the
image of the Father, has of the uncreated Source
of his own Beauty. The blessed behold the inmost
essence of the Divinity, see in their first origin
all those perfections of the creature which enchant

The Gifts in the Supernatural Life

25

us — being, goodness, truth, duration, unity, har­
mony, knowledge, heart, will, justice, mercy. They
see them no longer scattered and crumbling as
we see them, compelling us to consider them a
group only at a time, but united and concentrated
in the simplicity of the divine being, not diminished
and darkened by created life, but in their full un­
folding, all new and sparkling with the infinite life
in which they remain plunged. This is but a feeble
notion of what the blessed see face to face without
comprehending its immensity, since it is boundless.
There is nothing which touches, draws, or enchants
us upon this earth, nothing of the good and the
beautiful, which is not found in the ocean of the
Divinity though infinitely enlarged, infinitely more
beautiful and more consoling.
In the presence of this spectacle, the eye and the
heart are open wide and the Infinite penetrates them
without difficulty. Just as we allow ourselves, with­
out resistance, to be penetrated by the good things
of this world, the scholar by truth, the artist by
harmony, the friend by the thought of his friend,
giving them a permanent home in the depths of our
very selves, so that they dwell and remain intimately
and profoundly there in a way as true as that offered
by material dwelling together, just so does God
penetrate into the inmost recesses of the blessed.
There He dwells and remains. It is a spiritual habi­
tation of which lively thought and love form the

a6

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

foundation, the roof, and the walls. It is the only
dwelling in which can live the incorporeal Being, the
Pure Spirit, the Subsistent Thought and Love who
is God. Such is the supernatural life when achieved,
the life eternal in heaven.
To grasp what the supernatural life is on earth,
it will be enough slightly to modify what we have
just described. The life eternal is in the order of
things accomplished what the present supernatural
life is in the order of things which have not yet
reached their conclusion though tending efficaciously
toward that goal. Let me explain. It is the same
reality which lies at the root of heavenly life and
the supernatural life on earth, but, above, we possess
it unveiled, never to lose it, while, here below, we
have it veiled and may unhappily lose it. But, once
more, apart from the difference between faith and
sight, the possession is just as real. God dwells in
our hearts as really as in the hearts of the blessed,
since, in truth, we love Him and this love which
we now have will not change after our entry into
heaven. “Charity never dies,” says St. Paul. Thus,
the just man, the saint on earth, performs now, in
the sight of God, the same triumphant act through
which it will possess God in heaven. God already
dwells in his love. His heart is a veritable heaven,
although invisible and hidden from all eyes. Such,
in its profound reality, is the supernatural life
on earth.

The Gifts in the Supernatural Life

2η

But, to go still deeper into the springs of this
mysterious life, who has been able to deposit this
heavenly love in the heart of the man, living in the
world? Of ourselves we cannot produce even a par­
ticle of love for God as He is in Himself. First of
all, we cannot naturally know God in such a way:
He must be revealed to us. But how can we love
naturally what we do not know naturally? Further,
even after Fie has been revealed to us, how dare we
love Him? I mean with the love of friendship, a love
given and received, in a word, an efficacious love,
not the false and discouraging love which one has
for an inaccessible being, a love which is only a
shadow of love. Yet it is with this given and effica­
cious love that the blessed love God. God has stooped
down to them and what they could not do Fie has
given them the power to do. He has made them
participants of the love wherewith He loves Him­
self. The divine act has become, so far as it is
possible, the act of the blessed. And, as the Father
and the Son love one another through the Holy
Ghost, so the blessed love God through the Holy
Ghost. But, since the love of the blessed for God is
already in us in a state of efficacious tendency, it
follows that God stoops down to us to make us
participants of the love whereby He loves Himself,
to raise our small love to the loftiness of His Heart.
Thus it follows that the Holy Ghost, the consubstantial love of the Father and the Son, should, in a

28

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

certain way, be at the bottom of our love of God.
For, once more, we really love God, and it is by
the Holy Ghost alone that one can love God.
The Floly Spirit, then, dwells in us in an especial
way, though the whole Blessed Trinity dwells there
as the object to which our faith and our love eilicaciously tend. The Holy Ghost adds an especial way
to this already intimate way of living in a soul. He
resides at the bottom of the supernaturalized heart
as the principle of the movement by which it tends
toward the Holy Trinity. He is, so to speak, the heart
of our heart. And, as the heart makes itself known in
a man by an inclination which induces it, by a bias
which orients it and draws it powerfully toward the
good, so the Holy Ghost, as an inherent bias to our
charity, orients us, draws us and carries us along
toward the Holy Trinity, the common center of the
aspirations of the blessed in heaven and of the just
on earth.
It is with the expansion of this force, hidden in
the depths of our supernaturalized heart, that the
Gifts of the Holy Ghost are connected. They are one
of the two ways, and the most di vine one, by which
the activity of the Holy Ghost operates in the souls
of the just.
Every superior force has two modes of employing
its action. First, it may raise up in the being sub­
ject to itself fixed, permanent organs which divide
among themselves, under its direction, the various

The Gifts in the Supernatural Life

2g

fields of activity which are necessary to attain the
end which it purposes. It is thus that the superior
force which we call a germ raises up in the living
body an entire assembly of organs which divide
among themselves the different functions of life. In
this case the initial force conserves only the power
which unifies and vivifies the organism; it does not
intervene, directly and at every moment, in the
detail of its work; it leaves each organ to act accord­
ing to the laws which it has traced out for it; it
seems to adapt itself to each one’s mode of action.
It is thus that the Holy Ghost, residing at the source
of our entire activity by charity, creates for Itself the
fixed organs of its operations in the infused virtues,
in prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance and in
all the lesser virtues which are like the secondary
organs, the tissues and cells of these supernatural
organs. He contents Himself with unifying them,
leaving them to attain their functions according to
their special modes of action, analogous to those of
the human moral virtues which bear the same names.
The direction of the Spirit is not lessened by the
power which He leaves to these ministers of His
power, which hold from Him the vivifying impulse
which forms the basis of the life of the just, which
performs, noiselessly and naturally, works of a kind
which are nonetheless divine since the Holy Ghost
ceases not to be at their deepest source.
But if the vital force of the germ, essentially im-

go

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

mersed in the matter to which it gives life, is in
some sort exhausted in its first activity, such is not
the case with a vital force which is independent and
necessarily transcendent such as God is in relation
to His creatures. The divine activity goes beyond
the activity of all the organs which He has been
pleased to create in order to realize it. Just as the
head of a state, the absolute master of his realm, is
not bound to act through subordinates in order to
work his pleasure in such and such a part of his
government, although, ordinarily, he allows them to
act of themselves, so is the Divine Spirit who is the
absolute master of the government of souls in regard
to a supernatural end, the possession of the Trinity.
We should expect, on His part, direct interventions,
whether it be to aid the infused virtues, the ordinary
organs of His government, for example, in certain
extraordinary cases such as grave temptations which
the ordinary virtue cannot overcome, or, simply
because, being able, He wishes so to do, or to
promote, here and there in our lives, works of an
excellence which surpasses the common measure.
It is for these operations that the Gifts of the Holy
Ghost serve as a base of operation. Of course, God
could have justified us without our consent. He
could have entered at will into our supernatural
organization, making use of us as mere instruments
for His work. Sometimes He so acts, and it is with
operations of this kind that we must link, for

The Gifts in the Supernatural Life

31

example, the conversion of St. Paul and so many
other interior miracles. It is with such operations
that we connect prophecy, the gift of miracles and
all those graces which are given to man not for his
own sanctification but for that of others. But since
He is concerned here with our personal sanctifica­
tion, God did not. will that, even if Pie acted upon
us directly, without passing through the normal
organs, we should be not only without merit but
without co-operation with His spontaneous inspira­
tions. Hence this sanctifying germ has caused the
Gifts of the Holy Ghost to spring up in our hearts.
By them our supernatural organism is, as it were,
doubled. The extraordinary, the divine and spon­
taneous, is in some manner acclimated. This disposi­
tion is truly worthy of a divine author for whom
the extraordinary is the same as the ordinary, one
who is truly wise? and, if we may dare to say so, truly
prudent in mind, absolutely free, knowing that in
governing, He possesses infinite resources.
The Gifts of the Holy Ghost are not actual inter­
ventions of the Holy Ghost in our life, but habitual
dispositions placed in our soul which lead it easily
to consent to His inspirations. They are, the word
is perhaps strange but exact, “disposabilities” in
regard to God which the just soul keeps in reserve,
after satisfying the ordinary duty which is incarnate
in the moral task of the infused virtues. This is
unquestionably an original and unique creationi but

WBIUMBI

32

ΒΕΑώΧί-···

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

is not the case of a moral being who finds himself in
possession of an end which absolutely surpasses him,
under the divine directive influence itself, and which
he is powerless to secure by his own powers, equally
unique? Is it not necessary, on this head, that, along­
side the ever active virtues, there should be disposi­
tions receptive of all those divine influences which
the human activity cannot carry in its channels? Is
there not need of permanent “disposabilities” in
regard to everything which God may desire to work
in him?
It is true that the Gifts of the Holy Ghost are
limited in number, for there are but seven. Still this
number does not exhaust the infinite resources of
the divine bounty. Every time that the perfect num­
ber seven is used in theology to designate the works
of God, it expresses not so much a limit as a pleni­
tude. There are seven sacraments, seven virtues,
theological and moral. There are seven sacred orders.
Examples could be multiplied. Every time that the
plenitude of the divine treasures are spread before
us the number seven appears. It is represented before
the Ark of the Most High, of Jehovah, in the sevenbranched candlestick. We say, then, that there are
seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost, fear, fortitude, piety,
counsel, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. Do
not painters represent the splendor which escapes
from the sun by a finite number of rays and do they

The Gifts in the Supernatural Life

33

not place some in relief of which they form the
center and binding of each luminous sheaf? There
are seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost, but the means
which God has of activating us in regard to our end
are infinite.
Thus the Holy Ghost, that Great Performer, from
the depth of charity wherein He dwells, sees Him­
self performing upon the soul which is subject to
Him, as upon a keyboard with many stops, here the
activities, the infused virtues, there the receptivities,
the Gifts. Behold Him, the Divine Orpheus, who
sets Himself to the task. “The spirit bloweth where
He willeth.” Under His impulse, the keys of the
regenerated soul vibrate and there results a divine
harmony wherein the vigorous chords of the virtues
mingle with the intoxicating vibrances of the Gifts.
In proportion as the divine harmonies spread, the
luminous decisions, just actions, virile resolutions,
chaste sacrifices, holy apprehensions, courageous
attacks and unspeakable patiences, pious affections,
prudent counsels, the laments of knowledge, the
ravishments of understanding and finally, in heaven,
the enthusiasm of wisdom, these surge, mount, and
build themselves up into a sublime monument. And,
in the depth of the hearts of the saints, the Divine
Orpheus ceaselessly plays while the celestial Jeru­
salem slowly and majestically approaches from her
coronation.

34

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost
Blessed City, heavenly Salem,
Vision dear of peace and love,
Who, of living stones upbuilded,
Art the joy of heaven above,
And, with Angel cohorts circled,
As a Bride to earth dost move!
Many a blow and biting sculpture
Polished well those stones elect,
In their places now compacted
By the Heavenly Architect,
Who therewith hath willed forever
That His palace should be decked.

All that dedicated city,
Dearly loved by God on High,
In exultant jubilation
Pours perpetual melody:
God the One and God the Trinal
Singing everlastingly.

(Office of the Dedication of a Church.
Translated by John Mason Neale.)

11

The Gift of the Fear of God
Louis Bertrand
St- Vincent Ferrer
d7. Rose oj Lima

It is to the honor of Christianity that it trans­
figures the human passions.
Is there anything whose rehabilitation can be
more difficult than Fear? Love and hate, hope and
despair, desire and disgust, anger, audacity ... all
these passions have a certain grandeur. But Fear
. . . who would dare to take up its defense? Above
all, who will attempt to find a place for this in­
famous sentiment in a moral code which respects
itself and which respects man?
There is an initiative forbidden to human phi­
losophy, which is always afraid that it has not suffi­
ciently elevated itself. These pure moralists must
have a doctrine of entire disinterestedness. What!
Admit that men are sometimes afraid? Make use of
35

36

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

it to urge them to good? How shameful! Let us hide
this wretched thing and, in order not to disarrange
the good order of our pure precepts, let us suppress
even its name from morality.
It is the Holy Ghost who must rehabilitate fear.
It is true that the “fear” adopted by the Spirit has
nothing in common with worldly fear. It is not the
fear of men but the fear of God. “The fear of the
Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” say the Scrip­
tures. And the Holy Council of Trent, confirming
the age-long tradition of the Christian centuries de­
clares that even the fear of the divine chastisements
is something good and holy.
St. Thomas is not content with introducing fear
into natural morality, considering it as the matter
of a virtue, the virtue of the patient. It was not
enough for him that fear should be considered as a
legitimate motive to penance. This bold interpreter
of the divine audacity wished to give it a place in
theology which should be truly its own. Being un­
able to make a virtue out of fear because of that
something irrational and, as it were, inhuman which
it retains in spite of everything, he classifies it as a
Gift of the Holy Ghost, that is to say something
superior to reason, a direct emanation from the reg­
ulating influence of God upon human action. It is.
then, as a Gift of the Holy Ghost that fear plays
its important part in the supernatural Christian
morality.

The Gift of the Fear of God
And behold, as if to echo this doctrine, men arise
who dare to say aloud that they are afraid, that they
.consider fear to be an instrument of moral progress,
of sanctification: men who make fear the inspiring
thought of their life, who have the religion of fear.
These men, nevertheless, knew not how to tremble
before men. The just man of the old poet, “the just
and resolute man’’1 is but a child alongside of these
great independents. In fact, by their strange be­
havior, they have come to represent the sublimest
types of human morality made divine by the revela­
tion of God. They are the Saints, the purest, most
powerful, and the sweetest.
There are three chosen from the family of the
Holy Doctor, the Doctor of the Gift of Fear: St.
Louis Bertrand, St. Vincent Ferrer and St. Rose
of Lima.

Had the profoundly pious artist who thought out
the moving matins of the feast of St. Louis Ber­
trand read the tenth article of the nineteenth ques­
tion of the Prima Secundae'? The hymn begins
with an untranslatable resonance of the sighs, the
disciplines with which the Saint occupied his nights.
1 Justum et tenacem propositi virum.

9,8

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost
Nocturna coeli lumina
Suspiriorum conscia
Quae Ludovicus aetheri
Mittebat inter verbera2

The antiphons, the responses, the lessons begin a
strange harmony wherein are mingled the words:
tribulation, discipline, hair shirt, fasting, penance,
death. Here and there cries, more vibrant and more
keen, pierce the psalmody: “Burn here, O Lord, cut
here, here spare not, that thou mayest grant pardon
for eternity.” Did fear ever attain a more poignant
expression? Nevertheless, parallel to this plaint of
fear there runs the song of challenge and of intre­
pidity. “He feared not the savage hordes whose mul­
titude surrounded him. The stones, the spears, the
arrows caused in him no fear.” On the lips of the
Saint were the words of the Apostle “If I still please
men, I shall not be the servant of Christ.” Then the
two songs, one of the fear of God, the other of the
scorn of the world, end by harmonizing into one,
the song of charity. With it mortification is trans­
figured. “Grant me, O Lord, to die for Thee as
Thou hast died for me.” And matins ends with
a cry of triumph wherein all the rudeness of the
impetuous waves of penance dies away upon the
2ΊΤο nightly luminaries of the sky are conscious of the
sighs which Louis heavenward sent amidst the blows of his
discipline.

The Gift of the Fear of God

3g

enchanting shores of glory. “Thou hast broken my
hair shirt, O Lord, Thou hast surrounded me with
joy that it should be my glory to sing of Thee.”

If St. Louis Bertrand symbolizes the Gift of Fear
in the service of personal sanctification, St. Vincent
Ferrer represents it acting, so to speak, as an apostle.
To this preacher it was not enough that he himself
should fear God. He desired that the whole earth
should tremble with him.
He was a terrifying Saint whose whole words were
ordered with the object of creating dismay. His
favorite meditation was the vengeful Face of Christ
coming upon the clouds of heaven. His gospel was
the gospel of the end of the world. His meditation
had considered, in advance, all its chastisements. He
had paled before its just judgments. He was fearful v
because of this awe-inspiring Being. Like the traveler
who, nearing the coasts of Sicily by night, beholds
the peaks of the mountains encrimsoned by a somber
fire which reflects the hidden flares of Etna, so the
face of this man, raised by the Spirit to that eleva­
tion from which one may discover the hidden
horizons of the justice of God, reflects beforehand
the avenging fires of hell. So lofty was he in the
pulpit where he preached, so terrible, so penetrat­
ing the accent of his voice that one hesitated to

oses··

40

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

believe him a man. His voice was the trumpet which
sounded to summon both the living and the dead.
He was the Angel of the Last Judgment.

With St. Louis Bertrand, with St. Vincent Ferrer,
the Gift of Fear is still not wholly revealed. The
mortified fear of the former is as the root of the tree
hollowing the ground by its obscure and fecund
labor. The active fear of the latter is as the trunk
with its rough bark, overflowing with sap. In St.
Rose of Lima, fear is as the flower which spreads
around its perfumes and resembles a hidden and
supreme homage to the hidden beauty of the
Creator.
But do not look to find in St. Rose of Lima any­
thing which resembles softness or affectation. Our
Saint was a sturdy one and her mortification hardly
yields place to that of her brethren.
But, upon the robust stem of expiatory fear, she
raised in all its splendor the delicate and trembling
flower of filial fear which, according to St. Thomas,
dreads nothing so much as “not sufficiently to submit
itself to God.” Like the rose in bloom which the
invisible breezes wave in the sunlight at the top of
its stem, so is St. Rose before her Lord in the garden
of the Saints. And just as the rose seems to sum up,
in its brilliant colors and unparalleled perfume, the

The Gift of the Fear of God

41

highest and warmest energies of the sun, so this
mystical rose sees blooming within her the whole
of the light and warmth which the Holy Ghost
infuses into the heart of the saints. Herein is in­
satiable purity; the humility which unceasingly
studies and restudies itself; here we find the ever
fervent prayer and, in every order of virtue, the
need of the end, be it finite or infinite, for here
both are as one. There is the perpetual ascent to­
ward a likeness to the Heavenly Father; the anxiety
not to lose sight of a single one of the features of
His image; a delightful restlessness to reproduce
them; a delicate search after all the nuances of the
supernatural ideal. In a word, here is fear, filial fear
of God, fear without terror, for it is a fear basically
confident since it feels that it is due to the love of
God. The soul realizes that the cause of every pertur­
bation is that enough has not been done for God
and that, in spite of all its efforts, the soul still
remains at an infinite distance from the divine
beauty of the Face of the Father who reigns in
heaven.

III
The Gift o£ Fortitude
Si. Catherine de Ricci
St. John oj Gorcurn
St. Peter Martyr

“Who shall find a valiant woman?’’ Vainly do I
look for the answer to this question in the Book of
Proverbs where it is to be found. I see, indeed, an
ideal description of this type of virtue, but this
description stopped, the text is cut short and the
Sacred Book ends. Is it a piece of irony or one
of those eternally insoluble questions which the
ancients call problems and we, enigmas?
Not so, it is not an enigma, or, if it be an enigma,
it is solved day after day by the Spirit of God. To
the weakness of Eve, He opposes the strength of the
Mother of Sorrows; in contrast with the lamentable
story of the inconstancies of women who do not place
their confidence in God, He displays the epic of the
holy women who have found in the inspiration of
the spirit of fortitude the indomitable courage of
heroes.
42

The Gift of Fortitude

43

Such, it seems to us, was St. Catherine de Ricci.
Fortitude has two principal acts, supporting and
attacking. These characteristics are rarely isolated.
Nevertheless, as a rule, one of the two predominates.
If we must make a choice, we would say that the
temperament of our Saint was rather one of attack­
ing. The Spirit of God inspired her with the knowl­
edge, ability, and courage to act indomitably in
His service.
While she was still a child she willed to become
a Dominican. Immediately everyone had to bestir
themselves to obtain permission from her father who
was a personage of considerable importance in
Florence; the Dominican who passed through the
city, her uncle. Father Ricci, the Superioress of the
Convent of Prato, who was related to the leading
families and of great influence in Florence, all
helped. The latter obtained permission for Cath­
erine to spend ten days in her monastery. Naturally
enough, at the end of the ten days, the Saint refused
to return with her brother who had come for her.
Her father hastened to the monastery, but the child
would not return even with him: it was necessary
for the Prioress to add her authority to his. Finally
she set out but only after making her return the
condition of her leaving. Her father did not trouble
to keep his promise. Thereupon Providence inter­
vened and she fell sick “unto death.” Her father
was in despair. One day when he was weeping at her

44

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

bedside and holding her feeble hand she said to him:
“Father, Our Lord wants me to be His spouse. He
has told me so. Let me go and I shall get well again.
You shall see it.” The father assented and the child
suddenly recovered. This time she attained her end,
her father permitted her to go. She had willed to
become a Dominican: she was one.
Having become a Dominican she willed to become
a perfect religious “up to the neck.” “The nuns were
proud to have a little saint as their companion, only
they wished this little saint of eleven years old to
stay on their own level, to be wise, amiable, obedient,
regular, following along in the common rut.”1 This
was the will neither of the Holy Spirit nor of His
servant. The divine intimacies ravished her at her
tranquil duties. Extraordinary phenomena multi­
plied. The troubled community was full of suspi­
cions concerning these eccentricities. They went so
far as to order her to spit upon these visions, but the
latter, instead of disappearing, expressed approval.
The exchange of hearts with our Lord, the stigmata
and other supernatural manifestations were the
reward of her obedience and the unequivocal sign
of divine inspiration. Since she was the slave of the
Rule, and of a noble and frank familiarity with all
the sisters, she ended by obtaining the confirmation
of her way of life. Her perseverance, her courage, her
1 Sainte Catherine de Ricci, par le R. P. Boitel. Desclee
(1897), P· 7·

The Gift of Fortitude

45

supernatural energy, never conflicting among them­
selves, won a complete victory. She had willed to be
a perfect Dominican and so she was.
But this was not enough. Herself perfect, she
willed that her sisters also should be so. Now her
valor was known and it was brought into evidence.
First elected sub-prioress she surpassed all expecta­
tions, so much so that on the first vacancy she was
unanimously elected Prioress. Thereafter she dis­
played her whole energy. A woman of the head as
well as the heart, she ruled in a spirit of incor­
ruptible justice. . . . An austere exemplar and
vigilant guardian of the Rule, she allowed no fault
to go unpunished. .She would not tolerate her reli­
gious occupying their souls with frivolities or
worldly affections.”2 Nevertheless her firmness was
tempered with mildness as befits a gift of the Holy
Spirit. Nature is violent: true fortitude is self­
possessed and knows how to moderate itself. “Her
command was so maternal that it was a great
pleasure to obey her.” We may judge that under
this lofty direction the convent of Prato should
become the home of the ideal religious life. She
had willed that her sisters should be perfect and
so they were.
Even this did not satisfy her. She now willed that
the sanctity of the convent of Prato should radiate
beyond it, upon the Order and upon her well­
beloved Florence of which she was the protecting
2 Op. cit., pp. 17, 18.

46

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

angel. Like St. Catherine of Siena she had disciples.
“Her own Order gave her the first, Provincials and
Priors called her their mother: religious of great
importance were happy to correspond with her and
to follow her counsels. Her whole family was in her
hand ... in the Florentine aristocracy she could
number a crowd of disciples, lofty sotds capable of
the most exalted Christian and civic virtues. . . .
Most of them led a life in the world which would
not have been out of place in the cloister.’’ “Other
souls, more perfect still, sought her friendship. It
will suffice to mention St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi,
St. Philip Neri, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Pius V,
and Savonarola. To the latter she always remained
loyal and the convent of Prato became the home of
his memory. Through her most extensive corre­
spondence, the numerous visits which she received,
through the edification which all received from
their relations with Prato, she placed the seal upon
the work of her life. She had willed that Prato
should become a center of the perfect life and
it was.
Thus, despite the greatest obstacles, the strong
unity of this life is spread before us. The Spirit of
God had taught her to will strongly that which He
Himself willed and she willed it without faltering.
Dominican Prefect, Teacher, Center of an Apostolate, such is the progress of her attack. She is the
type of this first aspect of the Gift of Fortitude.

«MS!

The Gift of Fortitude

47

From Italy, the land of heroic condottieri, we pass
to Holland, the land of the patient brave, the people
who overcame with dykes the encroachments of the
sea, the ancestors of those heroes who but a few
years ago calmly awaited the enemy in the trenches
and, knowing not how to fear, won incomparable
victories by simply not retreating. It is the land of
fortitude, not so much that fortitude which attacks
but that which sustains without weakening. The
Divine Spirit, dwelling in souls by charity, often
tempers His action in accordance with our natural
dispositions and, since Charity knows how to suffer,
Charitas patiens est, upon the soil of Holland we
find ourselves in the presence of a race of saints of
strong and patient charity.
For twenty years John of Gorcum had been
pastor at Hornaer. All Holland was being ravaged
by the Gueux. The Catholic religion had been
destroyed over a large part of the land. In the parish
of Gorcum, two miles from Hornaer, the Calvinists
had taken prisoners a large number of priests, had
shut them up in the citadel and subjected them to
degrading outrages. John of Gorcum stayed in the
midst of his parishioners: he wore secular clothes
that he might be able to continue his ministrations.
He succeeded in entering the prison of Gorcum to

48

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

bring the Holy Eucharist to his imprisoned brethren.
He took charge of the devastated parish. His comings
and goings finally betrayed him. Made prisoner in
his turn, he was shut up with the future companions
of his martyrdom.
We cannot imagine the tortures which their
tyrants invented. Stripped of their religious habits
and half naked, they were transported to Brielle,
a wearisome journey of some twenty hours. At Dor­
drecht they were welcomed by the populace which
covered them with filth and heaped all manner of
insults upon them. They were exhibited upon their
boat like wild beasts for a certain price. At Brielle
they were compelled to surround the banquet table
of their executioners who celebrated their sorrowful
victory by an orgy. The following day they were
ordered to crawl on their knees to the place of execu­
tion and thrice to circle the gibbet. Believing that
their last hour had come they sang the Salve Regina
but it was nothing but a mockery. Through the
midst of a shrieking mob they were led, to the
market place where another gallows had been
erected. Here another parody took place and they
ended the day in prison. On the seventh of July
they were summoned before the governor’s tribunal
and charged to abjure the Real Presence of Jesus
Christ in the Eucharist and also the Primacy of the
Holy See. Three of them succumbed but the others
stood firm. On the following day one of the apos-

The Gift of Fortitude

49

tates, a Franciscan novice, returned to take his place
among the saintly group.
It is the ninth of July, 1572. We behold a ruined
Augustinian convent in the midst of whose ruins is
an old barn whose dismantled roof is supported by
beams. The Confessors of the Faith are lined up
facing those. They are naked. The guardian of the
Franciscans, Nicholas Pich, is seized first, a rope is
thrown about his neck and he is hung from the
beam. While he hangs writhing, a last attempt is
made to induce the others to apostatize. John spoke
and, on behalf of all, proclaimed the Real Presence
of our Lord in the Eucharist and the Primacy of the
Pope. Nevertheless two of them weakened. The
others closed their ranks and stayed at their post of
battle. One by one they were hanged, the rope
around their necks tied to the beams of the
roof. John of Gorcum was one of the last but his
courage never failed. He was executed in his turn.
From the gibbet nineteen corpses hung. The crowd
rushed upon them, mutilated them, cut them in
pieces; they placed the bloody limbs on the points
of pikes and in hideous procession marched in every
direction through Brielle. Finally all the pieces were
gathered together in the market place and sold at
auction to the highest bidders.3
In this sinister drama everything is resistance,
3 These details are taken from Notice sur Saint Jean de
Cologne et ses compagnons (Mortier, Desclee, 1899).

50

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

sacrifice undergone, indomitable patience. There is
none of the enthusiasm of attack. Fortitude is con­
centrated upon a single act, not to give way. In
proportion as the aggression grew sharper, the spirit
of resistance became more intense. What spirit
inspired in our martyrs those energetic refusals,
those sublime denials, that heroic passivity? Nothingother than the Spirit of Fortitude, more admirable
perhaps in patient endurance, wherein there is not
a single human joy, than in the enthusiasms of activ­
ity. How great is the glory of those privileged souls
whom God has called to suffering!

·# #· &
Upon the floor of the Chapter room in the
Convent of Bologna lies Peter of Verona. An accus­
ing voice is heard. He is proclaimed for a dishonor­
able crime. The Prior invites him to justify himself.
Kneeling, he refuses, simply protesting his in­
nocence. The evidence seems to be convincing, how­
ever, and Brother Peter, driven from Bologna is
sent to lesi in the Marches. He sets out in disgrace
and thus remains, for a long time bearing this divine
trial without murmuring. At last the time comes
when the truth prevails; his innocence is recognized
and proclaimed and he returns to his convent, his
face aglow with the aurora of the strong man who
knows how to suffer with patience.

The Gift of Fortitude

51

Now comes the moment for attack. Brother Peter
is an inquisitor, that is to say he was charged with
seeking out and following up heresy. He worked
amidst the greatest perils. It is a mistake to believe
that all the dangers were on the side of the heretics.
Besides, it was chiefly by his preaching that he strove
to convert them. So great was his boldness, so strik­
ing his success, that he became the object of all
manner of ambushes. “I shall die at the hands of
the heretics,” he would often say, but he continued
his mission without fear. In 1252 a plot was made
to assassinate him. Brother Peter was warned of it.
He announced to his brethren at Como that his end
was at hand and told them that his martyrdom would
take place between Como and Milan. Then, after a
last discourse of farewell, he set out for Milan
whither duty called him. Upon the road the ambush
was prepared. The Saint sang with his companions
the stanzas of the Victimae Paschali Laudes. He
walked ahead with only Brother Dominic. In a thick
copse the assassins rushed upon him and split his
head open with a bill-hook. He said “Into Thy
hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.” Then, sum­
moning up his last energies, he wrote with his own
blood these words upon the ground: Credo in
Deum.

52

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after
justice, for they shall be filled.” This it is that really
lay at the base of the souls of our three Saints. St.
Catherine hungered and thirsted after the justice
due to God, that is to say, the sanctity which makes
the truly just soul. St. John hungered and thirsted
after the justice which consists in doing one’s duty
and being faithful even unto death. St. Peter Martyr,
who knew how to adore the justice of the God who
chastised him when innocent, also knew how, with­
out failing, to second the designs of that same justice
when it struck error to safeguard innocence. Intre­
pidity in attack and patience in the service of God,
such were the characteristics of our three Saints.
Now they are filled in heaven whence injustice is
excluded. They see, in its source, the divine will
condemning the injustices of earth and approving
every just intention. Let us, who suffer for justice
and hate iniquity, raise our eyes and take fresh
courage. The present strife is only for a time. There
is a tomorrow after the day of persecution and
martyrdom. The kingdom of God, the kingdom of
justice whither our Saints have preceded us is very
close to us. “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst
after justice, for they shall be filled.”

i
!

IV

The Gift of Piety
Si. Agnes of Alontepatciano
St. Pius V
St. Raymond oj Pennajort

Filial piety toward God is one of the characteristic
traits of Christianity. Without going into the ques­
tion, more subtle than important, as to whether it
constitutes its whole essence, we should recognize
that, in our religion, the worship of the Divine
Paternity is placed in relief in an incomparable
manner. Paganism and philosophy have honored the
Creator, the Judge, Providence. We adore the consubstantial Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is
also, by adoption, our Father and we call Him, in
all truth, “Our Father who art in Heaven.”
If, as the Apostle says, no one can utter the name
of Jesus except through the Holy Ghost, it is so,
with still greater reason, in the case of the name of
53

54

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

our Heavenly Father. The Holy Spirit is at the head
of our entire supernatural activity and, indeed, He
must be, for how should we be able to perform acts
reserved to God, such, for example, as the efficacious
love of God, if God was not, by His example and
His movements, the profound principle of our life?
“Among these virtues,” says St. Thomas, ‘‘there
is one which leads us to a wholly filial love toward
God. It is this of which the Apostle speaks in the
eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, ‘You
have received the spirit of adoption of sons whereby
we cry: Abba (Father).’ Piety has precisely this effect
of making us render to our parents that homage
which we owe to them. When, then, under the in­
fluence of the Holy Ghost, we render to God the
duty and the worship which we owe to Him as our
Father, it is under the influence of the Gift of Piety
that we act.”1
The Dominican Saints have all possessed this
spirit of children of adoption, all have acted under
the influence of the Gift of Piety. If, then, we detach
from the diptychs of the Order the names of St.
Agnes of Montepulciano, St. Pius V, and St. Ray­
mond of Pennafort, it is with no exclusive intention
but because these Saints appear to us to display
certain original aspects of the spirit of filial piety.
St. Thomas, in fact, teaches that the operation of
1 2. 2ae, q. 121, a. 1.

The Gift of Piety

55

the Gift of Piety is not uniform. In a family, love
goes first of all to the father, the unit and foundation
of the domestic society: but, by a natural movement,
it radiates upon all those who, near or far, are con­
nected with the family. The love of the father, the
love of the mother, the love of the family, such are
the typical manifestations of filial love.
But if God is the Father of the Christian family,
Mary is its Mother, and the Catholic Church its
complete expansion. It seems to us that the names
of St. Agnes, St. Pius, and St. Raymond, respectively,
symbolize these three aspects of Christian filial piety.

We are never more really in our position as chil­
dren than when we are altogether little. But the
Blessed Agnes was from the beginning an altogether
little child of the Father. She entered the convent at
the age of nine! But that which inspired her to do
so was, nevertheless, not violence, caprice, feeling,
nor imagination. It was a profound and super­
natural inclination which was to persist and always
to grow in the same way, a really evident mark of the
intervention of the Holy Ghost. Was it not this same
Spirit who inspired the holy child-martyr Agnes, the
thirteen-year-old namesake and patroness of our
Saint? “She was barely old enough to receive the
death stroke/ says the grave St. Ambrose with

56

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

emotion,'and yet she already had the means with
which to conquer death.” Religious life or martyr­
dom, is it not all one to the Spirit who breatheth
where He will? Indeed from that moment her death
to the world was absolute, her prayer continual and
her piety toward the Father in heaven was wholly
confident and tender.
One astonishing thing is that this child was as
perfect in other respects as she was pious. The
practical faculties, even those of government, were
not wanting to her. Just as some children, educated
at home in the school of their father, early manifest
those serious qualities which seem more appropriate
in a more mature age, so was this little servant of
the Eternal King. At fourteen years of age, the
nuns already regarded her as their little mother. She
was made procuratrix of her monastery and her
administration was marked by a wise understand­
ing of everything. At fifteen she is abbess of a neigh­
boring convent. To the end of her life she was to
be a superioress. It seems that the Master and Gov­
ernor of all things had willed to mark with the
resemblance of His Paternity this pious child whose
sole ambition was to live in filial dependence upon
Him.
The absolute type of filial piety toward the Father
is our Lord, Jesus Christ. Intimate union with Jesus
Christ always resolves itself into a more profound
sentiment of respect and love for God, since the

The Gift of Piety

57

union produces the resemblance. But who more than
St. Agnes was in profound and almost familiar union
with Jesus? It is difficult, without misstatement, to
describe in human language the delicateness and the
loftiness of these supernatural unions. Holy Church,
which has the grace and the mission to do so, has
not hesitated to turn the office consecrated to St.
Agnes into a bridal song.
Magnae dies laetitiae
Venerunt Agni nuptiae
Et Agnes Agnum sequitur
Sponsoque Sponsa jungitur.2

May we, then, evoke the sentiments of filial piety
of the Son of God. Let us recall that incomparable
prayer to His Father which St. John has preserved
for us3 and, keeping all due proportions, let us not
hesitate to make it the expression and the pious
sentiments on the lips of the Spouse of Christ.
St. Thomas who sees each of the Gifts of the Holy
Ghost expanded in one of the Evangelical Beati­
tudes, is uncertain whether to apply the Gift of Piety
to that concerning those who hunger and thirst after
justice or to that concerning the meek.4 He con2 The days of great joy, the nuptials of the Lamb have
come, and Agnes follows the Lamb, the Bride and the
Bridegroom are wedded.
3 Ch. 17.
4 2. 2ae, q. 121, a. 2.

58

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

eludes by making the choice dependent upon the
characteristics of the individual saints. In the case
of St. Agnes there can be no doubt. It is meekness
that presides over the acts of her piety toward the
Father, meekness in regard to the Sisters over whom
she rules, the poor she serves, the travelers to whom
she gives hospitality, and the sinners she converts.
God made known the meekness of His servant by
surrounding her death with significant phenomena.
“A most sweet perfume was spread around her. Even
down to the linen wet with the sweat of her agony,
everything exhaled an odor of incense which filled
the cell.”5
The odor of incense, the sweetest perfume —
piety, meekness — what could more aptly symbolize
St. Agnes?

On the contrary, it is upon the hunger and thirst
after justice that the Gift of Piety in St. Pius V is
based. War and worship are the salient points of his
activity. The warlike spirit in him was born of piety.
For the war which he declares is a holy war, war
against the infidel without who threatens to over­
run everything, war against the infidel within who
threatens to corrupt everything. The liturgical spirit
in him was born of a profound piety. It is the great
5 Ste. Agnes de Montpolitien, par R. P. Boitel.

The Gift of Piety

59

liturgy of the Church which he endeavors to reform:
it is, above all, the pious prayer, par excellence, the
Holy Rosary, that prayer whose multiplied “Aves”
mingle the name of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of
the great Christian family, with that of the Father
who is in heaven.
The Office which the Church dedicates to him is
full of this alliance between the justice which knows
how to appeal to the arbitrament of war and the
piety which lives by faith. The Capitulum of First
Vespers is, in some sort, an outline of this. “God
will surround thee with the Breastplate of Justice
and place upon thy head the mitre of an eternal
honor; He will show thy splendor to everyone under
heaven, for this is the name which God Himself
shall give to thee; the peace of justice and the honor
of piety.”0
At Matins, the figures, at once warlike and religious, of the Old Testament pass in review. Moses
on the mountain stretching his hands over the con­
quered Amalekites, makes a striking image of the
saintly Pope praying with all the members of the
Confraternity of the Holy Rosary on the day of the
battle of Lepanto; St. Michael overcoming the
Dragon, might be a symbol of the angelic Pontiff
who took the name of Pius solely to war against the
impious. We understand how the noises of battle
mingle with these manly praises. The zeal of his
e Baruch. 5:2-4.

ξ;
·
5'■>

!
ζ

\

6o

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

faith is the zeal of a warrior; his confidence is as
strong as armor; his charity fears not the multitude
of his adversaries.
Lauds connects with the piety of the name which
he had chosen his prudent and reconstructive gov­
ernment, his justice in the repression of vices, the
constancy, continence, abstinence, temperance, and
all the virtues by which he Avon for himself his
splendid victories.
He is the Prince of his brethren, the support of
his flock, the strength of his people, repeats the Capi­
tulum of Sext, while that of None, replying to it
like an echo, discloses the secret of his power, that
from his whole heart he has praised his Saviour and
loved his God.
The prayer of the feast, summing up and entwin­
ing in its supplication the two aspects of this great
saint, expresses itself thus, “O Lord, who to destroy
the enemies of Thy Church and restore Thy divine
worship hast chosen the Blessed Pius as Sovereign
Pontiff, grant that we may be defended by his
protection and that, remaining loyal in Thy service,
after we have overcome our enemies, we may enjoy
perpetual peace. Amen.”

*

*

The Gift of Piety could not express itself in the
same way in the little saint of Montepulciano and in

The Gift of Piety

61

the warrior Pope of the Rosary. “Star cliffereth from
star in glory.’’ In his turn, the aged centenarian who
saw his religious childhood begin in his fiftieth year,
the scholar who, for an instant, took up the govern­
ment of his order only to lay it down again, could
not be pious in the same way as a vigorous soldier of
Christ or a little nun. What characterizes St. Ray­
mond of Pennafort is the cult of the Christian
Family considered no longer in its Divine Head nor
its Mother, but in itself, its spirit, its history, and
its glorious remembrances.
Who, on his travels, has not met one of those old
savants who devote their whole being to the search,
discovery, classification, and publication of docu­
ments which recall the life and the glories of their
native land, their province, their city, their hamlet,
or their religious or earthly family? Does not this
studious cult of family documents belong, in its
way, to piety?
“He searches with piety, says St. Augustine, who
venerates Holy Scripture and does not prune away
that which he does not yet understand.”7
It is in this sense that St. Raymond was pious.
Inspired by God, commanded by Pope Gregory IX,
in middle life, he attempted the collection of the
“Decretals” that is to say, all the texts, all the acts,
the memories, the memorable days in the life of that
7 Sermo in monte., iv.

«assa

62

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

great family the Catholic Church. The five books of
the “Decretals” together with the Decretals of Gra­
tian which they complete are today still the basis of
the legislation of the Church, reformed and newly
codified in the present Code of Canon Law. It is by
them, to a large extent, that the ecclesiastical order
has life, the social harmony which we twentieth­
century Catholics enjoy without having to trouble
ourselves with the labor necessary to secure it. St.
Raymond stands in the middle of Time, preserving
the past and insuring the future, inspired as he was
with a profound spirit of piety toward that Family
of which God is the Father and Mary the Mother.
Quidquid est alta pietate mirum
Exhibit purus niveusque morum
Sparsa summorum monimenta Patrum
Colligit mira studiosus arte;
Quaequae sunt prisci sacra digna cedro,
Dogmata juris.8

St. Thomas, truly prodigal in regard to the Gift
of Piety, discovers in it a third analogy with the
Gospel Beatitudes. He has already connected it with
8 Pure and snow-white in his life, he shows every wonder­
ful sign of a profound piety. . . . Diligently and with
marvelous skill, he collects all the scattered decrees of the
Popes, all the dogmas of ancient law that merit holy im­
mortalization.

The Gift of Piety

63

the beatitude concerning the meek and that concern­
ing those who hunger and thirst after justice. Now
he recognizes in it that of the merciful.9 It is under
this third aspect that St. Raymond appears to us.
Does it not seem as though he had spent the best
part of his life in the dry study of law simply to
merit his becoming, in the office of Grand Peniten­
tiary, the supreme organ of the Divine Mercies in
the Church? The sincere piety which inspired him
rendered him no less solicitous for the salvation of
the least of the children of the great Christian Family
than for the interests of the general government.
How can we fail once more to recognize in this char­
acteristic an excellent Gift of the Spirit of God?
9 2. 2ae, q. 121, a. 2.

V

The Gift of Counsel
St· Antoninus

To the eyes of human prudence life is a battle. The
interests of men are opposed. The good of one is
often evil for another. The more clearly we see into
human affairs the better do we see the obstacles in
the path of our best schemes, the more or less evident
are the maneuvers which conceal the counter proj­
ects inspired by the interest of another, often from
a most praiseworthy motive.
The diplomat, the administrator, even the ordi­
nary man who is merely wary and prudent in the
conduct of his personal affairs, must, then, it seems,
acquiesce in the ill fortune of others and resign him­
self to pessimism in regard to men and to human
sufferings.
It is not so with the prudence inspired by God.
The Holy Spirit assists in the unfathomable Counsel
64

The Gift of Counsel

65

of the Holy Trinity where, from all eternity, the
interests of humanity and the world were decided:
yet His name is Love. He whom Isaias called the
Counselor par excellence, “Consiliarius,” entered
upon His public life by applying to Himself the
words of that same Isaias. “The Spirit of the Lord
is upon Me: wherefore He hath anointed Me to
preach the gospel to the poor, He hath sent Me to
heal the contrite of heart, to preach deliverance to
the captives.”1
Accordingly, St. Thomas, following St. Augustine,
has the audacity to attach the beatitude of the merci­
ful to the Gift of Counsel, to give pity for the un­
fortunate as the distinctive mark of those prudent
souls whose diplomacy is directly regulated by the
Holy Spirit.12
St. Antoninus appears to us to be the very incarna­
tion of this prudence according to the Holy Ghost.
To this the Church bears witness by recognizing in
him the words of Job which form the First Lesson
of his office. “When I went out to the gate of the city,
and in the street they prepared me a chair. The
young men saw me and hid themselves and the old
men rose up and stood. The princes ceased to speak
and laid the finger on their mouth. The rulers held
their peace and their tongue cleaved to their throat.
The ear that heard me blessed me and the eye that
1 Luke 14:18, 19.
2 2. 2ae, q. 52, a. 4, c.

66

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

saw me gave witness to me: because I had delivered
the poor man that cried out: and the fatherless that
had no helper. The blessing of him that was ready
to perish came upon me and I comforted the heart
of the widow. I was an eye to the blind and a foot
to the lame. I was the father of the poor.”3
Does not this scene, in the picturesque language
of the East, express that alliance between the pru­
dence which hears and the mercy which blesses so
characteristic of the Gift of Counsel?
But let us now rapidly follow this double mani­
festation of one and the same Spirit in the life of
our Saint.
Prudent, wary, diplomatic, he was never more so
than on the day when, as a mere boy, he knocked
upon the door of the Convent of Fiesole. With one
of those clear glances which mature age no longer
knows, the youth had judged the world and rec­
ognized the vanity of those seductions which sur­
rounded him in the City of Flowers. He wished for
God and God alone and like the merchant who,
having found a precious pearl, sold all his goods that
he might buy it,4 our precocious diplomat is pre­
pared to give all that he might become a religious.
The Prior of the convent, thinking to put off this
frail and slender youth whom he judged incapable
of the observances of the Order, said to him, “When
3 Job 29:7 ff.
4 Matt. 13:45 if.

The Gift of Counsel

6η

you have learned by heart the contents of this book,
we will receive you.” The volume in question was
the “Decretals,” the fundamental code of ecclesias­
tical law. Nothing could have been more forbidding
to the young intelligence of the postulant but he
immediately took the offer under consideration. A
year later he returned with the “Decretals” and
asked to be interrogated: his memory could not be
shaken and he was admitted.
His genius, as a Doctor, perhaps dates from this
first intellectual effort. “He is above all a moralist,”
says his biographer.5 “If, in his ‘Summa’ he concerns
himself with Dogma, it is that he might draw there­
from principles of morals. In four successive pictures,
which form the four essential parts of his work, he
shows, as in a preliminary outline, the human soul
in its primitive nobility, its immortal destiny, its
gifts and its powers. Next, upon these pencil strokes
shimmering with light he throws the shadow of sin,
its causes, its disorders, and its shames: this forms
the second part. Following this path, he goes into all
its ramifications and shows its deformity in all the
circumstances in which man may find himself. With
a sure hand he traces out for each the line of duty
toward God, himself, and his neighbor and ends by
displaying the path which, above all others, will
bring the lost and fallen soul back to its primitive
0 Saint Antoninus, par le R. P. Mortier, p. 2.

reaBRSSBBtSa····

68

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

nobility, namely, the grace of God, the Gifts of the
Holy Ghost, and piety toward the Blessed Virgin.
“Even in his ‘Chronicles,’ one of the first attempts
at a universal history, St. Antoninus is still a moral­
ist. That which he follows in the history of a nation,
that which he perceives and declares, is the sover­
eign action, directive and beneficent, of Divine Prov­
idence.”
This practical bent of his spirit destined him to
administrative tasks. As Prior of St. Mark’s he
stamped upon his government the character of a
superior prudence. Endowed with a sense of real­
ities, he always regarded the supernatural end as
the supreme reality. One example out of a thousand
will suffice. His first administrative act was the recon­
struction of his convent. “Cosmo de Medici was the
treasurer, St. Antoninus the architect. Accustomed
to the splendors of his own palace, fond of display
and rich, Cosmo wished to build for his friend a
vast and comfortable monastery. The Prior was
adamant. He drew the plan, decided the dimensions
and superintended their execution in order to
prevent any surprises on the part of his treasurer.”6
The result was the remarkably religious cloister of
St. Mark wherein elegance and simplicity of line vie
with a thorough understanding of the exigencies of
the home of religious, advantages whose importance
6 Op. cit., p. 8.

The Gift of Counsel

6g

cannot be overemphasized. If, as has been justly
said,7 the cells are too narrow, it should not be
forgotten that each of them, by order of the Saint,
was enriched by one of Angelico’s frescoes, like
a radiant opening on to the infinite horizons of
heaven.
We must hasten along. St. Antoninus has become
Archbishop of Florence. What can be more worthy
of praise than the moderation of his habitual govern­
ment or the vigor of his use of power? The friend
of the Medicis, he, as a good republican, knew how
to defend against them the rights of the Constitution
and of the people no less than those of the Church.
While still in his cell in the convent of St. Mark,
Cosmo would come to visit him by night to discuss
with him the Affairs of the republic. Now, official
missions were entrusted to him. Of these he acquitted
himself with dexterity. “His sanctity was no hin­
drance to his ability in these matters and his com­
panions were able to write to the Seignoury that its
ambassador had succeeded wonderfully and had Avon
universal esteem and sympathy.’’8 Thus posterity
recognized him henceforth only under the title
of Antoninus the Counselor, “Antoninus Consi­
liorum.”
Postulant, professor, prior of St. Mark’s, Arch­
bishop of Florence, counselor of the Medici and
7 Ibid.
8 Op. cit., p. 24.

70

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

ambassador of the Republic, St. Antoninus himself
is always the same. His practical character developed
and grew with an impeccable progress and unity. Is
not this the activity of a soul counseled by the
counsel of the Holy Ghost? “The motion of the
advising mind is from the one giving counsel," says
St. Thomas.9 God moves each being according to its
nature. He moves the body in space and the* angel in
time. Why should He not ad according to the
temperament of the prudent of this world who
entrust themselves to His direction?1011
What is there
astonishing in the fact that the activity of the saints,
although it still borrows the forms of human pru­
dence, should appear superior to the uncertain
diplomacy of men by the whole superiority of the
counsels of God?11 Herein lies the secret of St. Anto­
ninus: In his heart the Holy Spirit dwelt. It was He
whom he consulted and he could reply to the pru­
dent of this world as did another heroine, herself
inspired in the same way though in a very different
vocation. “You have been to your counsel and I
also have been to mine.”
But that which especially flows from the counsel
of God is pity for the unfortunate. Whence does this
come?
9 2. 2ae, cj. 52, a. 2, ad 1 urn: Motio mentis consiliatae

ab alio consiliante.
10 2. 2ae, q. 52, a. 1, c.

11 Ibid., ad gum.

The Gift of Counsel

71

Give me a man of real prudence, not that nig­
gardly prudence which concerns itself only with the
small side of things, and let this prudent man of real
breadth go deep clown into the depths of himself.
He will not hesitate to admit that a multitude of
things are beyond him. “The thoughts of men are
timid and uncertain concerning our providence.’’12
Who, at this point, has not been forced to doubt his
own perspicacity? How much more true is not this
of supernatural prudence, of that prudence which
has as its aim the defeating, by a holy strategy, of
the ruses, ambushes and that entire incessant diplo­
macy of evil which aims at holding men back upon
the road to eternal beatitude?
Against an enemy so powerful, so persevering, and
so shrewd, there is needed something hardly short
of an extraordinary talent, even genius. To equal
evils so great, to assure us and those over whom we
have charge of the advantage of certain progress
toward the supreme end, man is not enough: God
is an absolute necessity.13
But how can we place God before our eyes? That
same lofty prudence which has forced us to rec­
ognize the necessity of addressing ourselves to the
counsels of God for our supernatural guidance shows
us the means. If you desire to be forgiven, says Jesus
12 Cogitationes hominum timidae et incertae providentiae
nostrae.
13 Ibid., ad ium.

72

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

Christ, forgive: if you wish to be aided by God, help
your unfortunate brethren.
By this beautiful doctrine, made luminous by St.
Augustine, the transition is brought about from the
Gift of Counsel to the beatitude of the Merciful.
Doubtless, at the bottom, the obligation to be merci­
ful remains a duty of Charity. But from another
point of view, that of prudence, perfect because it is
divine, it appears to be dictated by a lofty anxiety,
pure and thoroughly understanding, for the inter­
ests of those who are entrusted to us. “And then
especially the gift of Counsel corresponds to the
beatitude of Mercy, not as one eliciting, but as one
directing.”14 In God the heart and the head are not
inevitably opposed. To love the unfortunate is the
inspiration of a heart animated by charity; it is also
the best policy. For the good fortune of the merciful,
says our Lord, is that they shall obtain mercy. “How
just does it seem to be, says St. Augustine, that he
who seeks to be helped should himself aid those less
powerful than himself.”15
What a contrast there is between the heartless
pessimism of policy and that prudence which, with­
out losing its character, resolves itself into the widest
and most heartfelt feeling! What a distance there is
14 2. 2ae, q. 52, a. 4, c. Et ideo specialiter dono Consilii
respondet beatitudo Misericordiae, non sicut elicienti sed
sicut dirigenti.
15 De. Sermone Dom., lib i.

The Gift of Counsel

73

between the suave and indulgent benevolence of the
diplomat and that active compassion inspired by the
Counsel of the Most High. It is the entire distance
from man to God. It is also the whole difference
between the Medici and Antoninus.
Not far from the Seignoury with its portentous
ramparts, where only the great of this world, the
Senate and the Five Hundred, might enter, the
palace of the archbishop, which he himself had
stripped of every luxury, was open to every un­
fortunate being. A bishop clad in clothing more
coarse than that of the poor received them. On his
bed there was “a cover so scanty and wretched that
a gentleman, touched with pity, gave him another,
finer and warmer one.”16 He sold it for his poor.
Bought back and again offered by the Saint, he
sold it on three occasions. “Often more than one
distinguished personage had to wait until the holy
man had consoled some ordinary beggars.”17 Owing
to this easy access a man whose excesses he had
reproved tried one day to assassinate him in his cell.
Fortunately the dagger swerved. He gave away all
that he had, and his charity, going beyond his own
century, inspired him to found an organization for
the relief of the bashful poor.18 “Merciful toward the
le Mortier, op. cit., p. 16.
17 Op. cit., p. 9.
18 Op. cit., p. 27.

EJBSCÎJ

74

P
'i

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost.

wretched, and gentle toward the lowly.”19 Com­
passion and love, these are the two characteristics
which sum up his relations with the unfortunate and
such for him was the climax of an intelligence
splendidly endowed with a practical spirit and diplo­
matic qualities.
He is for us a valuable example. We each have
some small exterior government to administer; at
the very least, it consists in our relations with those
with whom we come into contact, in the care of
certain interests, in the direction of certain persons.
The practical spirit has necessarily a part in our life.
If we wish to be thoroughly practical we must be
supernatural. And hence, like St. Antoninus, we
must obtain help from God by pardoning our
brethren in a common miserable state and by aiding
them as far as our resources will permit.20
If we do this, God will inspire us with His coun­
sels, for He has made it a rule to aid those who help
the unfortunate. Our life unfolds beneath mean
preoccupations, the hardly Christian sentiments
which our daily life engenders, the fatal clash­
ing of personalities, the divergence of views even
the most reflecting, sometimes the most super­
natural. We soar. The angels, says St. Thomas, con­
sult God ceaselessly. Their life is the simple gazing
19 Office of St. Antoninus.
20 2 . 2ae, q. 52, a. 4, ad tum.

The Gift. of Counsel

75

upon the divine wdl each time dwy issue 1.01th to
act and during their action itself-2' It may be ours
also. St. Antoninus teaches us by his example that
we may also give to our lives this supernatural unity,
prudence, and wisdom of outlook, upon condition
that we do not separate the two aspects of the Gift
of Counsel and that, accepting the direction of God
for our own use. we fulfill the condition w’hich it
suggests to us. Wc must have a true supernatural
compassion, an understanding' of service to our com­
panions along the road, who are subject to the same
sorrows and labors as ourselves during this great
journey which we all are making toward eternity.
21

2. 2ae? q. 52, a. 3, c.

wii i1 . i·—

VI

The Gift of Knowledge
Si. Dominic

St. Hyacinth

The gift of the apostle is not the gift of the doctor.
The doctor studies and teaches an impersonal
science. His object is Truth for Truth’s sake. He
searches out, in their remotest origins, the reasons
for the existence of things, and if on these heights
he encounters God, it is because God is the Cause of
causes, the ultimate Reason of grace and nature.
The Holy Ghost, in becoming the immediate rule of
the intelligence of the doctor, through the instru­
mentality of the Gifts, does not change that which
is in the nature of things. By the Gift of Wisdom He
increases the capacity of the reason, He illumines
faith, He enables them to accomplish their sublime
task with a sureness and loftiness directly partic­
ipating in the Divine Intelligence. It is to this Gift
76

The Gift of Knowledge
that St. Thomas owes that divinely right and saga­
cious judgment which accompanies him from one
end of his work to the other, causes it to make the
First Truth, God, or the Trinity shine upon the
whole mass and each detail of natural or super­
natural truth.
The knowledge of the apostle, on the contrary,
cannot abstract from the souls which it is designed
to convert. It is not always the loftiest truths which
are the best adapted for this end. Of what value to
me are your metaphysics and your research into the
finality of things if I do not understand you? What
have you gained if the provocative and inopportune
raising of a too crudely preached truth offends my
weakness? The souls to whom the apostle addresses
himself are immersed in practical life, in its intel­
lectual and moral errors. They are not accustomed
to judge things according to the higher reasons.
They must take things as they are. If you wish to
make them rise toward God you must first have an
exact knowledge of the things which preoccupy
them, of the evils and errors among which they
struggle. This is simply that we must make an intel­
ligent use of the divine truth when we are called to
the ministry of the apostolate. We must understand
it in its reactions upon creatures; we must adhere to
those reasons which, ordinarily, carry conviction to
the souls we address, even if they be not the most
profound. “Note carefully,” says St. Ambrose, “how

78

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

Christ ascends with the apostles and how lie descends
to the crowds. How could the crowd sec Christ if
He did not descend? It does not follow on to the
mountain tops, it docs not climb up to the peaks.”1
But the Gift of the Holy Ghost which communicates
to just souls this divine knowledge of human tilings,
of motives and reasons drawn from the creatures, the
necessary mode of approach for the apostle, is,
according to St. Thomas, the Gift of Knowledge.
It differs from the Gift of Wisdom in this that,
instead of causing us to judge things from the point
of view of God taken in all His inaccessible pro­
fundity, it presents them to us in the light of some
point of view reflected in the creatures, sifted, so to
speak, and adapted to the use of every soul of
good will.

The Apostolic St. Dominic was destined to repre­
sent this Gift of the Apostles in an especial way.
Whether we consider his vocation, the books whence
he drew his knowledge or the instrument of his
apostolate, his ministry and his whole life appear to
us marked with the stamp of the Gift of Knowledge.
His vocation is foreshadowed in that distant
episode of his student life when a famine was raging
in Palencia. Dominic sold his books, his treasure,
1 Comm, in Luc., c. vi., Evang. “Descendens Jesus.”

The Gift of Knowledge

79

saying “How can one study upon dead skins while
there are men dying of hunger?’’ When one day a
more fearful scourge, the scourge of error which
poisons men’s souls, teas revealed to a heart thus
disposed from on high, the whole of the knowledge
which he had acquired during twenty years of silent
study adapted itself to save them. Behold him on
that night in Toulouse when the divine call was
revealed to him in that discussion with the host he
sought to convert. The same spirit which had wrung
from his compassionate heart that cry of pity for the
starving now animated him “to give the knowledge
of salvation to his people.” All the while he was
conversing, he sought earnestly for some arguments
which could affect his host. He made himself aware
of his moral and intellectual condition: he wished
to discover the common idea, the truth admitted by
both parties, a ray of God still preserved by the
misled spirit, upon which he could draw to rekindle
the light. At this moment, unquestionably he would
sell, as “dead skins,” all the knowledge he had
acquired by the labor and meditations of twenty
years to find the right word, the decisive phrase,
which would deliver and satisfy this soul.
Nevertheless, knowledge cannot be assimilated
without books. There is a method of understand­
ing study which is not sterile and there are books
which greatly lend themselves to the inspirations of
the Gift of Knowledge. What then were the books

BS'llff" 1ΙΊ"!·'.Ι—Η·

8ο

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

of St. Dominic? His biographers tell us that there
were three.
First of all there are the Epistles of St. Paul, the
Apostle par excellence. But is not this precisely one
of those books in which the Gift of Knowledge most
radiantly shines? Where can we find a more pro­
found knowledge and a more lively sentiment of the
miseries of man without God and of the causes
which prevent him from returning to God? If the
Apostle sometimes “speaks wisdom to the perfect”
how much more often does he not “lower his voice”
through fear of frightening the little ones? Flow
superb are his outbursts when, laden with the souls
whose whole infirmities, in the compassion of his
heart, he has taken upon himself, he, with them,
raises himself to God, finding in the very poverty
which the creature endures the very reason of their
enfranchisement! How often must not St. Dominic
have pondered the words, “I have regarded all things
as dross that I might gain Christ!”2 With what
emphasis must he not have repeated the cry of his
chosen master, “I am certain that neither life nor
death . . . nor things present nor things to come
nor might nor greatness nor any other creature can
separate me from the love of God which is in
Christ!”3 What light this must have shed upon the
life of those souls who heard words so profoundly
2 Cf. Phil. 3:8.
3 Rom. 8:38-39.

The Gift of Knowledge

81

penetrated with the sense of the vanity of the things
which held them in the vices of the flesh or the errors
of the spirit!
His second book was the Gospel according to St.
Matthew, that is to say, the Gospel of the Humanity
of our Lord, that in which our Saviour has most
descended within our reach. It preaches of His
divine pities, His numberless cures, His immense
mercies. “You shall bind the teaching of the law as
a pennant in your hand and they shall wave un­
ceasingly before your eyes.” St. Thomas connects
this precept of Deuteronomy with the Gift of Knowl­
edge.4 St. Dominic fulfilled this to the letter when
journeying alone, his St. Matthew in his hand,
/ his companions saw him make frequent gestures as
if he wished to surmount some obstacle which would
turn him away from his meditations “and they attrib­
uted to this familiar meditation upon the Sacred
Texts the marvelous understanding which he had
of them.”
The third book of St. Dominic was a thing apart
which did not resemble the other two. One day
someone asked him where he had learned all that
he knew. “My son,” he replied, “I have no other
book than that of divine charity.” It is there, indeed,
that we must go to discover the secret of a divinely
sincere knowledge such as that with which his whole
4 2. 2ae, q. 16, a. 2.

82

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

life was impressed. To acquire that imprint we must
revive our knowledge at the breast of that powerful
aspiration toward God and toward sotds in God
which the Holy Ghost, who is given to us with it,
spreads abroad in us. We must impregnate our ideas
and our speech with that need of the Divine Good
which is placed at the bottom of the heart of every
Christian. We must feel and live that need for our­
selves and for those to whom we are to speak. Then
the Holy Ghost Himself, hidden in that aspiration
animated by His breath, speaks in the apostle. Such
was the secret of the knowledge of our Blessed
Father, St. Dominic.
The stamp of the Gift of Knowledge is again
found in the great instrument of St. Dominic’s apostolate, the Rosary. That which makes the Rosary so
powerful a lever is its basis, chosen with a remark­
able knowledge of the organization of our human
nature. The Rosary comes to lay hold upon us where
we are struggling amidst worldly, sometimes danger­
ous, joys; amidst sorrows, sometimes unreasonable,
often crushing, nearly always badly borne; amidst
earthly hopes of every kind. Joy, sorrow, hope, these
are indeed the three shores against which our
agitated soul beats in turn. Dominic knew this and
with an insight of remarkable precision saw all
human life enclosed within these three sentiments.
Then he gently lifted this poor life toward better
joys, hopes, sorrows; he does not crush us with the

I he Gift of Knowledge

83

splendors of Sinai or of Thabor. He draws us with
the vision of joys holily understood, or sorrows
divinely borne and of true hopes. Without denying
the troubles of the soul, he eases them, transforms
them, elevates them little by little. The soft prayers
of the “Our Father’’ and the “Hail Mary’’ rise like
the music of love which, at each repetition, accen­
tuates its insistence. How great a knowledge of
divine things, of the human heart and the secret of
adapting them was needed to compose the Rosary!
Who could know how to proportion the divinest
remedies to the most human of needs and unite
them, the one with the other, by that most effica­
cious and consoling of ties, prayer? Who but the
disciple inspired by Him who, being God and hav­
ing created man, knew at once all that God could
be to man and all the need which man has of God?
So, throughout the entire life of our Blessed
Father, we find “that manner of understanding and
experiencing the creatures which causes one to
despise them in their seductions but to love them
with moderation in ordaining them toward God,”3
a striking characterization of the Gift of Knowledge.
But a still more striking, we might venture to say
definite, sign of this assimilation is given to us in
another gift of our Saint, the gift of tears.
St. Thomas connects with the Gift of Knowledge
the beatitude of tears: “Blessed are they that weep,5
5 John of St. Thomas, q. 70. disp. 18. arts. 4-5.

84

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

for they shall be comforted.” The reason which
he assigns is remarkable. Knowledge differs from
Wisdom in that, in order to judge things, it adheres
to reasons accessible to men, whereas Wisdom
climbs higher to the ultimate reason of things. But
when one perceives these ultimate reasons which
are, in reality, the will, the providence, the wisdom,
and the goodness of God, there results in the soul,
the effect of calm, serenity, and peace. That is why
the beatitude of the peacemakers is attached to the
Gift of Wisdom. But, when we take as our starting
point the knowledge of things created, although this
knowledge reveals a radiance which comes from
God, their imperfections are so numerous, evil fre­
quently prevailing over good, that inevitably it is
with tears that we envisage the sorrowful plight in
which we find ourselves and in which our fellow
travelers struggle. The knowledge of human things
is the mother of all sorrows: the pro founder the
knowledge the more abundant are the tears to
which it gives rise; for it is the knowledge of our
miseries.6 The Preacher wept over human life which
he had seen through. The apostle, inspired by the
gift of God, wept in his turn, feeling the miseries in
whose midst the souls whom he wished to save found
themselves.
St. Dominic wept often. “He had so great a love
of souls,” says one of the witnesses at the canoniza6 2. 2ae, q. 9, a. 4.

The Gift of Knowledge

85

tion process, “that it extended not only to all the
faithful, but also to infidels and even to those who
were amid the tortures of hell, and he shed many
tears for them.’’ “He often wept in the pulpit’’ and.
in general, he was filled with that supernatural
melancholy which a deep feeling of invisible things
produces. “He offered the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
with a great abundance of tears . . . when the
course of the ceremonies announced the coming
of Him whom he had loved best of all since his
youth everyone perceived the emotion of his whole
being as tear followed tear down his loving counte­
nance.”7
We could multiply these traits. The countenance
of St. Dominic owes its particularly moving character
to his special gift of tears which is the outcome of
the Gift of Knowledge. The Saint is a scholar who
also weeps. We well know both the tears of repen­
tance and the tears of love: here we have the tears
of a man who, thanks to an outstanding intellectual
gift, has penetrated into the true knowledge of the
world, of men and of God, has attained insight into
its misery and its goodness and, passing through the
world, has turned upon it a glance wherein emotion
clashes with serenity and the sadness of earth with
the consolations of heaven.
Thus is he represented in the marbles of his tomb,
by the traditional likenesses and the pencil of AngelT Vie de St. Dominique, par Lacordaire.

86

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

ico. But it is for his children to be living copies
of the untranslatable expression of the Blessed
Patriarch.

Such especially was his favorite disciple St.
Hyacinth, the great apostle of Poland. He had
himself clothed him in the habit of his Order. In
St. Hyacinth we encounter the same love of Sacred
Science, the same devotion to the Blessed Mother,
the same zeal for the salvation of souls, the same
sorrowful yet consoled glance upon men, sorrowful
from the compassion which he felt at the sight of
their miseries, consoled by the knowledge of the
divine mercies. Something of the Father, has passed
into the soul of the son with the habit in which he
was clothed. It would seem as if the Mother of the
Saviour, the Virgin so beloved by St. Dominic,
wished to consecrate that sonship by receiving St.
Hyacinth into heaven upon the very day on which
the Church celebrates her own entry into heaven,
her glorious Assumption.
■7^

But it is not only the canonized saints, it is also
the simple faithful whom St. Dominic invites to
reproduce the traits of his sanctity. Whatever may

The Gift of Knowledge
be the use which our life shall make of knowledge,
even if our share be only the catechism and that
knowledge of men and things which life brings with
it, wTe must remember that such knowledge may be
the instrument of the Holy Ghost. There is in us an
intimate current, a profound tendency which, com­
ing from God, brings us back to God. Let us take
notice of this movement which is the soul of our
life and let us ask of God, who dwells in us, to turn
it into an ever-deepening knowledge of what we
are and what God is. This was the prayer of St.
Augustine. “Lord, let me know myself and let me
know Thee. Let me know myself that I may hate
myself; let me know Thee that I may love Thee.’’
This is true knowledge, complete knowledge, the
science of the saints. It is not without a certain sad­
ness regarding natural things. But the holy figure
of our Blessed Father tells us that it also has its
consolations. He is the living proof of the Saviour’s
word: “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall
be comforted.”

VII

I he Gift of Unders landing
67. Catherine oj Siena

Blessed Raymond of Capua relates that at the
beginning of her visions our Lord appeared to St.
Catherine while she was at prayer and said to her:
“My daughter, do you know who you are and who
I am? If you learn these two things you will be
happy: you are that which is not and ‘I am Who
am.’ ”
This, we think, gives us the characteristic of the
Gift which the Holy Ghost gave to our holy sister.
It is the Gift of Understanding.
There are four intellectual Gifts: Knowledge,
Wisdom, Counsel, and Understanding. The three
former operate in us according to the method of
operation of the human spirit, i.e., by reasoning;
the Gift of Understanding is present as a simple
intuition, as a spiritual insight which goes beyond

The Gift of Understanding

89

appearances, which penetrates, beneath the mere
letter or the symbols into the hidden meaning and
causes the hidden thought to gush forth.1
“The soul,” writes Bossuet, “laying reasoning
aside, makes use of a gentle contemplation which
keeps it peaceful, attentive and susceptible of the
divine operations and impressions which the Holy
Ghost communicates to it; it does little but receives
much; its work is gentle yet most fruitful.” This
work is a “simple look, glance, or loving attention
in itself toward some divine object.”12
This, doubtless, is why, in our Order, God has
chosen one of the women Saints, and not one of the
men, to personify in an especial, though not ex­
clusive manner, the Gift of Understanding. With
the men, among whom acuteness of reasoning is the
dominant intellectual note, the Gifts are connected
with reason, thus Knowledge to St. Dominic,
Wisdom to St. Thomas, Counsel to St. Antoninus.
To a woman, more intuitive, more spontaneous,
more instinctive by nature, belongs the Gift which
corresponds more to instinct and feeling, for, if
propositions are deduced, “principles are felt.”
Doubtless, nature, of itself, cannot intuitively
know the Truth of God, the Principle of Principles,
who defined Himself, “I am Who am.” But God
makes it His glory to perfect nature, that by compar1 2. 2ae, q. 8, a. 1.

2 Manière courte et facile pour faire l’oraison en soi.

go

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

ison His gratuitous gifts become the more out­
standing. Why should He not then reveal Himself
to a holy woman in a way appropriate to the tenden­
cies of her sex? That is to say as a principle whose
truth needs to be felt rather than reasoned out, as
“a God sensible to the heart,” as Pascal says.
‘‘My daughter, you are that which is not; and
I, I am Who am.” It is not a long speech: the word
of Christ carries its proof within itself: it is concise,
luminous as a principle; we might call it one of
those sentences of the Divine Master which fill
the Gospel.
“O how great is this short phrase and how widely
does this simple doctrine extend!” cries Blessed Ray­
mond of Capua. “What great wisdom there is in so
few words! Who will enable me to understand them?
Who will reveal to me their secrets and enable me
to measure the infinite?” And, as if to exemplify
in his own person the profound difference between
the genius of the theologian and the Gift of the
Saint, he indulges in long commentaries upon this
saying of our Lord. Still, he has to stop without
having completely exposed it and to acknowledge
that whatever he could say is already known by
anyone who has penetrated the meaning of the two
phrases: “You are that which is not: I am Who am.”
No, reasoning cannot measure the infinite. But
who then will give us to understand them? Let us
learn from Bossuet: “God is He who is: all that is

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91

and exists is and exists by Him: He is that living
Being in whom everything lives and breathes. It is
only necessary to consent to and adhere to the truth
of the being of God: to consent to the truth, this act
alone is sufficient. Note that I say consent to the
truth, for God is the sole true Being. To adhere to
the truth, to consent to the truth, is to adhere to
God, is to place God in possession of the right which
He has over us. This sole act comprehends all acts:
it is the greatest, the loftiest which we can perform.”3
Only intuition penetrates principles. When the
Divine reveals Itself to us under this abridged form
it is fitting that reasoning should be laid aside. It
must, as Bossuet again says, “resolve itself entirely
into a simple glance.” This simple gaze is the work
of the Gift of Understanding.
But, it may be asked, amid the lights of intuition,
what becomes of the obscurity of faith? St. Thomas
himself asked this question. He answers that there
are two kinds of objects proposed to our faith. First
of all, there is the Divine Being and His mysteries.
Then, there is that large number of truths ordained
to the manifestation of the former: Holy Scripture
is full of this kind of truth which forms the sec­
ondary object of our faith.4
The Gift of Understanding is able to give us a
3 Discours aux Filles de la Visitation le jour du décès
de M. Mutelle, leur confesseur.

4 2. 2ae, q. 8, a. 2.

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The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

perfect knowledge of these latter. In the history of
St. Catherine, numerous traits bear testimony of this,
notably that martelons penetration of Holy Scrip­
ture which all her writings display. That marvelous
verse, “Deus in adjutorium meum intende” becomes
the subject of repeated meditations. The Psalm
“Jubilate Deo omnis terra” throws he)· into in­
expressible raptures. Even if I wished to do so I
could not make an end of exploring this intellectual
side of St. Catherine. Let us only cite one fact. Sev­
eral days before her death, she said that “with the
light of a lively faith she had seen and perfectly
understood, in her spirit, that all that happened to
her and to others came from God and had as its
cause the great love which He had for His creatures.’’
The “light of a lively faith,” it is thus (and we shall
give additional proof in a moment) that St. Cath­
erine always called the Gift which produced the
intuitions of her contemplations. Her own words
bear testimony that this light was allied to the
obscurities of faith.
In regard to the Being of God and the divine
mysteries, faith is complete. Nevertheless, according
to St. Thomas, the Gift of Understanding enables
us to penetrate deeper into the knowledge of the
mystery itself. Our Holy Doctor explains that to
know what He is not is to advance in the knowledge
of God.3 The author of the Imitation speaks in the
5 2. 2ae, q. 8, a. 7.

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93

same sense as St. Thomas. “We must go beyond all
creatures, leaving even ourselves, and there, in the
ecstasy of the Spirit, see, O Creator of all things, that
no creature can compare with Thee.”6
Thus the obscurity of faith remains, but from the
bosom of this obscurity there springs a light which,
by placing the divine perfection against the imper­
fection of every created being, gives a kind of
negative and analogical intuition of the inaccessible
truth.
But what is the good of attempting to define this
divine contemplation when we find it stated in the
words of St. Catherine herself. “O Depth, O Deity
Eternal, O Profound Ocean, canst Thou give me
more than Thyself? . . . Thou art the Light which
surpasseth every light. By Thy light Thou givest to
the understanding a supernatural light so abundant
and so perfect that the light of faith itself is more
illumined by it. I see that my soul has light in that
faith and that it receives Thy light in that light. . . .
Therefore I beg of Thee, Eternal Father, that Thou
wouldst illumine me with the light of Holy Faith.
That light is an ocean which nourishes the soul as
much as it is in Thee. . . . There, where the light
of faith abounds, the soul glows, so to speak, with
that which it believes. Truly, O Trinity Eternal,
Thou hast made me to know and to understand that
that sea is a mirror which the hand of Thy love
e Book iii, ch. 31, 1.

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The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

holds before the eyes of my soul and I, Thy
creature, see myself in the light of that mirror. Thou
presentest Thyself to me and I recognize that Thou
art the supreme and infinite Good, the Good beyond
all good . . . the Beauty beyond all beauty, the
wisdom beyond all wisdom, for Thou art Wisdom
Itself. Who may raise himself toward Thee to thank
Thee worthily for the ineffable treasures, both of the
superabundant graces which Thou hast granted me
and of the doctrine of truth which Thou hast
revealed to me beyond the general grace? For this
doctrine is a special grace which Thou hast granted
to men.”
What a difference there is between ordinary
faith, always weak and groping, and that faith,
certain even intellectually, which, if we may so
speak, sees!
But how does it see? There cannot be question of
such a revelation of the mystery which would trans­
form the gazing of the understanding into an un­
mixed vision exclusive of faith. Whence then comes
that special light which illumines the divine with­
out discovering it?
It is, as we have said, through the heart, that God
accomplishes, in this life, the deification of even
our intellectual activity. The Holy Ghost, by char­
ity, dwells in our hearts and it is from these that He
causes His gifts to shine. The effect of merely human
love is to render more intense the act of the intel­

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95

ligence applied to the obtaining of knowledge of
the object which we love, to enable it to discover a
meaning, hidden but really true, in words, gestures,
and every indescribable indication. If love has these
instincts, these divinations, the equivalent of lights
in the sureness of their insight, when left to its own
resources, what must the case of a heart be which
is dependent upon God, of which the Holy Ghost
has been constituted at all times the director, ruler
and guide! Its divine impulses will be infallible, its
instinct sure, its intuitions penetrating. The light
thus spread abroad by the Holy Ghost is efficacious
in its gentleness — Veni lumen cordium.
“This act,” says Bossuet, “should be performed
without effort by a return of the whole heart upon
God. It should be, I seek a word to express myself,
it should be tender, affectionate, feeling. Do you
understand me thoroughly? But do I thoroughly
understand myself? For there is a certain movement
of the heart which is not at all sensible with a human
sensibility but is born of the pure joy of the spirit.
And, hence, rejoice and say at all times this alone,
‘I consent, my God, to the whole truth of Thy Being.
I make it my happiness that Thou art what Thou
art: it is my anticipated beatitude. It is my present
paradise and will be my paradise in paradise.
Amen.’ ”T
1 Discours ... le jour dit décès de M. Mutelle.

96

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

Is not this luminous and heartfelt act the Aery
basis of the discourses and acts of St. Catherine? She
sees because she loves. It is no longer the simple
knowledge of faith: she has loved the d'ruth which
has given her the knowledge of faith: she has tasted
it and now she returns to herself with a changed
gaze, with that gaze of which the prophet has said:
“Taste first and then see’’ — Gustate et vidcled
But the Gift of Understanding does not stop there.
St. Thomas tells us that it is a gift at once speculative
and practical and that its action should be felt in our
life. “If it is true, as it is,’’ says Bossuet, “that we
are the more active the more we are impelled,
animated, and moved by the Holy Ghost, that act
by which we give ourselves to Him and the activity
which He works in us, place us, so to speak, wholly
in action for God.”0 St. Thomas, in a synthesis which
is as precise as it is astonishing, has grasped, in the
beatitudes of St. Matthew’s Gospel, this activity of
the Gifts and he has studied to bring to light the
correspondence between each of the beatitudes and
a Gift of the Holy Ghost. To the Gift of Under­
standing corresponds “Blessed are the clean of heart
for they shall see God.” The purification of the heart
is the proper work of the Gift of Understanding in
8 Cf. John of St. Thomas, ia. 2ae, q. 70, disp. 18, a. 3,
n. 37.

8 Discours sur VA cte de VA bandon.

The GifI of Understanding

97

this life. The light of vision is the reward of this
meritorious purification, a reward which, though it
makes itself felt in this world, is wholly achieved
only in eternity.
This correspondence between the understanding
and purity is a basic trait in the life of St. Catherine.
The ecstatic visionary is also the model of penitents.
And who more than that ardent saint has cultivated
that other purity of the heart which consists in the
profession of the Catholic Faith, unmingled with
error? Thus, in order that she might see the better,
she unceasingly purified her heart by penance and
the flight of the world’s prejudices and each degree
of contemplation acquired inspired her with the
idea of still greater detachment. In her soul there is
a twofold action wherein light evokes purity of heart,
and purity of heart gives rise to increasing illumina­
tions. In setting forth the bond which unites the
Gift of Understanding with the beatitude of the
clean of heart St. Thomas has revealed her life to
us in a single word.10
This is a consoling doctrine for the Gifts of the
Holy Ghost are placed in the souls of all the just
together with grace and charity. It is for us, under
the operation of grace, to use them. But you ask:
who will give us this grace? You already have it if
10 2. 2ae, q. 8, a. 7.

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The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

you sincerely desire it, for your desire strengthens
prayer of which St. Augustine says, “If you are not
already attracted, pray to be attracted.” Then, to
work and say, “I wish to use this Gift of Understand­
ing which I hope is in my soul by the grace of God.
St. Catherine help me!”
Then take the Holy Scripture, preferably one of
those passages which the Church has chosen in the
Liturgy and which it uses to make the interior soul
vibrate in the melodies of the plain chant. Or, again,
take the psalms, or, in the Gospels, the “Words of
the Lord,” the “Verba Domini” as St. Augustine
calls them, such, for example, as “If thou knewest
the gift of God and who it is that saith to thee: Give
Me to drink,” or, again, “He must increase, but I
must decrease.” Then, turn toward the interior
Guest, the Holy Trinity present in you by grace,
or, if you are in Church, toward our Lord present
in the tabernacle and consider the words you have
chosen as speaking to you of the God you love, as if
spoken at that moment for you by the God who lives
within you. Taste these words in that presence and,
when the movement of your heart returns upon it­
self in contemplation, you will discover a breadth,
height, magnitude, and depth which you had never
suspected, which mere faith could not show you, of
which only the eye of the heart, a heart in which

The Gift of Understanding

9g

you hope that the Holy Ghost dwells, will give you
understanding.11
Then, you will notice how your gaze is obscured
by imperfections to which you do not habitually pay
heed, by selfdove, prejudice, love of ease, false and
unchristian ideas, that alloy which even the gold of
a pious life contains. As with St. Catherine, the Gift
of Understanding Avili inspire you with a holy hatred
of yourself. You will arise stronger with the resolve
henceforth to consider “sweet things bitter and
bitter things sweet’’ for the sake of our Lord and to
increase, under the guidance of His Spirit, the
understanding of the consoling mysteries of our
holy faith.
11 Though we have the grace, yet knowledge is not certain
to one. But we may hope so as long as we are not conscious
of a mortal sin and we serve God with a good will. In the
case of souls resolutely Christian, the Holy Ghost often
adds His testimony to that which results from the witness
of conscience. Hence there is a state of practical certitude
which, though still leaving room for fear, gives to the
activity of the faithful a reassuring basis.

VIII
The Gift of Wisdom
St. Thomas Aqainas

In the “Crucifixion” by Angelico there are two
persons which especially draw the attention of the
Dominican soul. They are the two saints at the end
of the group placed to the right of the cross. In the
first row is St. Dominic, kneeling with arms extended
in a gesture of grief and compassion. His face, bathed
in tears, is but half raised toward the Crucified as if
he were still drawn by that sight on the other side
of the cross where the Blessed Virgin, supported by
John, Magdalene, and Mary, seems about to faint.
Standing in the rear row, his arms folded upon his
breast with head thrust forward to see the better,
is St. Thomas. His face betrays a poignant and
concentrated expression. Still he does not weep, he
gazes; he gazes fixedly at the Crucified Christ and
the mute emotion which envelops him, far from
1OO

The Gift of Wisdom

IO 1

averting his gaze, seems but to deepen it and to
draw from the depths of his eyes an intense flame
just as, in the black depths of a volcano, one sees
the bubbling fiery lava rise, powerful and restrained.
St. Dominic weeps, but with a heart divided be­
tween the grief of Christ suffering lor souls and the
sorrow of souls who, in the Virgin Mary, begin, at
the very foot of the Cross, the long martyrdom of
their union with the sufferings of Christ; and thus
shows the true Apostle, for therein is his double
vocation, heartfelt contemplation and merciful com­
munication. Such is the man of the Gift of Knowl­
edge.
St. Thomas looks the fearful sacrifice in the face
and, despite the horrors of the torment, masters its
characteristics so that nothing may escape him, so
that he may more deeply enter into the mystery,
and thus he is the Doctor. There is manifested his
vocation, no longer divided, but unified in a double
faculty, to absorb itself in light, to become itself
luminous and, without suspecting it, to give light
far and wide. There is the representative of the Gift
of Wisdom.
Wisdom, we know, is primarily an intellectual
faculty. By it we accustom ourselves to judge every­
thing from on high, from the loftiest possible point,
from the divine viewpoint. While Knowledge stops
at proximate reasons which can only give a half
light, Wisdom, at one bound, has recourse to the

IQBlimWMIlMII I I IM

102

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

supreme explanation. The scientist, in order to
explain the harmony of nature, speaks of sidereal
revolutions, of orbits, of rotation, etc. He speaks
truly but he does not give the ultimate reason.
The wise man, whether theologian or philosopher,
makes his appeal to the ordaining intelligence of
God. With one word he has explained everything
although everything is not revealed, for where
reason stops, mystery begins.
For this reason the Holy Ghost who “fathoms the
depths of God” links us to His own wisdom by a
Gift. What a difference there is between the faculty
and the Gift! In what does our theology and phi­
losophy consist if not in “finding ignorance in its
highest source”? What do we as theologians save
to delimit, with more exactitude than others, the
boundaries of dark abysses of mysteries or of blind­
ing suns whose centers are inaccessible to the human
gaze even when illumined by the obscure light which
proceeds from grace? And do not the most intelligent
often find their greatest trial in that which even
simple souls feel? To find oneself transported by
faith before a wall covered with characters which
tell of the most sublime and consoling things, and
to be unable to pierce the veil which hides them,
to realize that we must believe and not be able to
see, even for an instant, that which we believe with
our whole heart, this is indeed a trial for intelligences
as frank as they are faithful. To these it would be

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103

more grievous not to believe than not to be able
to see.
Where, then, O Doctor of the “Crucifixion” hast
thou found that eye which, gazing on the mystery,
remains not sightless, glassy and dead, like ours,
which, where I lose myself in the void, applies itself
to live an unprecedented life, a life which the eye
of Archimedes, reflecting the joy of his “Eureka”
could not know, nor even Newton, discovering for
the first time the mystery of the heavens? Hast thou,
O Angelico, in the flight of thy imagination thus
transfigured thy model? We cannot imagine it thus.
Thou hast seen him! The truth is that the Angelic
Painter has comprehended the Angelic Doctor.
O thou, who wast so revealed to the soul of
Angelico, do thou reveal thyself to us by the power
of that holy image, to us who know not how to gaze
as thou didst and have so great a need to strengthen
our faith by the illumination of the Gifts! Thou
didst visibly penetrate the mysteries of the Son of
God, incarnate and dying upon the cross. Speak and
we will listen to thee. Thine eyes, O Seer, shall be
our eyes. Thou hast experienced divine things; do
thou disclose to us something of those realities upon
which our hearts depend and yet before which our
intuitions and our reasonings, as theologians and
believers, remain powerless.
The fresco becomes animated and, like to the
wave which overflows from the deep basin wherein

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The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

their gushes forth a living spring, I hear reply that
voice, which, of old, satisfied the loving importuni­
ties of Brother Reginald, his dearest companion.
“Behold, my son, this Crucified. He is God. He
is God incarnate for our sins. For our sins, do you
understand? For a long time I have reasoned like a
philosopher, it seemed fine for me to behold in the
Incarnation of the Word the crown of the Universe,
the glory of humanity. I was divided between the
Holy Books which everywhere show me the Re­
demption as the cause of the Incarnation and that
sublime idea of a world culminating in a Divine
Being, in a Man whose feet should rest upon our
earth and his, while his head, loftier than the
summits of the highest mountains, should inhabit
the inaccessible light of the Deity.1 But in that
moment, all was illumined in the light of the Cross
and I saw . . . the Redemption was the end, the
sole end. Why was the Incarnation? For the Re­
demption. It was not principally to manifest the
divine power that a God became incarnate. It was
not even to show forth the goodness of God and
His divine liberality. It was to manifest His mercy,
the most unspeakable of his attributes.1
2 Now all was
explained in the divine word “where sin abounded,
pardon superabounded,’’ “He is come to save that
which is lost.’’ If man had not sinned Fie would not
1 In gum. Sent. dist. 1.
2 1, q· 31» a· 3·

The Gift of Wisdom

105

have come. Take away sickness, take away wounds,
and the doctor is no longer needed. O happy fault
to have merited for us such a Redeemer.3 It was
necessary to make the sacrifice of an inferior motive,
of a beautiful idea but still only a human idea. Once
more I had to bend my understanding beneath the
dictates of faith and, behold, through this, I have
found anew the light and the highest cause of the
mystery is revealed. I had explained the Incarnation
as a man. Now I behold its motive as God secs it.
This motive is both our sins and the divine mercy.
It is this cross which has revealed it to me and hence
I gaze upon it thus.
What a lesson for us too human philosophers and
theologians is this intellectual conversion of a St.
Thomas, this joyful effacement of the most seductive
synthesis before the humble word of the Gospel,
of the Apostle, of the Saints! What a lesson it is for
us, the faithful, who too often measure the things
of God, His teachings, the government of His
Church, the conduct of His ministers by the short
views that proceed from our pretended lights, our
passions, our momentary impressions, or our imag­
ination! Ah! we do not know enough to judge all
things, and especially the things of God, the highest
cause. We are full of ourselves and, if not at bottom,
at least in the real practical affairs of life, in judging,
we trouble ourselves with the viewpoint of God
8

q· », a· 3·

io6

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

too little. He has Himself said “Your thoughts
are not my thoughts and your ways are not my
ways.” Yet we must get out of so fatal a habit: the
mere zeal for truth requires it.
But, how are we to elevate ourselves sufficiently
to consider all things with the eyes of God? Is not
such a wisdom reserved for beings totally disengaged
from our weaknesses and miseries as are the blessed?
St. Thomas himself reveals to us his secret. It is.
he tells us, the Spirit of God alone who really
knows the divine mysteries. By our intellectual
power we are able to discover some of their features.
But what is all our philosophy compared with a
single ray which it pleases the Holy Ghost to send
us from the bosom of that fullness of light where
He dwells? To enter into relationship with the Holy
Ghost, there lies the secret of wisdom. But, says the
Apostle, “he that adhereth to God (listen, by char­
ity) makes but one spirit with His.”4 This does not
mean that by love we become the same being as
God but that, united to God by a profound senti­
ment of the heart — not of the heart left to itself,
but strengthened, established, by God Himself —
we love only that which He loves and enter into a
holy and habitual dependence in relation to Him.
The result of this effective dependence ought to
make itself especially felt in the conformity of our
judgments with His. And, since of ourselves we can4 2. 2ae, q. 45, a. 2.

The Gift of Wisdom

107

not raise ourselves to the ideas of God. it is necessary
that our God, to make His friendship effective,
should cause us to partake in the judgments of His
wisdom. This it is to form one spirit with God.
“It is to be instructed by His unction,’’ as says St.
John, “and that in all things’’5 which is to say that
the soul, full of the love of God, feels itself gently
and, as it were, unctuously touched by higher lights
which elevate it to a loftiness of view which it knows
not, to a purity, penetration and mastery of its intel­
lectual outlook such that it no longer seems to be
of this earth. Just so does the traveler from a moun­
tain peak see everything, the furious sea and the
rugged hills, the silent forests and the cities filled
with human turmoil, and feels his heart wrapped
in the unspeakable joy of being, for a moment,
detached from the detail of the earth and able to
dominate it with a single glance.
Nothing is so restful as such a sight which abounds
in salutary reflections. The smallness of that which
ordinarily arouses our passions appears to us in all
its reality. The soul which sees from above is at one
stroke enlarged and quieted. That doubtless is the
reason why St. Augustine has linked to the Gift of
Wisdom the beatitude of the peacemakers, “Blessed
are the peacemakers for they shall be called the chil­
dren of God.’’6 Peace is nothing other than the tran5 2. 2ae, q. 45, a. 2.
6 2. 2ae, q. 45, a. 6.

io8

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

quillity of order. But that alone is capable of assur­
ing order which sees the detail in the whole, which
judges from a loftier viewpoint that which is great
and that which is small. To make one’s life peace­
ful, to make the lives of others the same, it is ab­
solutely essential to be lifted above oneself, above
everything and to judge oneself in the truth. But
how is this to be done? We cannot separate ourselves
from ourselves and we needs must live in the world.
How then are we to raise ourselves above ourselves?
Where is the mountain whence, rvith detached and
dominating glance, we may truly appreciate our life
and that of others?
This mountain is God. God dominates His
creation by nature. Those alone to whom He com­
municates His judgment can dominate and judge
all as God does. And that is why, in the Gospel, the
figure of the Son of God made man appears to us
with a unique expression both of dominance and of
peace. He is a wise man; He judges others with
thoughts other than our own, with thoughts quite
simply spoken but filled with a content which
compels the wise men of all time to reflect. But in
dominating us, He does not crush us; He does not
break the bruised reed; He does not quench the still
smoking flax. This wise man is a peacemaker. The
Divinity which dwells within Him is like a peak
from which He considers and judges, in their reality,
all the causes of our troubles and strife; whence He

00

The Gift of Wisdom

10g

causes order, tranquillity, and peace to radiate into
the souls of those who believe His word. There lies
the model.
He is also the reward for He has said “Blessed are
the peacemakers for they shall be called the children
of God.’’ Yes, something of that serene and intel­
ligent domination, of that tranquil order, which
characterized the face of the Son of God, passed into
the wise men of the earth and humanity, struck with
the resemblance, proclaimed it with a loud voice.
Behold St. Thomas Aquinas! What theologian, in
the judgments upon all things divine and human in
whose formulation he spent his entire life, more
attached himself to the very thought of God? Who
is wiser with the wisdom which comes from on high?
Yet where is there a more intelligently serene counte­
nance, a more peaceful life, and a more tranquilizing
work?
No, after the Gospel, after the Apostle, there is no
reading which manifests to the spirit the impression
of tranquillity in order as does that of the works of
St. Thomas. Jesus saw; St. Thomas reasoned. There
lies the difference and it is immense. But their
spirits seem to be — dare I say it — related. Simplic­
ity and profundity, universality and the least detail,
sublimity and condescension, the hall mark of the
Gospel, are all to be found, in a lesser but still in
an eminent degree, in the works of St. Thomas. Is
not this a proof of the law laid down by the Holy
I

iio

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

Ghost Himself: “He who adheres to God makes but
one spirit with Him.’’ And is not the resemblance
between the intelligent and serene countenance of
the Angelic Doctor and the intellectual mien of our
Lord the realization of the promise of good fortune
made to the wise? “Blessed are the peacemakers for
they shall be called the children of God.’’

IX
The Gifts of the Holy Ghost
in the
Most Pure Heart of the Virgin Mary

Salve Regina! This is the cry which most joyfully
rises from the hearts of all the children of the
Blessed Dominic. Each evening the saints of our
Order have had it upon their lips. Mary is their
Queen. What does this imply? Evidently only
a spiritual royalty. But what gifts can assure such
a royalty but the Gifts of the Spirit? It is through
her heart, inflamed with an eminent charity, the
dwelling chosen above all by the Holy Ghost, that
Mary reigns over hearts themselves filled with char­
ity and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In her we
can no longer single out, as in each of our Saints,
some one particular Gift. The Spouse of the Holy
Ghost has entered into the plenitude of all the Gifts.
The Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost shine forth from
her Most Pure Heart and make it a resplendent and
incomparable glory. Ye Blessed of the Order of St.

112

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

Dominic, each one adorned with a precious but
special Gift, salute your Queen! Salve Regina!
Being eager to know the mysteries of the Most
Pure Heart of the Blessed Virgin, St. Bernard
anxiously sought to know how he could penetrate
its depths. It seemed to him that he found a certain
indication in the phrase from the Gospel “A good
man draws good things from the treasure of his
heart.” He then recalled that the Gospel itself has
recorded for us exactly seven phrases of the Blessed
Virgin. She spoke twice to the angel, twice to Eliz­
abeth, twice to her Divine Son, and once to the
servants at the feast in Cana. Here then, he cries,
are the seven acts of love which reveal her treasure,
the seven flames of her Heart. The first is that of
the love which separates, the second is that of trans­
forming love, the third that of the love which gives
itself, the fourth, that of love in rejoicing, the fifth
that of restful love, the sixth that of compassionat­
ing love, while the seventh is that of consummative
love.1
These characteristics of the degrees of love of the
Most Pure Heart of the Most Holy Virgin appear
to us to correspond to the different Gifts of the Holy
Ghost, although the order accepted by St. Bernard
may perhaps be capable of rearrangement, especially
in regard to the fourth “flame,” the “amor jubilans,”
1 Senn. ix, de Visitatione. Office of the Most Pure Heart
of the B.V.M. Lessons of the Second Noctum.

wwmmwi

■MUM

Gifts in the Most Pure Heart of Mary

I
i

J

113

1
I

which corresponds to the canticle “Magnificat/' and
which we transfer to the seventh place, as giving the
last word of that heart. Be that as it may, one cannot
find a more authentic basis on which to speak of the
mysterious operations of the Holy Ghost in the heart
of Mary than these words recorded in the Gospel.
We will apply ourselves, then, to meditate upon
them in order to discover their secrets.

I

First Word:

!

“The angel said to her: Fear not Mary for thou hast
found grace with God. Behold thou shalt conceive in thy
womb and shall bring forth a Son and thou shalt call His
Name Jesus. . . . Mary said to the Angel: How shall this
be done because I know not Man?’’2

The Gift of Fear.

“Fear not Mary.’’ These words of the angel place
us, right at the beginning, upon our way. Mary was
troubled at the sight of him and she asked the mean­
ing of his salutation. “Fear not Mary for thou hast
found -grace with God,’’ and the angel outlined the
glories of the divine grace. She should bear a son.
Jesus should be great and be called the Son of the
Most High and the Lord God would give Him the
throne of His father David. He should reign over
the house of Jacob forever and of His kingdom there
should be no end. This message could only redouble
the fear of Mary, but her answer explains to us the

i

2 Luke 1:30-34.

114

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

nature of her fear. It is the fear of a child of God,
of a chaste virgin, who, under the inspiration of the
Spirit, had vowed her virginity to the Most High;
to please Him she had forever separated herself from
every worldly hope. Her cry is the cry of the love
which separates, that is to say, of the Gift of Filial
Fear which casts far from the just all which may
distract him from God. “How shall this be done
because I know not man?”
“Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.” Mary is poor in spirit, she has
stripped herself of every created good, including
that hope which made the heart of every daughter of
Israel beat and made them regard virginity as a
disgrace. She had renounced marriage and, even
after the message of the angel, she intended to
remain a virgin. Thus the beatitude, reserved to
those who through fear of God are poor in spirit,
was to be fulfilled in her. The kingdom of heaven
is hers since Jesus, the great King of that realm,
descends to become, incarnate in her womb.
Second Word:

The Gift of Fortitude.

“The angel answering said to her: The Holy Ghost shall
come upon thee and the power of the Most High shall over­
shadow thee. Therefore the Holy which shall be born of
thee shall be called the Son of God.
Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done
to me according to thy word.”3

3 Luke 1:35-38.

Gifts in the Most Pure Heart of Mary

115

What a transformation! Unquiet hesitation is
supplanted by absolute confidence, the resolve to
abandon oneself without reserve to the action of God
who can do all things, who clears away all dangers
and who brings us surely to the most inaccessible
end. How could she preserve her virginity and yet
become a mother? The angel answers: “Nothing is
impossible to God.’’ And Mary said: “Behold the
handmaid of the Lord: be it done to me according
to thy word.” This is a cry of transforming love, that
is to say of the Gift of Fortitude. “The Holy Spirit,”
says St. Thomas, “often moves the spirit of man in
such a way that he performs his work while avoiding
all the perils which menace him. Although it is not
within the power of man to attain the end or escape
the peril . . . the Holy Ghost, who has the guid­
ance of our march toward eternal life, intervenes
and produces in the soul an assurance which ex­
cludes all contrary fear. This gift of the Holy Ghost
is the Gift of Fortitude.”4 Is not this passage from the
Holy Doctor the literal commentary upon the trans­
formation produced in Mary. She, troubled, said,
“How shall this be done?” The angel answered her:
“The power of the Most High shall overshadow
thee. . . . Nothing is impossible with God.” The
spirit of Fortitude inspired her and, like a disciplined
soldier, she answered: “Behold the handmaid of the
Lord: be it done to me according to thy word.”
* 2. 2ae, q. 139, a. 1, c.

ii6

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after
justice, for they shall be filled.” Phis is the beatitude
which St. Augustine connects with the Gift of Forti­
tude. Mary truly hungered and thirsted after justice,
since, when faced with the realization in her of the
great promise to Israel, she maintained the rights of
the promise of virginity made to God. Behold
Blessed Mary filled! She begot the Messias and
remained a Virgin. The Holy Child who was born
of her was called the Son of God. O happy and
blessed Mary, ever Virgin and Mother of God.
Third Word:

The Gift of Piety.

“And Mary rising up in those days, went into the hill
country with haste into a city of Juda and she entered into
the house of Zachary and saluted Elizabeth. And it came
to pass that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary,
the infant leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled
with the Holy Ghost; and she cried out with a loud voice
and said: Blessed art thou among women and blessed is
the fruit of thy womb.”3

She saluted Elizabeth. What this salutation was,
the Gospel does not say. It was the cry of the
love which communicates itself, which, possessing
some good, seeks only to share it. And, behold,
it is immediately shared. The child of Elizabeth, a
symbol of all humanity, leaps in the womb of its
5 Luke 1:39-42.

Gifts in the Most Pure Heart of Mary

117

mother and its mother is filled with the spirit which
dwells in Mary. The spirit of Mary saluting Eliz­
abeth is the spirit of piety, for piety is that gift of
God which causes us to revere not only God, the
Father of the Christian Family, but that family itself
in all its members, to render to it all the duties we
owe, to communicate to it the best we have. This is
exactly what Mary did, going in haste across the
mountains to lend her aid to her cousin Eliz­
abeth, to rejoice the heart of the mother by the
presage of the Blessed One of Israel, to sanctify,
in advance, the Precursor, the Herald of the
future sanctification of humanity. So also the
latter, by the mouth of Elizabeth, acknowledged
the piety which had inspired Mary’s journey:
“Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the
fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me that
the mother of my Lord should come to me? . . .
Blessed art thou who has believed because those
things shall be accomplished that were spoken to
thee by the Lord.’’
Yes, happy and blessed is Mary! According to St.
Thomas the beatitudes of the Gospel vie with one
another for the honor of setting in relief the Gift
of Piety, doubtless because this excellent Gift cannot
be exercised without raising in its passage a train
of excellent desires. Blessed are the meek for they
shall possess the land: blessed are they that hunger
and thirst after justice for they shall be filled: blessed

118

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. The
act of the Gift of the Piety is formed of what is best
in the three gifts of meekness, justice, and mercy.
Indeed all these are present in the Visitation of
Mary. Her salutation was meek; witness the wel­
come which Elizabeth gave her; her visit was an
act of justice since she was fulfilling a duty; the work
of sanctification which she performed was full of
mercy. Behold her, then, who at one stroke possesses
the land by the sanctification which she there pro­
duced, who is filled by the joy which her visit pro­
duces, who sees the mercy of the Lord confirmed in
her by the new assurance added to her happiness by
the prophecy of Elizabeth: “Blessed art thou that
hast believed, because those things shall be accom­
plished which were spoken to thee by God.’’
Fourth Word:

The Gift of Counsel.

“And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of
Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. And Jesus also
was invited and His disciples to the marriage. And the
wine failing, the Mother of Jesus saith to Hirn: they have
no wine. And Jesus saith to her: Woman, what is that to
Me and to thee. My hour is not yet come.”*5

“They have no wine.” How much confidence
there is in this laconic saying of the Mother to the
6 John 2:1-4.

Gifts in the Most Pure Heart of Mary

ng

Son! She urges nothing; she does not even make a
request; knowing His Heart, she contents herself
with opening hers. Yes, it is her heart that she opens,
the heart of the housewife and guest delicately
moved by the sorrows which her host is about to
experience. “They have no wine”: it is the hardly
murmured counsel of a mother conscious of the
heart and the omnipotence of her Son, which com­
pletely rest the one upon the other, “flamma amoris
soporantis.” Who could have inspired in her a
delicacy at once so insinuating and so firm, so worthy
of God to whom she spoke, for it is God whom she
is venturing to counsel, yet so truly marked with the
stamp of a mother’s rights? If ever counsel was
derived from a gift to mortal, it was truly in this
circumstance. What man, of himself, could dis­
cover the persuasive power of such a counsel? Is it
not the act of a prudence counseled from above, of
a prudence directed by the great Counselor?
“Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain
mercy.” It would seem, at first sight, that Mary has
not obtained mercy. “Woman,” Jesus saith to her,
“what is that to Me and to thee. My hour is not yet
come.” But this is only apparently so. Mothers know
what is hidden beneath the exterior coldness which
their grown sons raise to their overtures. They know
that while they, in the name of reason, resist, yet
in their hearts they have already yielded. Mary was
not mistaken. Her heart, full of pity for these poor

120

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost.

people, knew that it had obtained pity. She ordered
the servants to do all that her Son should bid and
the miracle was performed. Her counsel had pre­
vailed, because fundamen tally, it was the counsel of
a love inspired by the God of Mercy.
Fifth Word:

The Gift of Knowledge.

“And Jesus saith to her: Woman, what is that to Me
and to thee, My hour is not yet come. His mother saith
to the waiters: whatsoever He shall say to you do ye. . . .
Jesus saith to them: Fill the water pots with water, and
they filled them up to the brim. And Jesus saith to them:
draw out now and carry to the chief steward of the feast.
And they carried it. And when the chief steward had tasted
the water made wine ... he calleth the bridegroom and
saith to him: Every man at first setteth forth good wine
and, when men have well drunk, then that which is worse.
But thou hast kept the good wine until now.”7

“My hour is not yet come,” saith Jesus. But that
of Mary had come and she knew it. The hour of
Mary is that in which man finds himself in em­
barrassment, chagrin, or misery. She knows all
our sufferings from the little wound to the selfesteem of the host who, in the midst of the banquet,
discovers that he has nothing more to offer his guests,
to those dolorous sufferings which attack our life at
its roots. She knows all this and her knowledge is
7 John 2:4-10.

Gifts in the Most Pure Heart of Mary

121

not inactive, “flamma amoris compatienlis.” It is the
flame of compassionating love. “Whatsoever He
shall say to you do ye,’’ she said to the servants. Who
could have inspired this boldness in her? When the
Master had said “My hour is not yet come,’’ how
dare she act as if it had come? It is the Spirit from
on High who animates her with a higher knowledge.
It is because beneath the harsh phrase “Woman,
what is that to thee and to Me?’’ she, by the inspira­
tion of the Spirit, discovers the heart of Him who
should soon say “I have compassion upon the multi­
tude.” (“Misereor super turbam.”)
“Blessed are they that weep, for they shall be
comforted.” This is the beatitude which St. Augus­
tine links with the Gift of Knowledge and justly so
for the better one knows the world the more one
sees that it is sorrowful and full of misery.
The delicate heart of Mary discovered in the
sorrow of the bridegroom a human grief. It is small
but it is enough when one is inspired by the Gift
of Knowledge. She knows and she weeps with those
who weep. “They have no wine.” What a pitiful
plea! But, immediately, “Whatsoever He shall say
to you do ye.” The water is turned into wine and
the anxiety which had weighed down the heart of
the unhappy host is turned into a great gladness.
And Mary rejoiced greatly at hearing the chief
steward of the feast, who suspected nothing, say to
the bridegroom: “Thou hast kept the good wine till

122

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

now.” What a consolation to her delicate heart.
Blessed are they that weep, instructed by the Gift of
Knowledge, for they shall be comforted.

Sixth Word:

The Gift of Understanding.

“And it came to pass that after three days they found
Him in the Temple sitting in the midst of the doctors,
hearing them and asking them questions. And all that
heard Him were astonished at His wisdom and His answers.
And seeing Him they wondered, and His mother said to
Him: ‘Son, why hast Thou done so to us? Behold Thy
father and I have sought Thee sorrowing.’ And He said
to them: ‘How is it that you sought Me? Did you not know
that I must be about My Father’s business.’ And they under­
stood not the word which He spoke unto them. And He
went down with them and came to Nazareth and was sub­
ject to them. And His mother kept all these words in
her heart.”8

“Son, why hast Thou done so to us?” Is there
Understanding here? “And they understood not the
word which He spoke to them.” Can this be called
Understanding? We have not read the text to the
end: “His mother kept all these words in her heart.”
Here is the work of the Gift of Understanding.
To find we must seek; to receive we must ask. In
the Canticle of Canticles wherein the saints have
recognized the embraces of the human understand8 Luke 2:46-51.

Gifts in the Most Pure Heart of Mary

123

ing and the Divinity, there are words denoting search
and moments of meeting, fugitive meetings and
silent possessings. Mary is the Spouse of the Canticle:
Jesus is her Well-Beloved. She knows Him by the
spirit of Understanding which was bestowed upon
her at the Annunciation. Yet, the Gift of Under­
standing, upon this earth, does not exclude the
obscurities of faith. The soul sees suddenly, under
a mighty impulse of the heart, but a moment later
the Beloved is hidden. It can no longer lay hold
upon Him and it goes in search of Him.
“I sought Him whom my soul loveth.
I sought Him and found Him not.
I will arise and go about the city,
In the streets and in the broad ways
I will seek Him whom my soul loveth.
The watchmen who keep the city found me,
Have you seen Him whom my soul loveth?
When I had a little passed by them
I found Him whom my soul loveth.”9

It is with this figurative paraphrase in mind that
we should read our text. Even in Mary, the Gift of
Understanding does not exclude momentary lack of
understanding. It even requires it, so as to provoke
an anxious search, to arouse, because of the absence
of God, the Beloved, a stronger movement of the
heart which translates itself into a more ardent
’Cant. 3:1-4.

124

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

flame: “flamma amoris consummantis.” “Have you
seen Him whom my soul loveth?’’ said the Spouse
to the keepers of the city: Mary said to her Son: “Be­
hold, Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrow­
ing.”
Jesus replies by recalling His Divine Paternity:
and, says the Gospel, “they understood not the word
which He spoke to them.” Joseph and Mary did not
immediately understand, but, like the Spouse of
the Canticles who, when she had passed the watch­
men, found Him whom her soul loved, Mary is
shown to us keeping all these things in her heart.
Does this mean that she, at last, understands? No,
that is not possible. But she does better: she sees.
She sees with those eyes of the soul which do not
exclude obscurity but rather give an understanding
more immediate and more certain than the clearness
of evidence.
She does not understand, but, under the inspira­
tion of the Spirit, she feels the joy of being the
Spouse of the Eternal Father who is the Father of
her Son, and of being the mother of that Son who
is already about His Father’s business: she feels it
intimately, silently: she keeps it in her heart.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
God.” The heart of Mary was most pure. She has no
other love than the Father, Son, and Spirit. She lives
by the understanding of the deepest mysteries of
the Divinity. That is why she is blessed.

Gifts in the Most Pure Heart of Mary

Seventh Word:

The Gift of Wisdom.

“My soul doth magnify the Lord.”

“Magnificat anima mea Dominum.”1'1

This is the Canticle of Mary, the llame of love in
rejoicing, as St. Bernard says. It is the utterance of
the enthusiasm which is born in the lowest depths of
a heart wherein God has established His dominion
in an absolute and royal way. Such a heart sees God
everywhere, in all the events of its life, in all the
sources of the history of the world. God becomes,
for it, the great fundamental reality who hides Him­
self under the vesture of things. In Him and by Him,
we live and move and have our being. The soul
judges everything by this Supreme Cause, infinite
and profound. It seeks to enter into communication
with the Wisdom which rules the world, to identify
its own views with His. And since this inspiration
arises from its charity, whose government the Holy
Ghost regulates, nothing can hinder this identifica­
tion becoming a reality. For this reason the Gift
of Wisdom exists, the Gift of those peaceful enthu­
siasts who feel that the God who governs the world
is with them and they wish to spread this conviction
throughout the entire world. It is He who rested
upon Mary at the moment when, filled with the
10 Luke 1:46-55.

12Ô

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

Spirit of God, after this same Spirit had enveloped
Elizabeth and the child, the symbol of humanity,
had leaped in the womb, she burst forth into that
Canticle wherein the love of God appears at each
turn of the discourse. It is the ultimate expression
of her Most Pure Heart.
“My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit hath
rejoiced in God my Saviour, because He hath regarded
the humility of His handmaid.
For, behold, from henceforth, all generations shall call
me blessed, because He that is mighty hath done great
things to me.
Holy is His Name, and His Mercy is from generation to
generation to them that fear Him.
He hath shewed might in His arm: He hath scattered the
proud in the conceit of their heart.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath
exalted the humble.
He hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich
He hath sent empty away.
He hath received Israel His servant, being mindful of
His Mercy as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and
His seed forever.”

The Gifts In Heaven
The Dominican Pentecost

“The Holy City, the celestial Jerusalem, is not
watered by the course of a stream like to those on
earth; but, springing from the source of life, the
Holy Spirit, of which a feeble drop waters us here
below, floods the blessed spirits with the effervescent
flow of the seven spiritual forces.”1
It is in these terms that St. Ambrose affirms the
permanence, and describes the abundance, of the
Gifts of the Holy Ghost in heaven.
In heaven, the moral virtues have no longer any
reason for existence; there hope is accomplished,
faith is placed in the light of glory; all these virtues
disappear with our earthly life: charity alone
1 St. Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto, I, xvi, cited by St.
Thomas: I. sae, q. 68, a. 6, sed contra.

i«7

is8

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

remains. It remains the same, but infinitely more
burning, since it is no longer nourished in the
obscurity of faith but in the vision, face to face, of
the Eternal Beauty.
Charity remains: that is to say, that the Holy
Ghost does not cease to dwell in the soul of the
blessed: only it is no longer as a bias far from its
center of attraction and which encounters all kinds
of obstacles, but as a bias arrived at its destination
which exerts an influence henceforth un trammeled
and indissolubly establishing the being which it
animates to the end of its efforts.
If, then, the Holy Ghost reigns more than ever in
the heart of the blessed one it is because the Gifts
do not cease to regulate its new activity. What,
indeed, is the reason for these Gifts? We have told
this before: it is to make the soul docile to the
moving of the Holy Spirit. But when will it be more
responsive to this moving than when it has arrived
in that country where God is all in all, “omnia in
omnibus/’ and man is totally subjected to God?2
But if the Gifts exist in heaven, their field of
action is greatly modified. In heaven there are no
longer the delays which hope knows, the obscurity
which faith implies, which makes us understand and
not see the mysteries of God, no longer the impet­
uosities which impede the sureness of our counsel,
no longer ignorances to be overcome by mortifica­
2 i. sae, q. 68, a. 6, ic.

The Gifts in Heaven

129

tion, works of mercy to perform, adversity to be
borne, pride to be restrained by salutary fears. The
Gifts aid us to overcome all these difficulties of life.
But the difficulties no longer exist. Hence says St.
Gregory the Great, we admit that there is in each
of the Gifts something which disappears with the
present life.3
But he immediately adds that something remains
and that it is not the least glorious function of
the Gifts.
The Gift of Wisdom continues to fill the heart
of the blessed with Divine Certitudes: the Gift of
Understanding illumines it more than ever: Counsel
fills the soul with rational satisfactions: the Gift of
Fortitude fills it with assurance: the Gift of Knowl­
edge enlightens it to its depths: Piety inspires it
with sentiments of expansive gratitude: the Gift of
Fear enjoys without constraint the joys of fulfill­
ment.

The Blessed Virgin Mary was the first to receive
the imprint of these gifts thus transformed. The
holy apprehensions and courageous decision of the
Annunciation, the merciful salutation of the Visita­
tion, the compassionate counsel and knowledge of
her Son’s ways at the wedding of Cana, the silent
3 Ibid.,

ad 2um.

igo

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

recollection in the understanding of the mystery of
the Divine Paternity, the exaltation of the “Mag­
nificat/’ all this is reflected in the heart and is rec­
ognizable in the expression of her countenance, but
how much more strikingly. She is still the Virgin of
the Seven Words of the Gospel, but that which was
formerly veiled, like all human merit, is now
resplendent. The ideal of her heart is discovered.
O my good Mother, how fair thou art! “Tola
pulchra es!”
Mary has opened her mantle, that mantle which
envelops the universe with her protective power,
and in that best of places, wherein St. Dominic dis­
covered them like little birds beneath the wings of
their mother, are our Saints.

St. Dominic! He is no longer the Dominic of the
“Crucifixion”; no longer the scholar who, kneeling
at the foot of the cross, weeps over the sins and
miseries whose depths have been made known to
him by the Gift of Knowledge. He is the Dominic
of the “Incoronazionethe star erect and flaming
upon his brow, the glance fixed upon the Thrice
Holy God, plunging into the divine origins of the
salvation of the world. His look has become serene
after the complete evidence of the goodness which
watches over the salvation of sinners. Beside him is

The Gifts in Heaven

131

his son of predilection, St. Hyacinth, the Apostle of
a race of martyrs, the Saint who gazes ever toward
the east of Europe and ceases not to pray for that
nation which has been his lot. He partakes in the
serene joy of his Father, for he sees plainly the
eternal decree which ordains that the blood of the
martyrs be the seed of Christians. Upon his brow
is a tiny star, the image of that of his blessed Father,
the image also of his destiny which is to gravitate
toward the great Dominican star. This is the first
constellation beneath the mantle of the Queen of
our Order.

St. Catherine of Siena, St. Agnes of Montepulciano, St. Rose of Lima, and St. Catherine de Ricci
form a chosen group wherein the brilliancies of
understanding, the glitterings of filial fear, the
gentle light of piety and the reanimating ardors of
fortitude blend their diverse harmonies into a
mighty concord, indefinable and beatifying. Thus
it is that on a fine summer night, the traveler along
those seas in which the stars are reflected from the
promontory can contemplate in prayer the vivid
twinkling of the heavens. Suddenly toward the
south, a trapezoidal group of four shining stars
emerges from the line of the horizon and slowly
mounts, filling that corner of the heaven with a white

132

The Gifts of the Holy Ghost

brilliancy. In front is a star of the first magnitude,
one of the most brilliant in the heavens. It is Spica
of Virgo and its three followers. Such is Catherine
of Siena and her three sisters. There, standing out
upon the somber blue background of the mantle of
the Queen of the Friars Preachers is the second
constellation.

In the heavens there are stars, like Sirius, with
empurpled and bloody fires. It is with this brilliance
that our martyrs, St. Peter of Verona and St. John
of Gorcum shine. Their countenance reflects forti­
tude, but no longer the fortitude of victory yet to
be achieved. They smile, as at a game, upon the
strife of their martyrdom now that they see clearly
that they were right not to be afraid, now that they
behold, in its source, the strength which sustained
them, the omnipotence of the Eternal. There,
beneath the mantle of Mary, is the empurpling of
a third constellation.

*

&

Now come the Apostle Preachers. Their soul is no
longer oppressed by the salutary terrors that the
Spirit inspired in them “lest having preached to

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others, they themselves should be cast away.”4 They
have ceased to “realize in their body the filling up
of what was wanting in the Passion of Christ.”
There shine the glories of the two Spanish Apostles
who divided the world between them, St. Vincent
Ferrer and St. Louis Bertrand. St. Vincent is no
longer terrifying and St. Louis Bertrand no longer
trembles, for before them stretches eternally the
ocean of the Divine Mercy. This is the fourth con­
stellation in the heaven of the Mantle of Mary.

Glory to the Holy Trinity! Behold the constella­
tion of the Doctors. Here is their old friend, the
Holy and Indivisible Essence of God. How they have
searched into It as long as they lived. How great was
their labor! “For Thy sake, they sang, we are morti­
fied [slain] all the day: we are as sheep for the
slaughter.” The altar of sacrifice was their work
table: their mortification was their intellectual labor,
elevated to the service of the Faith. St. Raymond,
St. Antoninus, what a gaze is yours! How sparkling
it is, how intense: how it devours, how eagerly it
feasts!
But what is that inexpressible light, shining
behind you like a blazing golden fire? The whole
4 1 Cor. 9:27.

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mantle of the Virgin is illumined by it. all the celes­
tial beings see its warm light mingle with theirs. As
in the “Crucifixion” of Angelico, it is in the last
row. St. Thomas Aquinas in ecstasy: his gaze, open
as a bottomless gulf, gives entrance of full extent to
the waves of light which flow to Him from the Holy
Trinity! The glory of God is engulfed in his vast
intellect and descends to his very heart and did not
his breast glow like a sun and cause all this flame
one might believe him swallowed up in it. “An im­
mortal sun springs from his breast.” And upon the
mantle of the Blessed Virgin the fifth Dominican
constellation shines as the sun.

The heaven of our Mother’s mantle, beyond these
stars of the first magnitude, is not a void. A hidden
light fills it and the eye, which gazes at it fixedly,
feels that every moment it sees the twinkling of an
infinite number of lesser stars. It is not deceived, for
the very depths of the Virgin’s mantle are alive: one
sees an infinite number of Dominican souls. Some
of them are even recognizable: they are the protec­
tors of our Order, our Beati. There, too, are all our
brothers and sisters who, from the time of St. Dom­
inic, have died in the Lord to the singing of the
“Salve Regina”·, there also are our faithful brothers

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and sisters of the Third Order whose hearts beat in
union with ours. Shining there are our benefactors,
associated in our suffrages, officially or not it matters
little so long as they have been with us in our works
and our merits. With them are the innumerable host
of souls devoted to the Rosary, the Confraternity of
the Blessed Sacrament, the Holy Name and the
Angelic warfare. Together with these we find the
doctors who have professed our doctrine and, like
the children of St. Teresa and their mother herself,
“have deserved so well of it.” As a further glory we
find the multitude of souls saved by our preaching,
our prayers, our mortifications, and our good works.
And there is throughout the whole Dominican
heaven a profound light, a joyful twinkling, an
intense and diffusive animation which makes the
brilliance of the stars of the first line stand out, just
as on a bright night, the splendid pathway of the
Milky Way shines through the whole heavens as a
living and lucid base from which the great constella­
tions are detached and evolved.

You holy, pious Dominican souls, the mantle of
your Mother awaits you. Why delay longer in follow­
ing with docility the inspirations of that Spirit who
has espoused Mary and by which all your Saints have

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lived? You are hesitating, depressed, weak, afraid of
the supernatural. Should you be afraid of the Holy
Spirit which made Mary so excellent and our
brethren so amiable and so holy? “For you have not
received the spirit of bondage again in fear, but you
have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby
we cry Abba (Father). For the Spirit Himself giveth
testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God.
And if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and
joint-heirs with Christ: yet so, if we suffer with Him,
that we may be also glorified with Him.’’5 You do
not know how to act nor where to begin? Leave that
to the Spirit. He has charged Himself with our
conduct. Listen again to St. Paul: “Likewise the
Spirit also helpeth our infirmity. For we know not
what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit
Himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings.
And He that searcheth the hearts, knoweth what the
Spirit desireth: because He asketh for the saints
according to God.”6
Recollect, then, upon this holy day of Pentecost,
the anniversary of the glorious day upon which the
Holy Ghost took possession of the world: recall,
then, in the presence of the Holy Virgin Mary,
Spouse of the Holy Ghost, all the Saints of our
Order, who were His confidants, His friends, His
5 Romans 8:15-17.

6 Ibid., 26-27.

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faithful disciples and ask the Holy Ghost, who dwells
in you, to intercede on your behalf with one of those
unspeakable groanings which obtain from God
sanctity.
Veni Sancte Spiritus
Et emitte coelitus
Lucis tuae radium.7
7 Come, Holy Spirit, and from Thy clear celestial height,
Thy beaming radiance give.