Fruits And Gifts Of The Holy Spirit For Pentecost

[Lil'Monster]

WHAT ABOUT ME??????????

[MithLuin]

I would like one, please. Otherwise I'll just be greedy and ask for them all! Thanks

[let_go_let_God]

Please and thank you!

God bless-
LGLG

[Ash Wednesday]

[quote name='vee8' timestamp='1307909671' post='2252835']
Ash, your gift is fear of the Lord and fruit is kindness.
[/quote]

Thank you and may God bless you!

[MissScripture]

[quote name='vee8' timestamp='1307932472' post='2252983']
mrs. scripture your gift is piety and fruit is gentleness

[/quote]
I like the "mrs."

And thank you. Am I the only one who finds what I got a "holy 2x4" as my sister would say?

[Totus Tuus]

[quote name='MissScripture' timestamp='1307988102' post='2253237']
I like the "mrs."

And thank you. Am I the only one who finds what I got a "holy 2x4" as my sister would say?
[/quote]

Yes to my gift, no to my fruit. I definitely knew I needed piety, but I am excited to discover what God is trying to tell me with the call to "goodness."

[sixpence]

me too!! (please)

[vee]

[quote name='Lil'Monster' timestamp='1307932638' post='2252986']
WHAT ABOUT ME??????????
[/quote]

What about you?

Limon your gift is counsel and fruit is modesty.

[quote name='MithLuin' timestamp='1307983275' post='2253190']
I would like one, please. Otherwise I'll just be greedy and ask for them all! Thanks
[/quote]

Mith, your gift is knowledge and fruit is gentleness.
[quote name='let_go_let_God' timestamp='1307983730' post='2253193']
Please and thank you!

God bless-
LGLG
[/quote]

LGLG, your gift is wisdom and fruit is goodness.

[vee]

[quote name='sixpence' timestamp='1308006779' post='2253365']
me too!! (please)
[/quote]

Six, your gift is wisdom and fruit is kindness.

[MithLuin]

Thank you, [b]vee[/b], I'm sure I'm going to need them both this year! So....*deep breath*...thanks!

[Lil Red]

so any recommendations on books to learn more about our fruits and gifts? *hint, hint*

[let_go_let_God]

[quote name='vee8' timestamp='1308014371' post='2253395']
LGLG, your gift is wisdom and fruit is goodness.
[/quote]



Hehehe Wisdom again! Well these work great for a youth minister! Thanks Vee

God bless-
LGLG

[vee]

[quote name='Lil Red' timestamp='1308026974' post='2253495']
so any recommendations on books to learn more about our fruits and gifts? *hint, hint*
[/quote]

Mother Angelica's Little Book of Life Lessons and Everyday Spirituality has explanations of the gifts by her that I like and I will repost them here. Great book btw http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Angelicas-Lessons-Everyday-Spirituality/dp/0385519850

Fear of the Lord

The first gift the apostles received was fear of the Lord. Now you might say, " I don't want to be afraid of the Lord.". Well that is not what it means. There are two reasons to fear: out of punishment or out of love. If you love someone deeply, you do not want to hurt them in any way. You will do anything to avoid offending them. That's what fear of the Lord is: a childlike fear, rooted in love.
The fear of the Lord gave the apostles a deep knowledge of God as Father. They had the experience, through the power of the Spirit, of being sons of God, and they would do nothing to offend their Father. It drove them,and hopefully will drive us, to imitate the Fathers mercy and compassion. When I am a child of God I must desire to be like the Father.
This spiritual gift informs us that God is truly our Father and enables us to look upon all mankind as brothers and sisters, children of the same Father. We have the same concern for our brothers and sisters as the Father has. Without making this leap, taking this spiritual step, there cam be no other. This gift enables us to rise above our human nature.. It teaches us to love like God loves.
The fear of the Lord even elevates temptation. Temptation ceases to be negative, but becomes positive. You no longer think: I can't do this because I'll go to hell or I'll get caught. No. You now refrain from doing wrong because you love our Father and our Father would be displeased. It's about love and it frees you.
This gift of fear of the Lord is like an aid to keeping the first commandment to love God the Father with our whole heart and mind and soul and strength.

Piety

To love is to wish one well and do all you can to bring that about. The gift of piety resembles the virtue of love. It gives me a childlike affection for God. I am obligated to love as God loves me. My love for you must be totally separated from whether or not you are lovable.
Through this gift you can see people in a totally different light. For instance, when you analyze why you don't like people, you will find it is because they do not do what you expect them to do, they do not give what you expect them to give, they do not please you. But if you love as God loves, you are not disappointed in anyone, because you know human nature.
The gift of piety makes me loves. What is love? Love is an intangible desire, a giving of the self, something that makes me change for the better. "God is love," St John says (1John 4:8). When I love Him as Father, a part of that love comes into me-it is the Spirit. And when the Spirit of the Lord enters into my heart, He transforms me; He makes me a new creation; a new mind, a new heart. Love makes us new.
So my love for you must make you new, it must change both of us. You cannot possess Gods love and give it to others without changing that person in some way. If your neighbor is not changed for the better because he knows you, you do not love him, you love yourself! The greatest witness of the first Christians was their love. " See how these Christians love each other," people said. We must love like that.
The gift if piety should do another thing for you. It should allow you to release everyone to the Lord. The gift of piety makes you look upon everyone as someone very precious with an immortal soul. It protects me from judging others. So everyday ask the Spirit of the Lord to give you a great degree of the gift of piety that you might have patience and compassion, that you might love first and never be disappointed. Because, remember, as you love your neighbor, so you love God.

Fortitude

The third gift of the Holy Spirit, given to us at Baptism, is the gift of fortitude. It is very powerful. To have fortitude is to have courage. But courage for what? Fortitude to my mind is very akin to faith, because I must sincerely believe that Jesus is Lord before I have the guts to do what a Christian must, when everyone else is doing something else. I must have the courage to stand alone, to be willing to be called a fanatic, and to leave my family and all my possessions for the sake of the kingdom. Not everybody is called to that. For some the greatest penance is staying where you are, but it takes a lot of courage to stay and still be what God wants you to be.

The fortitude that the Spirit grants us is much greater than a conviction. It is a drive. Our Lord had it in spades. When He was traveling one day with the apostles, He said, "I have a baptism by which I must be baptized and how I am [i]straitened[/i] until it is accomplished" (Luke 12:50), meaning he could hardly wait for that moment when He would redeem us. That is fortitude.

A Christian is never really afraid of persecution; he is straitened until it occurs. You know our Lord said some very odd things. The Beatitudes are the wildest things in the whole wide world. He said, "Blessed are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven" (Matt 5:11-12).

Now we come to the thing that keeps most of us from sharing in this gift of fortitude: human respect. I know what God wants me to do or say at this moment, but I am afr5aid of so and so. Now some say we have to be prudent. But one thing we have too much of today is prudence. We are all so careful; I dont think people have to worry about prudence. Do you notice how you are hemmed in by human respect? Youre so afraid of what other people will say, or think or feel that you deny God His will. With the gift of fortitude you could care less. There is only one thing in your mind to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him at this moment.

Look at Peter in the courtyard. He was terribly concerned about what those people in the courtyard thought of him. He didnt want them to know he was a Galilean. He didnt want them to know that he was a follower of that Man. What a perfect example of human respect. In order to prove to these people that he did not "know the Man," he swore and cursed. He became what they were, so they would not think of him as one of the twelve. He descended to their level out of human respect. What a magnificent example of change. Peter had a very weak faith, but after Pentecost he is the one who goes out and preaches the word without fear. The cord that held him down all his life was broken thanks to this gift of fortitude. He no longer feared what anyone thought. The mission given to him by Jesus was everything.

The gift of fortitude makes us persevere in holiness. It gives us the strength to forge ahead in the face of opposition and weakness. It gives us supernatural endurance, a spiritual daring. St. Paul in
Second Corinthians describes it this way: " We prove we are servants of God by great fortitude in times of suffering, in times of hardship and distress; when we are flogged, or sent to prison, or mobbed; laboring, sleepless, starving. We prove we are God's servants by our purity, knowledge, patience, and kindness; ya spirit of holiness, by a love free from affectation" (2 Cor 6:4-6).

Fortitude is not only accepting the cross that God gives you, it is to empty yourself and to be unashamed that you love Jesus. This is a gift we must pray for every day, for when we lack fortitude we lack hope faith and love.

We need to tell the Holy Spirit: Let me know the Father as He is, and let me love Him as a child. Let me love my neighbor in the same way You love me. Then let me be strong. No matter what anyone says, or thinks, or does, let me persevere. Let me me unashamed that I am a Christian. Amen.

[vee]

Counsel

The next gift of the Holy Spirit is logical. Once I have the first three gifts I need discernment because there will be times in my life when I will not know God's Will. I have to discern. There is an enemy that is bent on your eternal destruction, and he uses people to trip you up, to lead you astray. There is a gift that God has given you, at Baptism, by which you can discern who and what is for your good. It is the gift of counsel.

The gift of counsel tells me what to judge and what not to judge. I am to judge by fruit, "by their fruits, you shall know them" (Matt 7:20). To "know" is to experience, and when you have experienced the evil in someone else's life, when that evil touches your life and makes you doubt God's existence or providence, that is bad fruit. You have not judged the individual, you have [i]experienced[/i] the evil in his life - the fruits. Places can be evil too. Inanimate places that breathe out darkness. Your spirit recoils when you go near them. No Christian can pass a massage parlour and not feel the evil that eminates from that place. This is not judging, it is discernment. Your spirit is discerning what is there. If the Lord died for you, do you believe He would leave you a sheep among wolves with no alarm system, with no discernment, no counsel to distinguish right from wrong?

When you are inspired to something by the Lord, the gift of counsel clears away the uncertainty. If God is guiding you to do something for Him and for His kingdom all hell will not stop you. The gift of counsel also gives us self-knowledge. It gives us the light to see ourselves as we are. Some evening write on a piece of paper everything you have found fault with in someone else today, and you will see, on that paper, a description of yourself head-on. Unless something is in you, you cant see it in anyone else. You think everyone is a liar, because you are a liar. The husband thinks his wife is stepping out on him because he's stepping out on her.

If you dont know yourself, how are you going to prune yourself? If you dont prune yourself, God must permit those events in our lives that almost crush us. God in His Mercy and the Spirit with His magnificent gift of counsel permit things to happen in your life to reveal who you really are - to make you conscious of an interior fault, a weakness, an imperfection, a sin. Then you can do something about it before your time comes. Counsel is that gift of God by which we first know ourselves and then are able to discern the human spirit, the Holy spirit, and the evil spirit operating in our lives.

Knowledge

knowledge is the gift of the Holy Spirit that detaches us. We often think of knowledge as the acquisition of a particular discipline or subject. But the gift that the Spirit gives us is knowledge of how God thinks, how He regards life and things. It gives me an insight into the transitory nature of of all that is created.

The gift of knowledge puts heart into your Christianity. Many good people live a Christianity of the mind where they profess Him with their lips. But Paul said that isn't enough; to be saved, Jesus must be accepted by my heart ( Rom 10:9). If your Christianity is only an acceptance of truth and an ethical code, then your Christianity is in the mind. The danger there is, when something befalls you, you cannot understand it. Your religion is in peril. Our minds cannot reason everything out; pain and suffering and famine, for instance... The gift of knowledge helps me find the pearl of great price buried in the soil of adversity. The gift of knowledge gives me awareness of the one thing necessary in this life: my union with God and His kingdom. It makes us realize that we do not have here a lasting city. This is not home. The early Christians knew this and we have forgotten it, or perhaps never knew it. Being healthy, wealthy, and wise was not their life's goal. The gift of knowledge helped them see that this life is a temporary testing ground.

This gift, that we must nurture and make grow in our hearts, leads us to an utter detachment from everything. There are things we must accomplish in this life, and people we must love, but we cannot become attached to them all.

Our whole lives are hampered by things and people and ourselves, but with the gift of knowledge I am not hampered by anything. If I have friends, I give them to God. If I have things and they make me happy and suddenly they are gone, I give those to God as well. We must be detached from everything.

I know a woman, and the first thing she did when she bought a new table was to tale a piece of glass and scratch it. She knew she had this hang up. She was so focused on having a perfect table that she couldn't concentrate on the people around her table. So she scratched it, gave thanks to God, and she had peace. That is utilizing the gift of knowledge. I have to have that disposition that I can live in the world and love it and see it and enjoy it, but never lose sight of heaven. I can have things and have them taken away with equal grace, because it's not permanent. The thing that is really valuable, the wealth that time cannot consume is waiting for me in the kingdom.

The gift of knowledge is detachment and hope. It is that balance of the spiritual with the human, between life here and the life to come.

[vee]

Understanding

Lets look at the gift of understanding. How many times in your life can you say that your will was totally united with God's? Has there ever been a time when you could perfectly understand God's plan? If you have, then you have really made progress. Youve begun to think as God thinks and plan as God does. Every time you have read Scripture and gotten something new from it, every time you looked at something and saw the spiritual meaning behind it, every time you have been intuitive and suddenly realized an invisible reality you have exercised the gift of understanding.

Scripture is the place where the gift of understanding is very important. Remember when Christ explained the Eucharist to the crowds. The Lord said, "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life everlasting" (John 6:56-57). and Scripture reports that they walked away, they did not understand. Jesus looked at His apostles and said, " do you also wish to go away?" Peter said, " Lord, to whom shall we go?" (John6:68). Peter understood what the crowds did not. Why was that? Because the minds, the hearts of these apostles sought the Lord. If you are seeking the Lord, you already have understanding. If you know what you need, you already have understanding.

This gift gives you intuitive vision: knowledge that you have not acquired by any visible means, not by a book or someone telling you. It is intuitive, directly from God-like a beam from God to your soul. when things are hard in your life, the Spirit will bring the word of Jesus to your mind- thats the gift of understanding. The Spirit of the Lord is so quiet, so elusive. He comes in the midst of such turmoil and chaos, if you are not listening you are liable to miss it. Thats why you need at least frive minutes of absolute silence, dead silence, so you can open up the valve of your mind and the door to your heart and say, "Lord, flood me with Thy grace and Thy words." Then along comes an idea of how to apply a particular piece of Scripture to your unique situation. Thats understanding in operation. It means I see how God is working in my soul. I(n this beautiful gift of understanding, faith is increased.

Understanding is the root of contemplative prayer. It is at the root of the ability to see Jesus everywhere. So a Christian looks at a tree and he sees the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He sees the hand of God in everything. He sees into the mystery of God's ways and will. He understands as God understands. St Peter says, to attain a participation in the divine nature, "you have to do your utmost yourselves, adding goodness to the faith that you have" (2 Peter 1:5-6). You need to understand God's ways to be good.

This beautiful gift of understanding, the gift that makes you pray and gives you an intuition into the very Spirit of God, will make you productive and help you bear much fruit for God.


Wisdom

The kind of wisdom that the Lord gives you is not discernment. The wisdom that God gives us is God Himself. St John says, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God...All things were made by Him and without Him was made nothing" (John 2:2,3). In the book of Wisdom, God is personified- the incarnate Word is personified by the word "Wisdom." So God is wisdom. You cant say He possesses wisdom or has wisdom. God is wisdom.

So when we speak of the gift of wisdom we are speaking of God giving us Himself. When we receive from the Holy Spirit the gift of wisdom, we receive in a very special way the Divine Indwelling. Thats what the gift of wisdom is all about: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit living in me.

Thats why the mystics and the saints had such a horror of sin. Because it is sin that snatches away the Spirit of the Lord and makes a man devoid of God, and thats a lonely way to be.

Wisdom gave the apostles at Pentecost something they never had before, and that was a deep awareness of the presence of the invisible God within them. They knew in the very depths of their souls that they possessed God. People could see it in their eyes, in the joy on their faces, in their courage and suffering. There was something so real, so above anything they had seen before. It was love. It was a tangible drive, an awareness, an experience of God.

You have been given the same gift. It provides you with a deep assurance that you are constantly in the arms of God. He is so close.

Wisdom is that gift by which and through which you some how go into God and become one with Him. Its a mysterious gift, which ties together and encompasses all the other gifts of the Spirit. Wisdom reaches into counsel, that discerning self knowledge, and raises me up to be a son of God. Wisdom reaches into fortitude and gives me strength of soul to suffer, to die, to live, to laugh, to cry with love. Wisdom sees knowledge as that total detachment from every created thing, ever reaching up and out to God. Wisdom reaches into Scripture and sees things there no one sees; it discerns God's hidden meaning in every verse. Wisdom helps me see God as my God, Jesus and my Jesus, my Savior. Its very personal. St Paul says he "lived and died for me." It gives me such a personal relationship with Jesus as Redeemer and Sanctifier, as if I were the only person in the world. There is between myself and God, thanks to this gift, a total aloneness, and it reaches into the very depths of the heart and the soul.