Kevin Vost - Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit

Other books by Kevin Vost
from Sophia Institute Press:

Memorize the Faith!

Fit for Eternal Life!

The One-Minute Aquinas

Unearthing Your Ten Talents

The Seven Deadly Sins

Hounds of the Lord

Kevin Vost, Psy.D.

The Seven Gifts
of the Holy Spirit

Every Spiritual Warriors
Guide to Gods Invincible Gifts

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS
Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright 2016 by Kevin Vost

Printed in the United States of America.

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Perceptions Design Studio.

Biblical references in this book are taken from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1965, 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from the Catechism of the Catholic Church , second edition, 2000 by Libreria Editrice Vaticana-United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, D.C. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Sophia Institute Press
Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108
1-800-888-9344

www.SophiaInstitute.com

Sophia Institute Press is a registered trademark of Sophia Institute.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Vost, Kevin, author.

Title: The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit : every spiritual warriors guide

to Gods invincible gifts / Kevin Vost, Psy.D.

Description: Manchester, New Hampshire : Sophia Institute Press, 2016. |

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016040102 | ISBN 9781622824120 (pbk. : alk. paper) ePub ISBN 9781622824137

Subjects: LCSH: Gifts, SpiritualCatholic Church. | Catholic

Church Doctrines.

Classification: LCC BT767.3 .V67 2016 | DDC 230/.2 dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040102

To all the clergy, religious, and laity
who teach the Faith:

May the Holy Spirit guide you
and bless you with His gifts.

Contents

r

Preface

Wherefore as sin is opposed to virtue from the very fact that a man sins, there results a diminution of that good of nature, which is the inclination to virtue. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica , I-II, Q. 85, art. 1

The gifts are bestowed to assist the virtues and to remedy certain defects... so that, seemingly, they accomplish what the virtues cannot.

St. Thomas Aquinas , Summa Theologica , I-II, Q. 68, art. 8

While researching for a biography of St. Albert the Great in 2011, I came across an earlier biographers declaration that within an authors first book can be found the kernels of all of his subsequent works. Upon a little reflection, I found that this sure is true for me, as the kernels contained in Memorize the Faith! (Sophia Institute Press, 2006) have popped into all kinds of subsequent books.

You see, one of the seeds in Memorize the Faith! was chapter 5, The Seven Virtues (four cardinal and three theological virtues), that four years later would grow into the book Unearthing Your Ten Talents (Sophia, 2010) (having sprouted three additional, intellectual virtues in the process). Five years later, lo and behold, chapter 4 of Memorize the Faith! , The Seven Capital Sins, had grown into The Seven Deadly Sins (Sophia, 2015). Well, another year has gone by, and now it is time to reap what was sowed in Memorize s chapter 13, The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, with this book that you hold in your hands. I hope you will find that it was a good crop.

In explaining the growth of the early Church at Corinth, St. Paul wrote: I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth (1 Cor. 3:6). Well, as far as this book goes, I planted it with Sophia Institute Press publisher Charlie McKinneys gracious permission; it was watered by many at Sophia, including Michael Lichens, Nora Malone, and Sheila Perry; and if this book should help any readers attain any spiritual growth, well, well chalk that up to the Holy Spirit, the all-loving Giver of all the gifts that matter the most.

Now, as for the gist of this particular book, in some ways it is the complement and completion of The Seven Deadly Sins , both in its subject matter and in its Thomistic approach. As I wrote in Unearthing Your Ten Talents, contrasting St. Thomas Aquinass approach to man with that of some schools of modern psychology:

Christians know that none of us is without sin. Because of the Fall, we all are prone to sin and imperfection, though this was not our original intended state. We can experience lust and hurtful anger and a myriad of other impulses to sin, but through Jesus we can receive the grace to overcome them. We need not live out our lives at the level of our sin and weakness. Christians know that the violent, lustful, selfish id is not really us. St. Thomas Aquinas knew all about fallen mans sinful side, but he was certainly no Freudian pessimist regarding human nature. He was not so interested in how low we can go, as in how high we can rise.

In Unearthing Your Ten Talents , I focused primarily on the virtues , those perfections of our powers that allow us to rise, and briefly introduced the gifts of the Holy Spirit, gifts that we could say perfect those very perfections and help us rise as high as we can go all the way to heaven, God willing! Here, in this book, the gifts themselves take front and center stage as we unwrap them so that we may enjoy and share them.

Well, I suppose you have the general gist of this books place in the scheme of things now. Theres so much to cover in the chapters ahead that Ill conclude right now with a few words from Scripture (prose that perhaps every author who produces a preface should prayerfully peruse and put into practice):

And so, methinks, it is here; to expiate, to digress, to indulge in curiosity on every point, is for the arch-historian; your epitomist will ask leave to such brevity, and let long disquisitions be. And now, to our matter! Here is preface enough; it were ill done to draw out the preamble, and leave our story cramped for room. (2 Mach. 2:3133, Ronald Knox Edition) These people work painstakingly, by the way, to weed out all the errors and typos I do not spot in the fields of my text. Chances are, though, that some will still remain. My goal is to write a book that could earn a nihil typos , although I doubt that Ill see that in this life! Although you need not have read that book to profit from this one. Kevin Vost, Unearthing Your Ten Talents: A Thomistic Guide to Spiritual Growth (Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 2010), 78.

INTRODUCTION

Seven Gifts That Are Out of This World

Now it is manifest that human virtues perfect man according as it is natural for him to be moved by his reason in his interior and exterior actions. Consequently man needs yet higher perfections, whereby to be disposed to be moved by God. These perfections are called gifts, not only because they are infused by God, but also because by them man is disposed to become amenable to divine inspiration. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica , I-II, Q. 68, art. 1

What Is the Worlds Greatest Gift?

If we focus on the word worlds in the question What is the worlds greatest gift?, Id say that the greatest of all worldly gifts is the God-given capacity to attain earthly happiness. As Aristotle argued and St. Thomas Aquinas confirmed, happiness is the final end, or the ultimate thing that we seek on earth. Everything else we seek, be it pleasure, honor, fame, or the like, is sought because we think it will make us happy. Now, to be happy on earth, we need to exercise fully our God-given powers as beings created in His image with intellect and will, so that we are not drawn instead to frustration and possibly to self-destruction by blindly following our sensual appetites. The perfections of our rational powers that can rein in our sensual desires and lead us to true happiness are called natural virtues.

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