Blessed are the Gifts
A couple of days ago on Facebook, my friend Rachel referred to the “seven gifts of the Spirit”. These are the gifts mentioned in the Prophet Isaiah:
And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel [right judgement] and might [fortitude],
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord [piety]…
– Isaiah 11:2-3
I commented briefly on Rachel’s Facebook posting, saying that St. Augustine associated these seven gifts with Christ’s beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3-10). In today’s post I wanted to explain in a little more detail what St. Augustine taught about the relationship between these gifts and the beatitudes…