I sat in the California sun, across from a friend, with anger raging through my heart. This precious friend of mine had shared something she had been told a teacher in religious education class. Here 40 years later she struggled daily, crippled with fears and anxieties about God’s harsh judgment of her.

The son of another close friend is beginning the same journey. Thoughts of suicide every day. Buried under the ravages of OCD and scrupulosity. The “wisdom” of a confessor in those delicate early years of a conscious relationship with God had resulted in this. I think of Fr. Hammond, our pastor in the parish in which I grew up. Older, wiser, an everyday gentle presence among us in the school and in the confessional. Now, gone to heaven, he is still in my grateful thoughts.

I can’t tell you the number of people who have unconsciously built their spiritual lives around the counsel of a spiritual person or minister who, no doubt, struggled with their own relationship with God. It breaks my heart when someone tells me, for example, that  Father So-and-So told them they were going to hell because of some struggle they have. Even more, it infuriates me, because I have seen the twisted spiritual lives of those who have believed this nonsense.

Last night, I received an email from a mother asking for words of advice for her son, a young man with a failed business venture, failed relationships, lots of regret, and sunk in depression as black as midnight. Could I give her words of advice for him. I closed my computer. What were the magic words? I realized I did not know them. I was inadequate of myself. Insufficient. Poor. Afraid…. I went to bed and slept on it. I needed the Holy Spirit and his gift of knowledge.

The gift of knowledge is a supernatural habit by which we, under the action of the Holy Spirit, judge rightly concerning created things as related to eternal life and Christian perfection. It is not a question of philosophical or psychological knowledge, which gives a certain knowledge of things we can deduce by natural reason. It isn’t even a question of theological knowledge. It is, according to Jordan Aumann in Spiritual Theology, a question of a supernatural knowledge or “divine instinct” that comes from a special illumination of the Holy Spirit. Under the influence of this superior impulse and higher light we are able to judge rightly concerning created things in relation to their supernatural end.

Under the influence of knowledge activated by the Holy Spirit a person who is untrained theologically may be aware whether or not a maxim, or counsel, or devotion is in accord with the faith or opposed to it. I remember some women coming into our Pauline Books and Media Center in Metairie over twenty years ago looking for candles for the imminent three days of darkness that had been announced on a Catholic TV station. Observing the fear that motivated their request as they sought to ward off the impending doom, I steered them toward the Divine Mercy. Jesus never told us in the Gospels to be afraid. In fact, he told us NOT to be afraid. I don’t claim I was motivated by the gift of knowledge, but the Holy Spirit helped all of us see that this counsel given on the show they had watched was not in accord with the Gospels, and they left with greater peace and a means of spiritual devotion that was new to them.

It is by the gift of knowledge that preachers, confessors, ministers, teachers, spiritual directors, superiors, parents know what they ought to say to meet the spiritual needs of the persons before them. Saint Catherine of Siena once offered at the abbot’s invitation an impromptu spiritual conference in a monastery she had never been in before. Afterwards, the abbot told one of her companions that Catherine could not have offered a better conference if he had explained to her the spiritual journeys and struggles of each one. It was the gift of knowledge that had inspired her words to perfectly respond to the needs of each soul before her.

The gift of knowledge also teaches us how to use created things in a holy way. The contemplation of nature, of people, of events, of all the gifts of God should raise us to praise God, to go beyond them to adore the glory of God visible through them.

Here are two ways that you can prepare the ground, so to speak, for the activation by the Spirit of the gift of knowledge:

• Pause a bit before responding. Email and texting have trained us to respond as quickly as possible to others. Try doing as St Francis de Sales who bowed his head in a conversation for a few moments of silence before responding, begging the Holy Spirit to replace your thoughts with divine thoughts, your understanding of the situation or person with the wisdom of God who loves and cares for them. And if you are receiving another’s counsel–or even reading it in a book or hearing it in a sermon–pause long enough to ask the Spirit to guide you in listening so that you take in what is meant for you and let go of what is not. Don’t be afraid, especially when receiving advice that upsets you or goes counter to the Gospel, to “get a second opinion.”
• Cultivate a simple glance that raises itself to God whenever it looks upon created things. Let nature, people, events cause you to raise your heart in prayer, gratitude, petition, and praise.

Prayer

May you, O Holy Spirit, fill me with the gift of knowledge so that you can use me to speak your words to others, to bless others with advice that is not mine but yours. I am so poor. I can never know for certain what you want me to say, but from this moment I beg you to replace my thoughts with your thoughts, my words with your words, my actions with your actions. I beg you to use me!