The Gift of Wisdom

  I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.

Luke 21:15

Wisdom embodies all the other six gifts and is the queen of all of them.

Pope Francis said, "This is wisdom: it is the grace of being able to see everything with the eyes of God. It is simply this: Seeing the world.situations, conjunctures, problems, everything with God's eyes. This is wisdom. Often we see things as we want to see them or according to our heart, with love, with hate, with envy—no this is not God's eyes." (Catholic Online)

To see every human being we meet as God sees them is indeed beyond our capability. We know he loves everyone he as created, but it is hard to see people as he does. Only his gift enables us to do that. 

Give me grace O Holy Spirit, Spirit of the Father and the Son to say to You always and everywhere, ‘Speak Lord for Your servant heareth.’ Amen.

 Come, O Spirit of Wisdom, and teach me to see as God sees. Reveal to my soul the mysteries of heavenly things, their exceeding greatness, power and beauty. Teach me to love them above and beyond all the passing joys and satisfactions of earth. Help me to attain them and possess them for ever. Amen.  

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The Fruits: Goodness

 

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things, there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

What is goodness? It is the nature of humans to choose what is good. Of course what an individual perceives as good generally is "good for me."

To give a petty example, I may choose pie for breakfast and ice cream for lunch. I crave them and perceive them as very good. In the context of my health and overall well-being, however, they are not so good for me. It is a matter of judgment and perception. On a much greater scale, Hitler did what he thought of as good for himself and even good for Germany. We think of him as a madman, but even madmen choose their perceived good. 

To bear fruit in true goodness, we have to have the wisdom—and selflessness—that only comes from the Holy Spirit.

What then is goodness? The etymological dictionary on historic principles says:

Old English gōd (with a long "o") "excellent, fine; valuable; desirable, favorable, beneficial; full, entire, complete;" of abstractions, actions, etc., "beneficial, effective; righteous, pious;" of persons or souls, "righteous, pious, virtuous;" probably originally "having the right or desirable quality,"

It is tempting to think that good and God have the same English root but the etymological dictionary argues otherwise. It doesn't matter. Goodness is closest to the scriptural idea of righteousness.

As a fruit of the Spirit and life under the guidance of the Spirit, goodness means displaying in my life that string of qualities in definition, things that are fine and valuable, and my particular favorite, "beneficial." I believe it means that the way I live makes the lives of those around me, the life of the church and the community, the natural world as I find it, all better--or at least as fine as God made them. Goodness is to build up, to give life.