Day 3: The Gift of Understanding

The third day of the Holy Spirit Novena turns to the Gift of Understanding. The Catholic tradition distinguishes Understanding from Wisdom: where Wisdom tastes the things of God in their savor and judges by the relish of love, Understanding sees the truths of the Catholic faith in their inner connections and their luminous coherence. The Gift of Understanding is the gift by which the doctrines of the Creed cease to be merely propositions believed and become realities seen by the inner eye of the soul.

Today's invocation

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful and kindle in them the fire of Your love. Send forth Your Spirit, and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.

Today's meditation

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the Gift of Understanding is one of the seven gifts that "complete and perfect the virtues of those who receive them" (CCC 1831). Understanding is not natural intelligence (some of the greatest Catholic minds have had only ordinary intellectual ability, and many of the most ordinary souls have possessed extraordinary supernatural Understanding). The Gift of Understanding is the Holy Spirit's interior illumination by which the soul sees the truths of faith.

A simple Catholic example: a child first learns the doctrine of the Real Presence as a series of words. Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist. The child understands this in a propositional way and assents in faith. As the child grows, the Gift of Understanding (received at Baptism, increased at Confirmation, deepened by sacramental reception) gradually transforms the propositional knowledge into a lived perception. The adult Catholic who genuflects before the tabernacle, who keeps the eucharistic fast with reverence, who comes to Mass with attentive hunger, has been given by the Holy Spirit a Gift of Understanding that goes beyond what the catechism words alone could produce. The same is true of every doctrine of the Catholic faith: the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection, the Church, the Communion of Saints, the resurrection of the body, life everlasting.

Today's intention

Today, ask the Holy Spirit for the Gift of Understanding in regard to the matter for which you are praying this novena. Holy Spirit, illuminate the truths of the faith that bear on this situation. Let me see this matter not in the dim light of human reasoning alone but in the luminous light of Your truth. If you are wrestling with a doctrinal difficulty (a particular Catholic teaching that has been hard for you to accept or to live), bring it to the Holy Spirit explicitly today.

Reflection

The Gift of Understanding is the Holy Spirit's response to the question raised in every age: can the doctrines of the faith really be true? The reasoning of the world keeps producing the same objections in every generation: too marvelous, too demanding, too complicated, too out of step with the modern mind. The Gift of Understanding does not silence the objections by argument; it dissolves them by giving the soul the inner sight of the truth itself.

Saint John of the Cross writes in his Spiritual Canticle that the soul transformed in the love of Christ comes to see all things in His light, and the things of God become clearer in their beauty than the things of the world had ever been. This is the work of Understanding. The Catholic faithful who have received the Gift in any considerable measure speak of the Catholic faith as something they have seen, not merely something they have decided to believe.

The Catholic spiritual writers recommend that the Gift of Understanding be cultivated through faithful Catholic practices: reading of Scripture (particularly the Gospels in lectio divina), regular reception of the sacraments, study of the Catechism and the writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and patient prayer over the truths of the faith that the soul finds difficult.

Closing prayers

Pray seven times each: the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.

Holy Spirit, Spirit of Understanding, increase in us the inner light of faith.