Touching the Sunrise with Sister Kathryn

In Scripture “to fear God” is to be in awe of his power and knowledge. To fear God requires a daring heart! Only a heart that fears God can be joyful. Fear is a word that we typically interpret as referring to a state of emotional distress in the face of some danger to our personal safety. The term “fear of the Lord” appears over 100 times in the Old Testament. For example: And now, Israel, what does the Lord, your God ask of you but to fear the Lord, your God, and follow his ways exactly, to love and serve the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul (Deuteronomy 10:12). However, in the New Testament, the term is only mentioned two times and has been transformed into a sense of awe that is joyful rather than horrified. It is the gift of fear that gives us an unmistakable and irrefutable sense of God’s closeness and his ultimate victory over all evil in the world. The gift of fear of the Lord gives us a greater sense of the greatness of God that should spark in our h...

We often think of fortitude as the gift that makes us brave and strong in our witness to Jesus. The martyrs have been filled with the gift of fortitude. But many of us will not die as martyrs. Our living of the Christian life, nonetheless, requires the strength of the Holy Spirit to persevere in the midst of life's ordinary challenges and struggles. After the age of the martyrs with the Decree of Constantine in the fourth century, the followers of Jesus asked themselves how they would live their total fidelity to the Lord. Thus began the pilgrimage to the desert as our desert fathers and mothers left behind the comforts of ordinary life to struggle against themselves and to grow in love for the Lord in the harsh desert sands. Today few of us have the luxury of solitude. It would perhaps be easier to hide away in a mountain retreat all alone, undisturbed by the needs and personalities of other people. Instead we remain in communities, families, relationships in both workplaces and i...

Pope Francis spoke of the Holy Spirit's gift of counsel in these words: “As with all of the other gifts of the Spirit counsel too constitutes a treasure for the whole Christian community. The Lord does not only speak to us in the intimacy of the heart; yes, he speaks to us, but not only there; he also speaks to us through the voice and witness of the brethren. It is truly a great gift to be able to meet men and women of faith who, especially in the most complicated and important stages of our lives, help us to bring light to our heart and to recognize the Lord’s will!” (General Audience, 2014). Today we explore more deeply the way the Holy Spirit not only leads us but also helps us lead others in the ways of the Lord.

We are continuing this week a journey with the Holy Spirit through a contemplation of his seven gifts. Today we are meditating on the gift of knowledge. I sat down for a conversation with Jeannette de Beauvoir and talked about what the gift of knowledge is, how it helps us grow in greater union with God, how it blesses our life, and how to prepare for this gift of the Holy Spirit. 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...