Today, what is traditionally the Ember Friday after Pentecost, we move to a consideration of the fifth of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit: the Gift of Knowledge.
For more on what is meant by an Ember Day, you might note: Ars bene moriendi: Ember Days?
The Catechism, referring to Isaiah, lists the Gifts thus: "The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord." (CCC1831)
St. Thomas Aquinas notes that knowledge is among four of the gifts that belong especially to reason, rather than to the will: "For, seeing that of the seven gifts, four belong to the reason, viz. wisdom, knowledge, understanding and counsel." (STh, I-II, q. 68, a. 1)
Of the Gift of Knowledge, the fifth listed, the Angelic Doctor says, "two things are requisite in order that the human intellect may perfectly assent to the truth of the faith: one of these is that he should have a sound grasp of the things that are proposed to be believed, and this pertains to the gift of understanding, as stated above: while the other is that he should have a sure and right judgment on them, so as to discern what is to be believed, from what is not to be believed, and for this the gift of knowledge is required...Hence the knowledge of Divine things is called 'wisdom,' while the knowledge of human things is called 'knowledge,' this being the common name denoting certitude of judgment, and appropriated to the judgment which is formed through second causes. Accordingly, if we take knowledge in this way, it is a distinct gift from the gift of wisdom, so that the gift of knowledge is only about human or created things" (STh, II-II, q. 9, a. 1 & 2) Further, he mentions of this gift in his introduction to the gifts that, "In order to judge aright...the practical reason [is perfected] by 'knowledge.'" (STh, I-II, q. 68, a. 4)
John of St. Thomas adds that, "The gift of knowledge likewise belongs to mystical and loving knowledge. The knowledge mentioned in Scripture is not just any sort of knowledge. It is the spirit of knowledge, the knowledge of the saints, since it is found only in those who are in the state of grace. Founded upon a motion of the Holy Spirit, it moves the mind not by a pure and naked light manifesting exterior truths, but by an internal experience, by a sort of loving and supernatural connaturality to the things that it judges." (Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Ch. IV, 56)
St. Thomas Aquinas associates the Gift of Knowledge with the theological virtue of Faith, for as John of St. Thomas summarizes in his Introduction to the Summa Theologiae, "Faith does not judge discursively the things proposed for belief...but assents out of obedience to the testimony of God. Similarly the gift of understanding does not make a judgment by discussing a thing in its causes but only penetrates and grasps the thing itself. Therefore the gift of knowledge is distinguished from both because it judges of things to be believed according to some cause or merit of credibility, and this pertains to the judgment of discretion or discussion. It differs from the gift of wisdom because of the means or cause through which it judges, for it pertains to wisdom to judge through the supreme and highest cause, but knowledge judges through a lesser cause. If then one judges and discerns the things to be believed out of some union or connaturality with God, that is the gift of wisdom, and it corresponds with charity...[i]f he judges of things to be believed by way of a kind of union with God as revealing in time, he discerns what has been revealed from what has not, and what is to be believed from what is not. He is said to have knowledge, because he judges according to some termporal effect, not simply according to affectivity." (Commenting on STh, II-II, q. 9 of Aquinas)
St. Augustine of Hippo, in On the Sermon on the Mount, associates the Gift of Knowledge with the Beatitude "Blessed are those who mourn," explaining that, "Knowledge corresponds to those that mourn who already have found out in the Scriptures by what evils they are held chained which they ignorantly have coveted as though they were good and useful." (Book I, chapter 4, 11)
St. Thomas explains, "Man rejoices in the very consideration of truth; yet he may sometimes grieve for the thing, the truth of which he considers: it is thus that sorrow is ascribed to knowledge." (STh, II-II, q. 9, a. 4, ad 2)
John of St. Thomas associates this third beatitude with a kind of perfecting of our concupiscible appetites: "The third, 'blessed are those who mourn,' removed the inordinate passions of delight and joy in which many, 'whose god is their stomach,' place their last end." (Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Ch. IX, 3)
On this Ember Friday after Pentecost, let us pray for the Gift of Knowledge, and that we might mourn so as to be comforted!
Veni, Sancte Spiritus! Live well!
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