The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 245: Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit (2025)

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

As we end our exploration of the virtues, we learn about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. These gifts perfect our virtues and increase our ability to respond to God’s guidance and inspiration. The fruits of the Holy Spirit perfect us, are signs of a life lived in the Spirit, and are “the first fruits of eternal glory,” as the Catechism tells us. Our cooperation with the Holy Spirit sustains and perfects our moral life, enabling us to live a more full and joyful life. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 1830-1845. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to The Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture, and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity and God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 245. We are reading paragraphs 1830 to 1845. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own cacism in a year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash CIY.

You can also, little known fact. You know what I'm going to say. You can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. Speaking of today, day 245, you guys, amazing. You made it. After today, there's 120 days. left, which means something. I don't know what it means exactly, but it means I can do simple math. That's what it means. And reading paragraphs 1830 to 1845. It is 8245. And I want to

thank you, not only for pressing play, I also want to thank you for supporting this podcast. If you've been praying, you know, I literally, I say, please pray for me. I'm praying for you. I'm praying for you. I literally do, honestly, every single day. I do that. But if you've been praying, thank you so much. And praying for each other. I'm so grateful. And those of you who supported this podcast not only with your prayers and interceding on behalf of each other and for all the staff who do this, but also financial gifts. Thank you so much. I don't want to belabor a point, but I am so grateful today. We're wrapping up the virtues and it's going to be great. We're talking about the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. It's only three paragraphs, which is relatively short

to when you're talking about the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. Then we got nugget after nugget. We have a bunch of nuggets. We have nuggets from paragraph 1833 to 1845. That might be the biggest nugget pack we've ever had. And yet some of these nuggets are for their one sentence long. So just keep that in mind. Okay, today we're talking about gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. Really important.

Very brief. Let's get started by praying, asking the Lord to bless us today. Father in heaven, we do ask you to bless us in the name of your son, Jesus Christ. We also ask you to receive our thanks, to receive our prayers. to receive our praise. You are good. You are our father. You're God. You are the alpha and the omega. You are the source of life and you're the source of love. You are the origin and you're the motive and you're the object of our faith, our hope and our love. Help us to love you better. Help us to trust you more. Help us to hope in you and your promises this day and every day. In Jesus name

we pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It is Day 245. We are reading paragraphs 1830 to 1845. The Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit. The moral life of Christians is sustained by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. These are permanent dispositions which make man docile in following the promptings of the Holy Spirit. The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, pious, and fear of the Lord. They belong in their fullness to Christ, Son of David.

They complete and perfect the virtues of those who receive them. They make the faithful docile in readily obeying divine inspirations. As the psalmist says, Let your good spirit lead me on a level path. St. Paul writing to the Romans says, For all who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God. If children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.

The fruits of the Spirit. are perfections that the Holy Spirit forms in us as the first fruits of eternal glory. The tradition of the church lists 12 of them. Charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity. In brief, virtue is a habitual and firm disposition to do good. The human virtues are stable dispositions of the intellect and the will that govern our acts, order our passions, and guide our conduct in accordance with reason and faith.

They can be grouped around the four cardinal virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. Prudence disposes the practical reason to discern in every circumstance, our true good, and to choose the right means for achieving it. Justice consists in the firm and constant will to give God and neighbor their due. Fortitude ensures firmness and difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good. Temperance moderates the attraction of the pleasures of the senses and provides balance in the use of created goods. The moral virtues grow through education, deliberate acts, and perseverance in struggle.

Divine grace purifies and elevates them. The theological virtues dispose Christians to live in a relationship with the Holy Trinity. They have God for their origin, their motive, and their object. God known by faith, God hoped in, and loved for his own sake. There are three theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity. They inform all the moral virtues and give life to them. By faith, we believe in God and believe all that He has revealed to us and that Holy Church proposes for our belief.

By hope, we desire, and with said fast trust, await from God eternal life, and the graces to merit it. By charity, we love God above all things, and our neighbor as ourselves for love of God. Charity, the form of all the virtues, binds everything together in perfect harmony. The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit bestowed upon Christians are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. All right, and there we have a day 245, paragraphs 1830 to 1845. Well, okay, we have nuggets. Nuggets upon nuggets. Stacks and stacks and nuggets. But let's talk about first the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. I think, well, I don't want to assume anything. I think I

sometimes assume too many things. I assume that other people are kind of like me. And you may have lived a lot of your life, not making a distinction between the gifts of the Spirit and the fruits of the spirit. If that's you, then, hey, we're similar. If that's not you, because you realize those are two different things, Father. Yeah, I mean, I know that now. I knew that before today. I just, It came to me later in life. We'll say it like this. So paragraph 1830 makes a distinction between 1831, 1832, but here's the distinction. 1830 talks about this.

The moral life of Christians is sustained by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. So we need these gifts of the Holy Spirit in order to continue to choose the Lord. It's so important. It goes on to say, these are permanent dispositions which make man docile and following the promptings of the Holy Spirit. So remember when we talked about the introduction of verses, how virtues are habitual dispositions to do the good, right? They're that stable sense. It's in the example could be, you know, that I'm playing tennis and I maybe hit the ball the right way, the right speed, the right angle and get it in this place I wanted it to go. That doesn't

make me a good tennis player. But to be able to do that over and over again, that makes me a good tennis player very similarly to just tell the truth occasionally. Does not make me virtuous to, you know, yeah, here's the one time that I found a wallet and turned it back to its owner. That doesn't make me virtuous. But to do that kind of thing on our. a regular basis, that's virtue. So here, paragraph 1830 talks about these gifts of the Holy Spirit are permanent dispositions, right? They're not just one-off. They're not just occasional. They're permanent dispositions that make a person docile in following the promptings of the Holy Spirit. That they open us up, they don't take over us, right? This is important to. Gift of the Holy Spirit,

they don't overwhelm us. They don't, we're not like a puppet, right? That God's the puppeteer here. we don't have any free will, but they make us docile, which means I'm open to being taught, I'm open to being moved following the promptings of the Holy Spirit. So then it lists them in paragraph 1831, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, remember, as opposed to the fruits of the Holy Spirit, seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. Now, those are the seven sanctifying gifts, right? These are gifts that they help us become holy.

So what are they? I mean, what do they mean? I use the words, right? Wisdom, understanding, counsel, and like, okay, wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge. How are those four words different? Because wisdom, understanding, counsel, and knowledge, they sound all connected. And they are not disconnected from each other. But here are a couple different explanations or a couple different quick definitions of what

these gifts of the Holy Spirit might be. So let's start with wisdom. What does wisdom do? wisdom draws us to divine things and disposes us to appreciate and value them. Now, I think in our culture right now, we are very much information driven. Like, we really love information. So the people who have the most information at their fingertips, we consider them to be, they're the geniuses.

They're the ones who are so wise. Yet, wisdom is not just a collection of data. It's not just a collection of, I know facts. It says here, wisdom as a potential definition, draws us to divine things, draws us to holy things. to be wise is the kind of person who I recognize divine things and I'm drawn to them and wisdom disposes us to appreciate and value them think about the wise person is the one who knows the value of a thing that's that's wisdom okay so understanding understanding is it empowers our minds to grasp revealed truths so here's god who revealed himself and we read scripture

and if I have that gift of understanding that means I have the ability to grasp revealed truths That's different than wisdom. Wisdom is, I know the value of a thing. Understanding is, I get it. I understand this, especially when it comes to the revelation of God, whether it be through the church teaching or through the scripture or some kind of thing. I have this, my mind has been empowered to grasp revealed truths. So wisdom, understanding, counsel.

Counsel empowers us. Again, all these gifts, they give us the power. They enable us to do something. So counsel empowers us to choose and act successfully. in concrete situations. I think about that. They're all connected, these first three,

but they're not the same. So counsel empowers us, it gives us the power to choose and act successfully in concrete situations. That's one of the reasons why, you know, if you ever are stumped

and you go to someone who's wise and the gift of wisdom would be, I recognize the value of a thing, but someone who's a good counselor is someone who can help you in concrete situations, that ability to have,

have counsel, it gives us that power to choose and act successfully in concrete situations. It's like maybe going back to prudence, right? Practical wisdom. Prudence, practical wisdom. So we so far, wisdom, right? You can value things correctly. Understanding. You can grasp reveal truths. Counsel. You have the ability to choose and act successfully in concrete situations. Knowledge. Here's the fourth one. Knowledge enables us to judge rightly the place of created things. So if wisdom helps us to know the ultimate value of divine things, knowledge enables us to judge rightly the place of created things. So this use of the term knowledge is not just, I have knowledge in finance, I have knowledge

in computer programming, I have knowledge in the catechism, but enables us to judge rightly the place of created things, their value. We'll move on. Fortitude, which is one of my favorite. I love it. Fortitude is inspired. courage, right? It's not just my own courage. It's not just me being a brave man or you being a brave woman. It's inspired courage. God breathed courage provided by the Holy Spirit so that we can

persevere in the service of God. So it's not just, I'm going to run into battle unless that battle is at the service of God. Piety. Piety is reverence for God the Father, which enables us to worship in spirit and in truth. It's that, man, it's the Holy Spirit's gift that leads us to worship. It's a Holy Spirit's gift that leads us to give God his due. It's so good piety. And lastly, fear of the Lord is a profound respect for the divine majesty and fear of offending him through sin. Yesterday we talked about, you know, a mercenary and talked about the servile fear, that fear of the one's master. In this case, this is a profound respect for divine majesty and a fear of offending him through sin. And that offending who? Not just our master, but offending our father. Remember yesterday talking about the

parable of the prodigal son. And I want to love God because he's deserving of love. And I fear offending him because he's so good, because he is love. Fear of the Lord is a profound, profound respect for divine majesty and fear of offending him through sin. Now, these definitions of these sanctifying gifts I got through a group called Focus. Focus is the Fellowship of Catholic University students. And there's this retreat. It's a great retreat. It's called the Spiritual Impact Boot Camp. We'll lead college students through this retreat where they learn about the sanctifying gifts of the Holy Spirit. And so one more time, wisdom draws us to divine things, disposes us to appreciate and value them.

I know the value of divine things. Understanding empowers our mind to grasp revealed truths. Counsel empowers us practically, right, to choose and act successfully in concrete situations. Knowledge enables us to judge rightly the place of created things, as opposed to wisdom, right? Divine things. We have fortitude, inspired courage from God, provided by the Holy Spirit, so that we can persevere in the service of God. piety, reverence for God the Father, which enables us to worship in spirit and truth and lastly fear of the Lord, a profound respect for the divine majesty and fear of offending

him through sin. Those are the seven sanctifying gifts and just the incredible gifts. And just these are, according to paragraph 1831, these are these gifts that enable us to live a full Christian life. They complete and perfect the virtues of those who receive them. And again, they make us docile and readily obeying divine inspirations. Because why? Because, yeah, I have wisdom. I understand the value of eternal things. I have counsel.

I know how to act in this particular way. I have fortitude. I know how to persevere in these kind of things. And not just know how to do it, but I have the power to do this. Hopefully this all makes sense. And I'm really grateful, again, once again, really grateful to focus for those quick definitions so helpful for me, at least. And hopefully they're helpful for you.

Lastly, there's the gift of the Holy Spirit. And there's fruits of the Spirit. the fruits of the spirit are perfections that the Holy Spirit forms in us as the first fruits of eternal glory. What does that mean? Well, think about fruit. So the gifts are given to us from the Lord, right? They empower us, they enable us, they inspire us. The fruits, they come forth from us because of a life lived pursuing Jesus. A life lived in the spirit, a life lived in the person of Christ, like as we're trying to like be him on a regular basis, be like him on a regular basis, These are the fruits that will grow.

I mean, it's real fruit, right? Think about an orange tree. The oranges don't come on the fruit on the tree from outside. And no one puts that fruit on there. That's like the gifts, right? That's the water. That's the sunshine. That's the nutrients that come into the tree.

Because of the sunshine, because of the water, rain, like, you know, it's irrigated. Because of the fertilizer, because of the roots that are taking in the nutrients, that tree can produce fruit. Fruit of oranges in the case of an orange tree. And apples in the case of an apple tree. you're wondering how this work. In this case, the fruits of the spirit are 12. Charity. So love, right? Joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity. These are fruits of a life lived in Christ. And that we can look at ourselves and say, okay, am I living a life deeper and deeper in Christ?

And you can evaluate this in some ways by looking and saying, well, do I have more charity than I had before? or less? Do I have more joy in my life or less? Is there more peace in my life or less? Have I grown in patience or am I more impatient? Have I grown in kindness? Have I grown in goodness? Have I grown in generosity or gone down? Have I grown in gentleness? Faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity. Because those are fruits of the spirit. They are a sign of a person living in Christ, walking in the power of the Holy Spirit. So again, these gifts of the Holy Spirit and fruits of the Spirit only got three paragraphs at the same time. Those are three full paragraphs because they're full of these gifts that God wants to give you, right?

God loves you. He wants to give you these gifts of the Holy Spirit, but also he wants to bring forth in you these fruits. And we might know this. We might know that I might not be able to bring them all at once. I might not have clear evidence of all of these 12 gifts or sorry, all these 12 fruits of the spirit in my life at the same time. But it could be a season where, wow, I'm really growing in chastity. I'm really growing in modesty.

I've been challenged to grow in faithfulness. And so on, that's happening. And you know how we grow? You know how fruit comes about in our lives, the spiritual fruit? It usually comes about in our lives because we need that fruit. So here's the fruit of patience. Well, it's most likely that in this moment, this season of my life, I'm being tested, in the sense of being trained, not in the sense of God administering an exam to us.

but in the sense of okay my patience is being tested and now it has an opportunity to grow or maybe faithfulness and my faithfulness is being under strain and therefore my faithfulness has the opportunity to grow maybe it's modesty and maybe that i've been i've been convicted about being modest in my speech or modest in my behavior modest in how i dress or how i you know how i act and because of that i'm being I'm being stretched, I'm being tested, and modesty is able to grow. Hopefully that makes sense because all of us, you know, we might not be working on all of these 12 spiritual fruits at any given moment, at least not in an observable way, but they're all happening, just like, you know, hey, there's an orange tree right there, but there's no oranges

on the tree at the moment. That doesn't mean that they're not growing. It just means we don't see them yet. So my invitation for all of us is be paid. Right. Be patient and asking God for those gifts of the Holy Spirit. Be patient and allowing God to bring forth in your life those fruits of the Holy Spirit because we're called to that. He wants to give you those gifts. He wants to bring forth in you those fruits. And so we just keep showing up, right? We keep pressing play. We keep saying, Lord, give me those gifts of the Holy Spirit. You knit them together. Unite them in love so that those fruits of the Holy Spirit can be made manifest in my life and in your life. I'm praying for that for you. please pray for that for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.