Holy Spirit, Fruits of

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HOLY SPIRIT, FRUITS OF

Those good affections listed by St. Paul as the achievement of man's spirit (Gal 5.2223) in contrast to the ills inflicted on him by his flesh (Gal 5.1921). As in many other places, Paul was speaking of the soul transformed by the Holy Spirit. Thus, some Fathers considered his enumeration a partial list of the many goods effected in the soul by the Holy Spirit's unity of action. St. Thomas Aquinas, influenced by the Fathers, attempted an adaptation of St. Paul's concept by fitting the fruits into his own theory of a supernatural organism. He considered man's supernatural life an organic synthesis, the interaction of whose parts influenced the maturation of the soul in grace. The gifts and infused virtues are bound together, some gifts serving the theological virtues, others directing the cardinal virtues. Into this spiritual composite, he fitted the fruits, attaching each to intense acts of virtues or gifts. Because of a sort of blessedness that comes to the soul from the intense activity of certain gifts, he called their fruits beatitudes. The good affections wrought in the soul by other intense acts of the gifts and of the virtues he called simply fruits. The virtue of faith perfected by the intellectual gifts results in a fruit, a kind of security, called faith, to which is attached a fruit called joy. Charity also produces joy, to which is added peace and the special fruit, charity (acts of). Counsel has no special fruit, since its end is action; yet acts of counsel have mercy and kindness attached. Piety's direct fruits are goodness and benignity; its indirect fruit, serenity. The fruits of fortitude are patience and long-suffering. fear of the lord, through its direction of temperance, produces the fruits of chastity, modesty, continence. Pope Leo XIII, though not citing the specific relationship of acts and fruits, spoke of "those blessed fruits enumerated by the Apostle which the Spirit produces and shows forth in the just" (Divinum illud munus ).

Bibliography: l. m. martÍnez, The Sanctifier, tr. m. aquinas (Paterson 1957). b. froget, The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Souls of the Just, tr. s. a. raemers (Westminster, Md. 1950). leo xiii, Divinum illud munus (encyclical, May 9, 1897), Acta Sanctae Sedis 29 (189697) 644658, Eng. The Great Encyclical Letters, ed. j. j. wynne (New York 1903) 422440, a. gardeil, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. a. vacant et al., (Paris 190350) 6.1: 944949.

[p. f. mulhern]

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