Come, Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Thy faithful, etc., etc.
Twentieth Day.
The gift of wisdom is a superior discernment of good and evil; it gives men a real taste and predilection for all that is good and holy, all that is connected with God and divine things; it turns their eyes to God, and teaches them to look at everything from God's point of view. It makes them love prayer, recollection, good conversation, and good reading. This is a great gift of the Holy Ghost, and one that seems to prefigure our predestination, because it places before our minds so vividly the necessity of doing good in order to go to heaven. How little of this heavenly wisdom do we generally possess! Wise enough are we in the ways of the world; we know how to make money, and to [pg 347] hoard it up; but we care little how to gain spiritual treasures. Do we not class ourselves with the children of the world by our smartness in gathering earthly goods? Our Lord said the children of the world were wiser in their generation than the children of light. He praises them, not to have us imitate them, but to put us on our guard against the false wisdom which is so easily acquired. The apostles, in the beginning of their election to the apostolic life, had not that heavenly wisdom, for they had very worldly ideas about the kingdom which they thought Jesus was to establish on earth.
Prayer.
Come, Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Thy faithful, etc., etc.
Twenty-first Day.
Knowledge is the possession of truth. When our mind is well stored with information we are said to have knowledge. The same may be said of spiritual knowledge, only it refers to spiritual things. We have knowledge, then, in a spiritual sense, when we put together our experiences and draw practical conclusions from them—when we realize that God created the world, and that we were created to save our souls. Hence we ought to use the world, not for our own exclusive enjoyment, nor for the purpose of amassing wealth, but for the greater glory of God. We know that we were placed on the earth, intelligent beings, to praise and serve God. It was in virtue of this knowledge that St. Ignatius declared that all the world around him recalled God to him. We too must see God in all [pg 348] things, and never lose sight of the end of our creation; those who love the world for its own sake cannot love God; we cannot serve God and Mammon; we know from our own bitter experience that as soon as we love the world, we have lost the love of God, and without the love of God it is impossible to go to heaven. The absence of this spiritual knowledge makes us impatient because we have not all the things we want, and we resist His holy will.
Prayer.