August 19th, 2025

Building Spiritual Habits   -  Part 5

St. Augustine prayed,

“Help me to grow in the four Cardinal Virtues, Your Seven Gifts and Your Twelve Fruits.”

Last week we talked about the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. They are wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, godliness—and fear of the Lord. These gifts, granted to Christians at their baptism and perfected in the Sacrament of Confirmation, are like the virtues we spoke about three weeks ago. They make the person who possesses them disposed to make proper choices and to do the right thing. If the gifts of the Holy Spirit are like virtues, the fruit of the Holy Spirit are the actions that those virtues produce.

The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, or the “charismata” that St. Paul speaks of and Isaiah talks about, are understood as pluralistic gifts (and the term is a plural form of the word “charisma,” which is usually translated “spiritual gift”).  As we discovered last week, the Gifts of the Holy Spirit are gifts that are given to all believers when Jesus is their Lord and Savior. The Fruit (singular) of the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer as he or she grows in knowledge and love of the Lord. 

At this point it is important to delve into the credibility of St. Augustine’s list of “Twelve Fruit” in the face of criticism that there are only nine.

There are actually two versions of the list of the Fruit found in Saint Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (5:22). There is a shorter version, commonly used in the Bible you might have, consisting of nine fruits; and the longer version of twelve fruits found in the Latin Vulgate. 

Saint Jerome, a contemporary of St. Augustine, translated the Old and New Testaments from Hebrew and Greek into Latin. Jerome’s translation was eventually called the Vulgate, a formalization of its description into a proper title. The Latin phrase editio vulgata means “common version” and vulgus, common people. As the Latin Bible grew in use, it was referred to as the Vulgas (English Vulgate) simply meaning “common.” 

The Vulgate contained three more fruits than the Greek text. This is not innovation, but rather an extrapolation. When Jerome translated the Greek, he found that some of the Greek words meant more (contained more meaning) than their Latin counterparts. To effectively translate the meaning of the Greek, Jerome had to add a divided description in the Latin.

St. Augustine read both Hebrew and Greek as well as Latin. Latin and Greek were the most used languages in the Roman Empire, with Latin predominantly spoken and used throughout Western Christendom. As Jerome’s Vulgate grew in popularity, there is no doubt that Augustine would have used it in his Bible study. The Vulgate was the unofficial standard Bible of the church, made officially standard at the Council of Trent in 1546. 

In 1943, Pope Pius XII wrote an encyclical entitled Divino Afflante Spiritu, which mandated future translations of the Bible be made from the original languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek) and not directly from the Vulgate. In 1979, the Roman Catholic Church produced a new translation, the Nova Vulgata–New Vulgate, using the primary texts. 

The former Vulgate is still regarded as authentic, the official description decreed in 1546. In historical context, "authentic" was used to mean "authoritative" for specific Church uses, particularly among the Latin editions of the Bible available at that time. Today, the Vulgate is deemed "authentic" in the sense that it is a trustworthy and reliable text for liturgical use and for defining doctrine in matters of faith and morals, free from fundamental errors in those areas.

It's crucial to understand that "authentic" in this context does not mean the Vulgate itself is considered divinely inspired in the same way the original texts are believed to be. Its "authenticity" stems from its long-standing usage and the Church's affirmation of its freedom from errors in faith and morals. 

Though St. Augustine consulted the Vulgate at the beginning of its usage, that translation was and still is regarded as an authoritative version, thereby supporting St. Jerome’s division and addition of three to the Fruit of the Spirit.

Next week, we will dive into the Twelve Fruits for a better understanding of how God equips us for ministry and service. This week, pray for a manifestation of the Fruit of the Holy Spirit in your life. The Fruits are:
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Charity, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Long Suffering, Mildness, Faith, Modesty, Self Control, and Chastity.


In Prayer,
Fr. Bill+