The Fruits of the Holy Spirit

Full Explanation

Paul uses a farming word on purpose. He does not say the works of the Spirit or the achievements of the Spirit. He says fruit, and fruit is something that appears on a tree because of what the tree is, not because the tree strained. That single choice of word settles most of the confusion. You do not manufacture patience by gritting your teeth at it. Patience shows up, over time, in someone who is being changed. The fruits are diagnostic rather than aspirational: they tell you what has been happening in a person, often before that person has noticed it themselves. The counting question comes up constantly, and it has a clean answer. In the Greek text of Galatians, Paul names nine: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control. The Latin Vulgate tradition carries a longer reading that adds three more, and the Catholic tradition, and the Catechism with it, lists twelve: charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity. Neither list is wrong. One follows the Greek, the other follows the Latin, and nobody is being contradicted. The other regular confusion is between the fruits and the gifts, and it is worth getting straight because they do different jobs. The seven gifts are given, at baptism and strengthened at confirmation, and they equip a person to act. The twelve fruits are what grows afterwards, when those gifts have been used. Gifts are the tools. Fruits are what the workshop eventually produces. The Catechism describes the fruits as first fruits of eternal glory, and the phrase is precise. They are not the full harvest and they are not a wage. They are an early taste, arriving now, of what a person will be permanently. Which makes the practical use of this list unusual. It is not a to-do list; treating it as one produces exactly the strain the farming metaphor rules out. It is closer to a mirror. Read the twelve slowly and one of them will be conspicuously absent, and that absence is more useful information than the eleven that are fine. Not because you should now go and manufacture it, but because you now know what to ask for.