Meditations and Devotions
The Gift of Piety
June 5, 2026
The great feasts of Pentecost, the Holy Trinity and Corpus Christi turn our attention to the special work of the third person of the Trinity. Though He is least understood, the Holy Spirit works visibly and clearly in our lives. His seven gifts—wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord—are operative every day in the life of the Christian. As we draw near the feast of Corpus Christi, the Holy Spirit moves us to enter into a deeper relationship with God, which His gift of piety prepares us for.
The word piety has a negative connotation for many people today. The word is associated with people who are only outwardly righteous, overly-religious or even pharisaical. That’s a shame, because piety is really about living as a child of God, and children are normally guileless. According to St. Thomas, the gift of piety is the affective and operative flowering of divine filiation in the soul’s actual life—the Holy Spirit moving the adopted child to actually act like a child of God in prayer, worship, and charity. We are children of God by baptism, but we need the Holy Spirit’s prompting to live this reality.
To see ourselves as children of the Father, we must see ourselves through God’s eyes. He sees each of us individually, calls us by name and tells us that even if a mother forgets her child, He will never forget us. In fact, God sees us as we really are, rather than how we present ourselves to others or however others see us. St. Therese of Lisieux once remarked how she could never be hurt by others’ accusations because she and God knew herself to be much worse than her accuser could. Yes, God sees all of us, including the ugliness of our sins. But this shouldn’t alarm us. He also sees our poor yet real efforts. He who sees all is also the most merciful and loving Father. Nothing shocks him, and consider how patiently he waits for us to mature!
Like a father who gets on his hands and knees to play with his children, our God desires to be with us, even though we are sinners. St. John Henry Newman, in a meditation on Holy Communion, put it this way: “Thou seest, not only the stains and scars of past sins, but the mutilations, the deep cavities, the chronic disorders which they have left in my soul … Thou seest all my bad habits, all my mean principles, all wayward lawless thoughts, my multitude of infirmities and miseries, yet Thou comest.”
A child is unafraid to interrupt his father at work, willing to beg his father for something he wants, trusts his father to protect him and take care of him at all times. Those who are parents have real life experience with this. Childlike trust is the foundation of piety. How do we gain this trust? Prayer. Prayer is the primary way we know and love God. And God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, will even help us pray, as St. Paul writes: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”
As we contemplate God, who deigned to become our very food and drink, let us desire to receive Him and be united to him. Let us speak to him boldly and listen to him expectantly. He is our Father, after all, and we can always interrupt him.
