Objective:
The middle school youth will develop a greater understanding of the gift of knowledge and how they can use that gift to look at the world in a new way.
Overview:
The knowledge we are given by the Holy Spirit is quite different than the worldly definition of the word knowledge. The Holy Spirit does not bless us with a plethora of information that no one else has. However, it does give us a new perspective, that comes from the experience of faith. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
“No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!”’ This knowledge of faith is possible only in the Holy Spirit: to be in touch with Christ, we must first have been touched by the Holy Spirit. He comes to meet us and kindles faith in us. By virtue of our Baptism, the first sacrament of the faith, the Holy Spirit in the Church communicates to us, intimately and personally, the life that originates in the Father and is offered to us in the Son (683).
Knowledge gives us the ability to admit the overwhelming greatness of God, which sometimes means accepting that there are divine truths that are not able to be completely grasped. It admits that there is a far greater reality than we will ever be able to explain. However, through this gift of the Holy Spirit, we can come to know of God’s truth and through his creations, come to understand him more.
Truth in words, the rational expression of the knowledge of created and uncreated reality, is necessary to man, who is endowed with intellect. But truth can also find other complementary forms of human expression, above all when it is a matter of evoking what is beyond words: the depths of the human heart, the exaltations of the soul, the mystery of God. Even before revealing himself to man in words of truth, God reveals himself to him through the universal language of creation, the work of his Word, of his wisdom: the order and harmony of the cosmos-which both the child and the scientist discover -”from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator,” “for the author of beauty created them” (2500 CCC).
Knowledge sees how things really are, from a God’s eye perspective. Knowledge can admit that bad things can happen to good people. Knowledge can admit in a reality much bigger than us. The world might say that “seeing is believing”, but knowledge would say that “believing is seeing.” As the bible tells us, it is God’s desire that we come know and understand his truth the gift of knowledge that comes from his Holy Spirit:
First of all, then, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity. This is good and pleasing to God our savior, who wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:1-4).