Gifts of the Holy Spirit

If you have accumulated wealth, expend it on others; if you have the faculty of teaching, do not bury the talent, but bring it out publicly for the sake of those who need it! Or if you have any other advantage, become useful to those who require the benefit of your labors! Do you not see that for this reason, especially, the bee is more honored than the other animals; not because she labors, but because she labors for others? For the spider also labors, and toils, and spreads out his fine textures over the walls, surpassing the utmost skill of woman; but the creature is without estimation, since his work is in no way profitable to us; such are those who labor and toil, but for themselves!

There is no man living who can see all things, neither has God given any man to know everything. One sees more clearly than another, one has more understanding than another, one can utter a thing better than another; but no man ought to envy or despise another. He who can do better than another should not set him at naught who understands less. Indeed, he who has the more understanding ought to remember that the same gift is not his, but God’s, and that God has given it him to teach and inform the ignorant.

Whatever we obtain from the Lord is granted on the condition of our employing it for the common good of the Church, and, therefore, the legitimate use of all our gifts is a kind and liberal communication of them with others. There cannot be a surer rule, nor a stronger exhortation to the observance of it, than when we are taught that all the endowments that we possess are divine deposits entrusted to us for the very purpose of being distributed for the good of our neighbor.