Understanding

Understanding, simply defined, is noticing what another person means, recognizing why the person acts as he or she does, and why the person lives as he or she lives.  It comes from the Latin words intus legere, meaning "to read inwardly."  In everyday conversation, we often use phrases that reflect this root meaning like:  "I can't read him or her," or, "We don't have a reading yet on which way the storm will go."  The root meaning of understanding creates the image of our entering into an author's mind or observing some phenonenon with a wish to grasp meaning.

Other related meanings of understanding are:  to comprehend, fathom, grasp, perceive, observe, notice, discover, differentiate, discriminate, and distinguish.

The scriptures are particularly colorful when describing understanding.  For example, the Book of Proverbs teaches us:  By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established" (24:3).  Isaiah rebukes the stiff-necked Hebrews for not wanting to understand God's ways with the words:  "Therefore my people will go into exile for lack of understanding" (Is 5:23).

In Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas directs us to the very essence of understanding.  He sees it as a gift of the Holy Spirit that enlightens our minds and graces them with greater penetrating powers to comprehend that which we hear and see.

From The Promise of Virtue

by Eugene F. Hemrick