BELIEF IN THE TRINITY, which is manifested as an interplay of the Father as power, the Son as wisdom and the Holy Spirit as the bond of love between the Father and the Son, was a fundamental aspect of the Christian faith in the late Middle Ages, as it is today. Christians understand that God loved them in creating them in his likeness; he loved them more in the costliness of their redemption; but his greatest act of love is the gift of the Holy Spirit, by which they know and love him, and are assured that they are his children chosen for salvation. The love of the Holy Spirit is believed to be manifested in the gifts of the Holy Spirit – wisdom, understanding, knowledge, piety, fortitude, counsel, and fear of the Lord – through which the Holy Spirit can direct the supernatural life of the soul.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are a key for exploring Margery Kempe's experiential awareness of the life of grace. The process is initiated after her mystical marriage to the Godhead in Rome on her way back from Jerusalem (ch. 35) – marking a threshold in her relationship with the Trinity. From then on the law of charity and obedience orders her life, as the presence of the Holy Spirit in her soul is signalled by the ongoing activity and effects realised through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But Margery undergoes a series of ordeals in the period following her return to England after her Jerusalem pilgrimage.