Sharing all the Charisms of the Spirit by Reverend Donald L. Gelpi, S.J.

In today’s Church, I believe that all Christians would agree that God calls us ultimately to resurrection with Christ; but we do not agree so easily about the proximate future to which God is calling us. We do not agree about the concrete shape which the kingdom of God must take here and now because we disagree, sometimes bitterly, about what it means for us to be a Church. Authoritarian, right-wing Christians want to pattern the Church on the Roman Empire. They want an authoritarian Church in which all movement descends from those in authority to those they command. Left-wing Christians want to democratize the Church and to pattern it on the democratic governments, which emerged politically in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In the polarized Church in which we live, the Charismatic Renewal has, I believe, the divine call and responsibility to insist that no political model of the Church can grasp or articulate the social reality which the Christian community ought to embody. The Church derives neither from the Roman Empire nor from democracies of the Enlightenment—but from Pentecost. On Pentecost, the risen Christ sent the Spirit into the Church in order to create it as a community of shared faith. The Spirit accomplished that task on Pentecost by an outpouring of all the charisms. Moreover, only by sharing all the charisms of the Spirit can the Church experience shared faith consciousness.

The Church needs prophets and teachers to remind it constantly of the events which give rise to it: the incarnation of the Son of God, His ministry, death, resurrection, and mission of the Pentecostal Spirit. The Church needs teachers to remind it in season and out of the history of sin and of grace which links it to the paschal mystery. Without the charismatic activity of those teachers the Church will have no present sense of identity. In other words, without the kind of historical consciousness which teaching and prophecy inspire, the Church will not know collectively who it is and cannot therefore reach clarity concerning what God has called it to become.

In addition, the Church needs charisms of prayer, like tongues and the other prayer gifts, as well as gifts of healing if it expects to experience in a vivid way the saving presence of God in its midst. Without a vivid sense of God’s saving presence, the Church will forget that only the saving grace of God creates and sustains it as a community; and that kind of tragic forgetting will make the Christian community indistinguishable from any other natural or sinful human community. A Church that looks like any other natural or sinful human community cannot, however, mediate Christ and His Spirit effectively to a sinful world.

If charisms like prophecy, teaching, prayer, and healing create the Church’s awareness of its authentic religious identity, the charisms of the Spirit also endow the Church with an awareness of the common future to which God calls it. Prophets and evangelists must call the community to the kind of repentance and conversion that alone can open it to God’s future. Teachers need to remind the community of its past mistakes so that it will not continue to make them and so to divide the Church into sinful factions. Discerners need to help the community distinguish between true and false teaching, between sound and unsound community discipline, between authentic and inauthentic hopes if shared consensus about the future to which God calls us will ever emerge in a clear and focused manner.

The Church, however, needs more than a shared sense of history and a shared consensus about the future in order to reach full consciousness as a Christian community. In addition, all the members of the Church need to collaborate in making that shared future a reality. Mobilizing the Christian community in order to realize the vision of the kingdom to which Jesus called us engages all the action gifts, which facilitate corporate action on the part of the Christian community. By the action gifts, I mean gifts of administration, of pastoral leadership, of community organizing, of practical concern for the poor, for the marginal, and for their needs. Such gifts make possible our practical corporate witness to the gospel.

I am suggesting to you that without practical, living faith in all the charisms of the Holy Spirit, the Church will never reach full, shared consciousness as a community of faith. I am also suggesting that only by reaching full, shared, faith consciousness can the Christian community exist as a Church. I say that the Church must re-appropriate all the charisms of the Holy Spirit.

It may well be true that God called the Charismatic Renewal into existence as His chosen instrument for bringing the rest of the Church to renewed faith in the gift-giving Pentecostal Spirit. If so, then we in the Charismatic Renewal must acknowledge not only our failure to date to respond adequately to that call; but we must also acknowledge our part in that failure. In my judgment, the Charismatic Renewal has become to a great extent the victim of the chief institution, which it created--namely the prayer meeting.

Within the context of shared prayer only, we can only share a limited number of charisms: tongues, prophecy, word gifts, and teaching. Many of the charisms, however, require another context for their exercise. I refer to gifts like administration, pastoral leadership, and practical care for the poor, and a prophecy, which confronts social injustice and oppression instead of just talking piously in King James English. Narrow focus on prayer gifts has, in my judgment, caused the Charismatic Renewal to inculcate an inadequate and skewed charismatic piety by focusing too narrowly on gifts like tongues, healing, and ecstatic prophecy and by failing to cultivate the full spectrum of the gifts.

In other words, the Charismatic Renewal itself has failed to grasp fully what Paul the apostle meant when he said (that Jesus), "the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit." Only openness to all the charisms of the Spirit can create the kind of balanced charismatic consciousness that creates the Church as a Church. At the Denver Symposium on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Renewal, which assessed the progress of the Charismatic renewal, I sensed an incipient consensus developing among the leaders of the movement that the name which the bishops gave this movement—"The Charismatic Renewal of the Church"—can have misleading connotations. The total charismatic renewal of the Church involves much more than what goes on in the movement which calls itself in obedience to the bishops, "The Charismatic Renewal." The total charismatic renewal of the Church involves all the renewal movements which contribute to the Church’s shared faith consciousness: movements like the RCIA, the Cursillo, marriage encounter, Christian Life Communities, the Jesuit Volunteers and other volunteer groups in the Church which work for a justice inspired by faith.

If the Charismatic Renewal hopes to respond effectively to the call of God to bring living faith in all the charisms to the heart of Catholic piety, then, in my judgment, the Renewal needs a spirit of repentance and of humility. We need to enter into effective dialogue with all the other renewal movements that contribute to the Church’s total charismatic renewal. We need to enter into that dialogue with an expectation that those movements have something important to teach the Charismatic Renewal about the full spectrum of the Spirit’s charismatic inspirations.

At the same time, we should enter into dialogue with these other renewal movements with a consciousness of all the important things which the Holy Spirit has taught this movement about the exercise of the gifts and which other renewal movements need to learn. The Spirit must, of course, guide such dialogue; and with the guidance of the Spirit that dialogue will, God willing, advance the day when the entire Church can confess that "the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit" and actually experience the reality of what it confesses.

Fr. Gelpi is a professor at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. This article was condensed from his presentation at the Liaison Theological Symposium, The Last Adam Became A Life-Giving Spirit: An Important Key to Spirit Christology, pp. 21-25.

I Can Feel The Presence of the Holy Spirit

by Dr. Kevin Ranaghan

Very often when we gather for prayer meetings, we experience the presence of the Lord. The words of the well known hymn, "The Lord is present in His Sanctuary", ring true. Over and over again when we begin to worship together, we realize that the Lord himself is with us. "The Lord is gathered in His people gathered here," the song reminds us.

Individual participants and the group as a whole not only believe, but also have a knowledge, a sense, a feeling that God is with them. Sometimes it seems as if Jesus is standing in the middle of the room. Sometimes it seems that a waterfall of the Spirit is cascading over everyone present. Still other times it seems like the whole group has been caught up into the heavenly court before the throne of the Father. All these different experiences strengthen our conviction that in a wonderful way the Lord is present in our prayer meetings.

This experience of the Lord's presence in our prayer meetings is not new. It has been characteristic of the Renewal for thirty years. Nor is it limited to Catholic charismatic groups. Protestant charismatics and Pentecostals also bear witness to same reality. How should we understand this presence of the Lord?

For us, as Catholics, when we consider the Lord's presence, the first thing we think of is the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. This is as it should be, for in the eucharistic sacrifice Jesus comes fully, entirely present under the appearances of bread and wine in the on going celebration of His paschal mystery of redemption. This great mystery of faith at the center of our life as the Church and of our lives as individual members of Christ's body. We know Christ is really resent both in the Mass itself, in the Blessed Sacrament reserved for the sick, for personal devotion, and for public adoration. This is so wonderful that whenever we think of His presence among us, this is what we think of first.

But this is not the only way the Lord has chosen to be present in s and among us. We w that, historically, Lord was present n His Incarnation. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn 1: 14). We also know that He promised to continue to be with us even after His Ascension. "Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Mt 28:20). The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council has helped us greatly to understand the multiple ways that Christ is present among us, teaching us that Christ is present in His Church, in the liturgy, in the person of the minister, in the Sacraments, in His proclaimed Word, and whenever we gather to pray and sing, for "where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them"(SC 7; Mt 18:20).

Jesus Christ the risen Lord, who is surely enthroned at the right hand of His Father, is also surely here with us. And He is not just here in one way, He is here in many ways. In different ways the one Lord is present with the whole parish at the Sunday Eucharist, and with the Christian family gathered in their living room for prayer.

It may help us to understand this if we consider what happens at Baptism. In Baptism, a person is reborn into the life of Christ. The Holy Spirit transforms one into a member of the Body of Christ, and makes one a sharer in Jesus' son-ship. In Baptism one is joined to Christ in His death and resurrection and becomes so identified with Him that, St. Paul says, "I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20). and "Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?" (2 Cor 13:5). The fact is, that the presence of the Lord with us is fundamentally the presence of the Lord in us, a presence that begins in our Baptism and which establishes our identity as Christians.

It is little wonder then, that when we pray to be baptized in the Spirit, which is a renewal of our sacramental Baptism, we experience so powerfully the presence of the Lord with us and in us. And when we who are (by God's grace) in the Spirit, and who have (by His mercy) Christ living in us, gather for a prayer meeting, it is no wonder that His presence becomes stronger, clearer and more effective as members of His body are joined together. Both for the individual and the group, this is another way in which the Lord is truly present. Since our charismatic Protestant and Orthodox brethren share with us both Baptism and the release of the Spirit, they experience this same presence of the Lord themselves. And we experience it together in ecumenical settings.

In His true presence at our gatherings, we worship our Father through Him. At the same time, with Him living in us, we act as Him extending His ministry of preaching, prophesying, teaching, healing, combating evil spirits and building the Kingdom of God. We can do these things because by His Spirit He is truly in us and with us.

Dr. Kevin Ranaghan writes for the ICCRS Newsletter and represents the USA on the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services Council. ©1998 ICCRS Newsletter, Vatican City.

An overview of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal

The outpouring and manifestation of the Holy Spirit at the first Pentecost continues in the Church today. The gift of the Spirit, as promised by Jesus and sent by the Father, is for all believers. It is God's Spirit that transforms us to be children of God. It is in the power of the Holy Spirit that great renewals, revivals and evangelization occur.

In February 1967, a group of students and staff of Duquesne University, USA, had a moving experience of the Holy Spirit while in fervent prayer on a weekend retreat. This was the birth of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. The fire spread quickly all over the US and to many other countries around the world. It has been the fastest growing movement in the Catholic Church. By 1985, 30 to 50 million Catholics worldwide had experienced the Charismatic Renewal.

Encouraged by our Popes
Pope Paul VI, in 1975 said that "the Church lives by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit... He furnishes and directs her with various gifts, both hierarchical and charismatic... The Church and the world need more than ever that 'the miracle of Pentecost' should continue in history. Nothing is more necessary to this increasingly secularized world than the witness of this spiritual renewal that we see the Holy Spirit evoking...". "How then could this spiritual renewal not be good fortune for the Church and for the world? It ought to rejuvenate the world, give it back a spirituality, a soul, a religious thought. It ought to reopen its closed lips to prayer and open its mouth to song, to joy, to hymns and to witnessing." He ended with the proclamation: "Jesus is the Lord! Alleluia!"

Pope John Paul II at a special audience for Charismatic leaders at Vatican City in 1984 said: "The Church's mission is to proclaim Christ to the world. And you share effectively in this mission... real openness to the Holy Spirit as it vivifies and guides the Church helps you to live in union with the Lord Jesus. It is your strength and your special treasure..."

At the 20th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in 1987, the Holy Father said, "the vigour and fruitfulness of the Renewal certainty attests to the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit at work in the Church these years after Vatican II."

New Pentecost
Pope John XXIII's prayer in preparation for the Second Vatican Council was "Renew Your wonders in our time as though for a new Pentecost."

On 8 December 1965, the Council ended. A great renewal for the Catholic Church began - a renewal that would encompass the entire Church - clergy, religious, laity. In February 1967, just little over a year after the Second Vatican Council ended, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal began.

"Rather than a movement, Charismatic Renewal is a Moving of the Holy Spirit which can reach all Christians, lay or cleric," said Cardinal Leon Joseph Suenens who was invited by Pope Paul VI to lead and encourage the Charismatic Renewal worldwide. "It is comparable to a high voltage current of grace which is coursing through the Church." The Cardinal has written a book entitled, "A New Pentecost."

Setting our Hearts on Fire We need an encounter and experience of the living God in our lives, transforming our minds, our hearts, our very lives, that our faith may be an experiential faith, a living faith. Though our Catholic Church provides us many opportunities for this through the Mass, the Sacraments, the Word of God and the many faith formation programmes - many people are still lost and burdened. In recent years, the Charismatic Renewal has provided us with an opportunity to come together to praise and worship God in a spontaneous way, to share His Word and experience His love, His healing and the presence and power of His Holy Spirit. This has, in turn, helped many Catholics to appreciate more fully the richness of our Catholic Faith and our Catholic Church.

Empowering and Transforming It is the Holy Spirit who makes Jesus more real and alive to us; it is the Holy Spirit who gives us an experience of God as our loving Father. "The Spirit makes you God's children, and by the Spirit's power we cry to God, "Abba Father! my Father!" (Romans 8:15). The Holy Spirit, our helper and guide, empowers us to follow Jesus more closely and to do the will of the Father that we might grow as His children.

Bestowing Charisms for Upbuilding
Fr Raniero Cantalamessa, who has been preacher to the Pope for the last 16 years, emphasizes the importance of the charisms: "The sacraments are a gift given to all Christians; but the charisms are given to all Christians for the sanctification and good of the entire Church. It is like two channels that interweave in the Church, the living Body of Christ. The grace of the Holy Spirit flows through them both. A body breathes with both lungs and the lungs of the Church are the sacraments and the gifts."

Proclaiming Jesus as Saviour and Lord
When we are on fire for the Lord, we must want to pass on the fire - to share Jesus and proclaim Jesus. Organise national rallies and conventions so that as many people as possible can come and experience that Jesus, our Saviour and Lord, is risen and alive! We praise God that many have been touched and renewed through their experience of God's love and healing.

An Experiential Faith

The vision and aim of the Charismatic Renewal is to assist in the renewal of the parish by providing opportunities for individuals to deepen their prayer life and experience of God that they may be spiritually renewed, and foster their gifts for the building of God's kingdom.

Prayer meetings which are central to the Charismatic Renewal, are held weekly and provide the opportunity to :

Home Cells (Small Faith Sharing Communities) are also held as an extension of Christian fellowship and community in which Christians can:

1 Corinthians 12:27 says "you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is part of it."

As the church, the body of Christ we are also a living organism. The way we grow is by each member fulfilling their role in relation to other members. As we find each other we begin to function together, multiply and grow the church. We cannot function in isolation.

A Living Faith

Life in the Spirit Seminar An 8 to 10 week Life in the Spirit Seminar (LISS) is conducted each year by most prayer groups. In some parishes, prayer groups have been requested to conduct the LISS for RCIA participants and those preparing for Confirmation. The LISS prepares participants for the Baptism in the Spirit during which they are prayed over for the release of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

Alpha Seminar An 12 week Seminar (Alpha) is conducted each year by most prayer groups. As with the LISS Seminar, Alpha prepares participants for the Baptism in the Spirit during which they are prayed over for the release of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

For many, LISS and Alpha (or other similar programmes) are the turning point in their lives, as they begin to be more aware of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit and enter into a deeper relationship with God as their loving Father and Jesus as their personal Saviour and Lord. Their experiential faith becomes a living faith as they go forth to be his witnesses and to share God's love and truth with others.

Service And Ministry

On-going formation and discipleship are necessary for us to grow spiritually, to bear fruit and to ensure that there is proper development and use of the Charismatic gifts. Charisms exercised in love for others become a ministry. Leadership in a Charismatic prayer group is vested in a Core Team, with supporting Service/Ministry teams. Most prayer groups conduct retreats and growth seminars regularly for all members.

Leader Training Committees organize and conduct Leaders Training Courses for all new and potential Core Team and Service Team members to ensure that they capture the right vision for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and the right spirit of leadership and service in charismatic prayer groups. On-going formation and training sessions are also conducted for all leaders. Emphasis is on formation and discipleship, spiritual growth, servant-leadership, team-concept, development and use of charismatic gifts for the building of God's Kingdom. It is not what we want to do for the Lord, but rather what the Lord wants to do in and through us. Men and women in pastoral leadership and service need to ask the Holy Spirit for a shepherd's heart that we may be able to respond to Jesus' call "Feed my lambs, feed my sheep."

SACCRE Healing Ministry was set up in 1989 to coordinate the Healing Ministry within the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, to help in the formation and growth of the Healing Ministry at prayer group level and to minister to cases which require more experienced people. It also offers a service to the parish and various organisations involved in healing, in line of formation and information. Seminars and workshops have been conducted on various aspects of healing. Jesus did not come just to heal our physical illnesses. He is concerned with the whole person. "I have come that you may have life- life in all its fullness" ...John 10:10.

In 1995, several sessions on Inner Healing were conducted by Fr Gino Henriques, who also helped us to set up the SACCRE Healing Ministry in 1989. We are grateful to him and also to Fr Michael Arro and Fr John Wood who have been spiritual advisors to the SACCRE Healing Ministry.

Praise &Worship And Music Ministry It is in prayer that we behold the presence of God and go beyond our human limitation, entering into the spiritual realm. In praising God, we focus on God's love and goodness, rather than on our own needs. In worship, we enter into a more intimate union with God. As such, the goal of the prayer meeting is to bring individuals and the whole group into an awareness of their union with God and to worship Him in that union. The prayer leader, assisted by the music ministry, plays an important role in guiding people to focus on God. Once the group has entered into worship, the meeting itself is transformed by the awareness of God's presence; the teaching, sharing, intercession all take on a deeper anointing of His power, as the Holy Spirit begins to move and touch each one. The ability to animate or lead the praise and worship is a charism. This includes sensitivity to the moving of the Holy Spirit and encouraging people to yield and respond to the Spirit; to call forth the gifts and discern the source of gifts and manifestation.

The Charismatic Renewal has introduced a dynamic expression of praise and worship. Music can be used by God to touch and move our spirits, to lift us up as we praise God and express our thanks and joy, to minister to us draw us into deeper worship. Music which is anointed can be a powerful instrument of healing, reconciliation, upbuilding and yielding to the Spirit.

Book And Tape Ministry To know God is to love God. The more we come to know of God's goodness and love for us, His promises and plans for us, His power and His glory, the more we want to respond and cooperate with God's work of salvation. Knowledge of God is not just acquiring information, it results in transformation. The Word of God, the Bible gives life and direction. In addition, for our spiritual growth, we also need to read and study other religious books and Church documents. For this reason, most Charismatic prayer groups have a Book and Tape Ministry which offers members a wide range of books and tapes on Christian living, spiritual formation and growth. Some  also plans to build up a central library of reference material, leadership training and formation programmes, books on Charismatic spirituality and on the role of the laity.

A Renewal still Strong & Growing
(Excerpts from "A Hopeful Perspective on the Catholic Charismatic Renewal around the World" by Sr Nancy Kellar, S.C. - ICCRS Newsletter, March - April 1996)

There is new growth, steady growth, and growth in the midst of great difficulties in many parts of the world. Here are a few examples.

In Eastern and Central European countries there is a great religious awakening happening with many people eager to learn about God. The Pentecost pilgrimage to the ancient icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa, organized by the Charismatic Renewal in Poland, has grown from 20,000 in 1992 to over 150,000 in 1995.

The Charismatic Renewal continues to flourish in places like the Dominican Republic and Brazil, in Australia, the Philippines and Malaysia. Both English- and French- speaking Africa report the good news of growth in numbers and spiritual depth. Slow but amazing growth is taking place in Papua New Guinea. I personally saw the multitudes of Catholic Charismatics that gather in Korea.

What are the Major Trends and Developments? Evangelization continues to be a major focus of the worldwide Catholic Charismatic Renewal, with both familiar and new initiatives. Stadiums and gymnasiums are filled with crowds of 20,000 to 160,000 in places like Italy and Brazil as people gather for praise, preaching and healing events.

Pakistan reports many Muslims and Hindus attending meetings, receiving healings and giving testimonies. In Australia, the aboriginal people are being reached out to by the Catholic Charismatic Renewal.

Schools of Evangelization have boosted the thrust and readiness to evangelize in many countries. The schools have opened a new way to challenge many people to a greater commitment to service. Another experience that is growing very strong in the USA and Europe is the Parish Cell System. The description of the early community in the Acts of the Apostles is coming to life in this form of parish renewal. Most areas of the world seem to be working to respond to the Lord and to the Pope John Paul II's call to evangelize youth, and the Holy Spirit is anointing their efforts. Family conferences are another way some areas are responding to this call.

What is the impact on the Church? I believe all of these initiatives in evangelization, parish renewal and youth ministry, plus social and political outreaches and efforts for unity are impacting the Church and the world by offering hope, healing and reconciliation to hundreds of thousands of people.

The Renewal is currently taking a leading role in many nations in developing Christian and leadership formation courses, and offering them as a service of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal to the Church. The recent meetings of music ministries in various places is highlighting the impact the Charismatic Renewal has had for some time on music and worship in the Church.

The Catholic Charismatic Renewal, while struggling with challenges and problems, is indeed vibrant and fruitful. The challenge to the Renewal in every part of the world is to stay fully alive in the Spirit, allowing individuals and groups to continue to mature in their relationship with God and one another, increasingly integrating their experience into the life of the Church, while reaching out to the needs of the world.