The Catholic Charismatic Renewal
Diocese of Rimouski
Conference of Sister Monique Anctil, r.s.r.,
Colloquium of the leaders of the C.C.R.
Granby, April 14-18, 2002
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Specificity of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal
At Pentecost, Peter, quoting the prophet Joel, raised his voice and addressed these words to the crowd. "In the last days it shall be," God declares, "that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. Then their sons and their daughters shall prophesy, the young men shall see visions and the old men shall dream dreams. And I will pour out my Spirit upon my servants and my handmaids, and I will show wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below..." At the end of his discourse, he added: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, and for your children and for all who are far away, as many as the Lord our God will call to him." (Acts 2, 17-19. 38-39)
Can one not see, in the appearance of the Charismatic Renewal and in the multiplication of charismatic prayer groups, of new communities, of prayer Centres and of the many charitable Works born of the Renewal... throughout the world, a new and unprecedented fulfilment of this Word?
Since the very beginnings of the Charismatic Renewal people have tried to find the origin of this grace given to the whole Church. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal is not a product imported from one country or another, or from one religion or sect or another. "The Catholic Charismatic Renewal is the springing forth, within the Catholic Church, of a richness that was already there, buried and hidden even from the eyes of those who held its deposit." (Cardinal Lustiger, 1998) One can say that the Charismatic Renewal, because of its ecumenical origins, has welled up as springs well up, here and there, from the bosom of the earth.
In 1965, in his Christmas message, Pope Paul VI could already say: "The Church has perceived in herself something like a return flow of the Spirit of Christ. She has felt the Gospel message rise again to her lips, with the need to proclaim it in a renewed way, for herself and for men. The Church has recovered her youth. She has felt herself reborn." And in the exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, he affirmed: "We are living in the Church a privileged moment of the Spirit" (No. 75).
Following him, Pope John Paul II saw in "the emergence of the Renewal that followed the Second Vatican Council a special gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church." The signs of rebirth in the Church are many: one witnesses a thirst for authentic Christian life, a renewed taste for prayer and for the Word of God, a proliferation of initiatives, many new forms of commitment especially among the laity, and finally, the birth of numerous ecclesial movements and new communities.
The many fruits of the Renewal certainly attest to the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church in the years that followed the Second Vatican Council.
A grace of Pentecost
The Charismatic Renewal is above all a grace of Pentecost. It brings us back to the founding event of the Church: Pentecost. It therefore brings us back to a Christianity of Pentecost. "The first vocation or mission of the Charismatic Renewal is to reproduce in a visible way in the Church of today the image of Pentecost." (Nancy Kellar)
Father Émilien Tardif defined the Catholic Charismatic Renewal as "the experiential rediscovery of the power of the Holy Spirit in each one of us and in the Church, and the opening of the heart to that extraordinary grace of renewal." Let us recall the account of Pentecost; that event has been and remains a landmark in the history of the Church, by what surrounds it and by what it produces.
What surrounds it
Upon a handful of men, gathered together in one place, the Spirit falls and works incredible transformations as well as incredible phenomena: a wind that blows like a tornado, with a terrible crash and a column of fire... Enough to frighten the boldest!
What it produces
The faint-hearted of the days after Golgotha, who were hiding away in their dwelling for fear of Jewish reprisals, become witnesses filled with an astonishing boldness that nothing will stop any more. They are transformed into new men capable of speaking in tongues and of prophesying. Powerfully aided by extraordinary gifts necessary for their mission and by a fire that burns them without respite, they set everything around them ablaze.
One can understand the grace of the Charismatic Renewal only to the extent that one lets oneself be moved by the extraordinary grace of Pentecost that gave birth to the Church, energized it and propelled it into the world. It is truly a shock treatment that God gives to his Church on the day of Pentecost. She will live for centuries on that momentum, which our century seems to want, very timidly however, to recover today, after years of lethargy.
The Catholic Charismatic Renewal was born of an experience of Pentecost, that of a few students and professors of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, in 1967. The experience of Pentecost is thus the great characteristic of the Charismatic Renewal: every time people gather in the Name of Jesus to pray together, they ask in faith and with one heart that they be granted to live a "little" Pentecost.
Just as the Acts of the Apostles suggest that the great Pentecost was the first of many others, so prayer assemblies are lived in the hope that they will be, week after week, the place of an Outpouring of the Spirit always to be renewed. There is indeed, in some way, an experience of Pentecost every time hearts become burning in the love of Christ, every time the breath of the Spirit, like a violent wind, transforms the members of an assembly and makes them testify with confidence, proclaim the Word in the power of the Spirit, prophesy, speak in new ways, praise the Lord, exercise any other charism manifesting the presence of the Spirit.
What essentially distinguishes the Charismatic Renewal is having understood that the role of the Holy Spirit in this work is the same since the day of Pentecost, and that we can make, today, the experience of the Outpouring of the Spirit, of the power of the gifts of the Spirit, like the first Christians.
The fact that, for too long, and this by influential members of our Church, the Charismatic Renewal was considered solely as a renewal of prayer has done it great harm. It is above all an actualization and a personification of the grace of Pentecost that we must make known and promote within the Church. Certain groups, by succumbing to the temptation of pietism, of the need for "dévotionnettes" (little devotions) or by nurturing a certain emotional complacency in the accounts of private revelations or apparitions, have been unfaithful to the grace of the Charismatic Renewal and have fostered a poor understanding of it on the part of people from outside.
The hour has come to become what we are called to be: beings renewed by the Breath of the Holy Spirit who let themselves be ceaselessly led by that Breath, that is, "plugged into" the Holy Spirit, who is the inspirer and builder of the Church. Our communities of faith (prayer groups, prayer centres, new communities...) will become truly charismatic only if they keep that constant concern of letting themselves be moved by the Holy Spirit!
A grace of holiness
The Outpouring of the Spirit
The Charismatic Renewal carries within it a grace of holiness. The essential characteristic, the founding experience of the Charismatic Renewal is the Outpouring of the Spirit, or, in Anglophone circles, the "baptism of the Holy Spirit," which is a grace of Pentecost. This experience can neither be explained nor understood except by its fruits. Lived differently in different people, it produces effects that one recognizes in all. What makes the originality of the Charismatic Renewal is having no recognized human founder, nor a "spirituality."
Born of the Breath of the Spirit, it is, for those renewed by the Outpouring of the Spirit, a true return to the sources of Christian life: the Holy Spirit, the Lord Christ, the Word of God, the sacraments, the charisms, prayer, evangelization... It is for this reason that one can say, without risk of error, that the Charismatic Renewal must remain a grace of holiness for the whole Church.
Father Cantalamessa affirms that "in the Charismatic Renewal, personal sanctification must come first, and only then, in second place, the experience of the charisms." All the baptized, without exception, are called to a life of holiness: "Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy." (Lev 19, 2) It is a commandment.
John Paul II, in his apostolic Letter for the new Millennium Novo Millennio Ineunte, (No. 33) expressed the wish: "that our communities become more and more authentic schools of prayer where the encounter with Christ is expressed not only by imploring but also by thanksgiving, praise, contemplation, listening and burning devotion, until the heart truly falls in love. For that is what saints are: persons who have fallen in love with Christ." Holiness means becoming "other," separating oneself from everything that is imperfect, impure or unworthy.
As disciples of Christ, we must live in such a way that people see that we are different and that we are consecrated, given to the Lord. That is what Saint Peter invites us to do in his first epistle: "Just as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct, as it is written: You shall be holy, because I am holy." (1, 15-16).
Father Émilien Tardif
The Outpouring of the Spirit appears, in the life of a Christian man or woman, as a conversion or a "second conversion," for it almost always represents a threshold moment of spiritual life, a gateway onto the path of holiness. It fosters a new, very personal and close encounter with Christ Jesus, recognized as Lord and Savior, a Living Christ. It can also make us taste very strongly the Fatherhood of God and his tenderness, filling us with the joy of calling the Father: "Abba!", "Papa!" and bringing us to realize that we are beloved daughters and sons of this God who is Father. It is more rarely a direct encounter with the Holy Spirit himself; the Holy Spirit having the mission of leading us to the Father and to the Son.
This grace is nothing other than a way of reviving the baptismal grace that is often benumbed or asleep at the bottom of the soul, in order to let it produce its fruits. It makes us aware of our baptismal dignity, which makes us priest, prophet and king. Priest: enabled to render worship to God; prophet: called to bear the Good News; king: armed to fight the forces of evil.
A common point in this experience is to feel and to acknowledge, sometimes painfully, one's poverty, one's limits, one's incapacity to go further on one's own. One then turns back toward God in a cry for help. And he responds with a closeness, a gentleness that change one's life. While remaining in the obscurity of faith, the Outpouring of the Spirit is an experiential knowledge that lets one perceive, taste the presence of one of the divine Persons, or still, experience the presence of God as an immense beyond that does not yet reveal itself perfectly, but which, however, gives itself and attracts without cease.
One then makes the experience of the psalmist who, drawing near to the Source, feels his desire become more vivid, more intense: "O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you, like a dry and weary land where there is no water..." (Ps 63) "As a deer longs for running water, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; when shall I see the face of my God?" (Ps 42-43)
Very often, baptized persons have not made a true living encounter with the Lord; "although catechized, a first evangelization has not taken place and they have no explicit and personal attachment to Jesus Christ." The Outpouring of the Spirit, as a renewal of a personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, therefore supposes, often, a preparation by an appropriate evangelization and catechesis, generally proposed on the occasion of the Renewal's prayer assemblies, taking up the fundamental elements of the Catholic faith.
The Seminars aim not only at recalling the principal elements of the faith, but at reviving a more personal commitment to the Lord Jesus and awaiting from his Holy Spirit an outpouring of Pentecost. It is of the utmost importance to offer regularly the process of the Seminars of Life in the Spirit in order "to help people turn toward Jesus and welcome him as the only Lord and Savior, to give themselves over more fully to the Holy Spirit and to become witnesses and evangelizers in the Church."
These Seminars can be - a deepening of an already existing relationship, - the resumption of a broken relationship, - the beginning of a new relationship with the Lord." (Introduction to the Life in the Spirit Seminars of the ICCRS, translated by Corinne Laplante and Marcel Haché). They are therefore addressed to everyone.
A grace of evangelization
One of the great characteristics of the Charismatic Renewal is to discover or rediscover the urgency, the necessity and the joy of the proclamation of the Gospel, a grace of evangelization. Moreover, the charisms have as their principal effect to open hearts to the Gospel, to make a truly Good News perceived in them, a Good News which, by its power of life, can transform mentalities from within. In Evangelii Nuntiandi, the Holy Father says: "In our day, in a renewed outpouring of the Spirit of Pentecost, the Church has seen ripen within her a livelier sense of her missionary character and, in a movement of generous obedience, she has again listened to the voice of the Lord who sends her into the world as the universal sacrament of salvation." (No. 2) The Spirit is given to us so that we may become missionaries.
The Renewal in the Holy Spirit is a breath of Pentecost with a view to that new evangelization to which the Church calls us, in a world that so much needs it and aspires to it. This spirit of evangelization therefore begins with personal conversion, for the first proclamation of the Good News rests on the witness of a life renewed by the truth and beauty of the Gospel, which gradually permeates the whole of life. For that, one must draw abundantly from the Word of God; our groups must become places where the Word is incarnated in the heart and in life. Are our assemblies authentic "Upper Rooms" where witnesses, evangelizers and prophets filled with a joyful confidence are being prepared?
Charismatic Renewal
The Charismatic Renewal, in an indifferent and hostile world, must bear witness to a deep spiritual life, renewed by the Holy Spirit, and to a generous gift of one's life in a communion with the sorrows and labors, the aspirations and joys of our brothers and sisters. A faith that hopes is the greatest characteristic of the Charismatic Renewal; a faith that affirms that Jesus is the Living One, the Lord, and that he has, even today, the power to heal the sick, to give sight to the blind, to bring about healings of a physical and spiritual order.
A characteristic effect of the Outpouring of the Spirit is that interior joy and the confidence in faith that mark it and that lift up the timidities and fears that were preventing one from testifying freely and simply to the truth of the Gospel, to the living reality of Christ and of God. The desire to testify, and often a great radiance in testimony, give the Outpouring of the Spirit a dimension of personal Pentecost. That is what the apostles lived on the day of Pentecost. Strong in the Spirit, they had the boldness to bear witness to the Living Christ.
For this beautiful ministry of evangelization, we are clothed with the power of the Holy Spirit and furnished with his charisms, from the most dazzling to the simplest, but all important for building the Kingdom and meeting the needs of our time and our milieu. And for the charisms to burst forth, we must recognize the power of the Spirit at work today.
Evangelization in the power of the Spirit is done through the proclamation of the Word and through the signs and wonders that accompany the preaching. (Rom 15, 18-19) Our communities of faith must not fall apart because the members no longer strive to let the spiritual gifts, the charisms, burst forth. In a group of the Charismatic Renewal, the members must pray constantly that the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit be developed and manifested in their life and in the life of the persons evangelized by the group.
The charisms of tongues, prophecy, healing, exhortation, teaching, organization, welcome, service... must be exercised in such a way as to be seen and heard! That is the witness of the work of the Holy Spirit today!
A community that remains closed in on itself, incapable of opening itself to the needs of the milieu, cannot grow and flourish; sooner or later, it will die! The experience of Pentecost carries within itself a missionary grace. We must be inventive, under the Breath of the Holy Spirit, to discover new forms of evangelization, however simple they may be, in response to recognized or expressed needs. "A prayer assembly centred on praise, with a good ministry of the charisms, a good preaching of the Word of God and a prayer of intercession remains the most effective means of evangelization," Sister Nancy Kellar tells us.
Speaking of evangelization, Charles Whitehead said: "We hear a great deal today about evangelization exercised 'with power,' but perhaps we must insist on a powerful evangelization manifested in weakness." Is it not to this form of evangelization that the simple and the little, filled with the Holy Spirit, are called?
The Charismatic Renewal has a prophetic mission. If we remain faithful to this triple grace with which we have been invested: - the grace of Pentecost, - the grace of holiness, - the grace of evangelization, we will be prophetic!
Pope Francis and Raniero Cantalamessa
https://youtu.be/kPj-6Ixqb0U
May the Spirit of the Risen Jesus lead us on the path of holiness so that we may carry high and alive the flame of Pentecost. May that flame continue to set ablaze the hearts of a great number of women and men of our time, as it has set us ablaze and transformed us, and bring them to Christ, the only Lord and Savior of our lives!
Monique Anctil, r.s.r.
Diocese of Rimouski
April 15, 2002