Gift of Healing
http://Charism or distractions?
Prayer of Father Émilien Tardif
Within the healing ministry that the Lord had entrusted to him, Émilien had received the charism of immediate knowledge, that inspired, clear, and sudden perception of what the Spirit is in the act of doing in one or more specific persons, who recognize themselves in it and can thus open themselves to the grace of God. For the word of knowledge makes faith grow in the person who benefits from it, and in the whole assembly. We have all been deeply moved by the charismatic words of Émilien Tardif, and we know on the other hand how much this charism can give rise to criticism, misunderstanding, and skepticism, which carry the great danger of “smothering the action of the Holy Spirit” in a prayer assembly.
But the exercise of the charisms, despite the difficulties it frequently encountered, constituted for Father Tardif a kind of school of simplicity and docility to the Holy Spirit to which he never stopped submitting himself. With his customary sense of humor, he told me that it was his own way of having distractions during prayer…
extract from the review: Feu et Lumières no. 176, article by Phillippe Madre.
References:
1508 The Holy Spirit gives certain people a special charism of healing to manifest the strength of the grace of the Risen One. Even the most intense prayers do not, however, obtain the healing of all illnesses. Thus St. Paul must learn from the Lord that “my grace is enough for you, for my power unfolds in weakness” (2 Co 12, 9), and that the sufferings to be endured may have as their meaning that I complete in my flesh what is lacking to the trials of Christ for his Body, which is the Church (Col 1, 24).
2003 Grace is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us. But grace also includes the gifts the Spirit grants us to associate us with his work, to make us capable of collaborating in the salvation of others and in the growth of the Body of Christ, the Church. These are the sacramental graces, gifts proper to the different sacraments. These are moreover the special graces also called charisms, following the Greek term used by St. Paul, which means favor, gratuitous gift, blessing. Whatever their character, sometimes extraordinary, such as the gift of miracles or of tongues, the charisms are ordered to sanctifying grace, and have as their goal the common good of the Church. They are at the service of the charity that builds up the Church.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1993, Le Service des Éditions.
The Gift of Healing
The gift of healing challenges us at the very center of our Christian existence, where the continuity of our hope and the founding rupture of our faith join together.
https://youtu.be/AHKaC47JxmQ
In the cultural and religious universe that is the one we know, that we live in and are imbued with, it is ill-advised to speak of the gift of healing. Our rationalist mind, our psychological reactions, certain interpretations of Scripture…all of this leads us to look from afar at, or to distrust, everything that the gift of healing can bring with it: fideism, fundamentalism, religious sentimentalism, a sometimes morbid attraction to the extraordinary. This movement of recoil can also be for us a reflex of common sense before the past of the Church, which has not always favored the distinction between faith and the naive credulity that can breed many spiritual and psychological disorders. Yet the facts are there!
Not only do people speak of healing, which is a first fact not to be dismissed, but furthermore there are effectively healings, which is a second fact (not necessarily linked to the first). And finally, a third fact, one finds a very great kinship between the Gospel texts speaking of healings and the present-day testimonies: the same spiritual approach centered on the forgiveness of sins and on faith, the importance of the concrete gesture, the same confession of Jesus the savior, healing remaining a sign for those who believe and a sign of contradiction for those who do not believe. Without wishing to establish, as at Lourdes, a bureau of investigations for healings, all kinds of psychological or physical illnesses have been stopped immediately or gradually by the exercise of this charism.
The psychological healings are the most common; but there are several cases of physical illnesses said to be incurable, where we can only observe that we are at present incapable, given the progress of science, of rationally explaining the healing. The purpose of this article is not to reproduce the numerous testimonies of the sick and of doctors (for that, read the two books of Kathryn Kuhlman and the testimonies of Agnes Sandford), but rather to explain from within the path presupposed by the rediscovery in the Church of the spiritual gifts and of the gift of healing in particular. To approach this gift without too great a risk of distorting interpretations, it must be situated within the broad and diverse current of the Charismatic Renewal.
Charismatic Renewal
For some years the majority of Christian confessions have been crossed by a spiritual current without precedent in history. Christians of all the Churches gather together to pray, rediscovering together the great axes of all Christian life. “Charismatic Renewal”, “Neo-Pentecostalism”, “Renewal in the Spirit”, “Catholic Pentecostalism”…one finds there also the strong points of any true spiritual renewal: rediscovery of the Word, life of Faith, openness to the poor, apostolic impulse, sense of prayer.
On the other hand, other aspects are frankly new and suggest that this is an important stage, definitive say some, in the life of the Church. Among the ancient things of this renewal, there is the rediscovery of the charisms, the spiritual gifts. One must reread the epistles of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles to understand what is happening today: what appears outwardly as the newest in this renewal is in fact what is most ancient! Among the different gifts of the Holy Spirit, Saint Paul points out the gift of healing.
Extract from the review Concilium
(Nov. 1974) pp. 125-126. By Georges
and Laurent Fabre