Commenting on the last issue of Goodnews, someone said although he had enjoyed it, he felt that it hadn't been very charismatic. Taking another look at it, I realised what he meant. There hadn't been any specific teaching articles on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But I also realised that almost every article had evidence of the working of the Holy Spirit in people's lives. When signs of the biblical charisms suddenly started manifesting themselves in the Catholic Church over 30 years ago, it was all very new and troubling and people needed a lot of teaching about them in order to be convinced that they were kosher. Today, although we must not forget people for whom all this is still new, we perhaps need less teaching about the charisms as encouragement and reminders to put them into practice in our everyday lives, because they are not so much "taught" as "caught."

Charles Whitehead shares how God can guide through the extraordinary as well as the normal and gives some examples of the powerful prophetic words he has been given by various people over the years, and how these came to fulfilment and affected his life, his job and his ministry.

Bishop lan Murray underlines this growing normality of the charisms in his article on the call of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, commenting that if the astonishing "signs are less obvious today, it is not because the giftedness has disappeared but rather it has become accepted as normality". No-one more than Mary, the mother of Jesus, epitomised a life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit as an everyday reality. Patti Gallagher Mansfield reminds us in her article of Mary's importance as a role model and teacher in the Christian life.

Almost 15 years ago I read a wonderful book called "On the Anvil", which I still remember today for some of the insights it gave me. I convinced its author. Canon Robert Warren, who has been at the forefront of evangelisation in the Anglican Church for over three decades to share one the main insights he wrote about in this. In his piece on the Art of Holy Decision Making, he explains how we need a balance between the intuitive, the rational and the spiritual when we make our decisions.

Fr Raniero Cantalamessa OFM Cap, the papal preacher, continues this theme of discernment in the latest article in his series on the Call to Holiness, where he examines the role of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in obeying God's call in one's life. The Holy Spirit doesn't just speak through inspired words but also through people's human experiences. Ram Gidoomal shares how it was seeing the poverty and suffering of the people in a Bombay slum that led him to abandon his successful business career and become involved in politics and social issues and, ultimately this June, to stand in the London mayoral elections as a candidate for the Christian Peoples Alliance.

Our Christian faith is something that should affect every area of our life and American journalist, David Morrison, shares how when he became a Catholic, he gradually turned away from a gay lifestyle to embrace a life of chastity, as he realised this would bring him closer to God.

Marcellino d'Ambrosio in his final article on Dei Verbum, the Vatican II document on the Word of God, concludes his teaching by stressing that the main goal of Scripture reading and study is simply to deepen one's relationship with God. He shares how as a 16 year old it was a gospel reading at Mass one Sunday about leaving everything behind to follow Jesus that made him realise how radical Christ was and that he was worth giving one's life to.

Dennis Wrigley, the prophetic founder, of Marantha, an ecumenical network of Christians devoted to healing, evangelisation and renewal, shares what he feels the Spirit is saying to the body of Christ at this time. He stresses the importance of silence and listening and then concrete action, and calls on Christians to stand up for their faith as the Christian fabric of the society disintegrates. He also believes that Christians from other countries have an important role in helping re-evangelise Britain.

One of the answers to the way forward is surely Christian small groups where people can support each other in their faith journeys and lifestyle choices. Fr Michael Hurley, a parish priest in Ireland, shares his experiences of running cell groups and how they helped people grow in faith. Fr Chris Thomas, from the Emmaus Family of Prayer, tells how his community have developed in their call, first discerned by Archbishop Warlock, of helping lay Catholics be formed spiritually.

It is interesting how the Holy Spirit has been leading the work of Crew Trust in recent years too and how Catholic Evangelisation Services at London Colney seem to have been led more and more to becoming a video production house, producing evangelistic and catechetical material for the Church as a whole, to help people in parishes experience the life transforming work of the Holy Spirit. This was highlighted recently when the team was commissioned by the archdiocese of Birmingham to produce a baptismal preparation course now available nationally and internationally. Also just out in time for Pentecost is the new evangelistic course "This Promise is for You." Details of both courses are available on the noticeboard page.

Kristina Cooper