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Renewing the RENEWAL Part 1
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa OFM Cap, the preacher to the papal household and one of the most highly thought of thinkers and theologians of the Charismatic Renewal, last year was invited to share his wisdom and reflections on it at the Newman Consultation of the Isles in Birmingham. Here is part one of the second acclaimed talk he delivered there.
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When I was a boy in Italy, there was a custom on a Sunday morning, when two friends walked home from Mass together that when they reached the house of the first person, the other was invited to come in for something to eat. This was a ritual, and the other person was never expected to accept the invitation! The reply was usually “No, thank you. My wife is waiting for me”. The first person would have been quite upset in fact, if the invitation was accepted and acted on! We invite the Holy Spirit all the time, but sometimes our invitations are formal, and like this example above, not really meant. Most prayers to the Holy Spirit begin with an invitation “Come, Holy Spirit…” “Come O Creator, Spirit blest..”. Most people, however, may not really mean what they say. When we say “Come Holy Spirit, and do what you want” we give free reign to the Holy Spirit because this is a necessary condition. We read about Pentecost morning “Everyone was amazed and perplexed. They asked one another what this could mean. Some, however, laughed it off, and said ‘They have been drinking too much new wine’. Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, and addressed them in a loud voice ‘Men of Judea, and those of you who live in Jerusalem, make no mistake about this, and listen carefully to what I have to say. These men are not drunk as you imagine them to be---it is only the third hour of the day. On the contrary, this is what the prophet(Joel) said about these times ‘In the last days’, the Lord declared, ‘I shall pour out My Spirit on all humanity. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young people shall see visions, your old people shall dream dreams. On men and women shall I pour out My Spirit. I will show portents in the skies, and signs on the earth below.’” (Acts 2: 12-19) “The coming of the Holy Spirit is now a reality” The most important part of this section is what Peter said by way of an introduction to the quote from the prophet Joel. What all the prophets had said about what would happen when the Messiah came is happening right now. It is no longer a prophecy, no longer a promise, but a REALITY. “What you see here is a fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel”. This is a very challenging statement. It denotes a change in direction. “You no longer have to look a long distance into the future, you simply have to look around you”. Let’s look at this prophecy of Joel. It is about visions, signs, prophecies and dreams. We should know this because it is a very basic notion about the Holy Spirit. Throughout the Bible we see two different ways of acting by the Holy Spirit. One way is when the Holy Spirit comes directly into the life and heart of an individual, changing that person completely inside, with a new heart, a clean heart, sanctifying the person. This is the sanctifying action of the Holy Spirit. The prayer of the Psalmist was “Don’t deprive me of Your Holy Spirit”. There was another way of asking for the Holy Spirit, which is older and different, and this is what we call the charismatic action of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit selects special people to whom He gives special gifts, so that they can perform some special task for the community. The Holy Spirit came upon the prophets and they prophesied. He came upon Samson, David, Solomon, etc. so they could carry out their particular mission for the sake of the people. “The Holy Spirit promotes the community” The characteristic of this second role of the Holy Spirit is not meant for the sanctification of the person who receives it, although that is not excluded. The Holy Spirit wants to act in the community, to promote the community. In the New Testament, these two ways of acting by the Holy Spirit become very clear. Chapter 12 of Paul’s First letter to the Corinthians lists all the charisms, while Chapter 13 highlights the supremacy of charity or love. The charisms are for others, while charity is for our sanctification. After Luke detailed the action of the Holy Spirit in the Apostles, he shows them as new men, filled with the Holy Spirit, filled with the love of God, and transformed. Before that moment, they were self-centred, and had argued among themselves about which of them was the greatest. Each of them was concerned with himself. After they were filled with the Holy Spirit they completely forgot about themselves. They were enthusiastic about the glory of God; they spoke about the great gifts of God - and this is why their listeners understood their language. “Pentecost, the reverse of Babel” Pentecost became a reversal of Babel, when the people
were filled with a sense of their own importance, and determined to
build a permanent monument to themselves. The Holy Spirit caused a total
transformation within the Apostles, converting them from being self-centred
to being Christ-centred. To affirm myself, to make a name for myself,
is a very real temptation and so we need a permanent conversion, a permanent
change from self-centredness to Christ-centredness. Thus if we want
to provoke a new work, a new Spring in the Charismatic Renewal, then
we need to ask for that permanent conversion, that permanent change
of heart. “Charisms have never left the Church” After this display of charisms in the early Church, what happened to the charisms afterwards? (Some commentators have wrongly argued that the charisms were only meant to assist the building of the Church in its early stages, and were then withdrawn.). Straightaway, I must stress that the charisms have never been taken away from the Church. That would be impossible. What changed was this: The charisms, little by little, came to be seen as belonging to the saints and the mystics. Soon they were the only ones seen to work miracles, to levitate, to preach with power. No longer were the charisms seen to be operative among all the people. Miracles, visions, and mystical visions of the Trinity became the preserve of Saint John of the Cross and such particularly holy people. The charisms became institutionalised, which meant that, little by little, they were attributed to the Magisterium, the hierarchy, e.g., teaching, preaching, prophecy, etc., were exclusively under the control of the Magisterium. In seminary studies, for example, prophecy was defined as “A special gift given to the Magisterium so that the Magisterium can authentically interpret the Scriptures”. Vatican II put a stop to all of that. Charisms were ‘removed’ from being the preserve of the life of the saints and were held up as something that belongs to the essence, the very existence of the Church. Charisms are being restored and used as a direct response to the Document Lumen Gentium of Vatican II. “The Holy Spirit not only sanctifies people through the sacraments, but also allots to each of God’s people a special charism for the upbuilding of the Church; and these charisms are so precious and so necessary for the renewal of the Church, that they must be welcomed with joy and consolation.”
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