The Charisms & the New Evangelisation

The Charisms
and the New Evangelisation

Cardinal Godfried Danneels reflects on the importance of prayer and the action of God in evangelisation. He believes that God has empowered the Church with the charisms it needs to confront the difficulties of evangelising our world today.

Cardinal Danneels The call to a new evangelisation often causes people to ask "Has nothing been done for the gospel up until now then?. All the work done for the Church - often at a high personal cost - isn't this evangelisation? Have we wearied ourselves for nothing over the centuries?" Of course not! And yet, the evangelisation to which we are invited today really is something "new".

What has changed - and in a radical manner - is our western civilisation, the ground in which we must sow. For the first time, perhaps in the history of mankind, we live in a universe where God scarcely seems to have a place. Faith is relegated to the small domain of private life, and many of our contemporaries believe it is possible to live without God. Without doubt, we have never seen until today a society that has become secularised to this point. Formerly the existence of God was part of shared truth: one could thus start from this innate religious sense to proclaim Jesus Christ.

Today the situation is no longer the same and the proclamation of the gospel has to take other paths. It is also very different to proclaim the gospel to people who believe in God without knowing Christ rather than to people who have been Christian but are no longer.

The ground where the good grain of the Word of God is thrown is thus confronted with new obstacles, and yet the germinating force of the seed has not diminished. Today, as yesterday, we live the time of Pentecost. The fire of the Spirit still burns, even if it is sometimes under ashes. Each age has its new Pentecost, as John XXIII said when he announced for the first time the launch of the Vatican II Council. The Pope asked the whole Church to read again the Acts of the Apostles and to return to the Cenacle at Jerusalem, to be fervent in prayer, together with Mary, the Mother of Jesus (Acts 1:14) in order to receive the Spirit.

"Go back to the Upper Room"

Each time that a believing community is paralysed by anguish, disoriented and discouraged, it is important to go back to the "Upper Room", to the Cenacle, this place of intimacy where God is recognised, adored, petitioned and thanked. It is there that the Church finds again her fundamental unanimity, when she gathers in lengthy prayer.
In times when we are tempted to be fired up with our own strategies, to light our own little bonfire, we need to reunite to receive together the unique fire of Pentecost, the Spirit which comes from God. All that the Church undertakes regarding evangelisation is rooted in fervent, patient and persevering prayer. In a prayer that is sufficiently extended, because it is not a question of just praying for a few moments before or after action; it is necessary for us to allow ourselves to be worked on by prayer. It is our whole life which must be bathed in a climate of prayer of adoration, of abandon and of the working of grace.

When the Church of yesterday or today, gathers in the cenacle, Mary is there. She gives humanity, humility, wisdom and balance. This is why her presence is particularly necessary in eras of great evangelisation like our own. The more the times are feverish, the more charisms there are, the more we need this Marian entrustment of the work of evangelisation. The more the world groans at the birth pangs of the kingdom, the more the mother of Jesus must carry the Church like a child.

There are charisms which make no noise. We call these, with St Paul, the fruits of the Spirit. These fruits are given to all, personally and in community. Paul enumerates them in his letter to the Galatians- "Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self control."

There are also particular gifts of the Holy Spirit. Paul talks of these here and there in his letters. They are given to a person but not for him or herself, they are given for the service of the community and of the world. These gifts can vary according to the epochs in history, according to the concrete necessities of evangelisation. That is why they are particularly present at the moment when the Church must
be founded or must root itself in a new culture, whether it be in antiquity or today in missionary countries or in our secularised societies. These particular gifts, some more, some less spectacular, are given to help the Church to blossom.

There are also places which seem more open than others to the Spirit, like Lourdes, Rome or Jerusalem. One of the particular gifts of the Spirit is the gift of government of the Church. This is given to those responsible to order the charisms of their communities and to test their authenticity.

"In times of crisis the Spirit multiplies the gifts"

In times of crisis like today, the Spirit multiplies its gifts. It is not surprising therefore that in our era, greater attention should be given to the charisms in a Catholic milieu. The Church today, more than a couple of hundred years ago, knows communities which are similar to those first communities in the Acts of the Apostles. Certainly discernment is needed in this domain. But the Church, united with her leaders, will always receive the charism of discernment, so important in our days.

There is also the charism of teaching and of studying theology, indispensable in our time where there are so many competing doctrines and scales of values. We have need of the gift of wisdom and balance, where so much unilateral and unbalanced discussion is flourishing; the gift of prophecy which facilitates the discernment of the signs of the times of which people speak so much; the gift of spontaneous praise,
in times of dryness and scepticism; the gift of compassion, of paying attention to others when many men and women suffer so many traumas and wounds; the gift of generous service, in a time when everyone is out for themselves; the gift of enthusiastic catechesis, of the charism of the consolation of the sick, the charism of encouragement, of solidarity with the poor and the oppressed, of the courageous word when the terror of ideologies reigns.

"The more life is harsh the more God grants His gifts"

he more the life of the people of God is harsh, the more God grants his gifts. What would be the particular gifts today which the Lord gives us? Would it not be faith which moves mountains, which brings about miracles and which thus gives weight to the proclamation of the gospel? The history of missionary preaching is full of such miracles, which Jesus already had promised: "These are the signs which will accompany those who have believed. In my name they will cast out demons, they will speak in new tongues, they will take snakes in their hands, and they will drink poison and not be harmed, they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover" Mk 16.17-18

Among these extraordinary gifts which the Spirit is bringing to our Church today, one must mention the new and diverse forms of community life. They are known a little everywhere and in very varied forms. There are also so many spiritual giants which mark our age such as Dom Helder Camara, Roger Schutz, Jean Vanier, Chiara Lubich, Mother Teresa, Joseph Wrezinski, The Abbe Pierre. In them the action of the Spirit is almost tangible and in the communities which they founded there are many religious vocations.

Another extraordinary gift is that of healing, both inner/psychological and even physical. Certain communities also have the gift of healing those who come to them, when they have been hurt by the wounds of a serious failure, or loneliness or illness. It is not even unusual that the physical health of a person improves noticeably through the imposition of hands and common prayer; gestures which come from the Lord himself and the early Church. Such healings through prayer are not new. Since the earliest times, the Church taught that the sacrament of penance, the Eucharist and the sacrament of the sick could bring those who received it healing of soul and body. Even in the eras most sensitive to the rationalist critique, the Church has never sought to remove this corporal dimension of healing from her liturgical prayer.

When the family suffers violence, as it does today, one might expect that God would send men and women, couples, priests and religious who have pastoral charisms adapted to the needs of couples and the family. Could God, after all, abandon families, the cells of life where each one of us receives - where we must receive - life food, and material and spiritual health? This is why the witness of joyful Christian families, who are welcoming, generous and praying and where the presence of God is lived simply and full of energy, is indispensable to the men and women of our time. Let us pray to God to raise up among his people apostles of evangelisation for couples and families. This is the most import charism in the Church at the beginning of this millennium.

And what stops us from being witnesses to the Gospel? There is first of all our often false sense of tolerance. We are so afraid of imposing our convictions on others that we daren't say anything to them. We are too often paralysed by our fear of being rejected. But it is not the most important obstacle to evangelisation, our lack of joy, of hope and of fervour? How can we bring the gospel to the world if we are discouraged ourselves?

The Holy Spirit is at work everywhere in our communities - discreetly or clearly manifest - and already he is allowing us to live the vividness of the Gospel and the joy of the first days of the Church. Let us find again thus in joy the fire of the first Pentecost and the joy of the beginning!

Translated and extracted from a presentation by Cardinal Danneels at Brussels 2006. Reprinted with permission

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