The
Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishop's Pastoral Letter
The Charismatic Renewal in Canada 2003
On the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the
Charismatic Renewal in Canada, we, the Canadian Conference of Catholic
Bishops, wish to address this pastoral letter to all the faithful. With
deep gratitude and a renewed sense of hope in our hearts, we invite
everyone to join us in celebrating the many blessings and gifts that the
Charismatic Renewal has brought to the life of our Church in Canada
during these past 35 years. We also wish to take this opportunity to
highlight some of the new challenges that the Charismatic Renewal faces
at a time when the Church seeks to “launch out into the deep” of a new
millennium.
Before
taking leave of his disciples, Jesus reassured them with these words:
“And the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my
name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said
to you” (Jn 14:26). He renewed their hope by promising them that he
would not leave them orphaned, that his Spirit would come upon them, and
that he would continue to be with them. If we needed a tangible sign
that the risen Lord has kept his promise in this regard, the presence of
the Charismatic Renewal in our Canadian Catholic Church is certainly one
such telling sign.
From its spontaneous emergence in Canada in
1968, from coast to coast and in places far removed from one another,
the Charismatic Renewal quickly resulted in a great upsurge of spiritual
vitality and renewal. Prayer groups sprang up in virtually every diocese
across the nation and very soon service teams and diocesan committees
were set up to unite and assist these. In the French sector, as early as
1974-75, the ACFRCC (Assemblée canadienne francophone du Renouveau
charismatique catholique) came into being, becoming ten years later the
ADDRC (Association des délégués diocésains du Renouveau charismatique).
Soon thereafter, in order to unite and assist the Charismatic Renewal
leadership at the national level, the CCRSC (Canadian Charismatic
Renewal Services of Canada) was established for the English sector, and
for the French sector, the CCRC (Conseil canadien du Renouveau
charismatique). Each sector has its official magazine: The Bread of
Life and Selon Sa Parole. Today over 1 million Catholic
Canadians have been touched or in some way influenced by the Charismatic
Renewal in Canada. There are some 862 prayer groups in roughly 16% of
all Catholic parishes in the country.
What is particularly remarkable about the
history and rapid growth of the Charismatic Renewal is the way it sprang
up quite spontaneously and organically from the grassroots level of the
faithful to become very quickly a nation-wide spiritual phenomenon in
the Catholic Church of Canada. This is all the more remarkable since the
Charismatic Renewal does not owe its origin to some inspired founder or
charismatic figure. It has no membership lists and is not unduly bound
by internal structures or rules. The Charismatic Renewal is a highly
diverse collection of individuals, prayer groups, communities, and
activities. Yet all share and espouse the same goals, namely, to foster
a personal and continuous conversion to Jesus Christ, receptivity to the
presence, power and gifts of the Holy Spirit, a deep love for the Church
and its work of evangelization, a strong fellowship, and a joyful zeal
for the Gospel. One can say that the Charismatic Renewal has been and
continues to be the sovereign work of God, realized through the Holy
Spirit. It touches the lives of men and women in every walk of life,
renews their faith, and enkindles in them a joyful love and zeal to
serve God and his People. These lay faithful, priests and religious have
allowed themselves to be surprised by God, surprised at the experience
of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in their
lives.
It is most fitting, therefore, that as
we review the 35-year history of the Charismatic Renewal, we lift up our
hearts and give thanks for the many spiritual gifts and blessings it has
brought to the life of the Catholic Church in Canada. We invite all the
faithful to join us as we make these words of Pope John Paul II our very
own:
How can we not give thanks for the
precious spiritual fruits that the Renewal has produced in the life of
the Church and in the lives of so many people? How many lay faithful –
men and women, young people, adults and the elderly – have been able to
experience in their own lives the amazing power of the Spirit and his
gifts! How many people have rediscovered faith, the joy of prayer, the
power and beauty of the Word of God, translating all this into generous
service in the Church’s mission! How many lives have been profoundly
changed![1]
Spiritual fruits of the Charismatic
Renewal
In order to better celebrate the blessings which the Charismatic Renewal
has bestowed – and indeed continues to bestow – upon the Church of
Canada, we wish to highlight and name here some of its more notable
spiritual benefits.
(1)Experience
What perhaps best explains the enthusiasm of participants in the
Charismatic Renewal is that it stems from a deep personal religious
experience. The Charismatic Renewal is not a teaching or a program as
such, but first and foremost a personal experience or ‘close encounter’
with God’s Spirit. For example, there is a big difference between
“experiencing” a region or country by traveling there oneself instead of
simply reading about it in a travelogue. The former has a much deeper
and more lasting impact on the individual. So too when a Christian has
the personal experience of having been ‘touched’ or ‘overtaken’ by God’s
Spirit. With varying degrees of intensity, it often marks a change in
the person’s whole outlook and being. There is henceforth in that person
an overriding sense that God’s Spirit is really alive,
powerful and trustworthy – even in today’s secular world.
In this respect, the Charismatic Renewal serves the Church well by
eliciting from every member a personal discernment of the workings of
the Holy Spirit and a “real assent” to the Spirit’s presence in their
lives and in the Church. It is of course true, however, that such a
personal experience of the Spirit is not reserved to just a select few
members of God’s family. It can and does occur constantly in the life of
every Christian who is alive to his or her baptismal vocation. This
experience is always bound up with the witness of the Apostles and the
living faith of the Church down through the
centuries.
In the classical theology of the Church, the Holy Spirit is the love
shared between the Father and the Son, or in St. Bernard’s beautiful
image, the kiss or embrace of the Father and the Son. St. Thomas Aquinas
speaks of the third person of the Trinity as the breathing back and
forth of the Father and the Son, the pulse and living heartbeat of God.
The Father and the Son go out of themselves in a sort of mutual ecstasy
and that ecstasy is the Spirit. This is not just an abstraction. It is
at the very heart of the Christian life. This is what the Charismatic
Renewal has experienced, and lest we forget, this is what it seeks to
make us all aware of, namely, that the risen Lord wants us to share in
God’s inner life and love, that he wants us to experience his own
Spirit, his own divine Ecstasy.
(2)Prayer
If there is one thing that characterizes the
Charismatic Renewal, it is the high premium that it places on prayer,
especially that of praise and thanksgiving. It has resolutely taken unto
itself St. Paul’s exhortation: “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In
all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in
Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit” (1 Thes 5:16-19). The main
purpose of prayer and prayer groups is to give glory to God our Father
through our Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. A typical
prayer meeting generally consists in songs of praise and spontaneous
prayers addressed to the Father, the Son, or to the Spirit. It is
punctuated with scripture readings, periods of silence, sharing, and
prayers for healing, often ending with personal testimonies and
thanksgiving. These prayer meetings take their inspiration from St.
Paul’s advice: “When you assemble, one has a psalm, another an
instruction, a revelation, a tongue, or interpretation. Let all things
be done for building up” (1 Cor 14:26). Or again, as when St. Paul
invites Christians to “be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another
in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and praying to the Lord
in your hearts, giving thanks always and for everything in the name of
our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father” (Eph 5: 18-20). This insistence
on prayer, both personal and communal, is very much in keeping with Pope
John Paul’s own exhortation. In his apostolic letter Novo Millennium
Ineunte, he speaks of prayer as “the very substance and soul
of the Christian life,” which, he says, is “wrought in us by the Holy
Spirit” (n.32). It is almost as though the Pope was thinking of the
Charismatic Renewal when he urged all Christian communities to become
“genuine ‘schools’ of prayer”(n. 33) – for indeed that is
basically what the Charismatic Renewal is all about.
(3)New
Evangelization
Pope John Paul II first called for a “new
evangelization” in 1983, an evangelization that would be “new in ardor,
methods, and expression.” The heart and wellspring of this new
evangelization are to be found in the “inscrutable riches” (Eph 3:8) of
Christ and the need to proclaim God’s saving love as shown forth in
Jesus Christ. Evangelization begins with a deep conversion to the person
of Christ. It is the continuation of the ministry of Jesus, through the
Church, in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Charismatic Renewal has
made a great contribution in this area as well. It has always understood
personal conversion as the goal of evangelization, that is, a complete
surrender to the person of Jesus Christ, a surrender that in turn
releases the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what gives the
Charismatic Renewal its ardent desire to be baptized in the Spirit. It
seeks to experience the fullest possible release of the Holy Spirit and
be confirmed in the “new life” that results from this release. The
expression “baptized in the Spirit” denotes an experience with God that
produces several things in the subject: a new or greater desire for
prayer, a substantial increase in the hunger to better understand
Scripture, a keener awareness of God’s Spirit, and a personal desire to
foster the Church’s mission of evangelization.
This is not something ‘new’ in the Church:
the Holy Spirit has always been active in the Church, and the New
Testament presents this as being quite normal for every Christian. What
is new and what the Charismatic Renewal brings to the Church today is a
renewed and lively awareness of the active presence and workings of the
Spirit. This remains the heart and central focus of the Renewal’s
spirituality. The Charismatic Renewal therefore does not regard itself
as a movement ‘set apart’ from the Church. To the contrary, it sees
itself as a spontaneous ecclesial consequence of what happens when the
fullness of Christian initiation is embraced and taken seriously. This
is why Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II have both insisted that the
Charismatic Renewal is a grace within and for the whole
Church.
(4)Gratuitous
Service to Others
The Charismatic Renewal would constantly remind us that charisms are
first and foremost gifts from God and “are exceedingly suitable and
useful for the needs of the Church.”[2] These
gifts are given to individuals primarily for the benefit of
others. Members of the Charismatic Renewal have always been very
mindful of this servant quality that flows from the bestowal of God’s
gifts. In this, they heed the words of St. Peter: “Like good stewards of
the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of
you has received” (I Pet 4: 10). This of course is not to say that only
those in the Charismatic Renewal receive such gifts; on the contrary,
every Christian is so gifted through the sacrament of baptism and
confirmation: “Each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind
and another having another” (I Cor 7:7). Yet the Charismatic Renewal has
certainly been a good and faithful steward in preventing us from
neglecting the importance of God’s gracious gifts to his pilgrim Church.
Members of the Renewal are not only quick to recognize the gifts of
others, but they are ever ready to share and serve others with whatever
gifts from God they themselves have received.
The Charismatic Renewal thus renders an
invaluable service to the Church in what may be called its “memorial
function”: it obliges us all to remember and keep constantly in mind
something we know through divine revelation, but in practice often tend
to forget, namely, the grace-given character of our Christian existence.
In this ‘memorial’ capacity, the Charismatic Renewal serves as a living
sign to all the faithful that the Holy Spirit both surrounds and
inhabits the family of God. It serves as a powerful reminder that we
must all assume an attitude of openness and grateful availability for
every gift that the Spirit wishes to pour into our hearts. Such gifts
are ultimately bestowed for the building up and edification
of the ecclesial community.
(5)Healing
Another salient feature of the Charismatic
Renewal is its healing ministry. Very early on, the Renewal recognized
that healing was an integral part of Jesus’ ministry and that he
empowered his followers to heal as well. Faith seems to have been a
crucial element in at least some of Jesus’ healings, as when he uses the
phrase: “Your faith has made you whole” (Mk 10:52). On other occasions,
by contrast, disbelief and a lack of faith on the part of his listeners
sometimes prevented healing from occurring (Mk
6:5-6).
The Charismatic Renewal sees healing as one
of the powers of the Holy Spirit and so embraced this ministry as an
integral part of its mission. It also recognized that with human beings,
there are different types of sickness: sickness of the body caused by
physical disease or accidents; psychic illnesses caused by psychological
traumas of the past; sickness of the soul caused by personal sin and the
forces of evil. Jesus also recognized these various needs for healing:
(a) at the basic physical level as when he cured the blind, the lame,
the paralyzed; (b) the recovery of a lost human dignity, as when Jesus
forgave the adulteress or honored Zacchaeus; and (c) at the level of
morality and the liberation of life’s potential, as when he cast out
demons, or taught us how to live the beatitudes and love our
neighbour.
In other words, the Charismatic Renewal does
not consider healing merely from physical illness, but from every
obstacle or hindrance that prevents one from surrendering completely to
God. Like Jesus himself, the Charismatic Renewal understands its healing
ministry primarily as a way of removing obstacles to one’s awareness of
God’s presence, a means of eliciting a more genuine response to God’s
love. In this sense, healing is not seen as an end in itself, but a
means of giving glory to the Father in the name of Jesus Christ, through
the healing power of the Spirit.
In their earlier pastoral message on sickness and healing,
New Hope in Christ – which bears re-reading – the Canadian
Conference of Catholic Bishops recognized the powerful concern in the
Bible for healing the whole person and all persons, a ministry that the
Church has always been faithful to throughout its history. The pastoral
letter also recognized that with Jesus, “healing of mind and body
becomes the clear sign that the Kingdom of God is already present.”[3]
For these and many other precious gifts that
the Charismatic Renewal has bestowed on the Church of Canada during the
past thirty-five years, we give thanks and praise the Lord, from whom
all good things are given to us through the Holy
Spirit.
New Millennium and New
Challenges
With his apostolic letter Novo Millennium
Ineunte, Pope John Paul II has charted a veritable ‘navigational’
course for the Church as it sets out on a new millennium. With that
letter, he effectively turned the eyes of the People of God toward the
future in anticipation of the challenges that await us. In a similar
forward-looking spirit, we now turn our attention to some of the
challenges facing the Charismatic Renewal that we foresee in the years
ahead.
(1) The
question of healing services
While recognizing that
healing has become an integral part of the life and ministry of the
Charismatic Renewal, and that over the years many individuals have
benefited from the healing power of the Spirit, we should bear in mind
that the healing gifts of the Church are not restricted to charismatic
healings. The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, in its 1983
pastoral message, New Hope in Christ, spoke of a diversity of
available healing ministries in the
Church:
Some people bring wholeness through carrying
their own suffering. Others, building on nature, have brought their
medical skills under the aegis of Christ. Still others have received the
rare gift of charismatic healing. All of these gifts are celebrated and
summed up, as it were, in the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick
where the Church’s ministry of healing is joined with its ministry of
reconciliation.[4]
The rich potential of these various forms of
healing ministry in the Church should be promoted and celebrated, to the
exclusion of none.
A healing prayer service must not be
introduced or take place within the existing Eucharistic
celebration. The Eucharist has its own ritual structure that must be
respected. A healing prayer service, however, could conceivably be held
before or after Mass for those who desired or needed such a healing
prayer service. Healing always entails a social dimension, as do all
forms of reconciliation. Indeed it would be wonderful if prayers for
healing and reconciliation were to become a normal everyday occurrence,
especially in our Christian families. Prayer for healing is the
birthright of every baptized Christian and is not restricted to ordained
ministers. When an anointing takes place in a charismatic healing
service, it is important to make perfectly clear to the faithful that
this is not a sacramental anointing. Hence when oil is used in the
non-sacramental anointing of a healing prayer service, care must be
taken to clearly differentiate it from the Sacrament of the Anointing of
the Sick.
(2)
Support and involvement of priests
The members and leaders of the
Charismatic Renewal have frequently expressed the desire and need for
greater support and involvement of priests in the Renewal. This desire
is expressed in terms of the Renewal’s increasing need for spiritual
direction and guidance. So much has changed since the beginning of the
Charismatic Renewal in Canada that at this stage of its maturation,
members often feel bereft of the help and support they would need in our
rapidly changing world. There can be no doubt that spiritual direction
is in great demand today in every sector of life. It is no longer
viewed, like it perhaps was in the past, as a spiritual luxury available
to only a few religious men and women. Spiritual direction is regarded
today as an essential component of the life of faith by an
ever-increasing number of lay faithful. It is something they need and
are demanding with greater frequency – and rightly so! In addition, many
express the need for guidance when faced with issues such as the New Age
movement, the esoteric, the occult, and other spiritualistic trends that
are present in today’s society.
On the other hand, with the growing shortage of
priests in many dioceses, the number of pastoral demands now being
placed on priests has increased considerably. Nor can one expect a
priest today to be an expert in dealing with every problematic issue
that arises in today’s society – much less have all the answers to
these. While there is generally much ‘good will’ and ‘mutual sympathy’
on the part of both the Charismatic Renewal and priests generally, the
need for closer collaboration remains. Ways must be found to meet this
challenge, something that most certainly requires on everyone’s part an
even “greater creativity of charity,” as called for by Pope John
Paul II.[5]
We therefore urge all priests and seminarians to study and make
every effort to become ever more proficient in the art of spiritual
direction. Faith is an arduous journey in the best of times, but today
more than ever the lay faithful require competent guides and mentors in
the ways of the Spirit. Today’s spiritual director must pay close
attention to God’s presence in the life of the directee and assist that
person in integrating prayer and life, contemplation and action, faith
and justice. Is this growing hunger for spiritual direction not one of
the new “signs of the times”? Could it be a providential sign that we
are being invited to re-think our ministerial priorities? We feel that
herein lies a fresh opportunity to accompany and journey with those
faithful who are searching, to help them discover the deepest treasure
of their hearts, namely, the beauty and depths of the grace already
given to them at baptism.
(3) The
question of leadership
As the Charismatic Renewal prepares to
“launch out into the deep” of a new millennium, it does well to
re-examine the manner in which its leaders come to assume and discharge
their duties. Many have observed that after thirty-five years, the
Charismatic Renewal in Canada has lost some of its original vitality,
that commitment to the Renewal has diminished, and that some leaders at
the local prayer group level are getting tired after years of leading
these groups. Might the prolonged burden of leadership at the local
level not be one reason why the Renewal has lost some of its initial
vitality, dynamism and capacity to attract the younger members of the
ecclesial community?
To be sure, good leadership and governance
are also among the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In his letter to the Romans
(12:6-8), St. Paul reminds us that the office of leader is a vocation, a
gift from the Holy Spirit. However, such a gift requires on-going
formation in the skills of effective leadership. God works with
nature and not counter to nature, as the age-old scholastic
saying goes, which means that we are to cooperate with God’s gifts with
all the human know-how and skills available to us. Thus a periodic
review and evaluation of just how – and how well! – leadership in the
Charismatic Renewal is actually assumed, maintained, exercised, and
eventually passed on to a younger generation is of critical importance.
Without such a continued re-assessment of its leadership, a movement can
lose its initial vitality, élan, and contagious appeal. Such an honest
review would re-examine the criteria by which leaders are chosen, the
manner in which they exercise this responsibility, the extent to which
they are afforded opportunity for on-going formation, the time-frame of
their tenure in office, and the procedure or mechanism by which a smooth
and timely transfer of leadership can take place within the
movement.
A leader is a person whose main concern is
effectiveness, i.e., whether the right things and directions have been
established to encourage people to live up to their full potential. The
leader understands that sustained long-term results cannot be achieved
by ordering people to do things. Leadership involves acting in a manner
in which people willingly follow. This requires the ability to plan,
organize, co-ordinate, and guide. This is especially true today since a
leader must deal with accelerated change, a diversity of cultures, high
expectations on the part of the members, and an ever-continuing
challenge regarding resources, both human and financial. Attention given
to these basic human leadership skills does not jeopardize the gifts and
spontaneous promptings of the Holy Spirit; on the contrary, the
development of these leadership skills can only enhance and complement
the workings of the Spirit.
A good Christian leader is not only a good manager, but
also one who “bears witness” to the Gospel in and through his or her
life. This is especially what gives a leader a compellingly attractive
force. As Pope John Paul II insisted: “United to Christ, the ‘great
prophet’ (Lk 7:16), and in the Spirit made witnesses of the Risen
Christ, the lay faithful…are called to allow the newness and the power
of the gospel to shine out everyday in their family and social life.”[6]
Immersed as they are in
the world, which is their normal working milieu, the lay faithful are
expected to manifest Christ though the witness of their life of faith,
hope and charity. Indeed their ability to bear witness in the world is
all the greater if their lives radiate personal holiness, since
“holiness is the greatest testimony of the dignity conferred on a
disciple of Christ.”
(4) The
question of on-going formation
Not only is the formation of group leaders of
particular importance, but it is becoming increasingly obvious, in our
rapidly changing times, that on-going formation must also be provided
for the rank-and-file membership of every ecclesial movement – indeed
for all the lay faithful. In his apostolic exhortation Christifideles
Laici, Pope John Paul II went to great length to insist that the
formation of the lay faithful be placed among the priorities of every
diocese. “The more we are formed,” he said, “and the more we feel the
need to pursue and deepen our formation, still more will we be formed
and be rendered capable of forming others.” Chapter V of this
apostolic exhortation is entirely devoted to the many interrelated
aspects of what Pope John Paul calls a “totally integrated formation”
of the faithful. The various components of such a formation, he
explains, include the following: spiritual formation,
doctrinal formation, the indispensable need to have a more
exact knowledge of the Church’s social teaching, as well as the
cultivation of human values.
We urge the members of the Charismatic
Renewal and all the faithful to make greater use of the many scriptural
and theological resources that are presently available. In today’s
pluralistic world, where so many conflicting views and opinions hold
sway, the need for on-going formation in theology is obvious. This is
especially true in view of the way people interpret the Bible today.
There are those who interpret Scripture in a fundamentalist, overly
literalist manner, while others interpret Scripture in an overly
subjective manner. To avoid this twin pitfall, a sound theological
formation is necessary. Theology is “faith seeking understanding,” and
therefore it seeks to probe and better understand our faith, to better
express it and thus account for the hope that is in us (Cf. 1 Pet
3:15).
The Theology Commission of the Canadian Conference of
Catholic Bishops has recently created a Web site that offers a rich
resource to assist in this on-going formation: http://theology.cccb.ca/
Here you will find helpful group discussion models, meditations, and
questions on all the major themes of Pope John Paul II’s apostolic
letter Novo Millennium Ineunte. In addition, there are many
theological resources available that can help one achieve a more
“integrated formation.” Special attention should also be given, the Pope
reminds us, to the local culture in which we live and work: “The
formation of Christians will take the greatest account of local human
culture, which contributes to formation itself.”
In this context, culture
is seen as “the common good of every people, the expression of its
dignity, liberty and creativity, and the testimony of its course through
history.”
Conclusion
We repeat here, for the benefit of all Canadian Catholics, the
concluding words of the first message we addressed to you in 1970 on the
Charismatic Renewal:
Remain attentive to the Spirit. He alone
can bring to completion, in ways no human hand can trace in advance, our
common efforts to build tomorrow’s Church.
This pastoral exhortation is just as relevant today as when we
first uttered these words some thirty-three years ago. It might be said
that they take on an even greater urgency today as we launch out,
together, on the uncertain waters of a new
millennium.
Pentecost 2003