A year ago, on the initiative of Pope Francis, CHARIS, the international service for Catholic charismatic renewal, was created. CHARIS marks, according to Pope Francis, a new stage for the whole charismatic family placed under the sign of communion within it and of the manifestation of the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit for the good of the whole Church. In the Church, the Presence of the Holy Spirit makes everyone equal, “because each and everyone is born of the same Spirit; big and small, rich in years and newborns, committed at the universal or rather local level, form the whole, which is superior to the part. (Pope Francis, June 8, 2019).
Inspired by the intuition of Cardinal Léon Joseph Suenens, Pope Francis defined the Charismatic Renewal as a « current of grace », « called to warm the whole Church so that all the baptized may be renewed in the Holy Spirit » ( Cardinal Farrel). This current of grace promotes spiritual life and the proclamation of the Gospel, the ecumenical dimension, service to the poor and social action, with baptism in the Holy Spirit and praise to God at its heart;
« If the Holy Father has repeatedly asked the members of the Renewal – and especially CHARIS – to spread baptism in the Holy Spirit throughout the Church, it is precisely because he is convinced that baptism in the Holy Spirit is a grace that every baptized person can live and should live. It is a personal experience of Pentecost, an irruption of the Holy Spirit in the life of the baptized which is accompanied by an experience of conversion and an encounter with the living Jesus. All of this should be part of the normal life of every baptized person, called to holiness,” said Cardinal Farrell last January in his address to the Brazilian bishops in Recife.
Praising is the movement of the heart turned towards God, but this does not come naturally in difficult times. In his message for Pentecost 2020, CHARIS ecclesiastical assistant, Fr. Raneiro Cantalamessa emphasizes that we do not “praise God for the evil that brings all humanity to its knees; we praise him because we are sure that he will know how to draw good even from this evil, for us and for the world. We see God in Jesus on the Cross. Father Raneiro also tries to identify the benefits already received in this situation: to thwart the illusion that one saves oneself by oneself, the feeling of solidarity between humans, the awakening of religious feeling and the need for prayer. “The extraordinary attention to the gestures and words of Pope Francis, including outside the Catholic world, is a sign of this”. The pope said on Good Friday: “we want to respond to the virus pandemic with the universality of prayer, compassion, tenderness.”
By Francois Prouteau
NB /
You can participate in the Pentecost Vigil on Saturday, May 30 at 10:00 p.m. (Rome time – UTC+1) hosted by CHARIS online
From now on, subscribe to the CHARIS Youtube channel which will broadcast the event: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCMdhi9sRVPgjhHfV9H98GA.
You will be kept informed on the CHARIS site of the concrete means that will be used: http://www.charis.international/
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