Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Sweden. Newsletter July 2024

More and more focus on the full life of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual gifts in the Church.

The full life of the Holy Spirit and the graces at work in all the baptized as a prerequisite for building up the church into a living evangelizing community are now often emphasized at all levels of the church. Some examples:

Pope Francis to the Charismatic Renewal: Share the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the whole Church.
At the founding of CHARIS in Rome in 2019, Pope Francis said that he wanted the Charismatic Renewal to contribute to the promotion of the baptism of the Spirit throughout the Church.

Cardinal Anders Arborelius: The Spirit sets us in motion.
Cardinal Anders Arborelius writes in a [column in the Swedish Catholic Magazine]:

"It is the great task of the Holy Spirit to see that we are all moving forward toward fullness, holiness, glory. The Spirit wants to wake us up and shake us up to set us in motion on the path of sanctification. If we think that we are already pious and good enough, it is a sure sign that we have stopped in our spiritual growth and are on a good – or rather bad – path to becoming spiritually prideful....

At the same time, we must be aware that there is a built-in resistance to the movement of the Spirit within us through the original sin that has stuck to us. The evil one is not slow to take advantage of this. It's so easy to get caught up in ourselves and in our own perceptions, believing that we're always right and others are wrong. As a bishop, I sometimes wonder how people can get caught up in petty matters and argue about small things without blinking. The evil one celebrates many triumphs among us Christians, who waste time and energy on nonsense. I am not accusing anyone, but we should be more anxious to listen to the voice of the Spirit than to ourselves.

All spiritual movements are there for the Church to shine in all its beauty as the holy bride of Christ. We are all invited to walk the path of sanctification and allow ourselves to be set in motion by the Spirit, regardless of whether we belong to a particular spiritual movement or not. Through our baptism, we all belong to this holy pilgrimage people that the Spirit pushes forward on the path to full glory and holiness. We must not stand – or comfortably sit in our armchair – and enjoy our own supposed goodness. We must run on and reach for the goal. The Spirit can wake us up, shake us up, and make us understand that we need to step out of the old man and leave our self-centered life behind. Cost what it wants."

Working material for the Synod of Bishops: Acting synodally requires the spiritual graces of all to be put into practice.
In the working material ["Instrumentum laboris"] published for the second part of the Synod of Bishops on Synodality in October, there is also much talk about the life of the Spirit and that the Church needs the diversity of graces of all the baptized to come into its own. Some quotes:

"Every baptised person is called to be a protagonist of mission since we are all missionary disciples" (ITC, no. 53). This renewal is expressed in a Church that, gathered by the Spirit through Word and Sacrament (cf. CD 11), proclaims the salvation it continually experiences to a world hungry for meaning and thirsting for communion and solidarity...  We renew our commitment to this mission today by practising synodality, which is an expression of the Church's nature. Growing as missionary disciples means answering Jesus' call to follow Him, responding to the gift we received when we were baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit...

Synodality is rooted in this dynamic vision of the People of God with a universal vocation to holiness and mission while being on a pilgrimage to the Father in the footsteps of Jesus Christ and animated by the Holy Spirit...

Synodality is not an end in itself. Insofar as it offers the possibility of expressing the nature of the Church and insofar as it allows all the charisms, vocations and ministries in the Church to be valued, it enables the community of those who "look to Jesus in faith" (LG 9) to proclaim the Gospel in the most appropriate way to women and men of every place and time,  and to be a "visible sacrament" (ibid.) of the salvific unity willed by God...

... awareness has grown of the variety of charisms and vocations that the Holy Spirit constantly awakens in the People of God. This gives rise to the desire to grow in the ability to discern them, understand their relationships within the concrete life of each Church and the Church as a whole, and articulate them for the good of mission. This also means reflecting more deeply on the question of participation in relation to communion and mission. At every stage of the process, the desire emerged to broaden the possibilities of participation and the exercise of co-responsibility by all the Baptised, men and women, in the variety of their charisms, vocations and ministries.

Blessed Elena Guerra – Apostle of the Holy Spirit ready for canonization.

Elena Guerra (1835-1914) was an Italian nun who had a strong devotion to the Holy Spirit and wrote a dozen letters to Pope Leo XIII urging him to call upon all Catholics to invoke the Holy Spirit in prayer. John XXIII beatified Elena Guerra in 1959 and before the opening of the Second Vatican Council, he prayed , "Divine Spirit, renew your wonders in our time as in a new Pentecost." Pope Francis has approved a new miraculous healing at her intercession, and she will now be canonized along with several others. Elena wrote:

"Pentecost is not over. In fact, it takes place continuously in every time and in every place, because the Holy Spirit desired to give Himself to all people, and anyone who desires can always receive Him.  We need not, therefore, envy the apostles and the early Christians; we only need to make ourselves ready to receive the Holy Spirit, and He will come to us as He came to them."

Pope Leo heeded Elena's call and he published three documents on the Holy Spirit, including a letter in which he invited the entire Church to pray a novena to the Holy Spirit for Pentecost in 1895 and the encyclical Divinum Illud Munus in 1897.  On New Year's 1901, he prayed for the whole church the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus and inaugurated the 20th century as the century of the Holy Spirit.

More teaching about the Holy Spirit in the church – that is exactly what is needed today. Therefore, this canonization comes just in time.

[Read more about Blessed Elena Guerra and the canonization here]

[Read more about Elena Guerra and the developments during the 20th century that led to the emergence of Charismatic Renewal in the Catholic Church and the significance of renewal for ecumenism]

CHARIS needs your support.

CHARIS depends on your support to spread the baptism of the Holy Spirit throughout the Church, to promote the unity of the body of Christ and to serve the poor. [Link to how to donate here]

The statutes of CHARIS state that "CHARIS is maintained through voluntary donations and financial contributions from the various realities and individuals involved in the Catholic Charismatic renewal throughout the world. Other possible sources of support are surpluses from events, conferences, courses, books and multimedia material, etc."

Feel free to consider making a donation, or why not become a monthly donor. You also support CHARIS by buying books or taking part in the great course and conference offerings that are available digitally, e.g. [CHARIS Formation Program], a high-quality course of two semesters that we encourage all leaders and contact persons within the Charismatic Renewal to complete, or to take part in the entire fine [conference CALLED, TRANSFOMED, LATE] held in the Vatican in the autumn of 2023 with f Raniero Cantalamessa and many well-known international speakers as well as an audience with Pope Francis.

Bengt Malmgren