.
An Ecumenical Pentecost:
The Future of Charismatic Renewal after
the Jubilee
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by Fady Noun
A “current of grace” for the whole church
The Golden Jubilee of the Charismatic Renewal in
the Catholic Church just held in Rome (31 May-4
June 2017) has been described by many as “an
ecumenical Pentecost,” with Pope Francis being
the foremost to insist on the “ecumenical
character” of this renewal from its inception.
Historically, the 1960s saw an extraordinary
convergence of two currents of grace that led to
the charismatic renewal of the Catholic Church –
an extraordinary spiritual heritage that dates
back to the beginning of the 20th century, with
a depth in the church that is both Catholic and
Evangelical. There is Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903),
who on the advice of a nun, Elena Guerra,
consecrated the 20th century to the Holy Spirit.
And there is also a small Protestant evangelical
congregation established in Topeka, Kansas USA.
Sister Elena Guerra is the founder of the
Congregation of the Oblates of the Holy Spirit
in Luca, Italy. At the age of 50, she wrote to
Pope Leo XIII under special inspiration and,
encouraged by her spiritual director, urged Pope
Leo to ardently call on the Holy Spirit for the
renewal of the Catholic Church. Elena Guerra’s
correspondence with the Pope also resulted in a
religious ceremony led by Leo XIII on 1 January
1901, the first day of the first year of the
20th century, in which he invoked the Holy
Spirit and in the name of the whole church sang
the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus (Come Creator
Spirit).
On that same day, another key event took place
at about 11 pm, thousands of miles away in the
town of Topeka, Kansas USA. The Reverend Charles
Fox Parham had set up the Bethel Bible College
and in it a chain of uninterrupted prayer had
been going on to invoke the Holy Spirit. And a
student asked Rev Parham to lay his hands on her
and pray. She was then baptised into the Holy
Spirit and began to pray in tongues. In the days
that followed Rev Parham and others had the same
experience. This event is generally considered
the starting point of Pentecostalism in the
Protestant churches.
Christ, in order to renew his church, he who had
made Peter a fisherman of men, threw his nets
among humble black people and white people in a
nation that was to become the world’s super
power. He did so far from the established
churches of a sleepy Reformation – churches that
ended up persecuting the emerging
“Pentecostalism” and forced it to become a
tradition on its own. Such is the story of this
historical and mystical link that binds the
Catholic Church to the Pentecostal movement, a
link confirmed by subsequent developments.
It is worth noting that Elena Guerra was the
first woman to be beatified by Pope John XXIII,
the pope who also summoned the Second Vatican
Council and asked the church to pray to the Holy
Spirit to renew his wonders “as in a new
Pentecost.” It is thanks to the faithfulness of
the Pentecostal churches through many
persecutions that the buds of a new spring came
to flower in American Catholic academic circles
at the University of Pittsburgh in 1967, two
years after the Vatican Council ended. From
there, a spiritual renewal spread like wildfire
throughout the world, to the point that the
“members” of prayer groups and communities
claiming to be part of the Charismatic Renewal
now numbered 150 million.
It is the very fact that those Catholics who
were baptised in the Holy Spirit refused to
leave the Catholic Church, and that the Catholic
Church took an inclusive approach to this
renewal, which made possible the Charismatic
Renewal as we know it.
In welcoming the “charismatics” in Rome at
Pentecost in 1975, Pope Paul VI said that in
view of its fruits, “How could one not believe
that this renewal is an opportunity for the
whole church?” Thus Paul VI issued a warning to
bishops not to reject the renewal, since bishops
in the early days had mistrusted it. John Paul
II, Benedict XVI and now Francis have confirmed
this prudent and courageous judgement of Paul
VI.
With the Golden Jubilee just held in Rome,
Francis completed the task and officially
accredited the Charismatic Renewal in the
Catholic Church as “a current of grace” for the
whole church and the experience of baptism in
the Spirit as a rule in the life of every
Christian.
Clarification
During a symposium held at the Pontifical
Urbaniana University during the Jubilee in Rome,
four significant authors and theologians of the
charismatic renewal – Raniero Cantalamessa,
Ralph Martin, Peter Hocken and Vinson Synan –
made some informative statements that developed
what Pope Francis had said.
In his warm voice, Fr. Cantalamessa, the
Preacher of the Papal Household, said that the
charismatic renewal is, since Vatican II, “the
most remarkable sign of the awakening of the
Catholic Church to the action of the Holy Spirit
and to its charisms.” He also spoke about the
contribution of the charismatic renewal to the
renewal of theology in the Western Catholic
Church and in the Protestant churches.
Fr. Cantalamessa, quoting St. Augustine – and
Nietzsche as a counterpoint – as well as
Protestant theologian Karl Barth and Saint Basil
of Caesarea, spoke of a “theology of the third
article” of the Creed (I believe in the Holy
Spirit) – a theology that has renewed the
spirituality of the Western church by “restoring
to the doctrine of salvation its positive
content, namely the constant and inward presence
(indwelling) of the Holy Spirit and the new life
in Christ” in contrast to the negative,
repressive and guilty content.
This is why, Fr. Cantalamessa insisted, the
“charismatic renewal” must not be reduced to a
pious devotion or belonging to a group or
movement, but must be understood as “personal
openness to the Holy Spirit” or as a “current of
grace flowing in different forms” throughout the
church.
Fr Peter Hocken and Vinson Synan both insisted
on the “radical equality” of all those who
receive the baptism in the Spirit. Fr. Hocken
also spoke of a “charismatic ecumenism” that
brings together all those who have experienced
baptism in the Spirit, as opposed to the
theological ecumenism in the institutional
church.
For his part, Ralph Martin shed new light on the
sacrament of confirmation, considering that the
experience of the inward presence (infilling) of
the Spirit can be regularly renewed, that it is
not “given once and for all times.” For him,
there will be no “new evangelisation” without “a
new Pentecost.”
What is happening in various forms in the
Catholic Church is good. In it, the “baptism in
the Spirit” is spread by a thousand ways through
the body of the institutional church, well
beyond the visible boundaries of charismatic
groups, communities or fraternities with their
more permanent or less permanent structures.
The future of charismatic
renewal, a prophetic breath
What is the future of the charismatic renewal in
the Catholic Church? Speaking on 1st June in St
John Lateran Basilica on behalf of Christian
Renewal communities, Bruce Yocum, who was there
at the beginning of the Renewal among the
thousands of students at the University of
Michigan, began by telling the crowded basilica
that the Psalms are entrusted with “the task of
sacred memory”, that of remembrance and the
“repetition of all the wonders of God” from
“generation to generation.” Afterwards, he
thanked Patti Mansfield Gallagher for the
fervour and fidelity with which she described in
her book As by a new Pentecost the famous
“weekend in Duquesne” in 1967, when the
charismatic renewal in the Catholic Church was
born.
Witness to the sudden process with which
charismatic renewal went beyond the geographical
and ecclesial (denominational) boundaries
towards a basic ecumenism, Bruce Yocum also gave
thanks for “the hundreds of currents”
(neocatechumenals, focolarini, Sant’Egidio,
Communion and Liberation, Cursillo, etc.] that
the Holy Spirit brought forth within the
Catholic Church in the 20th century, along with
the charismatic renewal. Looking into the
future, Bruce suggested that this renewal
appears to be the early stages of an
unprecedented evangelisation in the context of
the world’s deep spiritual darkness.
Ralph Martin and then Bruce Yocum had announced
this ambiguous “time” on Pentecost Monday in
1975 at the height of Pope Paul VI’s
pontificate. That year, he welcomed the
“expanding” charismatic renewal to the Vatican,
including some 10,000 of its members – a
multiform but still united current of grace that
had come to Rome. On that Pentecost Monday, the
Pope had celebrated a special Mass for the
“Renewal.” After he had left the altar, there
was a problem with the other microphones during
the time for prophetic utterance, and only one
was working, the one at the high altar, that had
been used by the pontiff.
Moved by a sense of prophetic urgency, first
Ralph Martin and then Bruce Yocum took to that
microphone to speak the prophetic words in St
Peter’s. “Because I love you,” said Ralph
Martin’s prophecy, “I want to show you what I am
doing in the world today. I want to prepare you
for what is to come. Days of darkness are coming
on the world, days of tribulation….Buildings
that are now standing will not be standing….A
time of darkness is coming on the world, but a
time of glory is coming for my church….I will
prepare you for a time of evangelism that the
world has never seen….And when you have nothing
but me, you will have everything….Be ready.”
The year 1975 was already at some distance from
the prayer with which John XXIII opened the
Council (1962), the first gust of wind into the
sails of Peter’s boat moving it away from the
rocks of the Sea of Tiberias and making it
regain the deep waters where a new miraculous
catch was awaiting. Pope John XXIII, who had
called the Second Vatican Council had prayed,
“Renew your wonders, as by a new Pentecost,” not
knowing what the future of the Catholic Church
would be like. But we know a bit better today.
The oil of renewal is conquering the Catholic
world, in parallel with the devastation of
secularism that is gradually emptying the
churches of Europe and causing a new, massive
exodus of Christians from the East that was
Christ’s birthplace.
An Orient emptied of its
Christians
The echo of the prophecies had not yet stopped
resonating amongst the marble and colonnades of
St Peter’s when some buildings began to crumble
in Lebanon. Without going too far into the
analysis of the pros and cons of what happened,
it is clear that the war that broke out in
Lebanon on 13 April 1975 was the turning point
in a spiral of violence that during the next 40
years would empty the Middle East of much of its
Christian population – something that is still
ongoing.
Along with other religious minorities,
Christians were among the first victims of the
mortal rivalry that broke out in the 1970s and
1980s between two Islams: the militant Islam of
the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and a Salafist
revival that aimed at conquering the world – a
rivalry that has its effects, from mosques in
Europe to the Nineveh plain in Iraq.
Speaking privately about the “darkness”
announced in 1975, Bruce Yocum answered with
surprising depth. For him, the word darkness is
to be understood above all in a spiritual sense,
and the darkness that has appeared, he said, is
not comparable with the one that is yet to come.
Author of a reference work on the conditions and
the exercise of the charism of prophecy in
charismatic renewal, Bruce Yocum said in
essence: “Listening to Ralph Martin [in St.
Peter’s], the faithful were astonished. We
looked at each other, and then looked around us,
thinking first of all about Saint Peter’s. The
war in Lebanon broke out soon after. The twin
towers came later (2001).”
“In my view, the prophecy of 1975 has not yet
been fully realised. I think the difficult times
we talk about are more of a spiritual nature. In
fact, in the draft of a book I’m writing, I make
a clear distinction between prophecy and
prediction. This is a general principle.
Prophecy does not tell you what’s going to
happen. It points to it; it indicates a
direction. Only when it is fulfilled can we say:
Ah, that’s what it was all about! The best
examples are the Old Testament prophecies. The
most important prophecies of the time pointed to
Christ and the New Covenant. But no one could
have predicted the Incarnation.”
What matters in these prophecies, Bruce Yocum
said, is that the foretold “darkness” is also
associated with a time of “unprecedented
evangelisation”. Lebanon’s experience is
prophetic in this sense, because the charismatic
renewal and its various outreaches in Lebanon
and the Arab world have flourished even in times
of war. “Of course, those were dark times,
everything was hard, but at the bottom of all
this,” he added, “something very positive
happened at the spiritual level.”
An appeal to the faithful
In conclusion, what can we say? The future of
the charismatic renewal is the same as that of
the whole church and the world. For a believer,
the celebrations in the Circus Maximus could
simply be a “Christian Woodstock.” But the
future of humanity is at stake as well, namely
the “final battle” of the Lord against “the
spirit of darkness in action in the world.” To
win this battle, unity is indispensable, as the
network of communities that came to Rome to the
jubilee seem to have understood.
Bruce Yocum’s final advice is simple: keep an
open mind and stay true to your calling. Do not
be surprised at the abundance of movements and
say that we are only part of a larger whole.
Finally, be open to the charisms and live your
life in the Holy Spirit, always remembering that
the Lord’s faithfulness is “forever and forever”
and that “it is renewed every morning.”
_____
Fady
Noun is a long-time member of the People of
God community in Beirut, Lebanon and a
contributor to the main French-speaking
newspaper in Lebanon, “L’Orient le Jour“.
Article source: Fady
Noun (author) and Sword
of the Spirit |
