We can learn more about the charisms in the Catechism. Paragraphs 799 to 801, thereafter, shed light on the nature of charisms. The individual who receives these gifts and the entire faith community must accept these gifts. However, it is essential to discern and use these gifts with the promptings of the Holy Spirit and in charity.
The Catechism on Charisms
Here’s what the catechism says about charisms. “Whether extraordinary or simple and humble, charisms are graces of the Holy Spirit which directly or indirectly benefit the Church, ordered as they are to her building up, to the good of men, and to the needs of the world. Charisms are to be accepted with gratitude by the person who receives them and by all members of the Church as well. It is in this sense that discernment of charisms is always necessary. No charism is exempt from being referred and submitted to the Church’s shepherds.”
Taking the First Step
Firstly, the catechism directs us where to go with charisms. A charisms discernment journey starts by recognizing the unique talents and abilities bestowed upon us by the Holy Spirit. To help you dive deeper into this journey, Many Parts Ministries offers a free PDF guide. This resource provides comprehensive information on all 24 charisms, guiding you towards a better understanding of your spiritual gifts. The catechism explores the charisms further.
Discovering Your Charisms
Additionally, besides the catechism, one powerful tool used to identify and understand your charisms is the charism assessment. This assessment, hence, enables individuals to gain insight into their strengths, skills, and passions. Our gifts align with specific roles in the Church. We can contribute authentically and experience a deeper sense of fulfillment.
The Impact of Charism Discernment
Discerning our charisms allows us to recognize how the Holy Spirit is already active in our lives. Therefore, we identify the areas in which the Holy Spirit invites us to contribute to the Church’s growth and vitality. Aligning our passions with concrete actions fosters participation in the Body of Christ, ensuring that we play an active role. The catechism gives us this basis for the charisms.
Undeniably, exploring and discerning our charisms is an exciting and transformative journey. It allows us to more fully live out our Catholic faith. Recognizing and utilizing our spiritual gifts brings us fulfillment and purpose in our personal lives. Embrace your unique charisms and trust in the Holy Spirit. Together, let us embrace the power of charisms and contribute to the flourishing of our faith community.
Learn more at Many Parts Ministries.
Jill Simons [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to Charisms for Catholics. My name is Jill Simons and I’m the executive director at many parts ministries where we equip the body of Christ by helping people learn about and discern their charisms, which is really another word for spiritual gifts. When you discern your charisms, you’re able to see how the Holy Spirit is already active in your life and where he is inviting you to further build the Church. Let’s dive in.
Jill Simons [00:00:31]:
Today we’re going to be diving into what the Catechism has to say about charisms. I know so many of you have been listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast with Father Mike Schmidt’s, which is fantastic. And there was an episode about the charisms. And that’s really what we’re going to focus on today is what is it say in the catechism? And Father Mike did a great job talking about it, but I’m just going to expand and explain a few things in it so that if you haven’t listened to that podcast as a whole, you can at least have an understanding about charisms in the Catechism. So this comes from the first part of the catechism talking about the profession of faith. And we’re specifically looking at chapter three where it talks about I believe in the Holy Spirit. The article is article nine, I believe in the Holy Catholic Church. And we’re going to be looking at paragraph number two, which talks about the Church, people of God, body of Christ, temple of the Holy Spirit. Everything we talk about, right? We talk about being body of Christ, we talk about being a temple of the Holy Spirit where we’re using our charisms. And so if you go down to this section specifically on the Church as temple of the Holy Spirit, this starts at seven nine seven. Paragraph 797 in the Catechism is where we’re going to be looking at. 799 is where the section specifically on charism starts. And so I’m going to go ahead and read it’s, just three brief paragraphs in the catechism, 799 to 801, where it’s talking very specifically about charisms. And then we’re going to break open what it’s really saying. So 799 says, whether extraordinary or simple and humble, charisms are graces of the Holy Spirit, which directly or indirectly benefit the Church, ordered as they are to her building up to the good of men and to the needs of the world. Charisms are to be accepted with gratitude by the person who receives them and by all members of the Church as well. They are a wonderfully, rich grace for the apostolic vitality and for the holiness of the entire body of Christ, provided they really are genuine gifts of the Holy Spirit and are used in full conformity with authentic promptings of this same Spirit that is in keeping with charity, the true measure of all charisms. It is in this sense that discernment of charisms is always necessary. No charism is exempt from being referred and submitted to the Church’s shepherds their office is not indeed to extinguish the Spirit but to test all things and to hold fast to what is good. So that all in the diverse and complementary charisms work together for the common good. So we’re going to go back and break that open sort of paragraph by paragraph so that we can look at what is it really saying. So whether extraordinary or humble, charisms are graces of the Holy Spirit which directly or indirectly benefit the Church. So this is our working definition of charisms, right? These are graces that we receive and we know that we receive grace specifically in the sacraments and that these gifts, these charisms directly or indirectly benefit the Church. So that’s really where there’s this outward focus of charisms. This is for the Church as a whole, not necessarily for you as an individual that’s more your own talents and maybe your own proclivities. But it’s not going to be your charisms. You’re going to enjoy them, it’s going to be an enjoyable thing to operate in your charisms, walk in them. But it’s not for you, it’s for the larger church. And these things can be incredible gifts of healing or it can be the gift of service and administration where it’s a simple humble gift but it all benefits the Church. And so in the last part of that sentence, which is also a paragraph, it says ordered as they are to her building up to the good of men and to the needs of the world. So this part also explains to us that this is for the building up of the church but also where the world needs the Church. And so I get a lot of questions about are my charisms only for use in the church, like in the four walls of the church? And the answer is definitely no. And that’s right here in the catechism. Our charisms are also ordered towards the general needs of the world. Really? Where does the world need Christ right now? That is where our charisms are geared towards. And so sometimes that’s going to be in the Church for the Church and other times that’s going to be in the Church for the world. And then we go on to paragraph 800. Charisms are to be accepted with gratitude by the person who receives them and by all members of the church as well. So I think that that’s a really great reminder that praise is an important part of this process where we really appreciate what it is that we have been given. We praise God for his glory manifest in our charisms and we keep that in mind that it’s not us that this is something that we have been given extraordinarily in order to serve. And so when we keep that focus on the service and charisms versus performing or versus earning something, it helps us to really keep it in the right place psychologically. They are also a wonderfully rich grace for the apostolic vitality and the holiness of the entire body of Christ, provided they are really genuine gifts of the Spirit and are used in full conformity with the authentic promptings of the same Spirit that is in keeping with charity. And so this is just reminding us that it needs to be done out of love. Anytime that we use charisms in a way to maybe make ourselves feel better than somebody else or to put somebody down, that’s never going to be an authentic use of our charisms. We still have free will around these things and so we are not exempt from using these gifts in a negative way if we are intending to use them in a negative way. So if we are not keeping charity and love at the forefront, then we can potentially abuse these gifts and use them in a way that’s not in keeping with the Holy Spirit. And the beginning of that sentence really reminds us of the importance of the discernment process. We really do want to do to the best of our ability to make sure that these are genuine gifts of the Holy Spirit. But I want to put an addendum there because I think that this sentence scares a lot of people where they get very hung up on this phrase provided they really are genuine gifts of the Holy Spirit. And people will say, okay, well, I’m not sure it’s really a genuine gift of the Holy Spirit, so it sounds like it would be better for me to just not use it. That is a really tempting lie that the evil one wants to give you, not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not want you to believe that because essentially that can keep you from doing your function in the body of Christ. And so yes, it is important to go through a discernment process, but it’s also important to move out of a discernment process at some point to actually begin using your charisms and not to be so taken captive by the fear that you might be wrong, that you don’t use what you’ve been given. This is what we see in the parable of the talents, right? There’s a person who is given one talent and goes off and buries it because he knows that it’s a harsh master and he’s afraid of what he’s going to do if he doesn’t bring about a return on that talent. And we see. This is the person who gets in trouble, right? This is the person who God says is a wicked servant who parts him out, who doesn’t give him anymore, who takes what he has been given, what he has been given and gives it to somebody else. This is not who we want to be. We want to trust the Holy Spirit, believe that God is not trying to deceive us, that we can discern, take some time and then we can know and move forward in confidence that we really do know our charisms to the best of our ability and then to bring those before God. Honestly Lord, I think this is what you want me to do. Correct me if I’m wrong. I pray that all the time, Lord, correct me if I’m wrong. I am as confident as I feel capable of being in the fact that this is what you are doing right now, or this is what you want me to do, but I’m definitely not infallible. So correct me if I’m wrong. If this is really not my charism, make it clear to me, Lord, and help set me on the right path because I want to do what you want me to do. And so this is really inviting us to keep that collaborative nature with the Holy Spirit, but not to the extent that it keeps us from taking any action at all. And then looking at that final paragraph 801. I love this line. This is one of my favorite lines in the catechism. It says, in this sense, the discernment of charisms is always necessary. I think that’s so true. I think all adults in the church need to discern their charisms because we need to know what our job description is. If you’ve got a cell in the eye that’s going around thinking that it’s a cell in the skin, that’s not going to be an asset to the body, right? We want to have clarity about where we are in the body of Christ in order to fulfill our function. Set another way. If you run an organization, you’re going to like that organization a heck of a lot more. If everybody actually knows their job description versus having 100 people working for you and nobody has any idea what their job is, that is not going to be a very effective organization. And this is the same thing we see in the church. We need to discern our charisms because we need to know what our lane is. We need to know our job. And I was listening to a really interesting piece a couple of days ago about how clericalism is really this false idea that the priests need to do everything, that every apostle, it needs to be run by a priest. Everything has to filter through your parish priest. There is a very important level of oversight that priests are called to provide for us. And I’m not knocking that in any way, but I think it’s very easy for a lot of people to just kind of pass things off to the priest like, oh, that must be their job. It’s for the larger church. When in reality there are so many important functions to the larger church that each of us is being called into, regardless of our vocation. So priests need to discern their charisms, but laypeople need to just as much. We are also being called to fill a very specific function beyond ourselves, beyond our family, for the larger body of Christ. And clarity about what that is, is going to be really important in actually doing it. Because if we don’t have any clarity about what it is, it’s highly unlikely that we’re going to randomly stumble into it over the course of our lives. That’s why we want to bring intention and free will into the process. And then the next sentence also gets confused. Sometimes no charism is exempt from being referred and submitted to the church’s shepherds. Their office is not indeed to extinguish the spirit, but to test all things and hold fast to what is good so that all the diverse and complementary charisms work together for the common good. So of course, the church’s shepherds are the bishops. Right? And so this is something I just wanted to expand on. If you did listen to Father Mike on the Catechism in a Year podcast, he talks just kind of almost as throwaway at the end about referring everything to the bishop. And I know lots of maybe people that err on the scrupulous side in my life that I was like, oh man, they’re going to feel like they need to go ask the bishop’s permission to encourage somebody. It is true. Absolutely. It’s what it says in the charism that we need to refer and submit everything to the church’s shepherds for sure. That doesn’t mean you need to go and personally ask your bishop, can I do this thing in my everyday life? What it’s saying is that we need to put everything that we do under the teaching authority, under the authority in general, of the body of Christ, of the Church. So essentially we need to use everything we’ve been given in keeping with the life of the church. And then if there’s ever something that does rise to the level of maybe you’re starting a large program or something that needs to actually physically be run by the bishop and there’s an important conversation to be had about do you really have the gifts necessary to do this thing, then absolutely 100% need to do that. But I don’t want anyone, same as in the last paragraph, to get held up by the fact, well, there’s no chance I’m going to get a personal meeting with the bishop and so therefore I’m off the hook. I don’t need to use my charisms because the bishop maybe doesn’t know me and I can’t go talk to him because he lives 3 hours away. This is something that we submit our charisms in the same way to the Church, that we hopefully submit our whole life to the church where we are living actively under the authority of the Church and under the teaching of the magisterium in our entire lives. And then when there’s ever something that rises to the level of being something that is going to be actually decided on by the bishop, we need to submit to his decision on that front. So I just wanted to clarify that for anybody who felt like they needed to take a meeting before they could use their charisms, that is not, in fact, the case. We want to be putting everything under the body of Christ as a whole. And then there’s also, you know, our our priests that are close to our level in our own parishes, that are the kind of emissary, the person standing in for the bishop at our individual church. And it’s great to invite them to help in your discernment process if you want some help and some oversight in making sure that things are genuine gifts of the Holy Spirit. So that is what the Charismatic Catechism says about charism 799 to 801. I invite you to read the surrounding paragraphs for greater context, if that’s of interest to you. But this is really, really helpful to dig into. Where does this sit in the life of the church? This is something that we need to do because the church needs the context and the direction of our charisms, and that is right there in the catechism. Have a great week.
Jill Simons [00:15:54]:
Thanks so much for joining us on today’s episode of Charisms for Catholics. If you would like to learn more about your charisms or begin your own discernment journey, head to our website@manypartsministries.com, where you can download our free PDF guide to all 24 charisms.
Jill Simons [00:16:13]:
And also begin your own journey by.
Jill Simons [00:16:15]:
Taking our Charism assessment.
