Charisms, also known as spiritual gifts, play a crucial role in the life of a practicing Catholic. On the latest episode of “Charisms for Catholics,” host Jill Simons delves into a question that many people ask: “Do charisms ever get taken away?” Let’s examine what was discussed in the episode and explore the nature and duration of these divine gifts.
The Nature of Charisms
Jill Simons starts by addressing the fundamental nature of God’s gifts. She draws a compelling analogy: God, unlike us, doesn’t have limited resources. Just as we wouldn’t ask for last year’s birthday gift back to give a new one, God doesn’t retract charisms from us. Instead of being taken away, charisms may recede into the background as different gifts come to the forefront at various stages of life.
Charisms in Different Life Stages
A common observation is that people experience different primary charisms at different stages of life. When you discern your charisms, you might find that one gift is very prominent during a particular phase. Jill emphasizes that if a charism seems less active now, it’s often because another charism is currently being emphasized by God. This shift is not a loss but a new invitation to explore and cultivate different aspects of our spiritual lives.
The Importance of Ongoing Discernment
Charism discernment is not a one-time event but an ongoing process. Jill advises spending about two months in focused discernment to initially identify your charisms. Once identified, you should commit to using them while staying in daily communication with God. She recommends revisiting your charism assessment every two to three years, especially for those who are consistently investing in their relationship with God.
Charisms and the State of Grace
One intriguing point made by Jill is the impact of one’s state of grace on the use of charisms. While the Church does not dogmatically teach that charisms are affected by whether a person is in a state of grace, it is reasonable to assume that being in alignment with God facilitates a fuller experience of our spiritual gifts. However, God can still use us and our charisms even when we are not in a state of grace, emphasizing that the effectiveness of charisms lies in the Holy Spirit’s work rather than the individual’s holiness.
Personal Experiences and Shifting Emphases
Jill shares a personal anecdote about how her prominent charisms have shifted over different periods of her life. Initially, craftsmanship was her primary focus, but as her role in Many Parts Ministries evolved, charisms like knowledge, teaching, and leadership became more prominent. These changes underscore the dynamic nature of charisms and the importance of allowing God to guide us through these transitions.
In summary, charisms are enduring gifts that God gives us, which may take on different emphases as we move through different stages of life. Ongoing discernment, staying in a state of grace, and being open to God’s guidance can help us fully utilize these gifts.
For those interested in discerning their own charisms, Many Parts Ministries offers resources and assessments that can help you begin your journey. Visit Many Parts Ministries to learn more and download a free guide to all 24 charisms.
Author: Jill Simons, Executive Director at Many Parts Ministries and Host of “Charisms for Catholics”
Stay tuned for more insightful discussions on charisms and how they can enrich your spiritual journey!
Jill Simons:
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:
Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of Charisms for Catholics. I’m your host, Jill Simons, and I’m really excited to talk about our episode topic for today, which is the question, do charisms ever get taken away? I get this question all the time where people say when I was, you know, in my twenties, it felt like it was this, and now it’s totally different because I’m a different stage of life. And I think that it’s important to remember the nature of, God’s gifts in answering this question. Because just like you would not probably, like, give a birthday gift to someone and on their next birthday say, I’m gonna need that last year’s birthday gift back so that I can give you the new one. God is not dealing with limited resources, and so what we see much more frequently or or much more likely within charisms is not that charisms are taken away, it’s that they recede into the background a little bit. We will have different charisms that will be primary at different points in life. So just because in the past there was a lot of weight, a lot of emphasis on a specific charisms that you had, and it feels like maybe that’s hardly showing up at all in your life anymore, that doesn’t mean it’s been taken away. That is to say that there’s something new.
Jill Simons:
There’s kind of a new emphasis within your charisms that the Lord is really calling you into right now, and that is part of why ongoing cares and discernment is an important thing to do. We wanna be really clear about the timeline here. What I encourage people to do is begin cares and discernment, move through it within 2 months or so, not we’re not looking to dillydally here, but spend about 2 months intentionally focused but to spend about 2 months intentionally focused in discernment and then to commit to the use of specific charisms. Then we want to be obviously saying in daily prayer, daily communication with God, listening to where he’s moving us in specific situations, But we really don’t want to go back to the drawing board on the carism front, like, which carisms you have for a little while. We wanna give that some time to actually breathe and to actually allow us to use those intentionally, experiment with them, etcetera. But I really encourage people to revisit their careism assessment and therefore their discernment process kind of in a miniaturized version every 2 to 3 years. So the way our assessment is set up, it’ll reinvite you in 2 years to retake the assessment, not because we wanna see if some charisms have been taken away, but much more likely your identity score will have hopefully gone up, hopefully changed, and you will likely have been given new charisms within that time if you really have been investing in your life of faith. Now if you are just kind of casually going through the motions of your Catholic faith, every 2 years might be too frequent for you because you are not pursuing relationship with God and experience of your charisms the same way somebody else is.
Jill Simons:
And I think that you should, and I wanna invite you into that. But people that are pursuing intentional daily relationship with God are gonna see so much more growth and change in just 2 years than someone who is more or less just kind of doing the minimum going through the motions because grace is not as daily active, and then they’re not making the opportunity for grace to be as daily active in them through prayer and the use of their charisms. And so this can reveal this revisiting the discernment process can reveal new areas of opportunity, new invitations into something that God wants to give you. In my own life, when I first discerned my charisms, I discerned a specific group of charisms that has really stayed pretty much the same over the years, but what has changed drastically is what I am being called to put first, what I’m called to lead with. For many years, it was craftsmanship, and that was the bulk of my days. That was what I did a lot at home. That was what I did at work, and that was really the big call on my life in that period. Now craftsmanship is minimal and kind of incidental in my life, though I still have the gift for it.
Jill Simons:
And now it is so much more about knowledge and teaching and leadership that God is bringing me into through our work here at Many Parts that there wasn’t a forum for earlier in my life and career. And so though I discerned leadership from the very beginning, there was always kind of this, like, okay. When are but when? When are we gonna do this leadership thing? Because I know you’ve given it to me, but it seems like the emphasis is still on this craftsmanship thing. And I was kind of chomping at the bit to get out of the craftsmanship stage and into the leadership stage. And it happened when it was supposed to happen. It happened in the fullness of God’s timing. And though I was impatient, I did let him lead me. And I think that’s an important thing to remember that we can be confused and impatient and human throughout the process, and we can still trust that God is going to lead us down the path that he desires us to go on.
Jill Simons:
The one exception to the, quote, unquote, removal of charisms is that you can lose access of a kind to your charisms potentially when you’re not in a state of grace. This is not a dogmatic teaching of the church. The church doesn’t have an official stance on whether or not charisms are affected by being in a state of grace, but I think it really organically follows that it makes sense that, when we are not in right relationship and alignment with God because of our sin, then we are also not experiencing the fullness of what he wants to share with us in our charisms. Now that said, God is God, and if there is a situation that he is just really needing you to be his emissary to speak into or to do something through one of your charisms, it is not to say that he’ll just say, well, you’re not in a state of grace, like, I can’t use you. You’re worthless to me. That won’t be the approach. Because it’s important to always remember with all charisms, charisms work charisms work because God does, not because the person does. So when you see someone having success, having fruit within a charism, that is not like God’s stamp of approval on that person, that this is an amazing person.
Jill Simons:
That is the consistency of the fact that when the Holy Spirit is involved, he shows up the same way or can show up the same way regardless of who the human being is that is been given that opportunity to share the Holy Spirit. So just like, healing is a really good example, some people will feel like, oh, you know, I’m not holy enough to use my healing charism, or that person must be super holy because of their healing charism. That is not the reality of the situation. Reality is that the that healing and all the other charisms can work in diverse people because the holy spirit works in diverse people, and there are a lot of factors going into what works or how effectively are all these things that we do not see and understand. So we never want to make the assumption that someone cannot use a charism because they are not in a state of grace. We want to encourage them to get back into a state of grace 100%, but we don’t know beyond the shadow of a doubt that that’s gonna invalidate their use of a cariesom, and we can be confident that we’re not going to get them taken away like a toy that gets removed because we did not play with it correctly or something like that. We will continue to receive more new things, and the guidance that God gives us is gonna be a lot more of those, like, shifting in what is sliding forward and in directing our focus to what is primary.
Jill Simons:
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 at manypartsministries.com where you can download our free pdf guide to all 24 charisms and also begin your own journey by taking our charism assessment.
