There are many challenges when using charisms, but utilizing them is not the actual problem.
Understanding Charisms in Catholic Life
In the recent episode of “Charisms for Catholics,” host Jill Simons delved into the fascinating concept of charisms, or spiritual gifts, which are graces bestowed by the Holy Spirit meant to build up the Church and serve God’s people. These gifts range from wisdom and knowledge to faith and healing, among others. But while these gifts are meant for the enrichment of the Christian community, their reception and practice sometimes face skepticism and contestation within it.
The Lenten Journey and Rejection of False Suffering
As Catholics observe Lent, reflecting on the sacrifices of martyrs and the life of Jesus, Jill challenges a common misconception: the notion that one’s own charisms should be set aside as a form of cross to bear. She argues that God-given empowerment isn’t a cross to reject but a part of our Christian identity to embrace. Therefore, suffering, although inherent to the Christian life, should not be conflated with shunning one’s innate gifts and opportunities.
True Humility: Embracing God’s Gifts
Amid the Lenten emphasis on humility and penance, Jill advocates for a nuanced understanding. She contends that recognizing and utilizing one’s charisms is an act of humility. Jill refers to Mary’s fiat—her ‘yes’ to God—as a model for how to humbly accept God’s will. Rather than an elevation of self, the proper use of charisms is a profound acknowledgment of God’s gifts and a commitment to serve His purpose.
A Response to Common Objections
Jill addresses five main objections to charisms in the episode:
- The Threat of Pride: Though pride is a real danger, avoiding charisms isn’t the answer. Charisms call for virtuous practice—one that fosters true humility.
- Removing God from the Picture: Charisms make God’s presence tangible in the world. Recognizing that works of charisms are operative only by God’s power helps maintain a healthy perspective.
- Laity Versus Clergy Roles: There’s no basis for the claim that charisms create hierarchy issues within the Church. Both laypeople and clergy have crucial roles to play, and the charisms propel the laity into active service and evangelization.
- An Overemphasis on Suffering: While suffering is an integral aspect of the Christian journey, it’s not the sole purpose. Charisms enhance the communal experience of faith and don’t negate the reality of suffering.
Building the Church Through Charisms
Jill emphasizes that the use of charisms is vital to the growth of individuals and the Church. Laypeople’s engagement in the Church’s mission through the practice of charisms is not only beneficial but vital for the whole Christian community. Conflating personal development and leadership with a detachment from God misunderstands the empowering nature of charisms.
Moving Forward with Radical Hope
Closing the episode, Jill encourages the Catholic community to reject fear and embrace a spirit of radical hope. She urges listeners to look beyond resistance, acknowledging that the path of the Holy Spirit is rarely predictable but always purposeful. By understanding that charisms are not self-glorifying pursuits but avenues of service and glorification of God, Catholics can navigate objections with grace and confidence.
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. Today, I’m gonna be sharing with you about some common objections that I hear to pursuing your charisms and discerning your charisms and living out of a place of your charisms. And there are there are more. There are others. But these are the 5 most common ones that I hear on a regular basis.
Jill Simons:
So we’re just gonna dive right in, kind of explain what the objection is and then to the best of my ability, explain why I think that that is not sufficient reason to lay the idea of charism aside. So the first common objection that I hear a lot is that, charisms shouldn’t be discerned and shouldn’t be focused on because it’s inherently gonna lead people into pride. It’s going to create this opportunity to fall in the the kind of mother of all sin, the sin of Lucifer, the sin of pride, because you’re gonna see that you’re having supernatural success in something. And that’s gonna make you think that you are so awesome and you are so good and there’s gonna be this self emphasis that leads to pride. And this is a fair objection. We don’t want to be going down a path that’s going to lead to pride obviously. That’s something that we want to stay away from and refrain from. So avoiding near instances of pride is a good goal to have.
Jill Simons:
So I don’t wanna undermine the importance of taking this seriously. But that said, just because something has the potential to be used poorly, doesn’t mean that we just lock it in a closet somewhere. There are so many things that have the potential to become really negative, but we don’t have the option to just completely cut them out of our lives wholesale. Easy examples, sexuality, food, you know, just everyday things that, you know, even even exercise potentially, where you’re getting in really great shape and therefore you feel really prideful because of how good you look. You know, that that can be an episode of pride and vanity. Anything can become sinful when you take it to an extreme. And just because that opportunity exists isn’t a good enough reason to completely avoid it. Because at the end of the day, this is how virtue is created.
Jill Simons:
Right? Being able to have prudence and temperance about how we engage in something is what ultimately leads to greater creation of virtue in all of our lives, not just, oh, I’m just gonna completely cut that out of my life. That’s where I love the food example, honestly, you know, just whatever food you want in whatever amount you want leads to gluttony. But there’s also can be a kind of pride in over, regimenting food and having it be so controlled. And that’s something that leads us into a kind of pride and control that can also be sinful. So either extreme creates a problem. What we want to do is find the virtue in the middle, where we figure out how to feast with the Church calendar, how to fast with the Church calendar, not letting either be a episode of pride or really allowing us to overindulge and and take part in the sin of gluttony. So when you look at the idea of charisms, we have a similar model. Right? We’re gonna have to do things in our life.
Jill Simons:
There’s no not doing anything option on the table. And so if you’re choosing what to do with your life, it’s incredibly logical to go towards the things that you are most apt and have the greatest ability to do because that is what God created you with. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to say, God created me as an extrovert and gave me all of these people skills and gave me these charisms to love people well and lead groups of people and all of this. And so I am going to avoid sin by locking myself away as a hermit. That doesn’t really make a lot of sense. It makes a lot more sense to figure out how do I live out these things that God gave me, these great people skills, this extroversion, all this other good stuff in a virtuous way, versus I’m just going to lock it away. And of course, the linchpin argument response to this that I probably relish pulling out a little bit too much is that by that logic, if we need to shut ourselves off from anything that could possibly lead to pride, even if it’s something that God has gifted us the ability to do, and if that were true humility, then our Blessed Mother should have said no to the angel at the Annunciation. And of course, nobody wants that.
Jill Simons:
Right? Nobody thinks that that’s what should have happened. But if we’re going to hold Mary up as the model of humility, she didn’t go off of what she thought of herself and think, oh, yeah. I I’ve been thinking I would be awesome at being the mother of God. That sounds like a good thing for me to do. She said, okay, I don’t see it. I don’t really see how this is gonna go down but I know that you see me, God, in a way that I don’t see myself. And so I’m gonna put greater trust in that than in how I see myself.
Jill Simons:
And that is actual humility, is really submitting to the role that God has for us even when we are it’s not not something we would have necessarily chosen for ourselves, not necessarily something that we see in ourself. But because God sees it in us, we say yes to it. And so that’s really the the number one way to overcome that objection of pride is that there is great virtue, true humility, to be found in engaging with our charisms in a way that allows us to cultivate virtue instead of just letting the fear of pride. That that’s really what it comes down to is are you living in hope or are you living in fear? If you are not saying yes to something that you know God is asking you to do because you’re afraid of being too prideful? Well, is God going to make you afraid into doing what you’re supposed to do? No. God is going to give you hope for what it is that you’re supposed to do. Give you courage for what it is that you’re supposed to do. The number one charism we see is actually encouragement, literally, to give courage to the people of God. So we want to be rejecting fear.
Jill Simons:
We want to be rejecting false humility. And that means we’ve got to take the harder road of saying, yeah, humility. And that means we got to take the harder road of saying, yeah, it’s possible I could fall into pride. I don’t want to. But I also can’t turn away from what I’m being asked to do. So I have to struggle against the pride that might come up on a regular basis and actually become a more holy virtuous person in that process. So that’s objection number one.
Jill Simons:
Objection number two is that using our charisms and and saying that it is our responsibility to use our charisms puts us in God’s place. So this basically some people believe that this is taking God out of the equation and and not saying, oh, God, you know, you need to do everything. We can do nothing. And it’s, like, inserting ourselves and saying, we are going to be the, you know, saviors, people making this thing happen. And this you just apply a very basic awareness of the reality of charisms, and this becomes ridiculous because charisms exist and work because they are things that they’re avenues that God has created in us to make himself present. And so to say that using your charisms and embracing them is taking God out of the equation makes absolutely no sense because they actually only exist and are efficacious because of God’s presence in them. And so another great kind of one two punch on this one is that it makes about as much sense to say, oh, I’m gonna step back from what God has asked me to do because I want God to do it himself. Makes as much sense as a teenager saying to their parent, oh, I’m just way too humble to clean my room.
Jill Simons:
It is important that only you do it because I want it to be clear that I only think that you have the skill and ability to do this. I don’t know a lot of parents that that’s gonna fly with. And we know that God is the best parent, the good father. And so we’re not having charisms. We’re not acting in these things. We’re not given these things because God is incapable of doing these things on his own. Just like we’re not giving our kids chores because we’re incapable of completing these tasks, we’re doing it because it is vital to their development for them to get to help. And this is exactly the way it is for us.
Jill Simons:
It is vital to the development of our personal holiness, our personal sanctity to participate in the life of the Church, in the building of the Church, and not just be passive, totally, oh, I have nothing to give, nothing to do, nothing to contribute members of the family. Because that is, again, we’re seeing all of the deadly sins show up here. That is sloth to just say, oh, I’m just I can’t do anything. So blah. I’m just going to hang out here while God does everything. When we actively use our charisms, that is what is making God present in those places. And our awareness of that, our awareness of the fact that we are simply making God present and not that we are doing something out of our own power that is miraculous, that’s one of the ways that we are able to combat pride in those situations. Going back to the first objection, we are able to combat pride by realizing that this only works because God is present in us.
Jill Simons:
And that’s been one of the biggest experiences of my life of really growing in especially my leadership charism, because there’s a huge temptation for me, maybe less to pride and more with frustration and maybe wrath towards other people. That sounds pretty extreme, but it’s extreme sometimes because I get so frustrated when people are bad at leading. And it has been so helpful for me to understand, Jill, you’re only good at this because the God of the universe saw it fit to give you a supernatural ability to do this well. And if you didn’t have this, you would be as bad or worse than all these people you’re getting frustrated with. So have a little patience. Have a little grace. And that has been a huge help to my mindset to recognize the fact that I am only able to function well in this space, because God has seen fit to empower me to do so, to make Him present in that place. And I see in all of the other charisms that I do not have in my feeble efforts to do those things, the fact that it’s very clear that that’s just me, that that’s only me trying to do it by myself, not doing great.
Jill Simons:
And I invite God to help me in those places. But it’s clear that I don’t have a calling on my life right now to build the Church in those places. The calling on my life in those places is to simply grow and get better and continue to pursue being more Christ like in all areas of my life. Objection number three, this one is that the idea of charisms elevates laypeople above their station. So this basically gives laypeople delusions of grandeur that a lot of the functions or some people would even say all of the functions the charisms provide are should be or are exclusive to the clergy. This one makes me pretty mad because, that one again, we when we apply some basic log logic to these things, they fall apart really, really quickly. Because the the Church is not meant to stand and support the weight of a 1000000000 members on the stilt legs of a couple 100000 priests, if that. I don’t even know the number of priests specifically in the world.
Jill Simons:
But my thought is that it would be, you know, that or less. They are not the only people called to contribute to the Church. The priests are not the only people that are building the kingdom of God. Are they vastly important, hugely important to our reception of grace, our reception of the sacraments, absolutely. We need them so so badly because they are the vehicle through which we receive the sanctifying grace of the sacraments through which we have the opportunity to reach the source and summit of our faith and receiving Holy Communion. But that said, they can’t do it alone. They are not the only people that are contributing to the Church. And in my humble opinion, totally free to disagree with me, in my humble opinion, that mindset is absolutely what has got us in the mess that we’re in right now because there have been less and less vocations in a lot of the world, not every part of the world, but in a lot of the world, less and less vocations, I believe, in part, because it seems like a punishing life to some people who would maybe potentially be open to discerning a vocation otherwise because there is this inhuman amount of weight and responsibility that we’re putting on priests that should not be solely theirs to carry.
Jill Simons:
There is absolutely things that are solely the job of the priest. Only a priest can do them. Only a man can do them in that role of persona christi. I don’t want to undermine that in any way. Actually, I want to appropriately elevate that by giving them the safety net of comprehensive support that they’re supposed to have from the laity. Being empowered to do all of the other things that are vital to the life of and the building of the Church. This is where we get a life giving, hopeful theology of how everyone that’s not a clergy member fits into the Church. This is what the you know, really the teaching, the idea that gave me just great peace and understanding about the Church’s teaching on the fact that women cannot become priests.
Jill Simons:
Because it’s not because we don’t have anything to give. It’s because what we are being called to give is vitally important, and it’s in a different place. It looks different than what priests are being asked to do. But if we say, oh, you don’t have that at all, it makes a lot more sense that people would be frustrated, and people would feel that they are not allowed to contribute to the Church the way they want to because there’s this undervaluing of the contributions of the lady. And that comes in a large part from an undervaluing of the charismatic gifts in favor of only valuing the hierarchical gifts. This is not the teaching of the magisterium at all. In fact, in the catechism, there, in and of course, I don’t have it open in front of me, but I believe it’s in 798, could be 799 in the catechism. It literally says that the Holy Spirit gives both charismatic gifts to the laity and hierarchical gifts to the members of the clergy.
Jill Simons:
This is straight out of to capital T tradition, the best of the teachings of our faith, that lay people are vitally important to the role of the Church. And it is in all of the areas that the charismatic gifts lay. So if you’re a lay person, the Church needs you. This is the core of our mission here. Right? Every member matters. There is no one who is expendable to the Church which is where we get the urgency of evangelization. There are people missing from the Church right now, and it is our job to invite them in because we need them, because the Church is less without them, every single one of them. Obviously, we also have the urgency of their personal salvation.
Jill Simons:
We want them to be with us in the beatific vision in heaven. And that is very important, as well. But I think that that emphasis sometimes makes it a little less urgent for some of us to think about. We’re not just looking for deathbed conversions here. We want these people contributing to the life of the Church with their life, and this is why that is so important. I’m sorry this episode is getting long, but I am on fire about these things. This is just so important to me that this is understood, and that there is correct valuation of everything that the Holy Spirit is doing. And that’s why our model always is to identify what the Holy Spirit is doing, so that we can value it and then invest in it.
Jill Simons:
Because when we don’t do that, we are really leaving treasure just out in out in the grass and rejecting so much of what we’ve been given to build the Church. So that’s the third objection. Fourth objection is this idea that suffering is a part of the Christian life and we need to be a slave to Christ. And so we have this mindset that, like, the Christian life and what we do in and with our Christian life is not supposed to be fun. It’s not supposed to be enjoyable. It’s not supposed to be, you know, personally life-giving. We’re just going to kind of get through it with all the suffering and finally be happy in heaven because that’s the best we can hope for. So there’s a lot of this is this is one of those, like all of them, where you’re just like, oh, man, devil, you’re really a jerk.
Jill Simons:
Because a lot of this is true. But it’s the little bit that’s a lie that just completely poisons the whole thing. Know, it’s the drop of cyanide that makes the whole glass of wine something that’s gonna kill you. Because, yes, suffering is a part of the Christian life, for sure. Sure. Yes. A lot of us are called to suffer for our faith, suffer persecution. It says in Scripture that we will be, you know, of the Church.
Jill Simons:
My my family and I are doing a beautiful study of martyrs, for Lent as I’m recording this. And absolutely, we’ve got a lot of suffering to embrace and a lot that we need to be willing to sacrifice for the sake of Christ and for the sake of our faith. And also it says in Scripture to that we are slaves to Christ, but I want to challenge several things that we make these statements mean that they don’t necessarily mean. So first of all, we don’t want to make things into the cross that are not the cross. Life is going to have crosses for sure. And we know we’re called to pick up our cross and follow after Christ. No problem with that. Totally agree.
Jill Simons:
We’re not here for some kind of prosperity gospel. You know, your faith is, if your faith is good, then everything in your life is good kind of mindset. That said, we don’t want to make things into the cross that are not the cross. You are going to have physical suffering, maybe persecution, maybe relationship pain, maybe habitual. I don’t want to put habitual sin in there, actually. That’s kind of in a different category. You’re going to have things from outside yourself that bring suffering in plenty in your life. You don’t have to go looking for more.
Jill Simons:
Okay? Suffering is part of the Christian life whether you do anything about it or not. We don’t want to take the fact that you are going to have something that you love and you want to do and you are supernaturally empowered to do, and you need to just voluntarily never do that and make that into your cross. Again, going back to the Blessed Mother, that’s like having her say no at the Annunciation and just say, no. This is my cross that I want No. No. That makes no sense. That’s not the cross. Don’t go making your own crosses out of random things.
Jill Simons:
There will be plenty. You can just take the ones that come. It is not the cross to consciously lay down an opportunity that God has put in front of you and empowered you to do. That is what you need to be running towards. When we get in this very suffering is a part of the Christian life kind of mind set, we forget that the fruits of the Spirit are a thing. We forget that there’s joy and goodness and kindness and generosity and self-control and all of these good fruits that come when the Holy Spirit is present. And those are the things that make the suffering that we do experience look less like suffering. So if you look at, you know, Saint Peter in chains and the joy that he has even in prison, that’s where we see that he is for sure doing what he’s supposed to be doing because of his experience of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the suffering while carrying the cross.
Jill Simons:
And that is what we should see. What we don’t wanna see is suffering where people are like, no. I love this. I would be good at it. I think it would be so fulfilling, but I’m not gonna do it because that would be prideful and that’s would be turning away from suffering and then they live this miserable life that just looks the worst. That’s that’s wrong. That’s not how saints are made. Okay? Saints are made through living the life that God invites you into, which is tailor made for how he has made you and how he has empowered you.
Jill Simons:
And then as you’re living that life, suffering is coming, and you’re still experiencing the fruit of the Holy Spirit in the midst of that suffering because the Spirit is so present in you. Looking at that, like, slave of Christ mindset, which is kind of these are kind of brother sister mentalities where it’s like, oh, it’s supposed to be slavery. You know? It’s not supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be drudgery. We have a very it how to phrase this? It it feels like there’s only one way to look at slavery. Right? We only have really one set of what is true about slavery in our collective consciousness culturally. But I want to challenge that by what the Bible is saying because our view of slavery is this like tyrannical owner treating people like property, abusing them, pushing them past their limits, ripping families apart, selling people like cattle, just the worst of the worst. And so then, of course, when you apply that kind of collective consciousness to the relationship we’re supposed to have with Christ, it makes sense that people would feel like this is supposed to be awful.
Jill Simons:
Right? But in reality, and this is supported by a lot of Scripture scholars, feel free to look into this more on your own if you would like. But in reality, what by the Bible is saying in this slave to Christ is that we are owned by him. We have been purchased by his sacrifice. And then by that sacrifice, we are set free. So, basically, there’s a price on our head that he pays. So he is our rightful owner, but that that is what invites us into freedom. He gives us our freedom freely. And that’s obviously much different.
Jill Simons:
Right? That’s not the same thing. And so this is the kind of mindset that leads us into the kind of fruits of the Spirit, number one, and also freedom and joy in using our gifts because there’s this sense like like someone has died for you, you know, if you’re in a childhood accident or something like that and somebody dies saving you. There’s this sense where you’re in war or something. Any anything where your life has been saved through the expenditure of another life. There’s this new weight to, like, gosh, I have got to live this life well. I’ve got to take this seriously. Something this priceless price has been paid for my life. I need to live this so well.
Jill Simons:
And this is the same kind of mindset that the quote, unquote slavery to Christ should give us. The fact that we need to steward this life so well, so intentionally because holy cow, a ridiculous price was paid for it. And that, again, invites us into we’re going to pick up everything So that’s the fourth objection. That’s why that doesn’t work. We need to be embracing the freedom that comes from the sharing in the life of Christ that we have. And we need to be embracing all of the gifts that God does give us. You know, said another way, rejecting God’s gifts is not the cross you’re supposed to be bearing. No.
Jill Simons:
You’re supposed to be accepting God’s gifts to be able to bear the crosses that are inevitably going to come. I think that as a young woman, this was a huge lie that I believed .And it felt like that was a sinful desire. And it was only in my late 20s, early 30s when I realized, like, no, I love this and I’m good at this because God was like, no, Jill. This is your job. This is what you’re supposed to do. I didn’t want you to be bad at your job. So I gave you what you needed to do it well. And there’s going to be a ton of suffering that just comes in the fact that you’re a human being and you have to live your life.
Jill Simons:
And don’t go making some fake facsimile cross out of you’re never gonna get to live the life that I intended for you because that is going to hold you back from becoming the person I’ve created you to be. And again, like I say so often, just like in politics, you follow the money. In spiritual matters, you follow the fruit of the thought. What is it that I’m going to do or not do because of this thought? And who does that benefit? Does that benefit the devil or does that benefit God? Well, if I’m not being who I was created to be by God, that’s a devil thing, right? That’s what he wants. And I don’t know about you, but I’m in the business of not cooperating with him as much as possible. So that’s something we can lay down if for nothing else than that reason. It’s motivated by fear. It’s motivated by just kind of false humility, and it’s going to lead to the fruit of not being the person that God created you to be.
Jill Simons:
So I Jill close the book on that one, fourth objection. The fifth objection. This is something that comes up a lot more in, less, kind of, theological terms and more in practical terms when I am talking with people about bringing charisms into their small group, into their parish, into their marriage, into whatever group of people they exist in. And this is the objection that, okay, charisms are real. Charisms are good. We should use them. We should know them.
Jill Simons:
But ultimately, people won’t buy into this and it’s just going to be kind of something that’s gonna fall flat because the buy in isn’t gonna be there. So fair. We can’t control people. People have free will, and you can have the best reasoned, most eloquent arguments in the world and you are still gonna have people that are like, no. I don’t think so. And we can’t change that. Right? I think that the defenses of the faith that exist are, like, flawless and so beautiful and so eloquent, but you still got people like Christopher Hitchens who were, like, nope. Not interested at all.
Jill Simons:
So one, we got to lay down the control because it’s not our place to control things. It’s our place to do what’s been put in front of us to do. And so when we do that, we keep our awareness on who is really acting in any given situation. And that’s the Holy Spirit. So I think from looking at the body of work that we’ve released already about charisms as well as the response to these common objections, I think it’s really clear that this is something that the Holy Spirit wants to break open in the lives of his people. And so then we look at that objection of, well, people won’t buy in. People aren’t going to do anything about it. So why try? That comes from fear and apathy.
Jill Simons:
And again, follow the fruit. Is God going to benefit from us acting out of fear and apathy? I don’t think so. So, yes, it’s possible people won’t buy in. It’s possible people will be apathetic about it. It’s possible people will take it and run with it in the wrong direction. It’s possible people will, you know, take what you’re giving to them and and fall into all kinds of pride. But just because there is a possibility that things can go badly isn’t enough reason to not try. It’s so cliche, but I think about that meme that’s like, but what if I fall? And it’s like, oh, darling, but what if you fly? Which just makes me gag a little bit even saying that.
Jill Simons:
I’m sorry I said that because but it’s true even if it’s gag worthy. There is always space for hope. And one of the most beautiful prophetic words that I’ve received that I think I’ve even shared on the podcast before is that hope itself is victorious. And so just taking the action of I don’t know how this is going to go. I don’t know how this is going to be received. But I’m still going to do what I feel God putting in front of me anyway. That is an act of radical hope. That is an act in the spirit of the resurrection.
Jill Simons:
And I don’t know about you but I want to live all of my life, take all of my actions in that spirit because that’s what creates the space for the Holy Spirit to move in radical ways. If we are waiting until everything is going to go exactly how we want them to, we’re never going to do anything. So, yes, there is the possibility that people won’t buy in but if we let that stop us, that means we are not having any faith in what is possible when we bring the work of the Holy Spirit more to light in the lives of the people that we love. So long episode because I got very passionate about these things, but it was really important to me that we went through these objections, gave them some time and proper weight. And I think that as we see in all of these, they come from good places. So if you have people who are bringing up these objections to you, that’s why I wanted to really give you the arguments, the best arguments that I have found and seen for these things. Because in my experience, these always come from the percept a perceived good place, wanting to avoid sin, wanting to correctly honor God, wanting to correctly honor the priesthood, wanting to have the correct mindset about suffering and disposition towards Christ, wanting to invest in things that are going to bear good fruit and come to fruition. Those are all good things, and we want to honor that in the people who bring these objections to us.
Jill Simons:
But we also want to reinforce the fact that the Christian life isn’t safe. The Christian life isn’t a sure thing. The Christian life is messy, and that’s what the Holy Spirit is here for. He’s here to be in it with us, and our charisms are one of the ways, one of the most powerful ways that he is in it with us. And that is why knowing them is only ever a good thing for his people. Naming the ways that the Holy Spirit is moving is only ever a good thing. And that’s why we want to make it as accessible as humanly possible to as many people as possible around the world. Thank you so much.
Jill Simons:
I will be with you next week. God bless you. In the meantime, I hope that he shows you this week a little bit about where he’s asking you to take a risk, where he’s asking you to grow, and most of all where he’s asking you to let go of a little bit of control. Thanks so much for joining us on today’s episode of Charisms for Catholics. If you would like to know more about charisms or beging 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.
