It’s essential to have a healthy attitude towards the charisms that may not be clearly evident in our lives. Rather than focusing solely on enhancing the charisms we possess, it is equally important to hold a balanced view of the gifts we have not been given. This disposition is vital to our personal growth and spiritual development.
Gratitude for the Received Charisms
One of the foundational principles is to be grateful for the charisms we have already received. Just as we are taught as children to appreciate and be thankful for the gifts we receive, the same principle applies to the spiritual gifts bestowed upon us. It is crucial to recognize and honor the uniqueness of the gifts we possess, acknowledging that they are the best for us at this particular time in our lives.
Hope for Growth and New Charisms
While gratitude for our existing charisms is important, it’s also acceptable to hope for new gifts. Jesus exemplified the fullness of all 24 charisms, and as we aim to become more Christ-like, we can seek the development and pouring out of additional spiritual gifts. It is acceptable to pray for new charisms that resonate with our spiritual journey, ultimately desiring to use them to build and serve the church and community.
Balancing Gratitude and Hope
Maintaining a balance between gratitude for our current charisms and hope for potential new ones is essential. We should avoid closing ourselves off to the possibility of new gifts while also appreciating and utilizing the gifts we currently possess. This equilibrium enables us to remain open to what God might have in store for our spiritual journey while actively employing the gifts we have already been given.
Embracing our charisms involves maintaining a grateful disposition towards our received gifts while fostering hope for potential growth and new gifts. This equilibrium enables us to honor the unique gifts we possess, while also remaining open to the possibility of further spiritual development. As we navigate our discernment journey, it’s crucial to hold a balanced perspective towards all charisms, allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us in utilizing our gifts for the betterment of the church and our communities.
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 are 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. Hello, and welcome to today’s episode. Today, we’re talking about what is the proper disposition towards charisms that you don’t have. This is a little bit of a departure from our normal content where we really talk about how do you better invest in what you have been given. But we also wanna develop a healthy, holistic way to look at the things that we have not been given.
Jill Simons:
And this varies based on charism a little bit, kind It’s how much people or how people react to whether or not they’ve been given something. So very commonly, I see people react act very negatively to not having the gift of faith or not having the gift of mercy or not having the gift of intercession. And there’s others as well that some people have strong reactions to, but those are kind of the general ones, especially faith where people say, if I don’t have the charism of faith, what does that say about me? What does that mean? That I don’t even have the faith to have the charism of faith? So that’s what I wanna talk about today. How do we look at the ones that we don’t have? How do we keep this kind of healthy outlook on ourselves and on other people as we navigate this? So first of all, we wanna return to kind of the well, that lesson we learned as kids, right, where you kind of are entering into community for the first time, a lot of us in elementary school, and you’re starting to become aware of things that other people have that you don’t. Right? And as you grow in this awareness, it’s challenging to navigate because there are there’s, you know, straight up jealousy or straight up envy, but there’s also things that are a little bit more nuanced where you don’t necessarily not want them to have it, but you also so would like to have it. And so this childlike place is sort of a good place to engage with the feelings we have around the charisms that we do and do not have. Because in some some sense, the old adage holds true.
Jill Simons:
Right? That the grass is always greener. It can always seem like a different charism, somebody else’s charism, somebody else’s combination of charisms is better than what we have received. And, of course, the antidote to this is gratitude for what we have personally received. So we wanna start there. Just as your parents probably taught you to be grateful for what it is that you have received, we wanna be grateful for the that we have received and to really honor the gift that those are. Because how does it make you feel as as a gift-giver on Christmas morning or on a birthday or something like that, if immediately upon opening the gift, somebody looks kind of crestfallen and is gazing wistfully at something that somebody else has. That’s not a very positive experience of being the gift giver, are. And we want to recognize that though we can’t hurt his feelings in the same kind of way we might hurt another person’s feelings, It is not an appropriate response to God as the giver of these gifts to dismiss what he has given to us and long after something that he has given to somebody else.
Jill Simons:
So that’s kind of an important foundation to start at is that we really need to accept and believe that we have been given the best things for us in this season of our lives. Now that said, Jesus had the fullness of all 24 charisms, and we are all called to become more and more and more like him, become more conformed to the person of Christ. And therefore, if there’s a charism that we see, not necessarily because it’s in somebody else or something like that, from a com place of comparison or envy, but where we see the good of a charism and how we can see that equipping us better to build the Church and serve in the mission that God has given us, we can absolutely ask for that charism. So we wanna be grateful for what we have, but we can also ask for God to pour out the grace of a new charism on us. Say for instance, you are very affected by the fact that you don’t have the charism of faith. Doubt has been a huge part of your story and you really struggle with that. Maybe asking for the charism of faith is something that resonates with you. To ask the Lord to pour out not just the the basic gift of faith that he gives to everyone, but also that supernatural gift of faith that is for the good of the whole community.
Jill Simons:
Let me rephrase that actually because all faith is supernatural. A lot of people receive what I call the personal license of faith, where this is, you know, what they need to sustain their own personal faith journey. But there are also people who receive, like, like, the corporate license. If you’re if you’re familiar with, like, online licensing for assets and art and things like that, where or you can use it for more people in more places because this is a gift you’ve been given not just for yourself, but to build the Church. And so if you’ve been given currently this kind of personal license, you can pray for God to really upgrade that grace that you’re receiving to something that is for the building of the larger Church. Now, of course, we need to be doing this from a good place. We need to be be asking for these things because our desire is actually to build the Church and not to be more of a light in our community for people to look at us and tell us how great we are and how amazing our faith is. That is something that comes comes from an identity that’s struggling, wanting everybody to look at us, view us a certain way, see us a certain way, and seeking validation from that.
Jill Simons:
If we’re asking from a charism for a charism, I should say, from that place, I think it’s very unlikely that we’re going to receive that because God is not necessarily, you know, he can if he wants to, not, in my experience, gonna give us a gift that is going to make it even harder for us to believe what he says about us. And so sometimes those noes are actually a mercy to keep us from going deeper into even more kind of convoluted identity issues. But if we’re wanting to really use that from a place of really desiring to serve and build the Church, love God more, to have greater confidence in his presence in our lives and in our community. That’s a beautiful thing to pray for, and you can absolutely ask for that. So we want to always be holding this tension of gratitude for what is now and hope for what might be coming. This is an important kind of space to occupy as we go on our journey with charisms.
Jill Simons:
Because we never want to close the door to something that God might want to do in the future. I’m never gonna receive that. I’m just gonna shut it down. Absolutely not. I’m not good enough for that, just kind of close off. But we also don’t want to live so in the future, so focused on what might happen that we don’t appreciate the charisms that we have right now, that he’s already given us, that he has given us ways to use even if we haven’t concretely identified them yet. This is the balance and tension. And I always joke that I know I’m at a women’s conference if one of the first questions I get after taking the charism assessment is how do we work on the ones that we got low scores on.
Jill Simons:
This is a very, like, in my experience, kind of female drive to, like, shore up the cracks and and take care of the issues and be able to be comprehensively good at things. Maybe men feel that way as well but in my experience, this is a very women’s conference question. The answer is you don’t. You can pray for them if you want them, but you don’t work on them. You don’t try and build them like a scale. You don’t try and grasp after them. If there are things that are a natural part of the Christian life, for instance, mercy, intercession, faith, those things, then we want to be pursuing them in the way that is right for every layperson or clergy member if you are in that category to pursue them. We want to be praying every day.
Jill Simons:
We want to be asking Christ to increase our faith. But our attention is mostly on on what it is that God wants us to grow in, how he wants to invite us into more, and how he wants us to grow and less on these being our external gifts to give the whole community. Does that make sense? Kind of that little bit of a difference between doing these things because they are good investments in our personal spiritual life that the lord is leading us through and having the mindset that these are the gifts I have personally been given to give the larger your community. If you only have a personal portion of a meal, let’s say, it wouldn’t be it would make a lot of sense to try and feed the whole community with that. But if we’ve been given a community portion, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to keep that to ourselves. And that’s why having the discernment process and some accuracy about where time and resources and charisms should be event is well worth your time because that clarity leads you also into clarity about how to give what you’ve been given and where you need to focus on receiving what God wants to give to you. I hope that helps and makes sense. Feel free to drop me an email at
Jill Simons:
Hello@ManyPartsMinistries. If you have any follow-up questions, I’d love to answer them. 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 can also begin your own journey by taking our charism assessment
