Our People

Fortieth Anniversary of Charismatic Renewal

By Most Rev. Julian Porteous
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
18/3/2007

Forty is a particularly biblical number. Lent is a period of forty days, following the forty days of prayer and fasting of the Lord in the desert regions beyond the Jordan river. The Jewish people spent forty years in the desert on their way from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land.

So the fortieth anniversary of the presence of the Charismatic Renewal in the Catholic Church deserves some recognition. Tonight we can pause and look back over the past forty years.

There is a question residing within me: “What has been the purposes of the Lord in this remarkable movement of His Spirit across the Church”.

The Holy Spirit was poured out in extraordinary fashion at Pentecost. The infant church grew “under the consolation of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 9:31). The charisms were in clear evidence in the early apostolic communities (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:4, Ephesians 4:11-12).

The Holy Spirit has always been with the Church, as the Lord promised (cf. John 14:16). Christian history reveals that there have been particular moments of particular outpourings of grace – the Spirit blows where he wills (John 3:8)

We have lived through one such period of special outpouring of Grace. As Pope Paul VI noted, “we are living in a privileged moment of the Holy Spirit” (Pope Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 75).

What has been the Lord’s purposes in this?

In 1967 the Church was in the early stages of the implementation of the reforms of the Vatican Council. It was a time of great hope and optimism. It was an exciting time for the Church.

Indeed across the world young people were staging a revolutions fuelled, as they felt, by the desire for peace and love. The old order was changing, a new and better order was coming in. Generally there was a hope for a new and vital future for the world and for the Church.

Yet unknown at this time the Church was to experience much turmoil, confusion and uncertainty. From promising a new and exciting future we have experienced many painful moments and much darkness. The future has had to be struggled for. The last forty years have not been easy ones for the Church.

Catholic Pentecostalism

A small group of students from Duquesne University on a weekend retreat focussed on the question of the role of the Holy Spirit in their lives and in the Church, spurred in their search by their contact with the Pentecostal movement in America. One student, Patty Mansfield, went to the chapel to pray and experienced an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

She shared her experience with the others, and they too came to experience this outpouring. News spread. Catholic university students at other mid-west campuses came under this special outpouring of grace. 

Catholic Pentecostalism, as it was called in early days, was brought to Australia by a mathematics professor, Dr Alex Reichel who had been on sabbatical in the US. In January 1969 Professor Reichel received permission from Cardinal Gilroy to hold prayer meetings at St Michael’s, City Road, then the Sydney University Catholic Chaplaincy.

I attended some of these meetings in 1971 while a seminarian at St Patrick’s College, Manly. My life came under the Grace of the Renewal. A flame was lit and still burns brightly.

Significance of the Renewal

What was the Lord doing in this particular outpouring of grace?

Many of us here would be able to testify as to the extraordinary influence of the Charismatic Renewal on our faith and lives. The exposure to and exercise of the charisms of the Holy Spirit as described in the New Testament – tongues, prophesy, healing in particular – led us into new dimensions of faith and ministry.

This grace which has been granted to us is an unmerited gift. It is not just a personal blessing for our own spiritual benefit, but it is a grace for the Church of our time. As St Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 12 (12:12 ff), it is for the upbuilding of the body, the Church.

The Renewal has touched the lives of millions of Catholics. It began is simple prayer meetings where praise of God and the exercise of the charisms were in evidence. For many people these prayer meetings nourished a new and deeper dimension to their faith.

The personal renewal in faith has spread more broadly than its expression in prayer meetings. The Church has witnessed the emergence of an extraordinary number of new ecclesial movements, many of which have their spiritual genesis in the Renewal and are identified as “communities”. These have become places where the gift of the Holy Spirit has been nurtured with solid teaching and formation, the development of defined patterns of communal life, and have nourished a range of very active and successful ministries.

The Renewal has fostered many new ministries, sometimes formed around the particular gifts of an individual or around a specific ministry task, like healing for instance.

Especially we should note the development of ministries of evangelisation which have taken multiple expressions. These  are a fruit of the Renewal and, indeed, the call of Pope Paul VI and then Pope John Paul II to make evangelisation the centre of the Church’s mission has been heeded and expressed particularly in individuals and groups inspired by the Renewal.

The Pope’s personal preacher, Fr Cantalamassa, owes his dynamic preaching to the Renewal!

All manner of initiatives in the Church, including World Youth Day, owe so much to the Renewal.

One can go on to speak of the contribution of a renewed spirit of worship and praise that has found a place in Catholic liturgy – in the Mass and in Eucahristic Adoration. The Renewal has nspired by a new body of music whose defining characteristic is worship of God.

One can attribute a renewed thirst to read and study the Scriptures as the living Word of God as emerging from the Renewal.

The list goes on.

The Charismatic Renewal has had a profound influence on the Church. It is in fact a grace given to the Church in our time. It is, in fact, a special work of God to help the Church deal with the pressing problem of loss of personal faith among so many as secular influences eat away at the inner life of the baptised. The Renewal is God’s antidote to secularisation.

Today, we can be humbly grateful for the mercy of God as He has once again come to the aid of His people. We can personally recognise how much we are indebted to the grace of the Renewal in our own lives.

Through the Renewal each of us has had a fire lit within us. Like the fire at the Burning Bush that Moses witnessed, it is a fire that does not consume the bush.

God has begun a good work in us, let us bring it to its fulfilment.