I. Charism - La Salle.org

II. CHARISM IN THE BIBLE 27
4. To be free - Gal 5:13.
5. To hope living with a single hope - Eph 4:4.
6. For the Kingdom - 1 Thes 2:12.
Vocation is a call… Call which in Hebrew is Qryáh. But “qryáh”
also means reading! Vocation is, then, a reading of our life by God,
for us… It is also a reading of our life by us, for God…
In the New Testament, vocation is maintained and strengthened
thanks to charisms. But the first of these gifts is the Holy Spirit
himself who is poured into our hearts (Rom 5:5; 8:15). The word
charisma is used within the perspective of this presence of the Spirit
and his free gifts (1 Cor 12:1-4).
In the Old Testament the presence of the Spirit was expressed in the
extraordinary gifts in which the prophets rejoiced (1K 22:28;
18:22; Ez 3:12). The Messiah being the greatest of the prophets was
granted all the gifts of the Spirit (Is 11:2). The Spirit who was
already hovering at the first moment of creation will be the guarantor
of a new creation in the hearts of the faithful (Ez 36:26; Jl
3:1). It is the Church which will henceforth gather together all
these gifts in the grace of the sacraments and the presence of the
Spirit which assists in its magisterium. It may also be said that it was
these same charisms that built it up as much in its beginnings as
they do today.
In the early church these gifts or charisms were part of everyday
experience. So it was that the preaching of saint Paul was accompanied
by miracles (1 Th 1:5; 1 Cor 2:4). He had the gift of speaking
in tongues (1 Cor 14:18), he had visions (2 Cor 12:1-4). These gifts
of the Spirit were also sometimes found in the heart of the community
so much so that they sometimes became a preoccupation (1 Cor
12:14). The exhilaration caused by a charism of the Spirit was not
free of ambiguity extending even to encouraging schism (1 Cor 12).