Charismata and the Four Pillars

Ask any Dominican about the Four Pillars, and they'll tell you that the Four Pillars are the aspects of a Christian life which a Dominican must nurture and balance. They are

• Community
• Study
• Apostolate
• Contemplation

So, how do the Charismatic gifts fit into this paradigm?

As Roger Stronsand points out in "The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke", Luke and Acts present the Baptism in the Holy Spirit (or Filling with the Holy Spirit) as an empowering for service. So the Charismata are the tools of that service.

To put it another way, just as God will give a Ministerial Priest Sacramental Grace to perform those works proper to his ministry (i.e., the Sacraments), so He gives the Royal Priest (i.e, all Christians) Charismatic Grace to perform the work proper to his ministry. The Gifts of the Spirit are, first and foremost, meant for ministry - for Apostolate.

In the Gospel of John, we see Jesus talking to the Samaritan. How did he know that she had had 5 husbands and was now living with another man? Because He was God? When He walked this earth, prior to His resurrection, He was like us in all ways except sin (Gaudium et Spes, 22). So, no, this was not a manifestation of His divinity. It was the Word of Knowledge (1 Cor 12:8), one of the Gifts of the Spirit.

Likewise, every healing which He performed was a manifestation of the Gift of Healing.
And Jesus said that we would do greater things than Him.

My Brothers and Sisters, the primary Apostolate of ALL DOMINICANS is preaching the Gospel to the lost. And with the Gifts of the Spirit, we are equipped to minister to the needs of the people, show the Love of Christ to people, which opens the door for the preaching of the Gospel.

More on St. Dominic and Miracles

The following are from Miracles And Manifestations Of The Holy Spirit In The History Of The Church, taken from page 110 of the Kindle edition.

Summary of Miracles Attributed to St. Dominic

One day, preaching before a church against the heresies of the day, St. Dominic found himself, with a brother from the Cistercian convent, suddenly transported into the church, without any one having opened the door.  At another time his valise and books fell into a river, and when, after several days, they were "fished up again", they were not even wetted.  Often while traveling the rain fell in torrents, without one single drop falling on him, that he might reach his journey's end quite dry.  As he never took money about with him, he had to ask free passage across ferries.  On one occasion the boatman refused to ferry him across without his fare; so he lifted his eyes to heaven, and found at his feet the required money.  In the convent of St. Vincent of Caatreg, the cruficix spoke to him, and told him to persevere in well-doing, and to remember that saints were made perfect by suffering.  In the same place, while at mass, his fervor was so great that he was lifted into the air full five feet from the ground, of which fact the prior himself and the canons were personal witnesses.  He saved miraculously from drowning forty English pilgrims going to St. James's, who had entered a boat too weak and had been thrown into the Garonne.

Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles, pp. 231-232.
Citing Les Petits Bollandistes, Vol 9, p. 284.

Raising the Dead

The son of a matron died while his mother was listening to a sermon by St. Dominic. the dead body was taken to the monk and laid at his feet.  The "blessed father", moved with compassion, made on the lad the sign of the cross, and taking him by the hand, the dead child rose, stood on his feet, and returned home in perfect health. 

A carpenter, working in the convent of St. Sistus, fell into a pit, and the earth falling on him crushed him to death.  St. Dominic ordered him to be dug out, prayed overe him, and he returned to life wholly unhurt.

The nephew of Cardinal Stephen, whose name was Neapolion, being thrown from his horse, had his neck broke, and was killed.  St. Dominic, going to the spot of the accident, prayed thrice, saying the same words; then taking the young man by the hand, he said with a loud voice, "Neapolion, I say unto you, in the name of Christ, Arise."  Forthwith he arose, and St. Dominic led him to his uncle.

Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles, pp. 80-81.
Citing Edward Kinesman, Lives of the Saints, 1623.

"If God Does Not Show Up, We're Dead"

by guest blogger, Sherry W

The following was originally published on the Siena.org blog, 28 April 2011 
 
In the spirit of the season, I have a book on order about 100 Catholics saints who raised the dead.

I know. It is really out there. Jesus rising from the dead - OK. Even the idea of saints doing it spooks us a bit. And as for just plain Christians experiencing God raising the dead? Yeah, right.
It came as a surprise to me to discover that it has always been a rare but real part of the Christian experience. The ultimate experience of resurrection life.

My first real life exposure was years ago when I was doing gifts interviews in Washington DC and a woman came in who had had an extraordinary healing ministry for 30 years. When I asked her to tell me a story, she told me about praying for a man who rose from the dead. We hear hundreds of amazing and inspiring stories in the Called & Gifted process but this was one of those jaw-dropping moments. I tried to appear calm and pretend that I had heard stories like this before although I was inwardly skeptical. Darn. She really wanted to talk about other things so I never did hear exactly what happened.

(I had a similar experience not too long ago when I finally heard someone tell of having an experience of bi-location. As she pointed out, I do joke in workshops about my desire to hear bi-location stories, but I never expected anyone to take me up on it. 65,000+ have gone through the Called & Gifted process and I finally stumbled across someone who seems to have experienced bi-location. That percentage seems about right.)

And then there was the time in Rome, when Fr. Michael Sweeney and I and our OP host were standing jammed upright in a Roman bus famous for its crowds and its pick-pockets. I had my purse firmly clapsed under my arm and my arms rigidly down at my side when our guide casually nodded his head toward a church that we were passing and said "Oh, and that's where St. Dominic raised the boy from the dead." "Wait!" I squealed inwardly as I desperately tried to turn my wedged body so that I could see what he was referring to but we had passed the spot by before I managed to extract myself.
Another tantalizing almost-brush with resurrection.

Bl Jordan of Saxony, who followed St. Dominic as Master of the Order, wrote a very sober account of the miracle which was witnessed by a number of intelligent Dominicans.

"It happened that, once while he was in Rome, a young man, related to the Lord Cardinal Stephen of Fossa Nuova, was riding recklessly down a steep hill and thrown from his horse. While he was being carried away, it was hard to tell whether he was still alive or dead. As the crowd which had gathered was displaying its grief with wails and lamentations, Master Dominic happened along with Brother Tancred, a good, fervant man and one prior in Rome; in fact, it was he who told me of this incident. Brother Tancred said to him, "Why do you hesitate? Why don't you call on the Lord? Where is your pity for your neighbor, your confidence in God?" 

Stirred by these words and inflamed by the fire of his own ardent compassion, he ordered that the young man be brought to a nearby house. There he restored him to life by his prayers and personally led him out of the house in the sight of those who had gathered."
He had expired. That is what I heard from his parents, who lived in the Roman Campagna.)

Wow. A Dominican whose instinctive response to a fatal injury was "Why do you hesitate to pray for life? Where is your pity for your neighbor, your confidence in God?"

Suddenly, it doesn't all seem so freaky.

And then I started to hear confirmed stories from sober people that Christians were starting to see people raised from the dead in significant numbers around the world.

And then I heard about Heidi and Rolland Baker, missionaries to Mozambique. Watch this short 2008 CBN interview with Heidi about the extraordinary things that she and her co-workers are seeing in northern Mozambique. Mother of over 7,000 abandoned and impoverished children, faced daily with a level of suffering and chaos that is almost indescribable, Heidi puts it bluntly "If God does not show up, we're dead." 

And she talks very simply about how hard it is for western Christians to be open to the miraculous.

To be desperate enough, hungry enough, humble enough to pursue God instead of depending upon our own considerable resources.

It was said of St. Dominic that he spent his days talking to people about God and his nights talking with God about people. It was his passionate longing for and pursuit of God that made it seem perfectly sane to his closest companions that he could and should pray for God to raise a young man who had died in a tragic accident.

But the question that haunts me is am I that open to God's manifest presence as St. Dominic and his early companions or as Heidi Baker is? Or am I just fine doing the conventional, educated, middle class western thing: depending entirely on my own resources? What more would God give the world through his Church if we were that desperate, that humble, that open?