This week’s General Audience in St Peter’s Square, dedicated to the theme of charisms, was marked by surprise announcements. In his greeting to the Italian-speaking faithful, Pope Francis announced a World Meeting on the Rights of the Child on 3 February 2025, entitled “Let’s love and protect them”, with the participation of experts and dignitaries from around the world, and that during the Jubilee Year there will be two canonizations, the official date of which has not yet been announced: that of Blessed Carlo Acutis, during the Jubilee of Adolescents, and that of Blessed Piergiorgio Frassati, during the Jubilee dedicated to young people. The Pope then went on to recall that Ukraine marks 1,000 days since the war began, which he described as “a shameful disaster for all humanity.” He then read out in full – in front of the wife of Ukrainian President Zelensky, who was present at the audience – a moving letter sent to him by a young Ukrainian university student, which read: “Father, When, on Wednesday, you remember my country and are able to speak to the whole world on the thousandth day of this terrible war, I ask you not to speak only of our suffering but also of our faith. Although it is imperfect, that does not diminish its value, because it paints, with painful strokes, a portrait of the Risen Christ.” “There have been too many deaths in my life recently”, states the letter of the young man read out by the Pope. “It is difficult to live in a city where a missile kills and you are witness to so many tears. I would have liked to flee, I would have liked to go back to being a child in my mother’s arms, I would have liked to remain in silence and in love, but I thank God because, through this pain, I am learning greater love. Pain is not only a road to anger and despair; if based on faith, it is a good teacher of love. Father, if pain makes you suffer, it means that you love. And so, when you speak of our pain, when you remember our thousand days of suffering, speak of our thousand days of love, too, because only love, faith, and hope give a real meaning to our wounds.”
“The charisms are the ‘jewels’ or the ornaments that the Holy Spirit distributes to make the Bride of Christ more beautiful”,
the Pope said during his catechesis: “The charism goes to a special person or a special community, it is a God-given gift,” he added extemporaneously drawing on the Council: “Charisms are gifts given for the common good, for the benefit of all. It is not, in other words, destined principally and ordinarily for the sanctification of the person, but for the service of the community”. Moreover, the charism is “the gift given to one, or to some in particular, not to everyone in the same way, and this is what distinguishes it from sanctifying grace, which instead are the same and common to all.” “The manifestation of the Spirit is given to everyone for profit.” Francis went on to quote from Benedict XVI: “Anyone who considers the history of the post-conciliar era can recognize the process of true renewal, which often took unexpected forms in living movements and made almost tangible the inexhaustible vitality of the holy Church.” “And this is the charism”, Francis added in unscripted remarks. “We must rediscover the charisms – the Pope’s invitation – because this ensures that the promotion of the laity, and of women in particular, is understood not only as an institutional and sociological fact, but also in its biblical and spiritual dimension.”
“The laity are not the least”, he remarked. “The laity are not a form of external collaborator or auxiliary troops of the clergy, no! They have their own charisms and gifts with which to contribute to the mission of the Church.”
For the Pope, “when we talk about the charisms, we must immediately dispel a misunderstanding: that of identifying them with spectacular or extraordinary gifts and capabilities; instead, they are ordinary gifts – each one of us has his or her own charism – that assume extraordinary value if inspired by the Holy Spirit and embodied with love in situations of life.” “Many Christians, when they hear talk of charisms, experience sadness or disappointment, as they are convinced that they do not possess any, and feel they are excluded or second-class Christians”, Francis said. He added off-text:
“There are no second-class Christians. Each person has his or her own personal, and also community charism.”
Quoting from St. Austine, the Pope remarked: “’If you love, it is not nothing that you have: if you love unity, whoever has anything in that unity has it also for you. In the body, the eye alone sees; but is it for itself alone that the eye sees? It sees both for the hand and the foot, and for all the other members’”. Charity, the Pope noted, “makes me love the Church, or the community in which I live and, in unity, all charisms, not just some, are ‘mine’, just as ‘my’ charisms, little though they may seem, belong to all and are for the good of all. Charity multiplies charisms; it makes the charism of one, of one individual person, the charism of all.”.
