1997, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. — Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
Introduction
One of the greatest blessings of my life over the past two decades has been the opportunity to listen to tens of thousands of Catholics around the world describe how God is using them in the lives of others. The one-on-one listening sessions that we call gifts interviews are just about the most fun you can have legally. We hear these words over and over: “I’ve never told anyone this story before but….”
For my collaborators and me, the interviews have provided a stunning window into the realities of God’s grace at work in our world that regular Catholics in the pews hardly ever get the chance to put into words. The stories we’ve heard run the gamut from the funny to the unexpected to the hopeful, and occasionally to the gloriously extraordinary. (I once had the chance to listen to someone describe an experience of bilocation!)
Of course, the experience of the vast majority of those we have helped to discern charisms is more mainstream but just as moving. You don’t have to appear exceptional to the world to be used in remarkable ways by God. As St. Teresa of Kolkata observed: “[Jesus] will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in his love than in your weakness. Only then, his hand will be free with you.”1
This book was written for the same audience for which I wrote Forming Intentional Disciples — the “Core,” the Catholic leaders, ordained and lay, at all levels of the Church’s life whose vision and decisions will determine our future. But this is not the Called & Gifted workshop in book form.
That’s because the discernment and exercise of the charisms is just one part of the larger and more fundamental issue of fruitfulness: the manifestation of God’s power, purposes, and provision in history through the intentional cooperation of disciples with grace. The world and the whole human race is waiting for the fruit that you and I have been anointed by the Holy Spirit to bear, and the charisms are just one important kind of fruit.
We have learned an enormous amount over the past twenty-three years about how to help Catholic adults of all ages and backgrounds discern and answer the call of God that comes with a charism. What I didn’t understand was how little of that accumulated savvy you can cram into a book of manageable size. I worked hard to cover the most basic principles, but I need to make it clear that reading this book is neither the equivalent of going through an actual discernment process nor does it include the Catholic Spiritual Gifts Inventory. (If you would like to go through a discernment process, please visit the Catherine of Siena Institute website at www.siena.org and give us the chance to assist you.)
I owe an enormous debt to our Institute staff and our indefatigable traveling and regional teachers and trainers, who make it possible for me to take time off the road, and to the 140,000 Catholics who have shared their experiences of God with us over the past twenty years. It has been a tremendous privilege to collaborate with the thousands of Catholic leaders: bishops, pastors, diocesan and parish staff, and so many others who have worked with us to foster the missionary discipleship and discernment of Catholics over the years. In the writing of this book, I am especially beholden to the apostolic passion and hard-won wisdom of Katherine Coolidge, Bobby Vidal, Father Michael Sweeney, O.P., Mark and Janet Shea, Deacon Keith Strohm, Dave VanVickle, Sherry Curp, Gary Weddell, Cindy Cavnar, Craig Pohl, Jennifer Brown, Bishop Earl Boyea, Father Tom Firestone, Father James Mangan, and all the priests and leaders of the Flint Catholic Community.
I can’t end without a shout-out to the 7,200 members of the Forming Intentional Disciples Facebook Forum. Being able to pick the brains and receive the prayers of some of the most astute and effective Catholic evangelizers from around the world at a moment’s notice has been incredibly fruitful and encouraging. It is the ultimate twenty-first-century Catholic evangelizer’s brain trust and support network. Our experience on the Forum has shown that we can use social media to duplicate some of the collaborative dynamics of the Generation of Saints who were the catalysts of the great Catholic revival in early seventeenth-century France.
Blessed be God in all his gifts!
1 The first sentence of the quote is from Mother Teresa, “Jesus Christ: He wants to love with our hearts and serve with our hands” (online at http://www.vatican.va/jubilee_2000/magazine/documents/ju_mag_01031997_p-10_en.html, as of May 5, 2017); the second sentence is from Mother Teresa, No Greater Love (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2002), p. 87.
Chapter 1
The Weight of My Neighbor’s Glory
All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:18
There is a story that I love to tell at every Called & Gifted workshop that I teach: the extraordinary life of Margaret Haughery, the bread saint of New Orleans.
Margaret was born in Ireland but lived most of her life in New Orleans. By the time she was twenty-three, Margaret’s parents, husband, and infant daughter had all died. She was penniless, uneducated, and alone. Although she originally supported herself as a laundress, Margaret quickly began to start businesses. She first founded a dairy and peddled the milk door-to-door. She used the money she made to buy a bankrupt bakery and turned it around, becoming enormously successful. The penniless orphan made a fortune and gave almost all of it away.
A devout Catholic, she lived a life of great simplicity — she owned only two dresses at a time. She was known as the “mother of orphans” because, for decades, she made and gave away vast sums to feed the poor, while founding and supporting homes for orphans and widows of all backgrounds.
Margaret’s wisdom was proverbial. Seated in the doorway of her famous bakery, she was consulted by people of all ranks. When she died in 1882, she was given a state funeral and all New Orleans mourned. What I find most moving is that the plain but fabulous Irish social entrepreneur that everyone called “our Margaret” did all this without ever learning to read or write.1
Margaret Haughery is a perfect example of why I love this observation by A. D. Lindsay:
The difference between ordinary people and saints is not that saints fulfill the plain duties that ordinary men neglect. The things saints do have not usually occurred to ordinary people at all…. “Gracious” conduct is like the work of an artist. It needs imagination and spontaneity. It is not the choice between presented alternatives but the creation of something new.2
Which brings me to the point of this book.
The greatest riches of the Church are not found in our gorgeous legacy of art and architecture, our brilliant philosophical and scientific heritage, or even our nearly 700,000 institutions that currently serve the dignity and eternal destiny of human beings on this planet. All of these treasures, wonderful and critical as they are, are fruit borne by human beings who, like the unlikely Margaret Haughery, freely responded to and cooperated with the grace of God in their time and place. Our greatest earthly treasures are our Margarets: the 1.272 billion immortals and potential fruit-bearers who currently bear the surname “Catholic.”3
As C. S. Lewis observed:
There
