The wonderful gifts of the Holy Spirit: Charisms vs Confirmation

Charisms versus confirmation 

The teachings of the church per the catechism can be expounded upon by the following: 

Every Christian who validly and fruitfully receives the Sacrament of Confirmation, which would effectively be only Catholic or Orthodox Christians, receives, as we know, seven special gifts, that are to strengthen him for the journey towards salvation, which is the same to help us in a very supreme way as adults to attain to heaven, which is the greatest challenge of our life and the ultimate goal of our life. 

What is less well known in Catholic teaching, and that is nevertheless something that really should be considered up and coming, as it were, is the now very substantially necessary reality known as the charisms, precisely because, per Vatican II, the laity are being radically called to go out and to evangelize the world and to build up the kingdom of God. 

The Bishops and the priests can no longer do it because the population is too big; we have to fill in the gaps.

Toward this end, how do we understand the difference between the charisms of the Holy Spirit versus the gifts that we receive a Confirmation?

Well, if you have ever attended the called and gifted seminar put on by the St Catherine of Siena institute if I remember correctly, it is actually a reality that every baptized person receives some subset of the known 24 charisms. 

This is even true for Christians of the separated communities by heresy, who unfortunately as indicated above, do not possess the true Sacrament of Confirmation because of lack of apostolic succession. 

Nevertheless, the sharing of some subset of these 24 charisms are completely different from the ones of confirmation. 

In short, the gifts from confirmation are inward and for the salvation of the receiver, whereas the charisms are outward gifts that are not meant to help save the recipient but to build up the church around them.  

This, in other words, means that the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are given to us in order to help us get to heaven inwardly. 

The charisms , on the other hand ,are given to us not so much to help us to get to heaven but to help others to get closer to God and to build up the church. 

For example on a personal note, it seems that by the comments and experience of many of my friends and family , I may have the following charisms: knowledge, teaching, writing, intercessory prayer, and possibly music. 

And yet, again , every baptized person of any form of christianity, has some partaking of the 24 charisms and , it means that you have gifts that enrich other people and draw them closer to God and build them up. 

Every Christian should, to the best of their abilities and for their own happiness and enrichment, try to discover and discern what particular subset of the charisms they have been given by God in his foreseen will 

When you do this, you will get greater and greater joy as you get holier, because the issue is that to the degree that you get closer to God and holier in your walk with him, the charisms will manifest themselves in a greater sense, because they are intimately connected to one another 

In short, this means that the holier you get, the more manifest these charisms become and the more powerful they become to help others to build them up when exercise of course properly with charity and love and so forth.

Initially, in older times of the church, the church thought that only saints were given these charisms, that they were that special. 

But now , within its doctrinal development, the church realized that the reason that the Saints had such great manifestation of these charisms, was not that they alone possessed them, but because of their great holiness. 

And this, is precisely why I said what I said above. 

The holier you get the more manifest your charisms become. 

The reason that the charisms didn't seem to be observed in normal lay people, was simply that their holiness wasn't very great , and so their charisms were not nearly as manifest. 

But now that the church realizes that every Christian has some sharing of the charisms, they are now dedicated to helping everyone of them to discover what their charisms are and then to begin to use them for their own joy and enrichment and to help build up others around them.

I do not know if the Saint Catherine of Siena institute still tours the country with their wonderful seminars on the call and gifted series, but nevertheless, they could certainly be contacted in order to provide you with possibly resources to help you to move in the direction of trying to discover what your charisms May be, in order that you may begin to enrich others in your life and find the joy that God desires you to have by using what beautiful things he has given you to build up the church.

For the catechism reference see paragraphs 799 through 801. 

God bless, and may the Lord help us all to determine and to be quote unquote great in our use of the wonderful gifts of the Holy Spirit!