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On 4 and 5 July, Vishwa Jyothi Don Bosco Philosophate, Karunapuram organized a seminar on Facts and Myths about Charismatic Ministry. Rev. Fr Benny Svd, a well known charismatic preacher and presently the director of Divine Word Centre at Muthangi and Brother Patrick, a lay person from the same team, debunked a lot of myths and clarified doubts regarding the Charismatic Ministry.
We are living in an era wherein many people see charismatic ministry in the Church as an emotional blackmail and are very critical about it. They see it as nothing more than an emotional euphoria. Moreover, many priests, religious and the candidates to consecrated life too have wrong notions about Charismatic Ministry. Hence, they do not appreciate the unique gift of Holy Spirit to such ministry. To clarify such wrong conceptions the seminar in consideration was organized.
The session started with the invocation of Holy Spirit imploring to overshadow the attendants with its presence and enthuse them with zeal for Christ. In the consecutive presentations of two days Fr Benny dealt with the origin of the charismatic mission and went on to explain the history of charismatic ministry and then finally ended his session encouraging the brothers to get involved in the ministry of Holy Spirit. With biblical evidences he showed that it was God the Father who originated the charismatic mission as part of the salvific plan for the entire human race, and it was in and through Jesus the plan was accomplished. He sadly noted that most of the priests and religious have forgotten such a mission of the Holy Spirit. Every disciple of Jesus is called to get involved in charismatic ministry which entails preaching the good news, praying, healing, prophesying, performing miracles; in short doing all types of activities that Jesus did. However, today many priests and religious have turned towards worldly things like money, power, position, internet, sex, etc. and due to this reason the Church ministers fail to perform t
he miraculous works that are endowed to them by the Father. In the charismatic ministry it is the Holy Spirit who works through the ministers and does wondrous things. It is the power that comes from above. The power does not come from world, from human being but from the Holy Spirit. It is the same spirit who gives different gifts to different people.
The Bible says that without faith we cannot please God. There are different types of faith, those that are doctrinal, thematic and expectant faith. Through faith in Jesus we can heal a person who is physically, mentally and spiritually sick. Faith does miracles. At the end of two days of animations he paused a question to attendants that whether they have received the Holy Spirit, if so why there is no miracles, healings in their ministry. The seminar ended with the message inviting everyone to be a model like Jesus to the faithful and to carry on the life in fidelity as a charismatic disciple till the end for Jesus. Through the seminar the attendants came to realize about the facts and myths about charismatic ministry and its importance. The seminar was effective and the fruit of it can be judged through the positive feedbacks. It enlarged the hearts of the attendants and broadened their minds.
