Sober intoxication of the Spirit

2005 – Servant Books, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Raniero Cantalamessa This book is a collection of teachings and meditations given at national and international meetings of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. The only exception is the last chapter (“We Were All Made to Drink of One Spirit”) which was a meditation delivered to Pope John Paul II’s Pontifical Household and the Roman Curia.

The chapters relate to different phases of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal from its beginnings to the present, which explains the varying tones and some unavoidable repetitions of the same theme.

I dedicate this book first and foremost to my brothers and sisters in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal because much of it was born of their prayer and their inspiring love for the Word of God. “The charismatic renewal,” or, as we say in Italy, “the renewal in the Spirit,” describes the special grace diffused in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. More significantly, it also describes the path of salvation presented in Scripture to the whole Church and to every believer: “He saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).

Because of that, the reflections in this book are not intended for just one particular ecclesial group but for all those who feel a need to open their lives more fully to the powerful breath of the Spirit which is blowing through the Church today “as in a new Pentecost.”

I am grateful to St. Anthony Messenger Press and to Servant Books for the opportunity to share these reflections with my brothers and sisters in the United States and in other English-speaking countries with whom I have shared so many times of deep prayer and joyful proclamation of the gospel. I am also glad to share these reflections because I am indebted to them: it was in the United States-New Jersey, to be precise-that in 1977 I myself received the grace of “the baptism of the Spirit.”