Why is there a constant need for revival among Evangelicals? Why do they constantly need shaking up? Why can't they keep the fire burning?
Renewal should be a constant movement toward the heart of Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Salvation is a process, the soul is a garden that must be cultivated. Take up the cross DAILY! Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
The Sacraments, devotions, fasts and feasts of the Church help the Catholic do just that. They were inspired by the Holy Spirit but are useless ritual if not practiced in Spirit and in Truth.
I would attribute these factors as the strength of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. We know it is a work of the Holy Spirit to strengthen the Church, and in fourty years He has done just that--CONSISTENTLY. Sometimes slower than we want, but it's all in God's time. No hot/cold roller coaster, just a gradual warming as God's Fire spreads throughout the Church.
The Prince of the Apostles, our first Pope, explained it this way:
Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.
For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. (2 Peter 1:2-9)
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