Our Mission Statement
In response to the Church’s call to rediscover the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, the Calgary Catholic Charismatic Renewal Society (CCCRS) seeks to promote a deeper personal relationship with Jesus Christ through the experience of a New Pentecost. Empowered by the Holy Spirit and commissioned by our Baptism to engage in the New Evangelization, we offer Life in the Spirit Seminars through which we invite participants to be baptized in the Spirit.
Our Core Values
To be obedient to the Church and Her Leaders, ever faithful to the Church’s magisterium and Tradition. To persevere in our call to holiness by an ongoing manifestation of the Fruit of the Spirit. (Gal 5:22-23)
Why Baptism in the Holy Spirit?
The International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services Doctrinal Commission, in its document entitled, “Baptism in the Holy Spirit” states that ‘There have been two primary ways of describing baptism in the Spirit: as an actualization of the grace of baptism and confirmation, and as a new sending of the Spirit’(pg. 70). The baptism in the Holy Spirit is the releasing of the graces that we have received in the sacraments of baptism and confirmation that often times lie dormant and unused. Therefore we must, as St Paul reminds us in his letter to Timothy, stir into flame the gift of God we have previously accepted” (cf. 2 Tim 1:6).
A New Pentecost
“Today I would like to extend this invitation to everyone: let us rediscover, dear brothers and sisters, the beauty of being baptized in the Holy Spirit; let us be aware again of our baptism and our confirmation, sources of grace that are always present. Let us ask the Virgin Mary to obtain a renewed Pentecost for the Church again today, a Pentecost that will spread in everyone the joy of living and witnessing to the Gospel.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Pentecost Sunday, Regina Caeli Message, May 11, 2008)
The New Evangelization
In his apostolic letter establishing the pontifical council for promoting the New Evangelization Pope Benedict XVI writes:
“It is the duty of the Church to proclaim always and everywhere the Gospel of Jesus Christ (…) Faithful to this mandate, the Church—a people chosen by God to declare his wonderful deeds (cf. 1 Peter 2:9)—ever since she received the gift of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost (cf. Acts 2:14), has never tired of making known to the whole world the beauty of the Gospel as she preaches Jesus Christ, true God and true man, the same “yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb 13:8), who, by his death and Resurrection, brought us salvation and fulfilled the promise made of old. Hence the mission of evangelization, a continuation of the work desired by the Lord Jesus, is necessary for the Church: it cannot be overlooked; it is an expression of her very nature.”
“Making my own the concerns of my venerable Predecessors, I consider it opportune to offer appropriate responses so that the entire Church, allowing herself to be regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit, may present herself to the contemporary world with a missionary impulse in order to promote the new evangelization.”
“Indeed we cannot forget that the first task will always be to make ourselves docile to the freely given action of the Spirit of the Risen One who accompanies all who are heralds of the Gospel and opens the hearts of those who listen. To proclaim fruitfully the Word of the Gospel one is first asked to have a profound experience of God… at the root of all evangelization lies not a human plan of expansion, but rather the desire to share the inestimable gift that God has wished to give us, making us sharers in his own life.”