BC Charismatic

Mar 8th Stay in the Spirit, 24/7

Lalith Perera brings ‘four step retreat’ to B.C.

So you were baptized in the Holy Spirit 20 years ago? That’s not good enough, says Lalith Perera.

We need to receive the Holy Spirit all day, every day, for the rest of our lives, he told this year’s Vancouver Catholic charismatic conference Sept. 23-24. And there are steps we can take to make sure that happens—10 times a day if necessary.

Perera is head of the Community of the Risen Lord, a Catholic charismatic community based in Sri Lanka and operating a worldwide ministry, in person and electronically.

Perera said most Catholics today are “with Christ,” like the apostles during Jesus’ ministry, but not “in Christ” the way those same apostles were after the Holy Spirit was poured out on them at Pentecost.

What’s the difference? St. Peter’s first two sermons, recorded in Acts chapters 2-4, brought in 5,000 converts. “Today if you preach 5,000 sermons and get two people to convert, you’ll be lucky,” Perera said.

“Something has gone wrong. There’s no difference between Christians and non-Christians all over the world today, because we have gone back into the ‘with Christ’ experience.”

The conference was conducted as a “four step retreat,” teaching a way to get back to the “in Christ” experience. The steps are: Come As You Are, I Love You; Give the Truth of Your Heart to Jesus; Surrender Your Life to the Lord; and Be Filled with the Holy Spirit.

COME AS YOU ARE

For step 1, Perera said, Catholics need to give up the idea, learned by many in childhood, that Jesus only loves good children. Jesus loves everybody. We must run to him now, sins and all. “Don’t wait till you change. Come and be changed. Come to the Lord, and He will transform you.”

GIVE THE TRUTH TO JESUS

Step 2: Tell the truth, especially to God. We all tell three kinds of lies, Perera said: to other people, which destroys our peace and joy; to ourselves—better known as denial—which brings the truth out in other ways, such as mental, emotional and even physical illnesses; and to God, which means “our prayers won’t go beyond the roof.”

“Take these three curses, says Jesus, and give them to me. I will turn it into a blessing,” he said.

We must be honest in confessing our sins, and God will heal them as He has been doing since the time of the Bible—a book of “all broken people, and a mighty God.”

SURRENDER YOUR LIFE

Step 3 may be the hardest: surrender. Most people, Perera said, think that means loss of freedom and happiness, so “nobody wants to surrender to God. We are trying to buy favours from God.”

Jeremiah 29:11 says “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Surrender means giving God permission to enact His plan in our lives.

In his own life, Perera said, he had been a charismatic leader for many years when God confronted him during a retreat in the year 2000. “You serve Me,” God told him, “but you serve Me on your terms, not Mine. Surrender to Me. If you do not surrender, I will still love you. I will still take care of you. But you will do little things for me, and grow old and die.” In tears, he surrendered—and soon a prayer group of about a dozen mushroomed to thousands of people.

Calling on the congregation to raise both arms in surrender, Perera said “in the army this is a sign: I give up. But in the kingdom of God it is another sign: Father, carry me.”

He said the surrender must include our money—“not only the money you drop in the plate but the money you have in your wallet, and the money you have in the bank, and your stocks and shares, belong to the Lord. You are the steward.” But if we ask God how to spend our money, and obey what He tells us, “I promise you, you will never be short of money in your life.”

Surrender must also include the way we treat other people, especially those close to us. “When you treat your family the way God wants, your family becomes the kingdom of God,” he said.

BE FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT

The first three steps we can do for ourselves, Perera said. Step 4 is something only Jesus can do: fill us with the Holy Spirit. We can’t live a Christian life without that. So we must start each day by turning to Jesus: coming as we are, telling Him the truth, surrendering to His will—and then He will fill us with the Spirit. And each time we fall away from this during the day, we should do the same steps, as often as necessary. Jesus will do His part.

Perera said the Spirit will give us peace and joy independent of our circumstances, will allow us to overcome the weaknesses of the flesh, and will enable us to love people that it would normally be impossible to love.

—Richard Dunstan

Jul 8th Summer Institute draws B.C. leaders

More than 60 charismatic Catholics turned out to St. Charles Garnier parish in Kelowna Aug. 14-19 for the third annual Our Lady of Pentecost Summer Institute.

Theme for the Catholic charismatic leadership formation event was Revisiting Pentecost, with Father Don Wilson of Kelowna, Father Bart van Roijen of Sparwood, John Connelly of Burns Lake, and Deacon Armand Danis of Thunder Bay, Ont., as featured speakers.

Also on the schedule were daily Mass; praise and worship; panel discussions and other audience participation activities; evening prayer gatherings; and the sacrament of reconciliation.

The event was sponsored by the Nelson Diocese Charismatic Renewal Service Committee, with the endorsement of Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services of B.C., and letters of greeting from all five B.C. bishops. Alanet MacKinnon and Madeleine Allen were co-ordinators, with Gladys Miller as MC and Johanna Tournemille, Laurette Hamoline, Gladys Miller and Roy MacIntyre leading music.

A total of 45 people attended full-time, with another 18 attending for at least part of the institute. The total was an increased of 15 people from last year’s institute.

Next year’s summer institute will be held in Kelowna Aug. 12-17, with sessions at St. Charles Garnier and opening Mass and accommodations at St. Elizabeth Seton House of Prayer. More details will be available in our spring newsletter.

For more information call Gladys Miller, 250-442-8589, or russ-m@telus.net.  

—Summer Institute stories by Richard Dunstan

Jun 8th Fr. Don Wilson: Don’t let the fire die out

God has given us fire, and we had better offer Him more than ashes.

Fire, in the Bible, represents both God’s love and His wrath, Father Don Wilson told Our Lady of Pentecost Summer Institute this summer in Kelowna. It expresses the intensity of God’s love for us, and at the same time His judgement on unrighteousness. “I have come to cast fire on the earth,” Jesus said in Luke chapter 12, “and how I wish it were already blazing!”

At Pentecost, Father Wilson said, Christians were given that fire. And if the Holy Spirit burns brightly in God’s people, it will kindle God’s flame in the whole world.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always burn brightly. The Church is often weak and feeble, Father Wilson said, clinging to “the ashes of a bygone enthusiasm. The fire that Jesus cast on the earth has grown sadly low.” Even in the Catholic charismatic renewal, he told an audience of more than 50 charismatic leaders, “every leader longs to be on fire, but today we are more likely to be burnt out.”

God wants our fire fanned into flame, he said, and it’s our job to do that.

. The dying out of the fire can lead to a lot of busy work that gets the kingdom of God nowhere, Father Wilson said. We can find ourselves ending in outward observance what we began in the Spirit, as St. Paul warns in Galatians chapter 3. Worse yet, “a lot of us can’t be burnt out because we were never on fire.”

The only solution, he said, is to turn back to the One who gave us the fire: God Himself. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Hosts” (Zechariah 4:6). “If we want to be on fire with the Spirit, we must take care of our relationship with the Lord.”

First of all, this means prayer time, and lots of it. “Sometimes it seems to be wasting time, but it’s important to waste time with the Lord,” Father Wilson said.

We must also be fully submitted to God in scripture reading, prayer, reception of the sacraments, and obedience to authority. All of this is more important than conferences, techniques or programs.

We need to let God be in charge of our schedule, and that takes more than good intentions. A lot of people are burned out doing things God isn’t asking them to do, Father Wilson said, but “there is always enough time to do the things the Lord is asking us to do.

“There is a small amount of time in the day available to us, and we are accountable to the Lord for how we use it,” he said. “We must be led by God’s priorities, not by demand or pressure from others.”

That means prayer time, time for our families, and appropriate time for relaxation and refreshment, as well as time devoted to the tasks God gives us. And it means cutting out time-wasters that don’t fit into any of those categories.

It also means delegating. Many leaders find that difficult—nobody else can be trusted to do things right. But the Bible says “better two than one by himself” (Ecclesiastes 4:9) , and in addition to lightening the burden, delegation gives other people a chance to grow.

“Never forget that we are not the saviours of the world,” Father Wilson said. “There’s only one Saviour, Jesus, and He invites us to work with Him, using the gifts and powers He has given us.”

We must meet Jesus as a living person, not just as a historical figure; renew our baptism every day, and seek the Spirit again for every new task. “A Christian is above all a convert, converted from the ideas of the world.”

We should ask ourselves, ”am I really converted? Is my whole soul truly turned toward the Lord? Am I calling lack of overt sin ‘conversion’? Is Jesus Lord of all my life, so that I can say ‘not I live, but Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:20) ‘? Have I agreed to be Christianized by Christ, spiritualized by His Spirit? Am I expectant that His gifts will be manifested in me today?”

Father Wilson said the current sufferings of the Church—the revelations of its infidelity and sin within the Church, and ridicule from outside—are actually signs of hope.

“Suffering is the seed of life,” he said. “The Church never has greater cause to hope than when its sufferings are greatest. God is the master of the impossible—He writes straight with crooked lines.”

Father Wilson, director of St. Elizabeth Seton House of Prayer in Kelowna, is a pioneer of the Catholic charismatic renewal in B.C. and spiritual adviser and past chair of the provincial charismatic service committee, as well as bishops’ liaison to the renewal.

May 8th John Connelly: ‘Re-Pentecost’ and be baptized

His name is John, and he came calling out “re-Pentecost!”

And if you think that’s a silly pun, you’re half right. The pun on “repent” and “Pentecost” is deliberate, but there’s nothing silly about the message.

Repentance and a new Pentecost go together, John Connelly told Our Lady of Pentecost Summer Institute in Kelowna, and the Catholic Church has no hope without them.

That might sound scary, but Connelly said Catholics should take heart. Literally. A new heart is just as essential as repentance and a new Pentecost, and only God can provide it.

“Nothing can put the Catholic Church together again but God,” he said. “The scandals are going to continue until we admit that we can’t do the job without a new Pentecost.”

Connelly, who operates God’s Revolution Today multi-media ministry out of Burns Lake, B.C., said his message was in keeping with the message of another John 2,000 years ago: John the Baptist, who preached repentance, and promised that Jesus would baptize his hearers with the Holy Spirit (Matthew 3:11). “Repentance points us to Pentecost,” Connelly said.

Connelly said the evidence of how little we as Catholics can do on our own power is all around us—or rather, among us. He said only 10 to 15 per cent of Catholics have a relationship with Jesus and are trying to be His disciples. The rest of the Catholic population is nominal at best, “and ‘nominal’ is kind for most of them.”

“Our programs are not working,” he said. “We need power that we do not have, and it is our lack of humility that will not admit it. We as a Church need to repent.”

That power, he said, comes from the Holy Spirit—the power that came down on Peter and the other apostles on the first Pentecost. “Something happened to Peter in that upper room,” he said, “and that something must happen in every Catholic.

“I’m not saying you need to join the charismatic renewal. I’m saying you need Pentecost. This should be universal—it should not just be a group in the Church. The Holy Spirit is central, central, central to the basics of Catholicism. Somehow, we’re not always getting the message.”

The Holy Spirit comes in fire, he said, and that’s exactly what we need.

“Fire can be seen,” he said. “A person who is on fire burns. The trouble is that the Church is not on fire.”

“The Spirit and the bride say ‘come’” (Revelation 22:17a) was Connelly’s overall theme for his talks. He devoted his morning talk to the Spirit, and the afternoon to the bride. The bride, he said, is us, or at least it’s supposed to be.

“God is not just looking for friends, or obedient servants,” he said. “He’s looking for a bride. The only thing we can compare it to on earth is a loving relationship between a husband and a wife.”

And to be a fitting bride for our Lord, we must have a new heart, like the one God gave to St. Margaret Mary, founder of the Sacred Heart devotion. “Love desires a heart that it not divided,” St. Margaret Mary said. “It calls for all or none.”

That, Connelly said, is something we can’t do for ourselves. We can only ask God humbly for a new heart, and then let him provide it, no matter how much it hurts.

“We have spiritual heart disease, and the divine physician must operate,” he said.

Connelly said the Church is facing tough times, but great times too. Tough times will mean Catholics have to make a conscious choice for their Church, he said, and many of the 85 to 90 per cent of Catholics who are lukewarm will drop aside. “Pope Benedict has said the Church of the future will be smaller,” he said.

Quoting Pope Benedict, Connelly said the Church of the future will have a renewed love for the Eucharist and for prayer; reconciliation between Christian denominations as all suffer persecution; and the flourishing of small faith communities.

“If you have a small prayer group, you’re right on target,” Connelly said.

But this small Church will also spread, he said: “Wherever there’s fire, people are going to gather.”

Connelly said God’s faithful must “come out of Babylon” (Revelation 18:4), not by literally leaving a sinful world but by setting ourselves apart from it spiritually, through personal holiness. “You live in Babylon. Babylon is all around you,” he said. “Create a desert in your own life where you will find God. That’s what a prayer group is.”

Apr 8th Fr. Bart van Roijen: You’re looking for Jesus

What are you looking for? Whether you know it or not, the answer is Jesus, Father Bart van Roijen told Our Lady of Pentecost Summer Institute.

We all want to be happy, he said, and we all have our own ideas about what will make us happy. “But there has to be a context to our happiness, and without God we cannot be truly happy.”

In a talk titled Pentecost: The Word Made Flesh Revisited, Father Van Roijen said John’s Gospel is framed at both ends with a question asked Jesus: “What (or Whom) are you looking for?”, and between those two questions are a number of stories of people who found the answer in Him.

In the first chapter of John, two disciples of John the Baptist set out to follow Jesus as he passes by; on seeing them he asks them “What are you looking for?” (Jn 1:38). After the resurrection, he meets the weeping

Mary Magdalene outside the empty tomb, and asks her “Whom are you looking for?” (Jn 20:15)

Others who come to Jesus on their own searches include Nicodemus in chapter 3, and the Samaritan woman at the well in chapter 4. They’re looking for other things—but in finding Jesus, they find everything else they truly want. “They have seen the Lord, and they are satisfied.”

Father Van Roijen described the story of the Samaritan woman as “a love story that is truly satisfying.” The woman is desperate for love, despite her five ex-husbands and her current boyfriend. She is an outcast in the community, too—reduced to drawing water at noon, a time when no one will be out in the hot sun of the Middle East.

Jesus, Father Van Roijen said, is number seven, the true husband in her life (in a spiritual sense, of course). She recognizes Him as the Messiah, and leaves her water jar—

which had been the whole point of her trip to the well—as she goes off to tell the story to the villagers who have ostracized her.

“He who is speaking to her is her true spouse. She leaves her jar. She’s finished with that endless task of looking. She has found.”

The same thing can happen for us, Father van Roijen said. Jesus’ teaching is centred around this question, and “He reveals Himself as the answer to this question. Jesus doesn’t just leave us looking—He tells us ‘here I am.’ In Christ we already share must fully that which awaits us [in heaven].”

People look for many things—acceptance, love, power, recognition, approval, security. To the extent that these are good things, we will find them when we find Jesus. But sometimes we may be looking for the wrong things, and then we need to repent.

“Are you looking for your one heart’s desire, or are you distracted by other things?” Father van Roijen asked. “That’s a good question to ask every day.”

As disciples who have found Jesus, he said, we should have certain distinguishing marks.

We should be in communion with God’s commandments and word; we should love one another; we should have faith in the One God has sent; and we should be in unity with one another. These things may sound simple enough, but they are only possible by God’s power through the Holy Spirit.

“The Holy Spirit is essential,” he told the audience.” Otherwise we’d be trying to accomplish God’s work on our own.”

Father van Roijen also spoke on Mary’s Life in the Spirit: Journey towards a New Pentecost. He noted that, while the story of the Annunciation is extremely familiar to us today, it was completely new and unexpected to Mary, and it wouldn’t have been entirely clear that Gabriel’s visit was a good thing.

Yet despite any fear she may have felt, she said “yes” to God and to the Holy Spirit—she “spoke a passing word and embraced the eternal Word,” in the words of St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

“We, too, must answer our God with a word,” Father van Roijen said.

As Mary’s journey continues, we learn more about the Holy Spirit. As she visits Elizabeth, John the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth’s womb. ”The Spirit is infectious—we see it as it leaps from person to person.”

After Jesus’ birth, Mary ponders the events in her heart. “It takes time to treasure and to ponder, Father van Roijen said. “We need to allow time for our roots to sink deep into our souls.”

At the Presentation in the Temple, she encounters Simeon and Anna, who are waiting in hope, as the disciples are told to do after Jesus’ ascension, and as we ourselves must do. And God blessed both of them for their waiting, as they beheld the glory of God.

They also prophesied to Mary, and to us, what the Christian life will be, as Simeon told her a sword would pierce her heart.

“The life in the Spirit is not a bed of roses but a crown of thorns,” Father van Roijen said.

In her docility to God’s will, Mary’s whole life is a model for our prayer, he said. “We are handmaids of the Lord. Our prayer does not dictate to God, but opens us more fully to Him.”

—Richard Dunstan

Mar 8th Armand Danis: A relationship with God

Communion with the Trinity is the key to the Christian life, Deacon Armand Danis told Our Lady of Pentecost Summer Institute.

It’s also the key to evangelization, and to spiritual warfare, he said.

Danis, a retired Catholic high school principal and counsellor from Thunder Bay, Ont., spoke on deliverance, and on discovering your spiritual gifts. But before addressing his formal topics, he presented extensive citations of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and other Church documents to underline the point that Catholic Christianity is not about following rules, earning grace, or judging other people.

“We are not selling a product,” he said. “Our faith is about a relationship.”

Drawing on his counselling background, he noted that psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs lists self-actualization as the highest human need. But from a Christian point of view, he said, transformation, in and by Christ, is the pinnacle of life.

And that transformation is a free gift, he said. Too many Catholics think grace is earned, by being good and going to church. In fact, he said, that’s backward. Grace is a free gift from God that makes it possible to be good and go to church.

Grace, he said, is simply participation in the life of God. “What do we have to do to participate in the life of God? Want to.”

Evangelization, he said, is not an intellectual exercise. It’s an outgrowth of our relationship with God. When we have the intimate relationship God offers to us, we have the power to be His presence in the world, as instruments of His love, and in that way draw other people to Him.

This “spirituality of communion” makes us open to everyone. All humans are made in God’s image, he said, “so whoever you meet in this context is your brother and your sister.”

Concerning spiritual warfare, he warned that “the existence of the Evil One is real,” but if we are in communion with Christ, there is noting to fear from the devil.

“We are never alone,” he said. “We can dispel the Enemy, not of our own doing, but because we have this intimate relationship with our Friend and our Lord, who does it as simply as flicking a mosquito off your arm.”

While actual demonic possession is rare, Danis said, lower levels of demonic activity are more common. They begin with simple temptation, to which all of us are subject. Temptations fall into three main categories, as shown by the Gospel accounts of Jesus temptation in the desert: pleasure (in Jesus’ case, turning stones into bread); power (the devil offering Him the kingdoms of the world); and lack of responsibility (the devil’s demand that Jesus throw Himself down from the peak of the Temple).

Next comes oppression, in which we experience a frightening sense of lack of control in our lives. Job suffered from this in the Old Testament, and Danis said that when his wife, Mary, was diagnosed with cancer, the couple suffered from oppression for a time—not the cancer itself but the initial fear and hopelessness.

Another level is obsession, where the lack of control is real. This happens especially with addictions, including drugs, alcohol, and abusive sexual behaviour, but also with occult activities such as the use of the Ouija board.

Danis said it would take a whole weekend to talk about deliverance in detail, but the most common form of deliverance is self-deliverance, especially as found in the Lord’s prayer: “deliver us from evil.”

“Every time we say it, it’s a deliverance prayer,” he said. “The Lord’s prayer is one way to assure ourselves of communion with the Trinity.”

Concerning spiritual gifts, Danis said there is no known finite list. God gives countless gifts, some for specific situations and some for ministry. Discerning them can often be a matter of looking for the fruits of the Holy Spirit, as these may point to gifts we have received even though they aren’t exactly what we prayed for.

He told the story of a 22-year-old man diagnosed with cancer, and with days to live. Danis prayed for him, and though he was not cured—he in fact died within a few days—he received a massive spiritual healing that extended to everyone around him, and left him content and joyful.

“It can be a question of touching hearts rather than the external condition we’ve prayed for,” Danis said.

At other times, he said, he has seen the external situation change as a result of prayer. During his teaching career, one of his students cut his lip badly, obviously needing stitches. As he left to take the boy to the hospital, he had the other students pray, and when they got to the emergency room the cut was gone.

“What do you think that did for the faith of the children in the classroom?” he asked.

Feb 8th Life in the Spirit: 19 years, 50 seminars

The Vancouver archdiocese’s 50^th Life in the Spirit Seminar will open Jan. 20 at Immaculate Conception Parish in North Delta.

The seminar will begin each Friday at 7:30 p.m. for seven weeks.

A celebration of the 19^th anniversary of Life in the Spirit Seminars in Vancouver will be held the previous Friday, Jan. 13, also at 7:30 at Immaculate Conception. Abbot John Braganza of Westminster Abbey in Mission will be principal concelebrant of the anniversary Mass, to be followed by a reception. All are welcome.

The seminars began Jan. 29, 1993, at Immaculate Conception, with 365 participants, and have been held in many parishes since then. Every session of the seven-week seminar features a talk by a priest, with two more as concelebrants for the closing Mass on the seventh week.

Highlight of the seminar is week 5,when participants receive prayer to be baptized in the Holy Sprit.

Organizer Lennie David, who is a member of Vancouver Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services, says more than 9,000 people have attended the seminars over the years. Twenty-two charismatic prayer groups have been formed as a result of the seminars, of which 16 are still in operation in the archdiocese along with five that were in existence prior to the beginning of the seminars.

Fifty priests have taken part. Archbishop Michael Miller will be one of the speakers at the upcoming seminar.

The anniversary celebration is also an annual event. Principal concelebrants have included Archbishop Miller, former Vancouver archbishops Adam Exner and Raymond Roussin, and bishops Richard Gagnon of Victoria and David Monroe of Kamloops.

All are welcome at the seminar. There is no charge.

To register, call Lennie David @ 604-597-8227.

Jan 8th Document planned on baptism in the Spirit

By DR. MARY HEALY

associate professor of Scripture
Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit

Three years ago the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services council commissioned Bishop Joe Grech, Fr. Peter Hocken and myself to create a theological document reflecting on baptism in the Holy Spirit.

The document would have a twofold purpose. First, it would serve as a reference point within the renewal by clearly articulating the grace of baptism in the Holy Spirit in light of scripture and tradition. Second, it would be a resource for ecclesial authorities, including bishops and priests, who have pastoral responsibility for renewal groups and the more than 120 million Catholics worldwide who have been baptized in the Holy Spirit.

Our first step was to create a draft document, which was completed in 2009 and sent to about thirty theologians and Renewal leaders worldwide for comment. We received detailed feedback and incorporated much of it into the revised document. In the middle of this process our beloved Bishop Joe was unexpectedly called home to the Lord, and I am convinced his prayers are supporting us in this work even now.

In March 2011 the document was presented at an international colloquium in Rome, organized by ICCRS and attended by theologians and Renewal leaders from 44 countries. The participants discussed baptism in the Spirit in depth and offered further input on the document. Afterward the document was again revised, and it has now been submitted to the ICCRS Council for final review and publication.

In preparing this document and conversing with many people on this topic over the last several years, I find in my own heart a renewed excitement to understand, live out and share with others the amazing, transforming grace of baptism in the Holy Spirit.

As the Catholic charismatic renewal fast approaches our jubilee anniversary in 2017, I believe the document is especially needed for three reasons:

First, there is a need to continually foster and deepen the reception of baptism in the Spirit within the renewal, especially through good formation. Unlike other movements in the Church, the renewal has no human founder, no centralized structure and no unified process of formation. This is part of its uniqueness, a gift of God, but it also means that we have to strive to ensure that solid formation occurs wherever the renewal exists, so that the flame of Pentecostal fire is kept burning and baptism in the Spirit is deeply integrated into the whole of Christian life.

Good formation also helps avoid pastoral mistakes, which over the years have given the renewal a bad reputation in some parts of the world. Thus there is need for teaching materials that can serve as a foundation to be used and adapted by different groups around the world.

Second, theological reflection is part of the ongoing process of growth in ecclesial maturity. Like Christians in every age, we are called to reflect on what God is doing in our time in the light of the deposit of Catholic faith. The beautiful diversity of the renewal, in all its rich variety of expressions around the world, also means there is ongoing need for theological dialogue with one another and for resources that express a basic consensus.

Finally, part of God’s purpose in raising up the renewal is to spread the “culture of Pentecost” and the “spirituality of Pentecost” throughout the Church. Indeed, Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II have given us this mandate. This is already being done to some degree, but there is much more to be done. There are many misunderstandings in the Church about baptism in the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. There is a resistance to the renewal in some parts of the world. At the same time, in some areas there is a new openness and interest where previously we found only closed doors. The time is ripe for us to develop a clear, unified and well-thought-out strategy of communication, so that doors may be opened even wider to the Holy Spirit and his gifts.

The document has four parts which cover the following key areas.

Part I: Characteristics and Fruits

This section answers the question: What are the visible, concrete fruits of baptism in the Spirit as it is experienced today? How has this grace changed the lives of individuals and the Church? Our answer was aided in part by the many encouraging statements on the renewal published by bishops’ conferences around the world, which are remarkably consistent in their description of baptism in the Spirit and its effects.

The section begins with a definition of baptism in the Spirit, which we refined on the basis of input received at the colloquium: Baptism in the Spirit is a life-transforming experience of the love of God the Father poured into one’s heart by the Holy Spirit, and received through a total surrender to the lordship of Jesus Christ. This grace brings alive sacramental baptism and confirmation, deepens communion with God and with fellow Christians, enkindles evangelistic fervour and equips a person with charisms for service and mission.

Part II: Biblical and Patristic Foundations

One of the most important tasks of the renewal is to help others in the Church recognize that baptism in the Spirit is not a marginal phenomenon —a group of Catholics over in a corner who happen to like Pentecostal styles of worship. Rather, it is a ‘coming to life’ of what is already at the heart of Christian life as presented in scripture and tradition, but which, over time, has sometimes become obscured and forgotten. Part II of the document shows this by presenting the biblical and patristic foundations of baptism in the Spirit.

The biblical section explains the background and meaning of the term “baptism in the Spirit,” the significance of the Pentecost event as narrated in the Acts of the Apostles, and St Paul’s teaching on the Christian life, as life in the Spirit.

The patristic section shows the ways in which baptism in the Spirit today corresponds to the experience of the early Church, especially in connection with the sacraments of initiation.

Part III: Theological Reflection

Part III was perhaps the most challenging part of the document to write, because here we sought to bring together diverse views that have been expressed since the early days of the renewal. As we worked on this part, I found myself more and more appreciating the different views by which theologians have sought to explain baptism in the Spirit. The reality is richer and deeper than any one explanation, and each contributes something significant. So, rather than choosing one view and discarding others, we sought to incorporate some aspects of each.

I like to use this analogy: Is light a wave or is it a particle? As physicists know, the answer is… yes! It is irreducibly both. We cannot reduce light to either a wave or a particle, because otherwise we leave some of its behaviour unexplained. Part of the richness of our faith is the Catholic ‘both-and’. Is Jesus God or man? Is our faith based on scripture or tradition? Is the Bible the word of God, or the words of men? Is the kingdom of heaven now or not yet? Both!

I think we can apply this principle fruitfully to baptism in the Spirit and the renewal. For example, some theologians describe baptism in the Spirit as a revitalization of the sacraments of baptism and confirmation; others describe it as a new sending of the Spirit into one’s life. Both views express something important. Similarly, some see the charismatic renewal as a current of grace meant for the whole Church; others see it as a movement among other movements. Again, these views are complementary and each contributes something important.

Part IV: Pastoral Issues

This section offers some basic pastoral principles that can be adapted by various groups according to their own local needs. The document does not impose a specific program for baptizing people in the Spirit (such as the Life in the Spirit Seminar), since part of the mission of ICCRS is to maintain great respect for the principle of subsidiarity. That is, it allows as much freedom as possible for initiatives at the local level.

The pastoral oversight of the renewal is not without its challenges. Fr. Peter Hocken mentioned the danger of turning baptism in the Spirit into a kind of quasi-sacrament and of making the preparations quasi-liturgical.

To over-institutionalize the work of the Spirit —to subtly place it under our control— would be to betray the very grace we have been given. Yet, as Pope Benedict has said, the charismatic must to a certain degree be “institutionalized” (that is, develop stable forms and structures) if it is to remain and bear fruit over time.

At the same time, the institutional must always be charismatic (that is, dependent on the Spirit). There is a delicate balance between creating programs that foster the work of the Spirit, and yet allowing the wind of the Spirit to blow freely, to surprise us and even sometimes upset our plans.

The document places a strong emphasis on formation. Some of the problems in the renewal —for instance, people leaving the Church, immature people establishing ministries of healing and deliverance, misplaced emphasis

on resting in the Spirit and other phenomena— can be minimized by good formation.

As Cardinal Rylko has noted, one of the outstanding features of the new ecclesial movements is their capacity to provide a solid and deep formation in which the Christian faith is not a veneer placed over an essentially secular interior life, but a transformation of the deepest core of the personality, impacting all a person’s choices and behaviour.

There is a great need for charismatic saints —people who live the grace of baptism in the Spirit fully and allow it to mature into heroic holiness. We should pray that God would raise up such saints in our midst to model for us what charismatic renewal holiness looks like. These saints will be men and women who love both the charismatic and institutional aspects of the Church, who experience, understand, and communicate to all the grace of God found in baptism in the Holy Spirit.

To be sure, one document will not completely answer all questions about baptism in the Holy Spirit. Indeed, as the document was being created, I grew more aware of the enormity of the subject we were considering. One cannot fit the ocean into a single jar! Yet it is a beginning, one that we hope will lead to further reflection and dialogue.

—reprinted from ICCRS newsletter