BC Charismatic

May 8th Do Whatever He Tells You

By Richard Dunstan –

“Do whatever He tells you” was the theme of the fourth annual Our Lady of Pentecost Summer Institute, held Aug. 12-17 in Kelowna. Based on John 2:5, the theme reflects the instructions the Blessed Virgin Mary gave to the servants at the wedding at Cana before Jesus turned water into wine.

More than 50 charismatic Catholics turned out to the event—44 registered full-time and around a dozen attending part of the sessions at St. Charles Garnier parish. Sponsored by the Nelson Diocese Charismatic Renewal Service Committee, the institute is endorsed by Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services of B.C. and by all five B.C. bishops, and is aimed at charismatic leaders and potential leaders from across B.C., along with anyone else interested in deepening spiritual life.

Featured speaker were Father Bart van Roijen of Sparwood, Father Gerald Sekanga and Father Louie Jimenez of Kelowna, and Teresa van Kampen of Calgary.

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.

LOUIE

We’re all called to be apostles of Jesus, says Father Cerlouie (Louie) Jimenez. But that’s a tough job, because it means living the way Jesus did, sacrifice and all.

Father Louie, opening speaker at Our Lady of Pentecost Summer Institute, took his lead from St. Paul’s comments on apostleship in 2 Corinthians, titling his talk Apostleship in St. Paul’s Criterion.

In 2 Cor 11:23-29, St. Paul defends his record as an apostle against his critics by pointing to his imprisonments, beatings, brushes with death, shipwrecks, and other hardships.

“For St. Paul it is very clear that the only criterion for an apostle was a life like Jesus Himself,” said Father Louie, who is assistant pastor at Immaculate Conception parish in Kelowna and chaplain for Live In and Rachel’s Vineyard. “These things are not metaphors. Paul would ask how often have you been in prison for your witness to Christ, how often has your life been in danger because you stand up for the truth of Jesus Christ?”

Apostleship actually has three meanings, Father Louie said. First, it means the Twelve, plus Paul and perhaps a few other such as Barnabas, who had a direct call through an encounter with the risen Christ and were sent out by Him with His Gospel. Second, it means many people in every age who have the task of going from place to place spreading the Gospel and founding Christian ministries.

And finally, it means all Christians. Through our baptism, all of us have the task of bearing witness to Jesus’ resurrection, especially to “the least, the last and the lost.”

Another thing we share with St. Paul is a need for personal transformation in Christ. St. Paul thought he was a good man before his conversion, but he was misguided, and after his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, he had to re-evaluate everything in his life. All of us need the same transformation.

On a related topic, Father Louie noted that apostleship is only part of Christian ministry. Apostles are listed first, but of course not alone, in St. Paul’s list of ministers in the Church in 1 Cor 12:27-31, along with prophets, teachers, administrators and others. Apostles work in partnership with those other ministers, with an emphasis on preaching. Baptism and ongoing programs belong to other ministers; St. Paul himself notes in 1 Cor 1: 14-17 that he was sent to preach, and baptized only a few people personally.

Then, he was off to preach in other locations while the Christian community he had left behind put his preaching into action. “He moved on,” Father Louie said. “He did not hang on. He did not make it his pet.”

He didn’t rest on his accomplishments, either. He had more work to do.

“We need to ask ourselves, am I like St. Paul?” Father Louie said. “Am I ready to do the work, and after the work is done, am I ready to start another work? That’s the challenge—sometimes we have the idea, ‘I have done my work, so goodbye.’ If we want the Church to grow, we must forget about ‘goodbye.’”

Father Louie expanded on the theme in his second talk, The Missionary Nature of the Church Towards the New Evangelization.

Quoting the Vatican II document Ad Gentes and statements by Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York Father Louie said that the Church’s missionary activity must extend from Jesus’ first coming to His second coming, but has changed in nature in recent years.

First, there is a geographical change. His native Philippines were evangelized by missionary priests from Spain, but now Asian priests like himself are coming as missionaries to North America and Europe.

Second, there is a theological change. In today’s society, nominal believers as well as unbelievers need to be evangelized, because their faith is often distorted by the influence of secular society, producing a lack of awareness of God’s transcendence, a practical denial of God, and superficiality and selfishness.

He said the ask of the new evangelization is to revive the faith of believers and thus inspire unbelievers. To do this we must learn to know Jesus more and fall in love with Him and His Church. We should study scripture and the Catechism of the Catholic Church and pray for courage to witness. If we do all this, people outside the Church will notice.

He said our evangelization must present a person—Jesus—rather than a belief system, and we must show by our joy that God is alive. We must also prepare for martyrdom, because evangelization is not a smooth or easy path, and yet we must not be afraid.

TERESA

“Docile” does not mean “weak.”

The two words sound similar to a lot of people in our culture, but the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary proves they’re completely different, Teresa van Kampen told Our Lady of Pentecost Summer Institute in Kelowna in August. And we need to show the courage to follow Mary’s example.

“Docility requires courage and strength, not weakness,” Teresa told the audience. “Mary was heroic in her co-operation in the plan of salvation as she accompanied Jesus her son in His passion and death.”

Teresa is Alberta representative to the national Catholic charismatic service committee and former chair of the renewal in Calgary. She and her husband have 10 children and 18 grandchildren.

She told the audience there is very little detail about our Lady in the Bible, but what there is speaks volumes. Mary is presented in the accounts of the annunciation, the birth and childhood of Jesus, His crucifixion, Pentecost, and a few other places, and at every point she shows complete trust in God and commitment to His will.

“The Blessed Mother of Jesus lived in and for the love of God,” she said. “Her entire heart belonged to Him, and His will was all she wanted for her life. She was docile to the Holy Spirit to the last breath.”

She said Mary was intelligent and well aware of what she was doing—not at all weak, childish, or unthinking, but trusting in a God she knew was good. She would do what she was asked, regardless of the consequences, unlike most Christians today who waver when faced with difficulties in following God’s will.

“We start thinking of alternatives. Maybe plan B is called for,” Teresa said. Not so with our Lady.

Mary is often called the new Eve, and indeed she joins Jesus in overthrowing the harm caused by the first man and woman. She was conceive in the fullness of grace such as Eve had enjoyed before the Fall. But Eve, Teresa said, wanted occult knowledge—God’s knowledge of good and evil. Mary resisted that temptation and was content to walk in faith, not by sight.

“She had no desire for any of the vanities, flatteries or deceptions of the evil one,” Teresa said. “She did not want power or knowledge outside of God her saviour. She was content to be His handmaid and in her docility to Him she co-operated with Jesus for the salvation of the whole human race.”

On the cross, Teresa said, Jesus gave Mary to all of us, through John, and we should follow her example.

Teresa’s second talk was titled Do, Become, Be…Whatever He Tells You, a reference to Mary’s directions at the wedding in Cana (John 2:5) and also to the theme of the conference.

“Whatever” is a tall order: holiness. Some people think holiness is just for saints, or priests and nuns, she said, “but we are all called, without exception, to be holy.”

That, she said, is how we get to heaven. She said the world teaches us that the road to heaven is wide and the road to hell narrow, but Jesus says the opposite; still, He wants us to make it to heaven.

“The call to holiness is more than doing what people think is good,” she said. “The call to holiness is doing the will of God.”

But while holiness may be the road to heaven, it isn’t the road to an easy life. Some Christians, especially charismatics, think everything will go well for them if they follow God’s will. That, Teresa said, is false theology.

“Life is not like that,” she said. “Jesus said take up your cross and follow me. He didn’t say pick up your bag of goodies.”

She cited the late Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan of Vietnam as an example. He had just been named coadjutor archbishop of Saigon when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese army in 1975, and he spent the next 13 years in jail, nine of them in solitary confinement, and suffered torture. He smuggled out messages to his people on scraps of paper. After his release in 1988, he held positions in the Vatican and was named cardinal the year before his death in 2002. His cause for beatification has been opened.

In a talk after his release, he said “if you have no opportunity for sacrifice, this is an indication that you still do not love God,” and Teresa said we all need to hear that hard message.

“In our culture we’ve heard the soft message for so long that we’re wimpy,” she said. “The teenagers in our culture are dying, and the soft message is hanging them out to dry.”

Teresa said Catholics should study the Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church to get to know Jesus better, always following Church interpretation of the Bible. We should confess any involvement in New Age activities (“break those ties forever. Don’t go back. Jesus is enough.”)

We must also forgive our enemies and pray for them; we forgive with our will even if our emotions don’t agree. “If you don’t forgive, He won’t forgive you. Forgiveness shatters the forces of evil.” We must also break our attachment to sin, including not only obvious sin but such things as manipulating other people to get our way.

GERALD

It’s OK to be afraid, says Father Gerald Sekanga—as long as we’re afraid of the right thing.

And for Christians, he said, the one and only thing to be afraid of is harming our relationship with God.

Father Gerald, assistant pastor at St. Charles Garnier parish in Kelowna, was a guest speaker at Our Lady of Pentecost Summer Institute, speaking on What Are You Afraid Of? and Preaching the Radical Word. Originally from Uganda, he has an education in law and philosophy, and works with youth and as a retreat leader.

Fears are more important than we think, Father Gerald said. “Our lives are ordered every day by what we are afraid of.” For example, seminarians are instilled with fear of the Church’s sexual abuse scandal, and told “stay away from the kids” as young priests. But in Uganda, priests had to drive pickup trucks rather than compact cars so that youngsters could ride along on their visit to missions, and tomorrow’s priests come largely from among those boys in the truck.

Fears like that are inappropriate, he said; even the prayer of the Mass asks God to “protect us from all anxiety” (the former text; “safe from all distress” in the new missal).

We must ask ourselves “have my fears overtaken who I am?”, he said. “Our fear as Christians should be the fear of the Lord. Without the fear of the Lord we close ourselves off from the treasures of God’s wisdom.”

Unfortunately, he said, the Church hasn’t always done the best job of instilling the right type of fear. Fifty or 60 years ago the stress on fear was excessive; today Catholics are so confident of God’s love that they think they don’t have to do anything in response to it.

“We’ve moved from one extreme to the other,” he said, and both lead to a secularization of values rather than proper fear of God. In the old approach, people thought “I’m going to hell anyway, so why bother?” Today, it’s “God loves me anyway, so why bother?”

Father Gerald cited the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah and the 19^th century Ugandan martyrs as examples of appropriate fear.

In Jeremiah chapter 20, the prophet complains to God about being sent with an unwelcome message to a hostile society; he had much to fear from the king and other officials, and was persecuted, imprisoned, and according to tradition eventually murdered. But he says that if he tries not to speak God’s word, “it becomes like a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.”

He was afraid of his enemies, Father Gerald said, but “the prophet Jeremiah’s biggest fear was that he would give up his relationship with the One who sent him.”

In Uganda in 1887, St. Charles Lwanga and a dozen other Catholic converts (as well as a group of Anglican converts) were burned alive by a king determined to rid Uganda of foreign influence. “They were afraid of the king, but more afraid of losing their relationship with God,” Father Gerald said. “They gave up their fear of the king and went to Jesus Christ.”

Father Gerald quoted Matthew 10:28, “do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna.”

Courageous Christian ministry “may even kill the body,” Father Gerald said. “Don’t worry about the body.”

In his talk Preaching the Radical Word, Father Gerald said preaching depends on our knowledge of and commitment to God.

“As a preacher you have to listen to the voice of the One who calls you out into the wilderness. It’s not about ‘we.’ We have to get rid of the ego.”

“It is the heart that has encountered God that is capable of communicating God. If you have not encountered God, people will see through you.”

Preaching has three goals, Father Gerald said: personal conversion (turning from self to God); ecclesial renewal (we need to create community); and social transformation. “If one part is ignored or played down, the others suffer.”

He said we need to let Jesus turn our lives upside down, let Him change all our plans, and also let people see the hope and joy in us.

Father Gerald also called for study of the Bible and Catholic tradition, so that we can articulate it to others. He noted with frustration that Catholic young people are the second-most ignorant religious group (behind Jewish young people) about their own faith.

BART

Both Abraham and the Blessed Virgin Mary encountered God’s love most intimately in their darkest and most demanding moments, says Father Bart van Roijen.

Both were called to sacrifice their only son, and both experienced the love, sorrow, and generosity of the Father in their obedience to that call, Father Bart told Our Lady of Pentecost Summer Institute in Kelowna.

Father Bart, pastor of St. Michael parish in Sparwood and Holy Family parish in Fernie, is chair of the Nelson diocesan council of priests and a member of the diocesan religious education committee. It was his second year as speaker at the summer institute. His topics were Abraham our Father in Faith; Mary our Mother, and Authority and Discipleship in Mark’s Gospel.

“The stories of Abraham and Mary run parallel to one another and lead us deeper into their union with God,” he told the audience. He said Mary’s experience on Calvary completes Abraham’s own journey to sacrifice his son, Isaac, at God’s command.

Abraham is 75 by the time his story is told in the book of Genesis, Father Bart said; the account contains only four lines about the earlier portion of his life. We are left wondering how he came to the point of trusting God so thoroughly—especially since he would have been considered cursed by God since he and his wife, Sarai (Sarah), had entered old age with no children.

“It’s interesting that Abraham had faith at all,” Father Bart said. “God had passed them over. They would die without having someone to carry forward their seed.”

He said many people in Abraham’s situation would simply have changed gods. But Abraham had faith that, though everything might not turn out, God would still be faithful.

By contrast, we know Mary was “full of grace” from the beginning. But there is still much we don’t know about her spiritual life. As with Abraham, much of her faith was formed in hiddenness.

There’s a lesson for us in that, Father Bart said. “So much of our faith journey takes place in obscurity. We may not even be aware of it ourselves….day by day, unseen by us, God is working something wonderful in us.”

In Abraham’s case, he and Sarah decided to take matters into their own hands, when Abraham fathered a child with Hagar, Sarah’s maid. God had a place for that child, Ishmael, making him the father of the Arab people, Father Bart said—yet God also repeated his own promise immediately after, that Abraham would have a son with Sarah.

But once he has that son, Isaac, Abraham is called on to sacrifice him. That’s not a reversal by God, Father Bart said—it’s Abraham’s faith “taken to its outer extremes.” It’s based on love, as in Jesus’ words in Matthew 10:37, “he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” The sacrifice is based on love on both sides, he said, and when Abraham had shown his faith, God rescued Isaac.

Mary, too, had to journey with her Son to the place of sacrifice. Jesus, of course, does die, but then comes the resurrection.

“We see both in Abraham’s story and in Mary’s story, that on the mountain, God provides,” Father Bart said. “The long and arduous climb has been worth it. Mary is led to the foot of the cross, there to experience the love, the sorrow and the generosity of the Father and so enter most intimately into God’s sacrifice and life.

“We too are called to heed her call to do ‘whatever He tells you’ [the theme of this year’s institute], not for His sake but for ours, so that in joining ourselves more fully in the gift of the Father’s only-begotten Son, we may also share in the joy of the Holy Spirit that filled Mary’s heart on the day of the resurrection.”

In his earlier talk, on Mark’s gospel, Father Bart led the audience through the text as a fulfillment of Isaiah chapter 63, especially verse 19, “O that You would rend the heavens and come down.” In Mark, the heavens open in the very first episode, Jesus’ baptism by John, and the Holy Spirit descends on Him (1:10).

“By the end of Chapter 1, unlike any other evangelist, Mark has hammered home the power and authority of Jesus” through healings and exorcisms, Father Bart said, and the next few chapters are taken up with challenges to this authority and illustrations of faith or lack of faith on the part of outside observers.

But in Chapter 8, the midpoint of the gospel, the emphasis changes once Peter has answered Jesus’ question “who do you say that I am” by saying “You are the Christ.” From then on, Jesus is dealing with his own disciples, and in particular their misunderstanding of the nature of discipleship: taking up the cross. Opposition now comes from within Jesus’ own circle.

“You [Peter and the others] got the first part of the message. Good for you,” Father Bart said. “Stay tuned for the second part of the message. The most important part is still to come.”

The point is made in the story of the rich man in chapter 10, who wants to know what he must do to be saved. He has always kept the commandments, but Jesus tells him to give everything to the poor, and he goes away sad.

“He was a good person. He had done everything right,” Father Bart said. “Jesus loves us so much that He invites us to take the next step.”

“It is not just that we need to do some pruning and housekeeping. It’s that Jesus needs to do some pruning and housekeeping in us.”

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