"Rivers of Renewal"
"The Beauty of Being
Baptized in the Holy Spirit"
I was first exposed to the Catholic Charismatic Renewal
when I was a junior in high school. I had become a lector in my home parish. On
one occasion I was assigned to lector at a Sunday mass in the Catholic grade
school gym. An Irish priest with a brogue was presiding. I finished proclaiming
the second reading during the liturgy of the word; then, I went to my chair by
the ambo. Suddenly, the priest began to sing an alleluia and praise the Lord
spontaneously. People in the congregation leapt up from their chairs and joined
him in spontaneous praise with joy and energy. Then, they may have all begun to
sing in tongues. I stood "frozen" where I was standing. How do you like this
choice of words: Frozen?! Within, all I could remember thinking was, "what in
the world is this?!" The priest then approached the ambo and proclaimed the
gospel. What I failed to realize at that
time in my life was that even though I was proclaiming the word of God as a
lector, I didn't know the Word himself. I didn't know Jesus personally yet. I
had not yet opened myself to experience his personal nearness and intimacy in
my life. In truth, I was standing "frozen".
Do you recall the first
"Chronicles of Narnia" movie, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"? In a
powerful and pivotal scene towards the end of the movie, Aslan, the Lord and
true lion king of Narnia, "resurrected"
after having been killed by the ice witch, visits the grounds of the witch's
palace and breathes on "frozen warriors" who had been struck by the ice
witch. Having been breathed upon, each of them is freed to join Aslan in the
final battle to defeat the forces of evil. This breathing upon reminds me very
much of the scene from John 20: 19-23 where the resurrected Jesus appears to
his followers behind closed doors on the evening of the resurrection after they
have locked themselves in for fear of the Jews. Jesus appears to them, breathes
on them and says, "receive the holy Spirit". His "conquering Spirit" sets them
free. In the story of the creation of humanity found in Gen. 2:7 it says:
"The LORD God formed man
out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of
life, and so man became a living being".
So too, I need the breath of the Holy Spirit
if I am to enjoy a rich "spiritual life" of prayer. The Father wants every
contemplative intercessor to be vibrantly alive in the Spirit!
The Catholic Charismatic Renewal has been a
tremendous blessing for the Catholic Church for decades now. Consider for a
moment the word, renewal. The word, renew, implies a bringing back to, a call
back to--a return to--an original state. Psalm 104:30 says, "When you send
forth your breath, they are created, and you renew the face of
the earth". Notice the words, 'breath' and 'renew', in this verse. The breath
of God is both creative and re-creative. It impacts life in a way that nothing
else can. To be renewed is to have the experience of being brought back to
God's original intention for His creation, "to have life and have it more
abundantly" (John 10:10). There can be
no authentic renewal unless the human heart is engaged; for the heart is the
"place" of love and communion, the place of encounter. In The Book of
Zephaniah we hear these words: "He will renew you in his love"
(Zeph. 3:17). There is nothing as healing, rejuvenating and reanimating as
love. God is love, and He "loves" to renew us in order that we might respond
more openly and eagerly to His invitation to a deeper intimacy with Him:
"Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. 21:5). The baptism in the Holy Spirit is
a divine intervention through which I can enter more deeply into the fullness
of God's life of love. The Holy Spirit comes and deepens my life in Jesus. In
my own life fourteen years after that first charismatic exposure in the school
gym on that Sunday--wouldn't you know it-- I became involved in a Catholic
Charismatic prayer meeting. Then, I willfully chose to be baptized in the Holy
Spirit. Only then did I begin to experience the joy, praise and enthusiasm that
I had witnessed both in the priest and the people at that mass fourteen years
earlier. Now, I knew. Now, I began to understand....the "thaw" had begun!
It is altogether refreshing, encouraging and confirming to know that
several popes of recent times have spoken both favorably and animatedly about
the need for a new Pentecost, about the Catholic Charismatic renewal, and about
the baptism in the Holy Spirit. In a general audience on November 29th,
1972 Pope Paul VI asked this question in his address and then answered it:
"More than once we have
asked ourselves what the greatest needs of the Church are...what is the primary
and ultimate need of our beloved and holy Church?...This need is the
Spirit...the Church needs her eternal Pentecost; she needs fire
in her heart, words on her lips, a glance that is prophetic."
The Holy Spirit is the "Soul" of the
Church, the "Soul"that ignites, animates and
invigorates the "Bride". The Church needs a constant inner renewal by Her "Soul
Mate" if She is to remain "forever young", living in the devotion and fresh
vitality of her "youthful" Pentecostal beginnings (see Jr. 2:2).
Thirty two years after Pope Paul VI spoke
these exhorting words, Pope John Paul II said at a Pentecost vigil mass in
2004:
"Thanks to the
Charismatic Movement, a multitude of Christians, men and woman, young people
and adults have rediscovered Pentecost as a living reality in their daily
lives. I hope that the spirituality of Pentecost will spread in the
Church as a renewed incentive to prayer, holiness, communion and proclamation."
In the Acts of the Apostles, one
beholds both the lived reality of Pentecost and the spirituality of Pentecost
in the lives of men and women who have been forever changed by the Spirit of
the living God. Pope Benedict XVI during a Regina Caeli address on Sunday, May
11th, 2008 (on the Solemnity of Pentecost) said:
"Today I would like to
extend the invitation to all: Let us rediscover, dear brothers and sisters, the
beauty of being baptized in the Holy Spirit; let us recover awareness
of our Baptism and our Confirmation, ever timely sources of grace."
Pope Benedict uses an interesting word, beauty, to
describe the baptism in the Holy Spirit. The Catechism of the Catholic
Church tells us that God is "the author of beauty" (CCC 2129), and St.
Augustine tells us that, in fact, God is the "Beautiful One" Himself (cited
in CCC 32). In Exodus 33:19 the Lord says to Moses, "I will make all my beauty
pass before you..." I am reminded of the refrains of several Christian songs,
one by Tim Hughes: "Beautiful One I love You, Beautiful One I adore, Beautiful
One my soul must sing"; another by Twila Paris: "How
beautiful, how beautiful, how beautiful is the Body of Christ"; Ultimately, the "beauty" of being baptized
in the Holy Spirit is that the Holy
Spirit releases more of the reality and, hence, the power of both my
sacramental Baptism and sacramental Confirmation; so, more of the beauty of
Jesus permeates my humanity: "From Zion God shines forth perfect in beauty"
(Psalm 50:2). Have you ever polished up old, dirty coins--pennies, nickels,
dimes, quarters--that have such faded images and dates that can hardly be seen?
After a coin is polished both the image and date are more clearly seen with
sparkle and shine. Through the baptism in the Holy Spirit I become aware of whose "image" I have been recreated
in, I rediscover a sense of who I really am and whom I truly belong to. Recall
the words that Pope Benedict uses, "let us recover awareness of our Baptism
and our Confirmation." Through the baptism in the Holy Spirit I rediscover that
my true identity is really Jesus, "the Beautiful One". This is truly who I am!
Jesus is the sparkling, shiny "Jewel of renewal" whose once faded image within
me now radiates more visibly through my humanity.
"Pope John Paul II has stated on numerous
occasions that the Church, beginning with the Second Vatican Council, has rediscovered
the charismatic dimension as one of her constitutive elements. By
charismatic dimension he means the present, vital action of the power
of the Holy Spirit in the life of each member of the Church" (When the
Spirit Comes in Power: Rediscovering the Charismatic Dimension of the Christian
Life; Peter Herbeck, Servant Books, 2003; p. 14).
Look for a moment at what is said of the Holy Spirit and
the Sacrament of Baptism in the Catechism
of the Catholic Church. I have highlighted particular words intentionally:
"To be in touch with
Christ we must first have been touched by the Holy Spirit. He comes
to meet us and kindles faith in us. By virtue of our Baptism, the first
sacrament of the faith, the Holy Spirit in the Church communicates to us, intimately
and personally, the life that originates in the Father and is offered to us
in the Son" (CCC 683).
The language used in this
text to describe the movement of the Holy Spirit through the Sacrament of
Baptism makes it clear that in the eyes of the Church, each of us should be
having a life-changing experiential encounter with the Holy Spirit, and this
should be the normative reality for all the baptized. The Holy Spirit works
to reproduce Jesus now within my humanity, so Jesus can continue his intimate,
personal relationship with the Father now from within me. When I begin to
experience being "born again in the Spirit" I begin to experience more of Jesus
living within me in the power of the Spirit. Note one of the highlighted words
from the text above: kindle. In the dictionary the word, kindle, is defined as,
'to build or fuel a fire; to set fire to; to ignite; to
cause to glow; to light up'. With this in mind, hopefully I now have a sense of what it might mean to
be a "kindled Catholic"!: Am I lit?! The root meaning of the
word, kindle, is 'to give birth to'. Born again at the baptismal font, I am born
to be on fire with the Holy Spirit. This rekindling is what occurs in the
baptism of the Holy Spirit. It's time to kindle or dwindle. Which will
it be? It's time to get lit!!
Scriptures: Psalm 27:4;
Jr. 2: 2-3A; Rev. 2:4
Questions:
1)
Am I experiencing the beauty and vitality of being baptized in the
Holy Spirit?
2)
Do I sense the need for a new infilling of the Holy Spirit?
