​This is a transcription of the workshop held in Rome on 1 June 2017 with this topic as part of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal #ccrgoldenjubilee2017
 
The speakers were Charles Whitehead and Bishop Sean Larkin, with translations in English and Spanish.
 
Charles Whitehead is from England, and a former ICCRS president. He has also written books about the renewal and the Holy Spirit. http://www.ccr.org.au/index.php/item/26-interview-with-charles-whitehead
http://www.iccrs.org/en/charles-whitehead-speaks-to-the-holy-father/
 
Bishop Sean Larkin is an Anglican bishop and part of the Anglican Expression of the Community of Jesus. https://www.kairos2017.com/speakers/speaker-profile-sean-larkin/ http://www.anglicanexpression.com/our-journey.html
 
This is the link for the video recording: https://youtu.be/IVhxnAeOZCU
 
Charles Whitehead: So good morning everyone! Good morning everyone. Now it's working. So I bring you greetings from England. There are many people here in Rome for this anniversary from England. So it is a great pleasure to be with you. My wife is sitting over there, and ah as you heard, she is a very committed Anglican, and we have survived marriage for 50 years. So ecumenical relationships are possible; and not just on special occasions – but all the time.
 
So I am very happy to have her with me. I need to warn you about her. Sometimes she interrupts me. I am preaching something really important and she is waving. I have to stop, and she has to come and tell me I have made a mistake or I have forgotten something very important. So this is quite normal. So please don't be worried if this happens.
 
And this lady, Lourdes, she is absolutely my favourite translator, because she always improves what I say. It's true. She translates my books into Spanish and when I say something she thinks is not quite right, she will correct it. So between these two women, I am not very important.
 
OK. Fostering Spiritual Ecumenism is the title I have been given, and because the organisers know what preachers are like, we had to prepare the text before – not so much because of the content but because of the length. So when my time is up, I will be told.
 
I want to begin with scripture: Ephesians 4:1-6. I will read it, and then Lourdes will read it in Spanish.
 
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one Body, and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called. There is one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.
 
We all know that divisions in the Body of Christ restrict our effectiveness in building the kingdom and our divisions undermine our witness to the world. So the Catholic Church looks upon ecumenism as essential to her life today. And this means that spiritual ecumenism should be essential to you and to me.
 
Now what does this mean in practice? Spiritual ecumenism is a phrase taken from the Second Vatican Council. And at its most simple it means to build good relationships with members of other churches and Christian communities; to get to know one another; to accept and to love one another; to pray together and to do together as much as we can.
 
Now if this is going to happen, we all have an important part to play especially those of us involved in the Charismatic Renewal, because as Pope Francis has reminded us – the Renewal is by its very nature ecumenical. So we must joyfully celebrate that grace and we must release the fire of the Holy Spirit so that individuals and organisations can be transformed and equipped to face the challenges of the future.
 
At the Second Vatican Council in 1964 Pope St John XXIII said he was determined to put Christian unity firmly on the map. And so the very first sentence of the Council's document on Christian unity, the document is called Unitatis Redintegratio and it begins with the words, 'The restoration of unity among Christians is one of the principal concerns of the Second Vatican Council' and section 3 says, 'All who have been justified by faith in baptism are members of Christ's Body and have a right to be called Christian and so are correctly accepted as brothers and sisters by the children of the Catholic Church'. So your protestant or pentecostal friend or who lives next door to you, is your brother or sister in Christ. This is a fact declared by the Church.
 
For the first time the Council formally recognised authentic faith in Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit in other churches, and accepted that divisions in the church contradict the will of Christ and scandalize the world. So the Council voted overwhelmingly for positive relationships with other Christians. Now we are charismatics here this morning. What I have just said must be worth an alleluia. Alleluia? Alleluia!
 
When writing his apostolic letter Et Unum Sint Pope St John Paul II clearly stated that in doing this he said, 'I am obeying the Lord' and Pope Benedict reminded us, that for Catholics ecumenism is absolutely central to Christian life. And in his encyclical Evangelii Gaudium Pope Francis has moved ecumenism forward very dramatically, particularly in sections 244-246*, which include these words: 'If we really believe in the abundantly free working of the Holy Spirit, we can learn so much from one another, not just to be better informed about them but rather to reap what the Spirit has sown in them which is also supposed to be a gift for us.'
 
Let me share some personal thoughts: You and I always have a choice how we want to behave in our own particular situation. To do nothing is not acceptable. In order to heal the pain of division, we must not only accept that there is division, we need to feel the pain ourselves - because only then will we begin to move forward, and to build good relationships with our Christian brothers and sisters. Spiritual ecumenism calls us to be pro-active. We must build personal relationships.
 
Now I know you all read the Catholic Catechism frequently. So you will already know what section 821 tells you. But let me just remind you. It tells us that we need the Holy Spirit to be at work in us bringing about conversion of heart. We heard this expressed very well in our session earlier this morning. But we then need to pray together with our Christian brothers and sisters. This is the heart of spiritual ecumenism, and this will lead us to a desire to get to know one another better, which in turn will involve dialogue and regular meeting. And this will lead us to collaboration in our human service. Now for most of us this will all begin with the local Christian churches where we live.
 
A personal story: 25 years ago the local churches where we live accepted the idea of doing a mission together. And because nobody wanted to take responsibility for this (they thought it would be full of problems), I was asked to do it.
 
Now our local churches are 3 Anglican churches, and they were very different, one was very high church – almost Catholic, one was very evangelical charismatic and the third was extremely liberal. Then we had a very dynamic charismatic Baptist church. We had Methodists who were very quiet and well behaved, we had a reformed church and two Catholic churches that were part of the same parish. So I called all the leaders of these churches together. We were going to pray and share a little bit about ourselves.
 
After 10 minutes I knew the mission was an impossibility without a miracle. They did not know each other. They did not like each other. This church blamed the other church for stealing people. And the other church said the people gave themselves up because the life of this church was so poor. How could we do a mission together?
 
We met for a full morning every month for 18 months. We prayed together, we shared together, we learned to understand one another and eventually we loved one another. (clapping). And then we said, 'We can do the mission'. We then had one year working with our respective churches to bring them into this relationship with each other.
 
We live in a fairly small villages…2 villages. 1000 people came to the mission every day for 2 weeks. Every church had new members at the end of the 2 weeks. And since then, 25 years ago, we have worked together all the time. The leaders meet at our home on the first Monday of every month. We pray together, we pray for each other, and we talk about the future.
 
We now have a prayer room in our village where we have 24/7 prayer, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which all the churches support. I have to tell you they are praying for you right now (clapping). I ask them, 'Will you pray for me?' 'Yes, we will pray for you, yes, but we will pray more for them.' 'Why more for them?' 'Because they have to listen to you' (clapping) But this is the fruit of building relationships.
 
My wife, my wife is saying something. I told you she would interrupt. Thank you. This is true. Very good. I'll tell you what happened. I will interpret what she said. At the end of the mission 25 years ago the local media, every headline said the same thing, 'Their unity held'. This was a miracle, for the local people.
 
OK. Let me move towards a conclusion. The Renewal is by its very nature ecumenical. We in the charismatic renewal rejoice in what the Spirit is doing throughout the Church world-wide today.
 
We know the experience of Psalm 133. 'How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity, because there the Lord pours His blessing.' This is a reality. When we work with protestants and pentecostals and independent churches the Lord blesses what we do. We are pilgrims journeying together. We must learn to trust each other. Loving relationships are the key to unity. This is our experience.
 
In 3 weeks' time I will be spending a 2 day retreat with the leaders of our other local churches. We will worship the Lord together. We will pray together. We will pray for each other. We will share our most deep needs. We will listen to the Holy Spirit, and I know, and I know for sure when we leave the retreat centre after those 2 days, our relationships will be even stronger. And the Lord will have shown us what He wants us to do next because we recognise one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.
 
We share the same Holy Spirit. Each of us is faithful to our own church but we are open to the gifts of the other churches. We all carry some responsibility for the divisions. We must recognise that and repent. Then we must do together whatever we can possibly do.
 
This is challenging. It's not easy. We have been doing it locally where I live for 25 years, and there are still times when we struggle. But we never forget Jesus and His Father want unity among us, and it's a work of the Holy Spirit.
 
So as St Paul says in 1 Cor 1:10 'I appeal to you brothers, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ to make up the differences between you, and instead of disagreeing among yourselves to be united in your belief and practice.'
 
You and I cannot solve all the theological issues. The theologians are working on that. But as Pope Francis has said very clearly, 'Don't wait for the theologians to come to an agreement'. If you remember what he said, he said that the Lord will have returned before that happens. It's a challenge. But we, you and me, wherever we are, we can build these relationships with our protestant and pentecostal and independent brothers and sisters, and the Holy Spirit will show us what we can do together.
 
This is spiritual ecumenism. Every single one of us is called to this. Amen? Amen! Alleluia? Alleluia!
 
Bishop Sean Larkin: We are very surprised to be here. My wife is sitting next to Sue (wife of Charles Whitehead) and she is very helpful to me, not because she will correct my sermons publicly but because when we get home, Ooooh…

The reason we are surprised is this. But I am reminded of the last words that we heard Cardinal Bergoglio speak in Buenos Aires in 2012. We were together with him at Luna Park and he was speaking last and this was, let's say, about 5000 Roman Catholic spirit filled believers (they were the scary ones) and then there were the Pentecostals and us. And Cardinal Bergoglio said to us charismatics, 'Have we lost the ability to be surprised by the Spirit? Have we? A little. So we are here to be surprised by the Spirit because we do want to celebrate 50 years of Catholic charismatic renewal, but we haven't begun, we haven't begun, because if this is it, Oh dear!
 
So let's look at how the Spirit of God might engage us. Oh, by the way, do you want to meet Jesus? (Yes). I sometimes do. But if He is Lord, He can do as He pleases and when He pleases through whoever He pleases. One of the things that has most hindered the grace of the Holy Spirit in the Renewal is that we took control. We took control back. This is my experience talking over 40 years to many people in renewal. We want the Holy Spirit to be respectable, and He says, 'No! I will be God.'
 
Do we want the Holy Spirit? (Yes). Now, some of you probably think that the Christian life is difficult. It's not difficult exactly. It's impossible. In other words we need God to make the life happen. And that is impossible without Him, which means that the only reason we are here is to please Him. We have only one person to please and His name is Jesus. One to please. One person to please. One to please. (clapping)
 
I was baptised in the Spirit in 1976. And part of my testimony is this: Oh, yes, I understood the gifts of the Spirit. But the morning after I was baptised in the Spirit I woke up changed. The Spirit of God took me into the word of God, and without the word of God we will go astray, because it is as precious a gift to us as the Holy Mass itself. The Word and the Spirit and the Mass live together. True. The Word, Spirit and the Mass live together.
 
So just like Charles did, would you turn with me to the word of God? Would you turn with me to a very familiar charismatic passage, and we are in 1 Cor 12:12. Now as you are turning there the Corinthian church was horrible. It was a mess. The doctrine was terrible. Ethics? Eew. Leadership? What leadership? And the jealousy and competition with the gifts of the Spirit, 'I am more spiritual than you.' And Paul says this, he says, if you have that attitude as God renews the Church you will discover a great lack of love.
 
But this church that was a mess, and I am speaking now as a bishop in the western church, I've had the joy of travelling to many places but I'm just going to speak to the western church. Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are in deep trouble. We need the Lord. Not for a better church, but for a church that truly reflects Jesus.
 
So when we read through 1 Corinthians we see much sin, but there is a sin that I think outweighs every other sin in the Corinthian church. 'For just as the Body is one and has many members and all the many members of the Body are one Body, so it is with Christ. For by the one Spirit we were all baptised in one Body.'
 
Now what the Corinthian church was doing to sin was this: We were looking at each other, we were talking to each other, but in our hearts was something deeply sinful. It was an attitude of sin. It said, my brother, my sister, I do not need you. And God hates it. God hates that sin. But it is all over the western church.
 
So if we are going to experience renewal, we heard this morning, that as we come to faith in Jesus Christ repentance takes place. So one of the graces we need from the Holy Spirit is the good gift of repentance. And I'm talking about this grace for Christians, not for non-Christians. And this grace, this gift, that God gives to us is ongoing and every day.
 
And in the book of Romans Paul will say, Romans 2, God's goodness and His kindness walks us into it, it leads us in to repentance. And repentance in the New Testament is the Lord wants to touch our minds, He wants to get inside our thinking. And I'm getting older. I'm old. I've just become a grandfather for the first time. I don't want to change. But with the Holy Spirit, His gifts are new.
 
We are not here in these days to think about a museum. We are here in these days to thank God that He did choose to move by His Spirit in Duquesne. And we celebrate 50 years. Very short in God's timing. So for the pathway of the Spirit, the Spirit will take us into repentance.
 
Now Charles explained to us so well this morning, why the teaching of the Church is this. You cannot be a Roman Catholic, I'm going to say that again, you cannot be a practicing Roman Catholic and say 'I don't care about ecumenism'. (Amen, clapping). And when I meet a Roman Catholic, I want to meet a Roman Catholic, not a pretend Catholic, not a Catholic that says I like this but I don't like that. We have a word for that: protestant.
 
You see one of the places God has taken us is to work with certain new communities - in fact we are part of a new community which is Roman Catholic, with a few Anglicans. But one of those communities is the Alleluia Community in Georgia. But if you hear the leaders of that community speak they will always say this: now the majority of people are Roman Catholic, but the current lead co-ordinator is not a Catholic. And when they speak they say this: My responsibility as a non-Roman Catholic is to make you the best Catholics you can be. (clapping). In that process I will be changed, because when you live life together you can't do anything else but be changed.
 
But so much in ecumenism is done through ignorance. Ignorance is the devil's playground. And the Spirit of God is the Spirit of truth. When we read Pope Benedict, when we read Pope Benedict, Pope Benedict is always saying to us relentlessly, 'Go for it, pursue truth'. But that's hard work. That means I have to learn, I have to learn. I have to take the place of a disciple. And I have to change. Yes, we do. Well you are charismatics, aren't you? (Yes, clapping) I don't know.
 
So let's come back to 1 Corinthians, 'I don't need you' is the sin. Now when you became a Christian, or perhaps you had the joy of being raised in the household of faith. What a joy! But God doesn't always ask your permission. And so when He took you to Himself, He plunged you into His Church. That's not something He asked you about. He's done it. So it is impossible to be a Christian in isolation. People will say to me, I'm a Christian but I don't have to go to church. (Raspberry/fart sound) That's my response. Because if Jesus loves His church and I don't want anything to do with Jesus loving His church, then something is very wrong.
 
So brothers and sisters, discipleship, learning, letting Him change us by His Spirit, this is not an optional extra.
 
I'm going to share an Orthodox experience – from the Orthodox church, because the Church is much bigger than we think. Many years ago I was in Romania and I was sent by our prison service because I had spent 10 years as a prison chaplain. And after the Ceausescu's were killed in Romania they were allowed to put priests into prison. The priests went into prison, but the Orthodox priests knew how to be priests but they didn't know how to be priests in prison. So I was sent to Cluj to speak at a Synod, and then visit literally most prisons in Romania.
 
But I don't want to visit Romania and come back unchanged. I want to be changed. I don’t want to walk out of here at the end of the day and not be different. And so as I was going around the prisons I began to discuss with them the liturgy. And in the Orthodox liturgy there is more bible than anywhere else on the face of the earth. But one of the priests was very kind to me and he said, 'Father, sit by the end of the holy table and we will teach you'. And so we go through this long, long, long liturgy, everything repeated three times, and then the priest takes communion. Do you know how many receive communion? Zero. Jesus is present, and nobody receives.
 
And I still to this day cannot tell you which came first. But I wept and I wept and I wept. And I was full of anger. And I said to the priest, why did nobody come? And he explained to me that they hadn't had opportunity to go to confession. And I said, 'Why not?' Not enough priests. And then he said with this, 'And most of the people they don't understand the Orthodox.'
 
And I had a little picture in my mind. It's not a novel picture. Many have had this picture. And I saw a big old fashioned treasure chest, buried in the mud, full of precious gifts but stuck, and then I saw the chest begin to open. You see the gifts were all there, but they were all stuck. And I heard in my mind's eye, you know however we do this, I don’t know what it means, but I heard from God. 'Sean, if you will learn to become like them, then I will open the doors for you.'
 
I went back and told Jill and she said, 'You have lost your mind'. But I began to explore the traditions of the church in priesthood. I opened up the traditions of the church, and I discovered as I embraced what has always been, that God began to open up something that had always been – this is how I now interpret it. That God had to take a lot of ignorance out of my life because I have been taught many things that were not true. And I still continue to have to be changed and to learn.
 
Now in some ways I want to share that picture with you, because in some ways that is how I feel about the Catholic Church. You are rich in scripture, you are rich in tradition, but does it live? Does it live? Is it alive? You are full of gift.
 
There was a famous preacher in London called Dr Martin Lloyd Jones, and one person asked him, 'Doctor, do you believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit?' And he responded like this. He said some of you keep telling me that I've got everything and Martin Lloyd Jones responded like this. 'Got it all? You've got it all? You've got it all? Then in the name of heaven, where is it?'
 
Because God has given gifts to His church. He has given gifts to you, and part of those gifts are each other. So that each of us can be made more like Jesus.
 
Ecumenism is essential for two other reasons, and I will be quick. Firstly, again to the western world, our Gospel of Jesus Christ is under attack in the church. We need one another for evangelization into the world and we need one another for the new evangelization which takes us into the world but more equipped. So we need one another.
 
The second reason is this: and it is the only quote I will give from Pope Francis, 'the ecumenism of blood'. When our Coptic brothers and sisters are martyred, they don’t care when they are killing the martyrs whether it is Coptic blood, Catholic blood or protestant blood: it's blood.
 
Brothers and sisters, without each other we will prevent God from doing what He wants to do. And that will be very serious on the day of judgment. God might say to us, 'I wanted to do this, but you would not'.
 
Do we want to be more like Jesus? Sometimes.
 
Would you stand? I want to pray for us for just one minute. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. On the first Easter Sunday evening Jesus came and stood among them. They were filled with fear and He said this: 'Peace I give you. My peace. Receive a fresh resurrection peace.' He is here to give you His deep, deep peace. And from peace, from that place of peace, which was my experience of being baptised in the Spirit, the Spirit will make you more like Jesus, which is what you want. And one day He will come back for one bride, His Church, and we will be given to the Father as Christ's precious gift. Peace be with you.
 
Question & Answer session
 
Q. Hello, I come from Madrid, Spain. The majority of Spaniards are Catholics. It is experience in recent years that I have met with evangelical brothers and sisters and other churches. Some years ago I would have fled whenever I met someone who was not Catholic. My pastors would maybe not have allowed me to get mixed up with these people. But since I received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and began to be involved in the Renewal I've started to love them, and to live by faith with them, and to learn a lot from them, and we are working together in different programs of evangelization. What can I do in the midst of this Catholic Madrid in Spain to not be considered as a madman or as a crazy person or as someone you must run away from because I am dangerous? Yes, that's my question. Thank you.
 
Charles Whitehead: It's a very good question. For many years I was in the same place. People thought that because I had a lot of contact with pentecostals and protestants that I was somehow dangerous and a bit crazy and wrong. We are the ones who are following the teaching of the Church. But a lot of our Catholic brothers and sisters will do something ecumenical once a year: the week of prayer for Christian unity. They become very ecumenical for that week. They go to a service in another church, host a service in our church, pray together, and at the end of the week of prayer for Christian unity they heave a big sigh of relief. Now we don't have to do that again for another year. But that is totally contrary to the Catholic teaching today, and especially the teaching of Pope Francis. We must build these relationships, but they must be ongoing.
 
I'm a good Catholic, he says very modestly. I'm very faithful to the Church. Pope John Paul II made me a Knight of St Gregory for my service to the Church, and part of that is the ecumenical work. And Pope Francis and his 2 predecessors have personally encouraged me to do this work. So we are not the crazy ones.
 
We are not the ones who are wrong, but we have to understand a lot of people think we are crazy. We have to re-educate people and it's a long process since the Reformation, but amazing progress has been made there also – documents of agreement between Catholics and Lutherans. I think my priest brother here is actually in the right place. Amen? Amen.
 
Q. I come from Latin America, from Mexico, where proselytism makes it almost impossible to work in the area of ecumenism. There is no promotion in this area of bishops, priests. They don't work on it. But if you lay people in the Church of Mexico have relations with the other churches, even within the official Catholic charismatic renewal in Mexico they look at us as if we were not so good. Even in our prayer meetings they have forbidden the evangelical songs so as to promote the Catholic music, we have to reject these protestant songs. So like, so how can we approach our leaders? Is there any official way to do this? To avoid all this struggle and tension between protestants and Catholics, knowing that there is also this protestant proselytism? It is an issue. But it's true that we are starting to have these communities, protestant pastors, which are trying to mingle, to relate to the Catholic Church. But anyway my own leaders in the Renewal, they don't like it. How to approach my leaders?
 
Bishop Sean Larkin: In the kingdom of God, we need to ask God for something and there is an expression which says, 'Find the man of peace', and kind of, the two questions run together very slightly. And I have read the document for South America (Aparecida Document) that Cardinal Bergoglio shared so, but I think we have to ask, 'Lord, give us people we can trust who will not come into my situation and try and change everything' but are simply there to bless you, and who want to learn from you. In the South American document, many problems were identified. One of them was simply this, 'How do the shepherds care for the sheep?' And Pope Francis says to us pastors, we must smell like the sheep. So there is a big question in the Church in South America about pastoral work. The second question is this, bible teaching. Much movement is because people are hungry for the word of God. And so, and this is only my limited experience, this is not the fruit of the rejection of the Catholic Church, it's the fruit of people desiring something more. And some of the bishops are getting it wrong because they are afraid. And I don't have links with Mexican bishops, I do with bishops in Brazil and Argentina.
 
Does anybody here remember the ministry of Fr Rick Thomas? El Paso, Texas. Wonderful community. I was in El Paso and I spent a day with them going over to Juarez and we were visiting people who were shut in and couldn't come outside. They were just shut in their homes. We took them gifts of food, we took them the gifts of healings that we had, we took blessed water and salt, and nobody cared that I wasn't a Roman Catholic.
 
Charles Whitehead: I just want to add one sentence in reply to your question; one or two sentences. When you have leaders in the charismatic renewal or in your parish who are against building these relationships with other churches, the only thing to do is to challenge them, the leaders, to get to know the leaders of these other churches.
 
In 2005, Sue and I went to Buenos Aires to see Cardinal Bergoglio. We took with us two pentecostal leaders and our question to Cardinal Bergoglio was very simple: 'How do we build better relationships with each other?' He told us, you have to cross the street, you have to ring the doorbell of the pentecostal leader who lives over there, you have to introduce yourself, ask him to pray for you, join him for coffee, pray together, build a personal relationship with him. And when we travelled around Buenos Aires in the following days every pentecostal leader we met told us, 'We love Bergoglio, he is our friend, we have built a personal relationship.' And that's the only answer. 25 years ago my parish priest wasn't interested in the other churches, but when I introduced him to their leaders he got to know them. He liked them better than he likes me. Strong relationships. They have to build personal contact.
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​*Evangelii Gaudium : Ecumenical dialogue
 
244. Commitment to ecumenism responds to the prayer of the Lord Jesus that “they may all be one” (John 17:21). The credibility of the Christian message would be much greater if Christians could overcome their divisions and the Church could realize “the fullness of catholicity proper to her in those of her children who, though joined to her by baptism, are yet separated from full communion with her”. We must never forget that we are pilgrims journeying alongside one another. This means that we must have sincere trust in our fellow pilgrims, putting aside all suspicion or mistrust, and turn our gaze to what we are all seeking: the radiant peace of God’s face. Trusting others is an art and peace is an art. Jesus told us: “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matt 5:9). In taking up this task, also among ourselves, we fulfil the ancient prophecy: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares” (Isaiah 2:4).
 
245. In this perspective, ecumenism can be seen as a contribution to the unity of the human family. At the Synod, the presence of the Patriarch of Constantinople, His Holiness Bartholomaios I, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, His Grace Rowan Williams, was a true gift from God and a precious Christian witness.
 
246. Given the seriousness of the counter-witness of division among Christians, particularly in Asia and Africa, the search for paths to unity becomes all the more urgent. Missionaries on those continents often mention the criticisms, complaints and ridicule to which the scandal of divided Christians gives rise. If we concentrate on the convictions we share, and if we keep in mind the principle of the hierarchy of truths, we will be able to progress decidedly towards common expressions of proclamation, service and witness. The immense numbers of people who have not received the Gospel of Jesus Christ cannot leave us indifferent. Consequently, commitment to a unity which helps them to accept Jesus Christ can no longer be a matter of mere diplomacy or forced compliance, but rather an indispensable path to evangelization. Signs of division between Christians in countries ravaged by violence add further causes of conflict on the part of those who should instead be a leaven of peace. How many important things unite us! If we really believe in the abundantly free working of the Holy Spirit, we can learn so much from one another! It is not just about being better informed about others, but rather about reaping what the Spirit has sown in them, which is also meant to be a gift for us. To give but one example, in the dialogue with our Orthodox brothers and sisters, we Catholics have the opportunity to learn more about the meaning of episcopal collegiality and their experience of synodality. Through an exchange of gifts, the Spirit can lead us ever more fully into truth and goodness.

This is a transcription of the workshop held in Rome on 1 June 2017 with this topic as part of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal #ccrgoldenjubilee2017
 
The speakers were Deacon Christof Hemberger and Jim Murphy, with translations in English and Portuguese.
 
Deacon Christof Hemberger is part of the ICCRS leadership team http://www.iccrs.org/en/dn-christof-hemberger/
 
Jim Murphy is the new president of the ICCRS Council http://www.iccrs.org/en/james-murphy-president/
He is the founder and president of Vera Cruz Communications, and has been involved in youth ministry on parish, diocesan, national, and international levels. In 1992, inspired by the American Bishops' letter 'Heritage and Hope', Jim undertook a 4200-mile journey on foot across America, carrying a six-foot cross in an effort of prayer and evangelization.
 
This is the link for the video recording: https://youtu.be/H68UKXNat4E
 
Deacon Christof Hemberger: Welcome to this workshop. It is a great pleasure to see so many of you, especially – and we know this – it is very early in the morning for many of us. I want to make, use a little while, to ask, where do you come from? Asia and Oceania? Africa? Northern and Southern America? Many Brazilians! Europe? Welcome home. Welcome everyone to this workshop. It might be that some of you – sorry I forgot – Middle East? Who have never led a prayer group. With this workshop we would like to encourage you to learn how to do it. Some are leaders of prayer groups for a very long time and would like to learn how to get the group vibrant again. You will also get some tools and hints to do this. Jim and I are involved in leadership since many years. But still we are learning. And it is not, and we can never come to a stage where we can say that we know everything.
 
But we are going to use this time ahead of us to share with you what we have been learning and experiencing in the last years. I will start with some basics, some general outlines that every leader needs to know about and Jim later on will give some more practical experience.
 
No matter whether you want to start or whether you are already leading for a long time, I think the main task of a leader is to know the vision of the group. You need to have the vision clear in order to reach your goals. What is the purpose we are meeting for?
 
In every prayer group usually there is two end groups. One part is searching for a spiritual home. The people are coming and they are asking for teachings, for good prayer times, for experiences to grow in the discipleship. They are searching for 'koinonia', for community, and they regard the prayer group as a discipleship training centre for their spiritual journey.
 
But there is also a second end group, the people who are not there yet. Prayer groups also have a goal to evangelise, to make a space for those who can be brought along. Many years ago I had a conversion experience and my sister who was a member of a prayer group just told me, 'Come along'. I didn't know anything about how to live with God in my daily life. I needed teaching, I needed experience, I needed training, explanations, before I was actually able to become a disciple.
 
So when I speak about we have two end groups, leaders and those involved in prayer groups need to understand there is discipleship and the purpose of evangelization always in a prayer group. When we only focus on the first, we will start pleasing those coming for many years and we will become a cozy club. But if we only focus on the second we will not give food to those who are coming and after some time they will search for other places where they can get food.
 
Maintaining living charismatic groups means to be open for discipleship and evangelization.
 
A second aspect: Know Your Identity. 10 years ago my wife and I have moved into the village we are living now. Some man came to us, approaching us, and he said, 'Well I am responsible for the rabbit club in this village' and I said, 'What's this? What rabbit club?' And he said, 'Well, we are the ones that raise rabbits. But we are also open for those who have horses and chickens, open for all, but we are the rabbit club.' Well, I didn't have rabbits, I didn't have chickens, so I never became a member of the club. But I was thinking, why is he inviting everyone raising anything if he is the chairperson of the rabbit club? Sometimes our prayer groups look the same.
 
There is lots of space in the kingdom of God and the Church is wide and bright, but if we are Catholic charismatic prayer groups your prayer group needs to have a Catholic charismatic identity.
 
Some prayer groups have lost their Catholic identity. They do a lot of Holy Spirit things but they don't teach and live anymore Catholic identity.
 
Some prayer groups have lost the charismatic identity. They are very faithful, true followers in the Church but you can't hardly see anything charismatic in their meetings anymore.
 
I encourage you to live your identity in fullness.
 
Personal relationship to the living God. You need to teach about this and you need to live it, the reality of the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the power of the Holy Spirit. Teach and speak and share about this.
 
Receiving and using the gifts of the Holy Spirit. So often I come to prayer groups. Somebody is there who is sick and the people say, 'let's intercede and when we go home during the next week we are going to pray for you. No! Interrupt your meeting. Take this person to the front, lay hands on, and pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit for healing and deliverance, and for everything else.
 
Praise and Worship. In the Church the Renewal is known as the movement that is known for praise and worship. Ten years ago I was involved in the preparations for the World Youth Day that took place in Cologne (Koln) Germany. There was a meeting of many, many people in the Church and I had to introduce myself and I said, 'I am Christof, I am from the Charismatic Renewal'. One person said, 'What's this? I have never heard about this?' Another person gave the answer. 'Oh, those are the people who are always singing when they start their programs'. It is part of our identity to praise the Lord, to have praise and worship.
 
The love for the Word of God and the Sacraments. So many people say, 'After I found a renewed relationship to the Lord I suddenly understood the bible in a personal way; the sacraments became important for me.'
 
Evangelisation and Mission. If we focus on ourselves we will forget the task we have been given by Jesus. We are called to evangelise. We are called to bring in our friends, neighbours and colleagues.
 
And also part of the Catholic charismatic identity is the heart for the whole Body of Christ.
 
Why am I saying this? I say this because I want to encourage you to live your identity in fullness. If you are a member or a leader of a Catholic charismatic prayer group, make sure your program is Catholic charismatic and is seen as Catholic charismatic. Don't only know about the charisms, use the charisms. Don't only know about the personal relationship to the Lord, live the personal relationship to the Lord.
 
Some people ask, usually in those meetings, 'give us a structure of a perfect prayer meeting'. I can't. You need to find out your perfect structure for this evening.
 
But I can give some recommendations:
 
Have some time for welcome. A prayer meeting is not just a program we are running. It is a time of relationship and community. Make sure people feel welcomed. Draw in those who are new and don't know how to behave. Explain what is going to happen.
 
Usually we start with some time of praise and worship. We focus on the Lord. We give Him our honour and our glory. This helps us because we come from our daily life to focus on the greater thing that is been given to us.
 
Usually afterwards we have some time of bible study, teaching or preaching. We want to learn from God.
 
I usually ask the people in my prayer group, 'What is the Lord saying to us today?' for our situation, in our time, for the next week?
 
You can follow by a time of sharing of your experiences. Some people will have experiences with God and can give a testimony, or you can share experiences that you have been doing long ago but can help others understand what to do and how to live. I spoke about that prayer groups is community is koinonia, it is not that the leader is standing in front telling the others what to do. 90% of the things that I have learned for my Christian life I have learned by the testimonies of friends.
 
Never finish without having a time just for the Lord. Sometimes this is related or lined to the praise and worship time. Sometimes it is linked to the preaching or to the intercession time, no matter, but don't leave without having a time asking the Lord to speak to us, speak into our situations. What shall I do now personally? What do You want to tell me?
 
I would like to speak one minute about the tasks of a leader.
 
Of course we need to prepare and moderate and lead the prayer meetings. Did you hear properly? Prepare the meetings. This is some work. It is very easy to say, 'O the Holy Spirit will do everything'. Maybe the Holy Spirit is using you as a leader to do the things. You don't need to do everything by yourself and you don't need to take the tasks that are the Holy Spirit's but you need to take your tasks, and your task is to prepare, moderate and lead the prayer meetings.
 
Be an example to the others. You are not responsible for their personal lives. You are also not their spiritual directors. You are not responsible for the decisions they are doing in their personal life, but you should be a good example as a disciple of Christ.
 
One topic we could spend a whole weekend about is establish a team that can support you, and establish a next generation of leadership. It is a bit naughty when I say a good leader makes himself not needed any more from the same day he took on leadership. Those leaders after many years don't find successors have not done their job in establishing new leaders early enough.
 
A last task of a prayer group leader. You are the watchman of the vision. Keep in mind the charismatic and Catholic identity and division of your group and once in a while take some time asking yourself, 'Are we still living according to our vision?' 'Are we still open for new people to come in?' 'Do we still help others to grow in discipleship?' 'Are we still living our charismatic identity?' 'And are we still living our Catholic identity?'
 
My last thought, because I think it is essential for many, many prayer groups. The use of the charisms. Know and teach and use the charisms in your prayer group. Charisms are not medals for personal holiness. They are gifts to us for the sake of building the kingdom of God. They don't fall from heaven like apples. Ask for the gifts. Use the gifts. Make space for the gifts in your programs. Once in a while go to the music ministry and talk to them, 'How can we establish charisms in praise and worship?' Try to find out what is the charisms of my people? And find possibilities where they can bring them into the group.
 
Teach and train the gifts and their use. And ask for the charisms. Pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Foster a mature use of the charisms among your people. When you are thinking about the program of the next prayer group evening keep times of silence during the evening. So often we do this and this and this, and sometimes the Lord doesn't even have the possibility to talk to us. If prophecies and words of knowledge are coming, find a way how to discern them. Is the prophecy a real prophecy? Is it for everyone or just for a few? How do we need to react to this word of God now? One practical hint, singing and praying in tongues helps to open for the other charisms. Teach and use the charisms in your prayer groups.
 
And I am very happy now that Jim is with us. He is a very experienced person and I am very keen on listening on what he is going to say about practical aspects of a prayer group.
 
Jim Murphy: Before I begin I would just like to share a personal note. I feel it is a great honour to be speaking to you today, because I really believe in the value of Catholic charismatic prayer meetings. I believe that prayer meetings are one of the foundational pieces of the Renewal and I sincerely want to thank all of you who have invested so much of your life to building up good prayer meetings. I know many of you have invested your life into this and at times it gets difficult, but what you are doing is important and it is an honour to speak to you today.
 
I'm also honoured to speak with my good colleague Deacon Christof. He's a very good teacher and he's a good friend. Our time is very short today and I wish we could talk about everything but we can only cover a few basics. But Christof has written an excellent book* and a lot of the material he has covered today is found in his book. And this will be on the table later if you want to find out how to get it. Also you can go to our ICCRS website and find out more about our various leadership training programs, which I hope could give you a lot more information. (* 'Living Charismatic Groups: A Handbook for Leadership Formation' by Christof Hemberger, 2016, New Life Publishing)
 
Deacon Christof gave us some very important foundational aspects of vision. I'm just going to focus on two points this morning. One is how to maintain dynamic praise and worship at a prayer meeting and the second aspect is how do we give a good teaching. Due to time constraints I am going to leave out most of the theory and just talk about practical points.
 
So let's first talk about dynamic praise and worship. In my estimation praise and worship is the most essential part of a prayer meeting. To me everything flows from praise and worship. And when the praise and worship is weak everything else falls down. In this conversation when I use the word worship I am not speaking of quiet adoration before the Blessed Sacrament but dynamic praise and worship. There is absolutely a place for quiet adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, but in this conversation we are talking more about a charismatic experience.
 
So where do we start? One thing that I believe is essential to praise and worship, we need to educate people on the biblical principles of dynamic praise and worship. We have to be fair to our brothers and sister fellow Catholics, as Catholics many of us were raised using very traditional prayers. Look the prayer style of Catholicism is usually quite rote. They are more used to a traditional style of prayer. So when people join us in these very dynamic meetings they're really not quite sure how to respond. One of the first times I went to a prayer meeting I turned to the person next to me and said, 'Is this Catholic?' And I think we have to be careful, we've become very comfortable with this, but this is a new experience for others.
 
And I believe it is essential that we teach people what is the scriptural background and even in Catholic tradition where this fits in. Wouldn't you love to go to a prayer meeting led by St Francis of Assisi? So charismatic praise and worship is very much in scripture and in tradition, but that's not known by many Catholics and even some charismatics.
 
Our time now does not allow me to exactly give this teaching, but I would urge you to study on this topic. There's a lot of good material out there. As a prayer group leader you have to help people understand why we do it this way. It is not enough to lead praise and worship, but we have to become advocates of praise and worship. We have to be able to explain it to others.
 
So the first step is to be an advocate for and to teach people about praise and worship. Prepare good teachings to give your people on why we do it this way.
 
The second step is we need to get people engaged in prayer and worship. A prayer group leader is not supposed to praise and worship for the people, but the leader's job is to encourage and aid and help the people praise the Lord. A leader doesn't praise God for the people. A leader praises God with the people.
 
So how do we get people engaged? A very practical way is the physical proximity of the leader to the people. In a situation like today, because of the nature of our program, this is how things are arranged. If I was leading a prayer meeting here I'd be out there with you, and we'd all be close together. A leader helps by making eye contact with the people, by literally reaching out to the people.
 
In too many prayer groups there is a group of people leading and everybody else is just watching. We have to change that. We have to connect with the people and then encourage them and lead them. 'Come one, let's do this together'. The people are not there to watch you pray. You are there to help them pray. Don't let the group become passive spectators.
 
Now music can be a great way to help people praise God. But let me offer a caution. In some places prayer meetings have turned into concerts. The music is great, but it has almost become a performance and they're fantastic, but we all sit there and watch them do the music. It's really a nice event, but it's not praise and worship because the people are not engaged.
 
Don't just play one song after another, after another. There should be music, but then the leader should be encouraging spontaneous praise and worship. And the leader should be saying, 'Come on, come on, let’s go', encouraging people. Usually when a group of people start worshipping God we often experience praying in the Spirit, praying in tongues. Encourage people to keep going with that, because when the whole group is praying or singing in the Spirit, then they're engaged; they're invested; they're doing something. And then when that dies down we do another song and we start the process again.
 
And usually when we enter into this kind of prayer we start receiving prophetic words or scriptures, and the job of the leader is to keep all these things in balance. So when a scripture is given, maybe there is a song that is perfect as a complement to the scripture, or maybe the leader feels we should respond by standing and praising together.
 
But a prayer meeting leader has to be able to focus on many things. It's not just music. It's not scripture only. It's not a particular dynamic. All of these things are happening at once. And the leader has to be discerning this. It's a dynamic process, you can't just do it off a schedule.
 
It's also important as a worship leader to be able to summarize what the Lord is doing. Maybe there was a strong prophetic word, maybe somebody had a scripture, there is a particular song that really moved people. It is the leader's job to make all of these connections and present to the people what it seems the Lord is doing. And then encourage the group to respond.
 
There's a main principle here that we have to keep in mind. A leader of a prayer meeting has to be connected to God and connected to the people at the same time. Sometimes as a leader you just want to pray and get lost in heaven, but you are leaving the rest of us out. And some leaders are so busy keeping everybody happy they're not even paying attention to what God is doing. So you have to keep these two things in balance. What is the Lord doing or saying? But how are the people doing? And to keep these two in balance is important.
 
So let me summarize this section:
1. We must be advocates of praise and worship. We want to teach people the principles but also the methods.
2. We must engage the people. We stay close to them. We stay connected to them. We work with music and encouraging the people.
3. A worship leader must be able to manage many things at the same time.
4. A worship leader must be attentive to God but also attentive to the people.
 
Let's take a few minutes now to talk about giving a teaching. There's three things necessary to give a good teaching: Proper discernment of what teaching to give; Preparation of your material; Proper delivery of the teaching. These three elements are essential.
 
If you look at our friends with their cameras, the cameras are sitting on tripods. One of the jobs the cameraman has is to ensure all three legs are extended. If all three legs are not correct, the thing tilts over. It's the same with a good teaching. You need these three elements to make the thing stand right. We'll quickly go through these three elements.
 
The first one is proper discernment of what to teach. Why do we give teachings? Are we just trying to fill in the time? Hopefully not. We're giving teachings because we are trying to impart the word of God. We're trying to share a word with our brothers and sisters. So it is very important that we know what it is God wants us to say.
 
So how do we know what God wants us to talk about? I think there's three normal ways that we understand what to teach on. Sometimes people in authority give us the assignment. And if you are part of a group and the pastoral leadership says, 'Would you give us a teaching about this?', well then, do it. Sometimes we just get – we sense what the people need. They might need some encouragement in an area, or perhaps they need some correction. So sometimes a theme is not given to us by divine revelation but our pastoral instincts show us what the people need at this time. And sometimes, the third way, God puts in our heart what we need to teach about. An idea starts forming in your mind, and then you go to Mass on Sunday and the scripture speaks to that, and then you hear a song on the radio that fits with that very thought. God's probably trying to tell you something.
 
So whether somebody is telling us what teaching to give, or our pastoral instincts give us some direction, or we just get a sense in our heart – these are three common ways we know what to teach.
 
Now the best way to prepare your material is what I do is I keep small pieces of paper with me – an index card – and I always carry these cards with me. And I find a scripture that speaks about that teaching, I write it down on a card. I'm having a conversation with a friend and they say something that fits in with that teaching, I write it down on that card.
 
So I am constantly looking for how the Lord might be speaking to me. And I keep collecting these cards with these ideas. Then I sit down at home. I take all my cards and I put them on the table. Lord, what are You saying with all this? In my cards I have many different scriptures. I might have a particular story. And I just pray with this material. And then I start organizing the ideas.
 
One of the problems most of us have; we try to put too much material in. You can't use everything. But all these things help us to prepare our material. And then I take a blank piece of paper and just put down my key points. So when I give the talk I'm not reading all these cards, but they just help me remember what order to go in.
 
And then finally when we actually give the talk, be sure people can hear you. Be sure people understand what you are saying. Be sure to stay connected to the people. Be sincere. Be focused on Christ and then when you are done, sit down. I'll sit down.
 
(A third person then gave a rough summary of both talks, thanked both men, and invited them to give a final prayer before a final song.)
 
Christof: Thank You Lord, thank You Lord for this morning. Thank You for everyone who came. Thank You for everything we have been learning this morning. And Holy Spirit I ask You to come and to fill everyone who is here. Help us to become leaders and members of the prayer groups that You have intended us to be. Help us to be watchmen of the vision. Teach us and worship us according to Your Heart. Holy Spirit we can learn a lot of things but most important is to receive everything from You. And so we ask You Holy Spirit, Come. Come and fill this place with Your glory. Come and fill our hearts with Your presence and grant us everything You want to give to us.
This workshop took place in a church, and as always in a church we will get the final blessing and the final song.

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Below is a printer-friendly edited transcript, 6 x A4 pages 

Please print it out and share this document, because it would be very hard to find a prayer group that couldn't benefit from reading it.

In recent weeks I was given a document (see below) with some analysis of the great protestant revivals of the last 2 centuries. Using that document as a launching pad, I'd like to do three things. Draw out some conclusions, compare the Catholic experience and make some comments.

The conditions prior to the revivals discussed in this document were full of lawless violence and low levels of church attendance. Yet it took individuals of courage to say that situations like these could be fixed by prayer, and who were willing to pray and invite others to pray. What we don't have is any record of how they prayed except for the 'O God, bend us', 'O God, bend me' of the Welsh revival. But it must have been that kind of heart-felt prayer of the truly desperate for grace to begin to flow so exponentially. That heart-felt need for prayer and God's power to change was experienced, and responded to, across denominational lines. The impact was seen in changed lives and changed public morals as well; resulting in living examples of 'where sin abounds, grace super-abounds' cf Rom 5:20.
 
In our own days we have observable evidence of crime rates plummeting in cities that have hosted World Youth Days, during those days of grace and lingering for a while afterwards.
 
Surely the situation is worse now that what it was in the 1850s and 1900s, with global threats to peace, terrorism, breakdown in family life, large decreases in the numbers of those identifying themselves as Christian, and the multiplication of crimes that attract God's vengeance. It feels like we have forgotten how to call out to God for His answers and solutions.
 
Revival isn't a word that Catholics use. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, just that our experience of it often gets called movements or currents of grace - and that most of them are ongoing.
 
Perhaps the first great movement after the Apostolic era was the Desert Fathers where, in imitation of the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert in prayer, fasting and battle with the evil one, many men and women responded to this calling and pathway to holiness when getting martyred was no longer an option. That channel of grace is still flowing, whenever people read their writings and decide to follow Jesus more radically.
 
Monasticism was another great movement of grace, born from the Desert Fathers, where instead of living isolated and coming together only for the Sunday Eucharist, they began living a common life and various rules of life sprang up. The Rules of St Benedict, of St Basil and of St Augustine are still living wells of grace for those multitudes of people who today live under them.
 
St Francis and St Dominic both felt the call to poverty and preaching, and enormous numbers followed them, and still do today in the various Franciscan and Dominican orders.
 
For all its faults, the crusades were another movement of grace. What else could inspire so many to heroically leave home to serve God as both warrior and pilgrim?
 
Wherever God has raised up individuals of outstanding holiness, rivers of grace flowed. We can see that in the ministry of St Vincent Ferrer and the successful preaching tours he undertook through Europe with his co-worker priests and penitents. St Catherine of Siena was another, just gazing upon her was enough to convert many to Jesus.
 
We've then got the massive movement of grace we now call the counter-reformation headed by St Charles Borromeo, St Ignatius of Loyola, St Francis Xavier and the Jesuits, St Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross and the Carmelites. The city of Rome was profoundly converted through the prayers, and witness of St Philip Neri and those who joined him in the Oratory movement.
 
The French Revolution was devastating, but from that pain and suffering all kinds of new religious movements and religious orders were born, many marked by devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus – itself an extraordinary outpouring of grace that spread like wild fire.
 
The Miraculous Medal, 1830, brought with it a tidal wave of grace that is still abundant today. We can see the same thing in the rapid spread of devotion to the Divine Mercy across the globe in the later part of the 20th century.
 
When it comes to tsunamis of grace, the tilma of St Juan Diego with the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe converted multitudes of Central and South Americans to the gospel of Jesus almost overnight. Today millions of people visit that shrine in Mexico each year.
 
St Bernadette and Our Lady of Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje, La Salette and other places where God has sent the Virgin Mary remain places of extraordinary grace and conversion.
 
Then there's the Cursillo movement, Marriage Encounter, Catholic Action, Teams of Our Lady, the St Vincent de Paul Society, the Antioch movement for young people, the Neo Catechumenate, and many other movements in living memory. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal exploded in grace at Pittsburgh in 1967 and was holding truly international conferences in Rome by 1975.
 
These are but the tips of the iceberg when it comes to movements of grace that our protestant brothers and sisters could call revival. Many of them have an individual of outstanding holiness at the initiation of them, with a charism of founder or foundress. Others have charisms of preaching and healing, like Fr Emiliano Tardif of living memory, and great crowds gathered wherever he was sent around the world.
 
The movement of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament has brought healing, conversion and drops in the local crime rate where ever it has been established, as well as many vocations to the priesthood and religious life.
 
How did many of them start? Usually by an individual or group deciding to take God seriously in a radical way. Some saw the needs of the time and asked, 'God, what do you want me to do about it?' At other times the beginning was a sovereign work of God, gifting someone with extraordinary charisms and calling them to unusual levels of holiness. What we don't know on this side of eternity is how many of these movements of grace began with the long term prayers of a mother like St Monica for St Augustine or the mother of Alan Ames, or the prayers of grandparents; nor how many began in response to someone dedicating their lives to God under the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. There are just too many stories of the link between a religious vocation and the start of a very fruitful priestly vocation, for this to be discounted.
 
So Yes, the Holy Spirit is alive and active throughout all of Church history, and in our era too. All He needs are willing partners in His divine plans, especially people willing to pray and offer up sacrifices in supplication for the grace of conversion for many - and people willing to be obedient to His inspirations no matter how wacko we may think of them.
 
There's our challenge. Be like them, and with the Holy Spirit change our world into a better place, or play it safe and watch as humanity heads down the slippery slope to destruction.
 
Our Lady, Queen of the Angels, pray for us.
All holy men and women used by God to bring rivers of grace to others, pray for us.

This is a transcription of the workshop held in Rome on 1 June 2017 with this topic as part of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal #ccrgoldenjubilee2017
 
The speakers were Fr Dario Betancourt and Damian Stayne, with translations in English and Spanish.
 
Fr Dario Betancourt is a Colombian priest working in New York and active in the Renewal since at least 1977. There isn't much online about him in English. He does have a Facebook page.
 
Damian Stayne is a founder of the Cor et Lumen Christi community and runs Charism Schools. He too has a Facebook page.
 
This is the link for the video recording: https://youtu.be/PXLkeNGXa9o
 
(Ed. The translation for Fr Dario's talk wasn't as good as usual, due to a variety of factors, so the transcription for it won't be exact.)
 
Fr Dario Betancourt: Good morning. We are fighting against the time. I would like to share with you many texts from the Second Vatican Council, but we don't have the time. I would like to emphasize the second part of Lumen Gentium.
 
The Holy Spirit gives the gifts as He wills for the good of the Church, brothers and sisters, for the life of the Church. Jesus will infuse the healing gifts to those who believe in Him.
 
I encounter this in Chapter 9 of the Gospel of St Luke. The Lord Jesus sends His apostles to evangelise and to heal. It is important that Jesus did not send them just to evangelise, but to evangelise and to heal. And in the same Gospel of St Luke in Chapter 10 we see Jesus sends out His disciples to evangelise and to heal.
 
Let us not confuse apostles and disciples. Those are two different things. The apostles are disciples, but the disciples are not apostles. There were many, many disciples, but not many apostles.
 
It says in Luke 8, that Jesus had many followers including many women, including Mary Magdalene, Susanna and Joanna. It is very important that we understand what it means to be a disciple. It is a word, discere, that comes from Latin and discere means to learn. And to learn what? It is to learn the life of the Master, to live the life of the Master and to learn what the Master knows (eg about geography and other such things.)
 
But the most important thing is to live the life of the Master, not just learn what the Master knows.
 
This is a very important thing to note in the life of Jesus: He heals people. When He encounters people He heals people not to prove that He is God, but because He was God, He is God. What I find fascinating is that He didn't just talk and teach. He showed His power through charisms and wanted to give the power to His disciples.
 
What I find marvelous is that St John doesn't say that we have to be a reproduction, a copy, a continuation of Jesus, but that we have to be Jesus completely in our souls, bodies and spirits, completely Jesus.
 
Between the 1st and 4th century the Church preached, evangelised and practiced the gift of healing, as a normal part of the church. Then in the 4th century the Stoic ideal of ideology came about and talked about the life that is about suffering, a lot a lot of suffering. That God was the mind for His people, and their reason. That God was at peace with the idea of suffering because Jesus suffered much physically. The idea was that people also suffered.
 
The suffering Jesus received was from the outside to the inside, and not suffering from the inside going outward. The suffering He endured came from the outside, came from persecution, misunderstanding and people not following Him.
 
What Jesus does not want is that we suffer from within. What does it mean to suffer from within? It is cancer, paralysis and epilepsy. He does not want us to suffer. What are the illnesses of the body that Jesus healed? Blindness, deafness, paralysis and He was called to heal.
 
But the suffering from outside to within, that's the suffering Jesus wants us to suffer, from outside to inside.
 
But the sufferings from inside to outside He condemns and He sent them to heal all these sufferings.
 
Before the 4th century there were no problems. Problems started to occur after the 4th century. So what happens after the 4th century is that our holy Catholic Church really focuses on going to preach throughout the world and then healing was not so important, not so emphasized. What was emphasized was Eucharist, Reconciliation and Confirmation and those things.
 
The healing gift appeared in the last century up till now, mainly with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Now it is natural for us to preach and then to pray for healing – it’s a natural thing.
 
But until the Catholic Charismatic renewal, the Catholic Church, let us say the truth clearly, I want to be helpful, so that all can see that they have the gift of healing.
 
This from Jesus in Mark 18:18 That those who believe in Me will lay their hands on the sick and heal them. Raise up your hand if you believe in Jesus. Consequently if you believe in Jesus you have the healing gift. Alleluia!
 
In John 14:12 Those who believe in Me will perform the same things I do and even greater ones. Jesus! Jesus! John 14:13 Those who believe in Me, ask whatever you want and you will receive it. John 14:14 Ask and the Father will give you whatever you want. Alleluia!
 
In the Gospel of John it says, 'If you believe in My name I will give you whatever you ask for', so you have to believe in My name.
 
Acts 4: 3 shows the disciples conscious of the necessity of the charisms to evangelise and it says they performed miracles and extraordinary signs in the name of Jesus. Alleluia!
 
Damian Stayne: Alleluia. Jesus is Alive. Jesus is Alive. Are you Christians in here or Muslims? Jesus is Alive (Response: Jesus is Alive).
 
We have been asked to speak about growing and moving in the charisms and I am going to share with you very quickly some Keys that we have found to growing in the supernatural. Because we have been so privileged by God's grace to see so many miracles; in healing, in prophetic miracles, in liberation miracles. So we just want to share these keys with you so you can take them away. OK?
 
First Key. Absolute Conviction. What Fr Dario has been speaking about. We have to pray to move beyond the idea that the charisms are an optional extra, like having a sunroof in your car or tinted windows. Charisms are as essential as the steering wheel and the accelerator. OK. There is no work of God, so spiritual work of God among the people of God that is not a charismatic act. Without the charisms, the mission of the Church is over.
 
If you want the mission of men – good luck to you.
If you want the mission of God, you must have the charisms.
So we must pray for a revelation of absolute conviction that the charisms are non-negotiable.
 
Second Key. Bigger Vision. Bigger vision. Say that back to me. Bigger vision. We are getting little because our vision is little. You see small vision gives us small prayers and small prayers give us small answers. If you have a big vision then you pray big prayers. When you pray big prayers you get big answers. Amen? (Clapping)
 
Third Key: Faith. How many of you believe that miracles are happening in God's Church today? Hands up if you believe in miracles, in miracles happening in God's Church today. Now keep your hand up if you are performing miracles regularly. Ohhhh. So what's going wrong? You have faith that miracles can happen and you wonder why they are not happening. People come to me and say, 'Damian, I believe miracles can happen today but when I pray with people I am not seeing any miracles. What's going wrong?'
 
I tell you, it's very simple. Believing that miracles can happen today is an assent of the mind only. An understanding only in the brain. But the faith that makes miracles is an empowering of the Spirit and we have to pray each of us that God will give us the faith that empowers the Spirit to miracles. In my opinion this is the one single biggest confusion about the power of God in the charismatic renewal in the world. We thought that if we knew it, we had it. But as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, we must beg the Lord to increase our faith.
 
Feed your faith. If you want to grow in the charisms, feed your faith. If you want to grow in the charisms, you must feed your faith. Read books about miracles, watch videos about Christian miracle ministries, listen to testimonies. Get alongside people who are seeing more than you are. Because often the experience is that faith is caught. You catch it from being close to it.
 
You know, if I want to see more miracles in an area of my ministry, like if I wanted to see more blind people healed, then I read and read repeatedly stories about the blind being healed, until my mind is full of the vision of the blind being healed. Then I pray and I pray until my spirit agrees with my mind. And then when I tell the blind eyes to open, the blind eyes are opening.
 
The same with the deaf and the lame. The same with cancers and tumours. I have seen tumours the size of my fist disappearing in 5 minutes. And I saw a man with a tumour like this (coming out from the area between the ear and the shoulder and sizeable) and I said, 'God, we've got to see victory over that!'. So I started reading stories of saints and early pentecostals who saw huge tumours disappearing and then I prayed and I prayed for that. Since that time I've seen tumours the size of your head disappearing in 5 minutes.
 
At one of our services 51 people, 51 people after the word of command to cancers and tumours to vanish, their cancers or tumours shrank, shrank or disappeared completely. There is always, there is always more. If you are here (below the knee), pray to  be here (above the knee); if you are here (above the knee) pray to be here (hip); if you are here (hip) pray to be here (shoulder); if you are here (shoulder), pray to be here (head); if you are here (head), pray to be there (above your head).
 
Fourth Key. Prayer and Fasting. We've got to become more holy. It is nearly impossible to become holy unless you are praying deeply. You see, people will not fall in love with Jesus if they only see His hand. They must also see His face. They will fall in love with Him if they see His character revealed in us when they see His hand.
 
Fifth Key: Purity. St Paul says, if you want to be used as vessels of silver and gold in the house of God you must purify. If we want that, Paul says we must purify ourselves from the impurities of the world. Don’t expect the privileges of the kingdom if you are playing with sin in the film, the television, in the internet, in the kind of music you listen to. You cannot be friends with the world and expect the supernatural anointing of the New Testament.
 
Sixth Key: Family. If we don’t put first in our lives what God has put first in our lives our ministries will lead to misery. Our ministries will lead to misery. What is it that you evangelise the whole world and your children go to hell? Jesus says there are those who take what should have been given to their parents and offer it to God and call it korban, so that they do not have to give it to their families. Many of us charismatics, we have done that with our time, our energy and our affection. We ran away from the duties of love in our family because we wanted to have a big ministry. Let me tell you. You put your family first, God will put your ministry first. Since my children were tiny, I'm a very busy man. I have 2 children. I spent an hour playing with each of my children every day of their lives since they were 2 years old. Playing, loving, saying 'you first'. After Jesus, you are my first mission. So when I go away, my children bless me and send me. Now they are both radically on fire for Jesus and both of them are performing miracles. Actually they have been performing miracles since they were little children.
 
Seventh Key: Humility. What can I say about humility? Yes, we're not very good at it. OK. There is no way in to humility, except begging for it, and letting your good friends tell you your sins and thanking them when they do. You see, love demands that I beg for humility because if I do not beg for humility God can't trust me with the glory. The quickest way into the glory is through the door of humility.
 
Eighth Key: Love. Make love your aim and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts. We desire the spiritual gifts for one reason, because we are aiming for love. Because I want to love like Jesus loved. And I want to tell you that if I had the gift of miracles I would be so happy. I can tell you from experience, miracles don't make you happy, love makes you happy. I could heal everybody in this church, but if I don't love any of you what joy would it give me? So when you are pursuing the gifts, pursue them for love. God's word says this: Earnestly desire the spiritual gifts. And if God's word is saying 'Earnestly desire the spiritual gifts' it must be that God is earnestly desiring to pour them out. God has a bowl of gifts tipped to the brim in heaven, just waiting for your faith.
 
So we are going to see some of the gifts now. We have been seeing lots of people being healed by getting the congregation to proclaim Jesus is Alive. Even big healings. How many of you here have got something wrong with your body? Put your hand up. The power of the name of Jesus has overthrown the power of hell. If you would believe that Jesus can heal you now when we make this declaration many of you will be healed in this church in the next few minutes. Say Amen if you believe that. OK. I'm going to break you up into 4 groups, 1, 2, 3, 4. When I point to your group, you stand up and you declare with your arms stretched, with the top of your voice and all of your faith, 'Jesus is Alive'. OK. And as you do. As you do many of you are going to be healed. And we will ask you afterwards – 'Who has been healed?'
 
This is not a game. When you say the name of Jesus with faith, the power of the kingdom is detonated. Are you ready? (It begins…a holy competition of proclaiming Jesus...can you do better than this?).
 
Now those of you who have something wrong with your bodies, try and move it now. If you had healing in your body, wave your hands at me. (He stopped counting at 18, but there were more). Alleluia. Jesus is Alive!
 
Questions and Answers
 
Q. When you talked about family first, then you will do God's will for you, right? But at which level do you put family first when you decide what you will do for your whole life, when maybe family does not approve it, in terms of vocation?
 
DS: If you are obedient to God, this is the way to love your family. But each day I am called to radical love, and if I want to inherit the land, if you want to take back your countries, what is the promise? Those who honour their father and mother will take the land. If we love our families, this doesn't mean to disobey the radical call of Jesus. It is a matter of working out priorities of time and not running away from our duties to do something a little bit more exciting. So I could go away every weekend of every year but while I have small children I made the decision to only go away once a month. And this purchased the loyalty of my children to Jesus. And in our community every child who is old enough to join our community has chosen to join the community because the community's discipline about family gave them brilliant parents. Do you understand what I am saying? Did I answer your question?
 
Q. Yes, but you talked as a parent. You already chose to be a parent. But when you haven't yet made that decision, how does family fit in?
 
DS: In your situation you must discern your calling with Jesus. Even if you are called to be a hermit, you never turn your back on your parents. So there is no vocation that says my parents matter nothing to me. Even if you are called to be a missionary on the other side of the world. Do you understand? OK.
 
Q. What should I do if in my family or community, if criticism starts?
 
Fr D: We must talk about Christ, as the centre of our lives. We have to be witnesses of Jesus Christ.
 
Q. When we pray for the healing of the people, how can we distinguish the leading of the Spirit?
 
Fr D: I believe the answer is when Jesus Christ healed our blind. Jesus asked the blind, 'Can you see?' 'Yes, I can see, but it is not clear, like trees walking'. So like Jesus, I have to pray a bit more. If Jesus had to pray twice for the blind, maybe you and I have to pray more, maybe 20 times, maybe 200 times. Maybe Jesus is also testing them. Remember Jesus also said to the blind, go and wash in the pool of Siloam – then we can see that Jesus put a test to the people, to see the faith of the people. I believe that we cannot be worried if the healing is now, tomorrow or afterwards. The most important thing is to pray, and God will do what He thinks is right, today, tomorrow or afterwards.
 
Q. Christ will see what is inside us, but sometimes we can have inside what is coming from outside, eg from curse or witchcraft.
 
Fr D: My experience is that I believe that Christ wants us healed from inside to outside. These are all the physical disease. But there are also the spiritual illness that are hate, fear, remorse and (something that wasn't translated). Difficult to explain, The priest sees many illness caused by external means like witchcraft. That's why it is very important to make a diagnosis. To do a diagnosis like a doctor does. The doctor will ask you questions, date of birth, family medical history and other information, and finally he will give you an answer, a medication or specific recommendation. Is it physical or spiritual? Possible causes of it. There can be many obstacles inside us, and when we pray away the obstacles, the healing happens. God can do it in a greater way, here and now, physically cured. It is very common to cure physical illness, but there are many that we cannot see – because if you hate someone you cannot see it.
 
We don’t have time to give the testimony of many of you. But I would like to see who has a medical brace because you couldn't move without needing this brace. You are here. The woman came forward and showed how freely she was moving.
 
Jesus is Alive. Jesus is Alive. We need to sing that Jesus is Alive.
..................................................................................
​An edited 4 x A4 PDF version of these talks is given below:

From many sources there is a prophetic expectancy that God will move in great power very soon. But He cannot do that unless we do our part and go deeper in our prayer, our trust and our surrender to Him. This talk of Damian Stayne gives very practical ways of doing this essential preparation for co-operating in what God wants to do supernaturally in our world.

During His pontificate Pope Francis has been giving us fresh insights into the Gospel, right, left and centre.

These meditations on the Mysteries of the Rosary have been gleaned from his writings and speeches, and then edited down so that each set of meditations (Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful and Glorious) fits onto 2 x A4 pages of text.

That makes them about the right length for meditating on these Mysteries on First Saturdays of the month, while praying the rosary, as requested by Our Lady to Sr Lucia of Fatima in late 1925.

But they are also a very good summary of what God has been teaching us through Pope Francis as well.

This is a transcription of the workshop held in Rome on 1 June 2017 with this topic as part of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal #ccrgoldenjubilee2017
 
The speakers were Dominique Ferry and Fr Dave Pivonka, with translations in English and Spanish.
 
Dominique Ferry is a Catholic deacon and member of the Chemin Neuf Community. This link will give you more background information about him, but you will need to scroll a bit to find it.
 
Fr Dave Pivonka is a member of the Third Order Regular (TOR) Franciscans. He has served in ministry positions at Franciscan University Steubenville and is now on his Wild Goose Project.
 
This is the link for the video recording: https://youtu.be/kPVGz08xDnc

(A printer-friendly, edited version of this transcript is available at the end of this blog-post.) 
 
Dominique: Well I am happy to be with you this morning, and if you don't mind I will speak standing because I can see you all. I am not an expert on everything and every part of the world, so I will speak from what I know, and I am just sorry for those left aside. My experience in the past 14 years have been mostly with students and parish life in the western world. So that is the place I will speak from.
 
If we want to bring the Gospel to the world outside we have first to open our eyes and see what the world outside looks like. Most of our fellow human beings live in large urban city areas and very far from their relatives without a sense of belonging, of being lost in an anonymous environment and when the life becomes hard because of unemployment, divorce, or any hardship of life, illness, loss of dear ones, then there is very few people to support them and faith tends to be a very private thing. So you can live next to other Christians and not even know you are sharing the same faith.
 
And for the generation of the young adults, let's say 20 to 30, either they have not been raised in the Christian faith or they have been raised in Christian faith in their family but the story is almost always the same: when they leave their family and go to university then things begin to dwindle down and more or less they lose contact with the faith – and so most of them have never had a chance to develop a personal relationship with Jesus. And in their world nevertheless the parish remains the place where you can knock on the door and just light a candle because your grandmother is very sick or after several years of living together with your partner you want to have a child and you think it is safer to be married in church or they want to have their child baptised or they bring a dear one to their last place on earth – but facing that most of the parishes are still living still as they were 50 or 70 or 80 years ago. So they are dealing with people within the walls and they are not worried about the great, great number of those outside the Church.
 
And today we should be like Jesus who said, 'I came to bring fire on earth and how I wish it would be already burning', and most of us, we are not burnt inside with that same desire Jesus had to make the kingdom of God known. And now there is such an urgent need for people to see our countries as places and fields of evangelization.
 
An interesting experience is the origin of the Alpha course in the Anglican Church. Years ago in a parish in the centre of London called Holy Trinity, Brompton, the vicar of the parish Sandy Millar and a team of his parishioners decided to set up a course for the members of the parish; a discipleship course to help people to deepen their faith and understanding of their faith. But then came a new curate in the parish called Nicky Gumbel, and Nicky Gumbel had not been brought up in any faith at all, he was a non-believer and didn't know anything about Jesus Christ until he went to university at Cambridge University and because of an experience of a friend of his who became Christian. His first reaction was I will lose a friend because now he will become boring. Nevertheless, he wanted to keep some kind of friendship so he started reading the Gospel and through that he was touched by the Holy Spirit and became a Christian because he met Jesus alive. And since then, as a student first, he had the heart for those who were not church goers. So when he joined the team of Holy Trinity Brompton he found interesting the discipleship course but helped re-design the whole thing to help people who had never heard of Jesus Christ. His heart and mind were turned to those in the street, outside of our church buildings, those who were not 'in the pews' as we say. And then the whole thing was redesigned with a purpose of helping people to have a real personal experience of the Holy Spirit, Who is the great evangelizer – and this is the important part – this became the vision of the whole team of the parish.
 
So you can say that the parish was targeting people outside and that the Baptism of the Holy Spirit was at the heart of their mission statement.
 
Now another experience would be the one that we have in our community- the Chemin Neuf – with the young people, teenagers and young adults. Because in the same way the Question is how can we reach out to those people: all those young people that consider that God is an old fashioned thing? And so they knelt together and guidance from the Holy Spirit and the thing is – you have to keep going in your listening to the Spirit. Because in 1993 they founded something they called the Festival for Young People in France. And it was a success, but in 2003 things were going down and down and down. 10 years later the need was different. The young people were different. They were not ready to abide by the same rules as the ones 10 years before.
 
But the core of what has to be announced is the same. It is the kerygma, because the kerygma has a power in itself. Isaiah 55, 'My word does not come back to Me without having done the purpose for which I sent it'. And the kerygma is that powerful word that has the power to turn the heart of the people, to work the work of God which is that they recognise Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Saviour of the world. And after that to accompany the people, you have to offer the Baptism in the Holy Spirit.
 
For instance, last year at the World Youth Day there was a big gathering organized by the Community (I'm not making advertisement for the Community – but it is the one I know). And after a time of reconciliation where people can come before God as their Saviour, there was a call for those who wanted to give their life to the Lord, and in order to give their life – to receive His Holy Spirit, and more than 1000 young people moved forward to be prayed for at the same time. And they managed to pray one by one, because it is not a group thing, it is a personal commitment to Jesus and a personal encounter with the power of the Holy Spirit. And you could find many other examples in various denominations of the same kind of experience where a team is looking outside to bring the Gospel in the streets, but the need for these is for a new pentecostal experience.
 
And maybe the difference between 50 years ago is that 50 years ago people were personally renewed by the baptism in the Holy Spirit they had, they would come together and be able to journey together as prayer groups, communities and other places. Whereas today my feeling is that there is a need for a pentecostal experience of the whole community, in the parish, or in another place, because it is the whole community that has to change their mindset from maintenance mindset to an evangelising mindset.
 
If you look at the Acts of the Apostles, well there is the first Pentecost that we all know and that we will celebrate in a few days' time. But then when there were threats from outside and they were facing opposition from the outside world and started to be persecuted they came again together in prayer and they said to the Lord, Acts 4:29-31, 'So Lord look at their threats and grant to Your servants to speak with all boldness while You stretch Your hand to heal through the name of Your servant Jesus. When they had prayed the place where they had gathered together was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.' They felt they needed a common infilling of the Spirit to get the new pentecostal experience. So it is that Jesus' mission was overflowing from His loving Heart for the lost and the sinners. As we are His ambassadors, His envoys, we need of course to remain personally grafted to Jesus, but we have to share His Heart for the lost sheep. This is not only a personal conversion but a conversion of the community together; and that has to be of one heart and one soul as the Acts of the Apostles says.
 
And at the end of the day it is what we have seen and heard that we declare to others so that they may have fellowship with us. Thank you.
 
Fr Dave: Good morning. When we began we prayed for Dominique and myself – which I appreciate, but I believe the most difficult job this morning is with Patricia (our interpreter). So we pray for her, too. Jesus pour Your Holy Spirit upon her, that You would fill her with Your anointing, give her Your peace, and allow her to use the gifts You have given her. Amen? Amen.
 
If you want to know what faith is: faith is me believing Patricia is saying what I am saying.
 
And as was mentioned, I am a preacher, so for me to do this from a talk written is very difficult, but we will try. Amen? Amen. Good.
 
I had an experience a number of years ago that surprised me. In the middle of a talk a woman jumped up, she interrupted me and she said, 'Why have I never heard this before? I've been a Catholic my whole life and I had never heard this before'. She became increasingly angry. What was I talking about that caused her to become angry? I was talking about how the Holy Spirit wanted to animate her life: how the Holy Spirit wanted to fill her: that the Holy Spirit wanted to come in power: that the Holy Spirit wanted to heal her: that the Spirit of Jesus wanted to breathe life into her. She said to me, 'I have never heard this before. Why has no one ever said this before? And she is not alone. There are a tremendous number of Catholics who do not understand what it is to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
 
The first reading just a few days ago said, 'I had never heard of the Holy Spirit'. This is very sad for many reasons. But the main reason is that men and women are being invited to be disciples of Jesus Christ.
 
Often times Catholics hear us priests to tell them to love, to be patient, to be kind, to be forgiving. We invite them to share the Gospel. We invite them to live a life of purity, to follow the teachings of the Church, and for many of them they try to do that, and then they fail. So they make a decision, 'I am going to try harder'. And they try very hard, and then they fail. And this cycle happens time and time again. And it becomes a burden. What they hear from the pulpit, from the Church, becomes a burden for them. They don't feel they can live this life. They want to live a life of faith, but they fail. They get frustrated, they get angry, they despair, and they walk away. They try to live a dynamic faith, they try to live a life of faith, but it is impossible. There is the problem. We are asking them to do something, but we are not equipping them to do it.
 
I believe it is one of the reasons the new evangelization has perhaps not been as successful as we had hoped. Many people decided to follow a programme of evangelization, thinking that a programme would change a person's heart. Programmes do not change people's hearts. But the only thing that can change a person's heart is Christ. There must be something more than a programme. The individual must encounter Jesus. They must encounter Jesus and be filled with the Holy Spirit.
 
I am reminded what Pope Francis stated in his document Evangelii Gaudium 7,8. 'I never tire of repeating the words of Pope Benedict which takes us to the very heart of the Gospel. 'Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice, or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, with a person which gives a new horizon and a decisive direction.' Thanks solely to an encounter or a renewed encounter with God's love.' No doubt that this encounter is key to the new evangelisation. I have loved how Pope Francis continually speaks about this encounter. If St John Paul II spoke of a civilization of love, Pope Francis is speaking of a culture of encounter. As Dominique was saying, our parishes and our communities must create a culture where the possibility exists to encounter Jesus – in everything we do, everything. Amen? Amen.
 
The responsibility to facilitate/help with this encounter is not just my job as the priest. It is for all Catholics. This is a part of the new evangelization. No longer can we say, 'Father is going to do that' or 'Sister will do that', but you must do that. Amen? Amen.
 
There is only one of me, and only one of Patricia, but there are many of you – so the job is yours. So I am going to take a vacation for the next year, and you work. Amen? Amen.
 
Again, reminding us of the new evangelization; that this proclamation of the Gospel, the sharing of the Gospel, is for the people that you are in Church with. It is not merely for some foreign country, but for the people around you: the people who work in the office next to you. It is the proclamation of the kerygma which draws people into a relationship with Jesus, into a relationship with the Church, and into a life of holiness. It is not merely obedience. It is not merely obeying, but that is a part of it.
 
Understanding what this evangelization is causes me to reflect that perhaps that we should have spoken of the new Pentecost before the new evangelization. It causes me to think of the disciples, who had every advantage. I am going to ask you a question, and it is a very simple question. Who taught the disciples how to pray? Jesus. Who taught them how to forgive? Jesus. Who taught them how to heal? Jesus. They had every advantage. They spent time with Jesus. They saw everything that Jesus did, and yet it was not enough. That they needed more than an encounter with Jesus – they needed the Holy Spirit. The disciples were not able to evangelise until they had experienced Pentecost. I believe that we will not be able to evangelise until we experience Pentecost. Amen? Amen.
 
I mentioned at the beginning of my talk. I spoke of the woman who was so frustrated that she had never heard about the Holy Spirit or the transforming grace of the Holy Spirit. It is imperative that we share the message of the Holy Spirit. St John reminds us that it is the Spirit Who gives witness to Jesus. Pope Paul VI stated that it is the Holy Spirit Who is The Evangeliser. It is impossible to evangelise without the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen? Amen.
 
My father is a physician. If my father knew what was causing somebody's illness, and he did not give them a prescription he would be sued for malpractice. My fear is that we are doing the same thing in the Church. We know what the problem is: the people of God do not have power, and the prescription is the Holy Spirit. Amen? Amen.
 
To try to evangelise without the grace of the Holy Spirit is setting the Church up for failure. When the Holy Spirit is present in our evangelization we will see marks such as they will be filled with the love of God. Pope Francis has spoken about the connection between the love of God and the Holy Spirit. Pope Francis says, (Homily 9 Jan 2015) 'You can follow a 1000 catechism courses, 1000 spirituality courses, 1000 yoga or zen courses, and all of these, but none of this will be able to give you the freedom as a child of God. Only the Holy Spirit can prompt your heart to say 'Father'.' Only the Holy Spirit can open your heart to love. So Amen? Amen.
 
So people who have experienced the Holy Spirit should also experience the love of God. And then they begin to share that love with other people. Romans 5:5 It says, 'the love of God is poured into our heart by the Holy Spirit'. Amen. But only the Holy Spirit can do that.
 
Another mark of someone who received the Holy Spirit, they give witness to Jesus. John 15:26 Jesus says He will send His Holy Spirit and His Spirit will give witness to Him. So the more we receive the Holy Spirit, we are compelled, we are forced, to give witness to Jesus.
 
When they experienced the Holy Spirit they become aware that we are children of God. Romans 8:15 says that the Spirit makes us cry out Abba Father. The Holy Spirit causes us to cry out Abba Father. So the Holy Spirit comes upon us, and we cry out 'Abba'. So when we experience the Holy Spirit we give witness to Jesus, we cry out 'Abba Father', the Spirit brings us into the Trinity, that we understand that we have a relationship with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and in that we have relationship with God. We begin to discover what it is to have a relationship with Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen? Amen.
 
The Holy Spirit also convicts us of our sin. We live in a world that does not believe there is sin. Now it is important to understand that it is the Spirit that convicts us of our sin. The purpose of the Holy Spirit convicting us of our sin is in order to convert us, not to condemn us. The evil one wants to condemn us. The evil one  wants to show us our sin so that we think we are horrible. We see our sin and the evil one tells us 'God will never forgive you', 'God does not love you anymore', ''He will not forgive you this time', 'Too many times you have committed this sin. That is the evil one. But the Spirit convicts us of our sin, and the Spirit tells us, 'You have a Father who loves you', 'That Jesus has looked for you', 'That He will always forgive you'. The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin, and yet we live in a culture that does not want to talk about sin. The Spirit wants to show us our sin so that we might be purified, so that we might be converted. Amen? Amen.
 
We are just going to jump ahead a little bit.
 
What are some barriers or stumbling blocks to allow us to experience the Holy Spirit? Fear. Fear is the enemy of the Holy Spirit. Do not be afraid to share the grace of the Holy Spirit. The grace of the Holy Spirit is essential to the work of the kingdom. Stand in the power of the Holy Spirit, boldly proclaim the power of the Holy Spirit. Ignorance of the Holy Spirit. We must become familiar with the Holy Spirit. I have a relationship with the Father, a relationship with the Son and we must have a relationship with the Holy Spirit. It is important to understand that God does not ration His Holy Spirit. It is not just a little bit of the Holy Spirit, just a little bit. He does not ration his Holy Spirit. There is always more of His Holy Spirit, much more of His Holy Spirit, and we need to stand under the grace of the Holy Spirit, stand under the Holy Spirit and ask for more.
 
The other, is the Holy Spirit does not show partiality. But He uses the entire Body more and more in my ministry. I invite the people to pray with one another and I ask them to pray for the baptism in the Holy Spirit. It is not just me as a priest, but it is the body of Christ. And I think too often we look to me, or to the bishop or to somebody else, but the grace of the Holy Spirit is in you. It is in the body. The Scripture tells us that God does not show partiality. He doesn't love me more than you. He wants to give you the Holy Spirit, He wants to give the Holy Spirit to them and to me.
 
So a couple of weeks ago I received an email from a parish I had been working in and he said to me, 'Our community continues to be blessed by the Holy Spirit. We have continued to have people experience healings that are miracles; people are free from past sin and addictions; there is a deep desire for holiness and the things of God!' Amen? Amen.
 
That's because the people of God prayed with one another and they experienced the Lord. I have seen the movement of God's grace. The Spirit of God is touching people's hearts and their lives. It looks different than it did 50 years ago. I think sometimes we expect God to do what He did 50 years ago and God is doing something new. God is doing something new. When Pope Francis spoke at Olympic Stadium (2014) he said 'Do not try to tame the Holy Spirit, but let the Holy Spirit be free'. I think that's what we as a community must do. We must let the Holy Spirit be free. We should not control the Holy Spirit, we should not tame the Holy Spirit, we should let the Holy Spirit control me, and the Holy Spirit tame me, and with that, the grace of that, the fruit of that will be a new evangelisation that will change the world. Amen? Amen.
 
A time of Questions and Answers followed:
 
Q. We have lots of difficulties to be able to live the experience of the Holy Spirit in the church itself. The priests themselves have not lived that experience and we do not know how to transmit/convey them this new life, so that the whole community can be able to live what you are talking about. Can you give us any ideas?
 
Fr Dave: The first answer is to pray for your priest. Be willing to serve him and the community. Sometimes we approach the priest with our agenda, and we need to be able to ask the priest, 'What can we do for you?' Be a witness of the kingdom of God in your life that other people in the parish community are seeing you change and that is encouraging other people to convert. Oftentimes when the priest begins to see a person who is willing to serve, to help in areas that need help, perhaps they become more open. I would love to say there is an easy answer that says if you do this your pastor will do what you would like, but that is not always the case. So for this, Jesus said prayer and fasting.
 
Q. My name is Jose…and I am a priest, because I came to know the Renewal. You have spoken about the new evangelization. Pope Francis has spoken about the new evangelization. In a Church where everything is done with the Holy Spirit it seems that the Holy Spirit is in a little box, where we don't let it free. Those of us who believe in Him and who want to transmit it – even our fellow priests and fellow other Christians are just pushing us aside. How to be able to continue to be working in that area? How to not get discouraged? How can we do that?
 
Fr Dave: Part of this, is that we need to be able to present the Holy Spirit in a manner that is more inviting. You stated that we put the Holy Spirit in a box. Recently I have been speaking of the Holy Spirit as a wild goose. That was the term that the ancient Celts used for the Holy Spirit. But why I like that image is that the Holy Spirit cannot be tamed. But we try to tame it because it makes us nervous, particularly priests, it makes us nervous because a priest wants to make sure that everything in his parish is controlled, and that becomes very difficult. So I think one of the things we need to do, is to try to present the Holy Spirit in a language and in an experience that can speak to the people today. Dominque Ferry mentioned very beautifully that young people today are different from those of 15 years ago. So it is incumbent on us to be able to pray and say, 'Lord, what do You want to say today?' and respond to that. And finally, if our peace is dependent on success we will always be frustrated. My hope is in Jesus, and Jesus alone, and hope does not disappoint.
 
Dominique: If I may add something. Is that the ground for everything to happen is a real sense of community which means brotherhood, where the priest and the parishioners are not the priest and the parishioners; they are brothers and sisters in Christ, and they are able to share their problems together, to pray for one another, because then, there is the one thing everyone wants, is love – and it is very good to be loved by God, it is essential, but it is quite nice to be loved by your fellow Christians and to find support in them and that is something people are well eager to receive.
 
Q. It is a great gift to be here. We spoke of freeing the Holy Spirit from a cage. Many young women feel that they are in a cage within the Church, and feel that their gifts as women are not affirmed, but they have a great love for the Church. How do we open this cage so that they can fly free?
 
Dominique: Give it a try and see of the fire is just spreading around. How do you open the cage? Give it a try and just see if the fire is just getting out and then let it burn and blow on it. Let the fire burn and blow on it.
 
Fr Dave: 2 Cor 3:17 'Where the Spirit of God is, there is freedom'. So to the degree that we encounter and experience the Spirit of God more, we personally experience freedom. Even in the midst of oppression we experience freedom. So freedom ultimately comes from the Spirit of God, not from outside and external things. But that's the other reason why I always speak about the Holy Spirit shows no partiality; that the Holy Spirit does not look at male or female as far as ministry is concerned, and anointing is concerned, obviously male and female we have different roles. So when I work with my staff, from a leadership position, with every conference we do, we ask how are we empowering women? How are we putting women in front, particularly young women. In the United States we have quite a few older women who have been involved for a long time, but not very many young women. And the other is for me as a leader, to ask young women and young men, Hispanics and Latinos 'What is God saying?' 'What is God saying?' But I believe that they can hear the Lord in a way that I am not able to. Amen.
 
Q. If someone comes to me and wants to receive the Holy Spirit and be baptised in the Holy Spirit for the first time, is there a particular prayer or way that you would pray for them to receive the Holy Spirit?
 
Dominique: Well the first thing is to be sure that the person understands that receiving the Holy Spirit means to hand over the direction of his whole life to God. Well now if the person is really knowing that what it means, well there is one easy prayer, 'Come Holy Spirit'.
 
Fr Dave: Very similar. First thing I would walk them through a prayer of commitment to Jesus, very quickly a time of repentance, a surrender like Dominique said and then 'Come Holy Spirit'. I have a small rosary, I say 'Come Holy Spirit' many, many times a day. It is that simple. Can we pray?
 
Let us stand. Come Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit.
Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus we come before You this morning and ask that You would fill us with Your Holy Spirit. Breathe life into our dry bones. Come with Your fire and Your power that we might proclaim to the nations that Jesus Christ is Lord. May Almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
​
And I want to thank the interpreters very much.
 
Dominque: And as I am a deacon, I have the last word. Go in the peace of Christ.
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Here is the printer-friendly edited version...6 x A4 pages:

Please think for a moment of someone who would finding reading this to be the encouragement and inspiration they need, and share it with them.

Mary, Mother of Jesus, Mother of the new evangelisation and spouse of the Holy Spirit, pray for us. Amen. 

This is a transcription of the workshop held in Rome on 1 June 2017 with this topic as part of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal #ccrgoldenjubilee2017
 
The speakers were Cyril John and Denise Bergeron, with translations in English and French.
 
Cyril John lives in Delhi, India and is vice-president of the ICCRS Council. In 2012 he published a book called, 'Pray Lifting up Holy Hands: The Prayer of Intercession'.
 
Denise Bergeron lives in Canada and is part of the Centre De Prière L'Alliance which runs Intercession Training Courses.

This is the link for the video recording: https://youtu.be/ZK4134aUKCE
It is not a full recording; there are two gaps where content is missing.

(At the end of this blog-post is a 2 page PDF summary of this workshop, to enable it to be easily shared at prayer meetings.)
 
Cyril: This morning we are going to deal with a very exciting topic, that is Prophetic Intercession. This a prophetic sign of the times. Great things that the Lord is going to do in our midst. Great things that the Lord is going to do through the Jubilee Year. How many of you have heard about Prophetic Intercession before? Yes, some of you have heard about Prophetic Intercession, and some of you are going to hear for the very first time.
 
We have a very short time, but we will try to present this topic in a nutshell. And those of you who want to read more about this, you have a book on intercession that is in French as well as English.
 
So St Paul speaks about Intercession in a very powerful way, that is in 1 Tim 2:1-2. St Paul says, 'First of all, I ask that supplications, praise, petitions and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, and especially kings and those in authority'. St Paul says that it is the first and primary responsibility of every believer. Normally people think that intercession is meant for a very few people. Intercession is the responsibility of every baptised person. That is why St Paul says that it is the first priority in the life of a believer and St Paul says, 'intercede, pray for everyone' and pray especially for those in authority: those in authority in the Church, those in authority in our countries and those in authority in the renewal.
 
So, we are all called to be intercessors, and then the question is 'How do we intercede?' Some of us have been interceding for 20 years, 10 years. How do I intercede? Most of us, you know, have a notebook we write down the intentions that people tell us. We carry the notebook to our intercessory meeting and we lift up these intentions, and we have been doing this for the past many years. What I am trying to tell you today is just like we go to school in the nursery class, then Class 1 and Class 2, so we need to grow, we need to grow in our ministry of intercession. So it is good that we begin writing down in the notebook presenting it to the Lord – but it is also important that we grow in our ministry and in prophetic intercession we try to rely on the Lord.
 
A prophetic intercessor is one who opens his ears, who opens his eyes to hear what the Lord is speaking. Consider that our interpreter is Jesus and that I am an intercessor. As an intercessor I place my ears close to the heart of Jesus (visual demonstration). What am I trying to hear? The heart-beat of Jesus. What I am trying to tell you is that every moment Jesus has a burden to share with us. As intercessors we should train our ears, we should train our eyes to hear what Jesus wants to tell us and to see what Jesus wants to show us, because Jesus is The Intercessor and Jesus carries a lot of burden for the world and the church.
 
Now, Ezekiel 22:30, it says, 'Thus I have searched among them for someone who could build a wall or stand in the breach before Me to keep Me from destroying the land, and I found no one.' Ezekiel 22 speaks about the sins of Jerusalem. The Lord was going to destroy Jerusalem. And the Lord is saying, 'I have searched for someone who would build a wall or who could stand in the breach'. What is the wall? The wall is built to protect. So the Lord is looking for one person, to stand in the breach. Standing in the breach is where there is a strain or break in the relationship. The Lord is looking for someone to stand in the breach and intercede between the people and God. So every time there is a situation, the Lord is looking for intercessors.
 
You and I will be able to hear this call from the Lord and see this call with our eyes, if we become prophetic intercessors; intercessors who are willing to keep our ear and eye to the Lord. Now the Lord says, 'I have searched for someone', one person and one person can save the whole of Jerusalem.
 
Now in the first book of the bible, in Genesis, father Abraham has a prophetic role that way in chapter 18 which says, 'The Lord says to Himself (Gen 18:17) shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?' The Lord was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and the Lord is thinking to Himself, 'Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah?' And the Lord speaks to Abraham, and Abraham intercedes. Alleluia. That is prophetic intercession. That is prophetic intercession.
 
So whenever something is going to happen, the Lord searches for people in our midst who are willing to build a wall or to stand in the breach. Amen. Shall we say Amen? Amen!
 
Do you recite the Divine Mercy chaplet? Yes or No? Yes. Sr Faustina started this. But what is important is the circumstances, the situation when this was started. Sr Faustina was praying in her cell, then she had a vision. The vision was an angel of destruction going to destroy a particular nation. Sr Faustina started praying, and nothing was happening. And Sr started praying more and says she was lifted up to heaven and she was standing before the Trinity and she was inspired and given a new prayer. She started praying and she says the angel of destruction started withdrawing from the process of destruction and the nation was saved. This is prophetic intercession.
 
So from time to time the Lord is searching for people, the Lord is looking for intercessory groups. And I remember once in Delhi the city that I live, we were praying in a group and the Lord showed us a cyclone and we started praying for the cyclone. Again next week, again the Lord showed us the cyclone coming towards coastal India. After 8 days it was announced in the news that there is going to be a powerful cyclone. So the Lord revealed to us 8 days before about the cyclone, so we all prayed and the cyclone was coming at a speed of 125 km/hr. So the speed of the cyclone was reduced to 80 km/hr and then reduced to 8 km/hr and finally the report said the cyclone went back to the sea and the commentator said it is stationed there. The commentator said, 'this is a unique phenomenon'. Amen.
 
(break in content)
 
He asked the woman, 'Did you ever think of committing suicide?' She said, 'Yes, 16 years ago I attempted suicide'. So the Lord is looking for prophetic intercessors.
 
What is needed from our side? That we need to be listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. We need to keep our eyes open. We need to keep our ears open. Romans 8:26-27 It says 'in the same way the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness for we do not know how to pray as we ought'. So in prophetic intercession we rely on the Holy Spirit, for we do not know how to pray. There are many things not known to us when we pray for a situation. So when we rely on the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit reveals many hidden things and we are able to intercede powerfully and we are able to intercede strategically – with a strategy.
 
Few minutes. Stand up. We are going to have a very short workshop. Turn to your companion, 2 people each, two by two. Turn to each other. We are going to pray. Now listen. You are going to pray for a companion. You are going to ask the Lord, 'Lord make this brother or sister a prophetic intercessor, a prophetic intercessor'. And after you pray over, you are going to bless both the eyes with the Sign of the Cross and bless both the ears with the Sign of the Cross. Because you are going to ask the Lord to open the eyes to see what He wants us to see, open the ears to hear what the Lord wants us to hear. Because only when we have the eyes and the ears open to the Lord we can be prophetic intercessors. So just lay your hands and pray, and both of you at the same time and bless the eyes and the ears. So we begin.
 
(break in content)
 
Denise: Lord we thank You because You speak powerfully to us today. Some brothers and sisters among us feel maybe like they are choking and aren't able to let this fire rise up through their hearts. I invite you to abandon yourselves into God's hands. I invite you to place your faith in Him who is the source of life, and if your heart is choking up raise your hands to God, raise your arms to God and wait, wait in faith, don't hold back on what is holding you a prisoner but raise your hands to the Lord. He wants to free you today. Don't stay in darkness, but come to the light. Thank You, Lord Jesus, thank You. And I invite you now to bless the Lord and to thank Him. And I invite you now to a time of silence to receive God's word that I am now going to give you, which we can receive. God's word which is given to us today.

Matthew 10:1 and onwards. 'Having called His 12 disciples to Him, Jesus gave them authority over unclean spirits in order to be able to chase them away and to heal, to be able to heal all illness'.

That is God's calling to us today, because He always answers our prayer and that accomplishes and completes in a good way what we are doing. When the Lord is calling you He always gives you His Holy Spirit. May this word heard today come and act powerfully in our hearts so that more and more intercessors can agree to pray for their brothers and sisters.

And now Lord we want to thank You for all that You are going to do. We have offered You our lives, we have prayed for this fire to spread throughout the whole of the earth and now we want to thank You for the way in which You are going to do that and I want to end our prayer by entrusting all these intentions to the Virgin Mary. Mary intercedes for us powerfully because she is in deep communion with her Son.

Hail Mary…
Glory Be…
Alleluia.
 
…………………………………………………….
 
This talk takes on a whole new dimension of importance after hearing the prophetic word of Patti Mansfield towards the close of the Pentecost Vigil at the Circus Maximus in Rome 3 June 2017:
 
'Lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest and if you would obey Me and if you would obey the prompting of My Spirit you will yet see infinitely more than you can ask or imagine you will yet see power of my Spirit descend upon the human race. I tell you the fields are white for harvest but I need your obedience, I need your docility and I need your faith and you will yet see marvels that will astound you infinitely more than you can ask or imagine for the glory of My name.'
 
We cannot obey, unless we can see and hear what God is calling us to do.
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Below is the promised 2 x A4 page PDF edited summary of this talk:

Share it in your prayer groups, and pray for each other in the way that Cyril John invites.

Some of you may recall that I took the plunge last year and began an Instagram account so that I could follow our young people through their World Youth Day Krakow adventures. This was in addition to our family Facebook and Twitter accounts. Since then there has been the Proclaim 2016 conference, the Ignite Youth Conference, the Servants of Jesus annual Share the Holy Spirit conference, Disciples of Jesus Summer Schools of Evangelisation in various Australian locations the biannual Light to the Nations conference over the Easter Triduum and the big gathering in Rome for Pentecost and #ccrgoldenjubilee2017.
 
At the Proclaim 2016 conference at Chatswood in early September 2016 (#proclaim2016), there was a spread of social media savvy types in attendance who did a reasonable job collectively of live tweeting memorable parts of the conference content and using the hashtag to enable them to be easily found. The benefits being 1) that those who attended and tweeted have the possibility of connecting with each other post-conference 2) bite sized reminders of the conference content became available to read later on and get re-energised by, and 3) those who were unable to attend the conference were able to take part in it and follow it through the social media postings – thereby multiplying the numbers of those who heard those messages well beyond the number of people the auditorium could hold.
 
Go to any writers (#CYA2016 early July 2016) or business conference (#SCBWISyd) and they will do an even better job of utilizing the multiplication effect of social media. However, it does pay to have a unique hashtag that no one else is likely to use – otherwise it all gets buried under later events that use the same hashtag.
 
Hashtags are your great helper in sharing good content, and in allowing others to find it. However, to be effective the hashtag for each event needs to be unique. #aussiepilgrim was not unique for World Youth Day because lots of other non-WYD travelers abroad used it. #sse17pat was more successful as a hashtag than #sse17 because any three letter acronym can have multiple meanings, for example #ccr can refer to both the pop group Creedence Clearwater Revival and to the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. #sse can refer to the business event called the Sweets and Snacks Expo and not just Summer School of Evangelisation.

Hashtags are powerful because search engines can find them across all the major social media websites.
 
Find a hashtag for your event that is no more than 12 characters long, and make sure it is unique. Test the uniqueness by plugging your hashtag options into a search engine like Google.
 
Print that hashtag on all your printed matter for your event, and in an easy to find place on your event's website. Flash it up on the sight screens for your event 2 or 3 times a day.
 
I've been at play in the social media world for a while now: Xt3 since 2008; Blogging since late 2011; Facebook since the beginning of 2013; LinkedIn since 2014; Twitter since mid-2015 and Instagram since mid-2016. So I have seen the power of social media at work to disseminate information, and know that it can be used for great good. That's why I get so utterly frustrated when I see it being used poorly.
 
In the last 12 months I have been paying particular attention to how big evangelistic events in the Catholic world are reported on social media. The report card says, 'Can do much better' and the surprising thing is that it is our young people - and those who lead them – who are the worst at it. Only those in diocesan curia's tasked with capturing and sharing episcopal photo opportunities seem to have a clue, and writers who have (or who hope to have) religious books published.
 
For example the World Youth Day Krakow 2016 report card goes something like this: Lots of happy pilgrim photos, lots of photos of beautiful pilgrimage sites and extraordinary churches, plenty of photos of WYD events but….poor hashtag co-ordination and if you were following a young person's pilgrimage and hoping for a snippet of teaching from one of the catechesis sessions, from one of the pilgrimage homilies or one of the Pope's speeches you were doomed to disappointment.
 
It was similar when I tried to follow the Ignite Youth conference in Brisbane. A single mention of something Sr Hilda OSB said in a workshop was the sum total of actual teaching content shared.
 
DOJ Summer Schools of Evangelisation at Bathurst and Paterson, and the SOJ Share the Holy Spirit conference were no different. There were lots of photos of happy people, but nothing at all about the teaching given.
 
Light to the Nations is a biannual event over the Easter Triduum that attracted over 1000 people this year. Again there were lots of photos of happy people and live action Stations of the Cross and candle lit Easter Vigil, but as to the teaching given? The homily on Holy Thursday night mentioned something about keeping in tune with the beat of Jesus. That is all I was able to glean - and I searched and searched.
 
The big weekend held for the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal was sadly no exception. A few photographs, and enormous difficulty locating a hashtag that people were using for it. Like WYD Krakow it was a mishmash of hashtags, and no real content. Thankfully the talks were livestreamed and I was able to watch them afterwards. I wanted to go back and transcribe them, but they were taken offline and now you have to pay to get access to them https://something-like-real-pictures.myshopify.com/ The talks were truly excellent.
 
Many of my friends were lucky enough to go to Rome for Pentecost and the preceding 3 days of conferencing and workshops, preceded by a retreat in Assisi. Several of them have had social media presences for many years, but did I find anything in their posts about what they learned or what inspired them? Nooooo! Aargh!! The most that was posted was that such and such a talk was very good, or how our souls should be like the magnificent churches in Rome as dwelling places for Jesus. It wasn't only them either, it is a global problem. Thankfully many of those talks and workshops were recorded and are available online http://www.vocepiu.it/GoldenJubilee/ Thankfully Zenit Francais tweeted some of the content from the Pentecost Vigil and Google translate did its best, but sadly they were the only ones doing it. The recording given in the Pentecost Vigil link above didn't come with any English translation voiceovers.
 
What a lot of wasted effort!
A) Because for the want of a few extra words the impact of your social media posts could have been so much greater and B) Think of the time and effort that went into preparing the talk you heard. If it was good it deserved to be shared among a wider audience than just those who heard it at the venue.
 
What a lot of very easy opportunities to share the good news of Jesus with social networks missed!
 
We often say that a picture is worth a 1000 words. That's true if you are trying to describe a scene, but many pictures lack value unless they are put in context with a few explanatory words about Who, What, When, Where and especially Why.
 
There may have been better content posted, but I wasn't able to find it because a relevant hashtag wasn't attached to it.
 
Let's look at some biblical principles
 
1 Cor 11:23 For this is what I received from the Lord, and in turn passed on to you.
 
The privilege of being at these amazing events of faith is not for ourselves alone, we need to pass the good stuff on to others. Social media is a non-threatening way of doing just that.
 
And it is so easy to do!
 
Eph 3:29b-30a Let your words be for the improvement of others, as occasion offers, and do good to your listeners, otherwise you will only be grieving the Holy Spirit of God.
 
Add some words and a hashtag to your images, words that will help you reconnect with that moment later on and words that will help your readers and viewers connect with it too.

For example, an early morning photo of the campsite says something on its own about beauty. But if you added words like, 'I woke up tired after the long Holy Thursday night session last night, but this early morning sunshine lifted my spirits. I feel it's a gift of God to me. It is like He is preparing me for the day, just like last night He prepared His disciples for the unfathomable gift of the Eucharist by washing their feet #LTTN17' it becomes something much more.
 
For the love of God don't post, 'My friend XX gave a particularly anointed talk today' and then not share some of what your friend said. It only needs to be a sentence or two. For example Damian Stayne's talk in Rome was so good it needs to be shared widely. One of the things he said was, 'The charisms are not an optional extra like the sunroof on a car, they are essential, as essential as the steering wheel.' The former is frustrating to anyone who comes across it, the latter is something worth pondering on and may even intrigue people enough to watch the video recording.
 
1 Sam 3:19 Samuel grew up and the Lord God was with him and let no word of His fall to the ground.
 
Get into the practice of taking a photo at each session you attend – usually as it begins is best - then spend a minute or two when the session ends recalling the part of it that meant the most to you. Write it down. If you have time, post it then, otherwise post it later when you can. We forget so much of what happened in a session like that, even 24 hours later most of it has faded. If you capture even a sentence that spoke to you from each session, collectively they will help you discern what God's message was to you from the whole event.
 
Even better if you are the MC for an event, or the person giving the verbal thanks after a talk, or the person giving the talk, help people to do it. It isn't difficult. Just say, 'Before we go off to morning tea (or the next session) let us pause for a moment. If anything struck you from this talk, write it down now. A single sentence summary of what you heard God say to you though it would be ideal. Or a single sentence summary of what you think is worth remembering from it. Let's do that now….Good. Our speaker is happy for you to take a photograph. If you are on social media, share what you want to remember using the hashtag (and remind them what the hashtag for your event is).
 
Sharing even one of those thoughts on social media could help someone else enormously.
 
For an event, I'm likely to pick the best one-liner of the day and Tweet that when I get home. After each talk I'm likely to do a quick summary on Instagram. If it is very good, I will take the time to write out my notes in full and share them in a blog-post. Then if the content warrants it, the blog-post gets shared via Facebook and/or Twitter. Using the event hashtag on all of them, of course.
 
Do what works for you, but do something to share the good teaching you have received.
 
The days of people who believe in Jesus not being on social media need to be over. Realise that more and more people are thinking that if you can’t find something on the internet or on social media, then it didn't happen.
 
Facebook is the best social media site for connecting with people in your own locality. Parishes and youth groups, and those seeking to run Alpha courses and RCIA courses, you need to understand this and use it for good. It is possible, if you pay a small fee, to get posts targeted to postcodes.
 
Twitter is where the thinkers are. Twitter is where you can easily share links to good blog-posts or newspaper articles, and where you can find the good stuff too. There are a lot of good and holy people producing excellent content that doesn't get the readership it deserves because too few believers are online, reading and liking and retweeting.
 
If you want to be able to find a particularly good bit of content later on, for Facebook share it, and for Twitter re-tweet it. That content will then show up on your profile page for whichever social media site you used.
 
Instagram is where the youngsters are. If you want to connect with them, you need to be using it. Instagram is where the creatives are. Mobile devices are what Instagram works with. Instagram access via computer has much less functionality. It is much harder to share a link on Instagram, but then you aren't restricted to 140 characters and can write as much or as little as you wish.
 
Remember your likes, comments, shares and retweets matter. The more a social media post gets, the wider it gets shared and the more likely it is via the various algorithms to hit your inbox and the inbox of your friends. Those who posted them need the encouragement, too. Even if you share a social media post, only a fraction of your friends will see it pop up in their social media feed. However if both you and a friend share the same post, a higher number of both your friends will see it. The increase is lesser for likes, but they still make a difference, and comments are somewhere in the middle.
 
Trolls. Yes, they exist. Don't be one. Don't feed them attention. They roam around the online sphere looking for something they disagree with and then let it rip. The better your content is, the more likely it is to help someone towards conversion to Jesus, the more likely the first comment will be from a member of the trolls. Reading 'One Body, Many Blogs' will help.
 
But if you are called to be a social media apostle, then you really should be blogging. Of all the social media options, the work you do on a blog is the most long lasting, posts on Facebook and Twitter will eventually get buried by new content, and that happens even faster with Instagram and SnapChat.
 
If this sounds like you (and heaven knows we need social media apostles and many more of them), view this interview with Brendan Vogt on The Journey Home program back in 2011. Get a vision for it from him.
 
Hint: If you don't leave home without a notebook and pen, and always take notes when listening to a talk, then you should definitely consider a ministry in social media. It doesn't have to be much of a commitment, just a regular one; like 30 mins once a week reading and liking and sharing, and 30 mins once a week writing and posting about something that matters to both you and God.
 
If you are a grandparent and you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, then you most definitely need to be on social media in order to connect with your grandchildren and to provide some occasional online reminders that God is real and active in people's lives. You don't have to be on all the social media sites, just the one your grandchildren use the most.
 
For those who have waded through all my rants and pleas, a reward is in order.
 
Towards the end of the Pentecost Vigil at the Circus Maximus in Rome, gathered together with the Pope and some 30-50,000 others, Patti Mansfield one of the two earthly protagonists of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal was inspired to give a prophetic word. It is about 15 minutes from the end of the video recording, just after everyone say, 'Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me'.
 
'Lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest and if you would obey Me and if you would obey the prompting of My Spirit you will yet see infinitely more than you can ask or imagine you will yet see power of my Spirit descend upon the human race. I tell you the fields are white for harvest but I need your obedience, I need your docility and I need your faith and you will yet see marvels that will astound you infinitely more than you can ask or imagine for the glory of My name.'
 
Everyone needs to hear this, and act on it…but I am still waiting for those who actually were there to share this prophetic word and mention in online. We have a duty to share the good stuff. Please join me in doing it.

Our Lady, Queen of the Apostles, pray for us.
St Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, pray for us.
St Maximillian Kolbe, Media Apostle, pray for us.  
 

The final session of Proclaim 2016 was a plenary one, with a Discussion Panel made up of many of the keynote speakers and workshop presenters.

The Discussion Panel consisted of:
Fr David Ranson, Parish Priest of Wahroonga and Vicar General of Broken Bay diocese (DR)
Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington (DW)
Bishop Nicholas Hudson, Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster (NH)
Dr Susan Timoney, Secretary for Pastoral Ministry and Social Concerns for the Archdiocese of Washington (ST)
Jude Henessey, Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) Wollongong (JH)
Sophy Morley, Diocesan Pastoral Coordinator and the Coordinator for Liturgy in the Diocese of Sale (SM)
Professor Brother David Hall, dean of the La Salle Academy at Australian Catholic University (ACU) for Faith Formation and Religious Education (Br D)

(As usual, expect that these notes will be rough, but will give you the gist of what was discussed.)

Fr David Ranson (DR) facilitated the discussion panel.

DR: Thank you for all the questions that have been submitted. We will focus on the themes that were found in those questions. The American priest and sociologist Andrew Greeley, wrote that ‘the Catholic parish is one of the most ingenious communities that human skill has ever created. Its overlapping networks of religious, educational, familial, social and political relationships has created … “social capital"’. No other community can accompany the human journey in such an effective and sustained way. Would you agree that our definition of parish is changing? It still has a mostly geographical definition, but increasingly membership is more by affiliation.

ST: Urban mobility is both an opportunity and a challenge. Diversity of experience in a parish is a sign of vitality. We see parish as our spiritual home, and want the newcomers to be able to claim it as home too. If the community is changing rapidly, then more flexibility is needed. We need to both extend welcome, and to honour the history of our parish.

DR: How do we keep cohesion between the newcomers and the old timers? The latter feel displaced and the former bring new energy, but how do we maintain the identity of the parish?

DW: By getting them to realise they share the same values. We pass them on through community life and the welcoming nature of our communities. Pope Francis tells us that parish is supposed to be flexible, and to be able to grow and develop. I read Andrew Greeley's 'The Church in the Suburbs' during my college days.

DR: Perhaps the opposite situation is faced by those in stable rural communities, whose challenge is how to keep the message fresh.

SM: We do have large parishes in country Victoria, but they are remote. I travel to each parish. They are mainly 'anglo' parishes. There is an asylum seekers support group liaising with Melbourne. Through the Marist Fathers there is some solidarity with the East Timorese. Rural parishes have strong bonds of community. When other races and religions come into a small community, most people have no idea what to do with them. But this is only due to ignorance. With the Sudanese the breakthrough came through song and story, they love to sing and they love to hear and share stories. Once you get the connection, it all works.

NH. With 214 parishes in the Diocese there is lots of mobility. So we have to be more strategic. We have to ask ourselves, 'How are we meeting the needs of all groups in the parish?' With constant demographic change in each 12 month period, we need to take the pulse systematically. Are there large groups that don't come to certain activities, or some who come to some activities and never to other ones?

DR: Let's talk about parish collaboration.

JH: Wollongong diocese resides along a coastal strip with parishes close together. We are looking at clustering. But how to form the smaller communities into one community is a big challenge. We've visited the megachurches in the USA, and they look at areas on maps that are within a 30 minute driving circle firstly to pick locations without competition and secondly to make small groups viable.

Br D: The future requires collaboration, but brutal realities have to be faced. Who will get the youth? Who will get the young professionals, and by extension, the money? To make it work requires lots of respectful dialogue. It is a good concept, but less attractive in its reality.

DR: What does the sociological reality of communion look like in a parish?

DW: Communion is a spiritual reality, a grace of God poured out on us. Baptism is the foundation of communion, but it has to be manifested and expressed. What do our congregations do when they gather geographically or ethnically? They do what the first parish did, as described in the Acts of the Apostles: Acts 2:42: the disciples anointed by the Holy Spirit prayed, listened to the teaching of the Apostles, grew in the bonds of communion, and celebrated the Eucharist. How does this communion happen? Through solidarity, working together and collaboration. It takes practical day in day out effort. Our challenge is to find ways to manifest the presence of the Holy Spirit together so that everyone feels a part of it and is invited into it. At the same time we recognise that members don't have to be 'in everything'.

DR: St John Paul II in Novo Millennio Ineunte spoke about the need to promote a spirituality of communion and said that our external structures of communion rely on this inner reality.

NH: We are here because Pope Francis has a dream for a missionary option. He tells us in Evangelii Gaudium that if we respond to the call to evangelise that we will really experience joy. But we need to include the most marginalised, because joy is also found with the poor. Our structures must serve communion, and then that communion fuels mission. Vision without strategy is hallucination. Goals without means for achieving those goals – are illusory. We must organise our parishes as teams. Pastors need to acknowledge that they can't do all this alone. Laity acknowledges that we can't possibly do this without our pastor. What can you do with a reluctant pastor? Persevere with the Evangelii Gaudium vision, and choose 2 people to go and say to Father, 'We cannot do this without you'.

DR: We live in an age of migration, and many of our priests are from cultures alien to our own. This has the potential for richness, but also the potential for great difficulty. How should we deal with the difference in culture between the pastor and his community? There have been as many responses to this situation as there are communities, and we acknowledge that religious orders are helping a lot. A key factor is the quality of the induction of our foreign priests. It has to go much deeper than a 2 day course, and we need to allow more time for this induction process to take place.

ST: There are 21 language Masses each Sunday in Washington DC. We share a lot of catholicity and we all share Marian devotion. The challenge is how to weave devotions and practices together. A pastor is ineffective without the collaboration of parishioners.

JH: Wollongong has lots of cultural groups and chaplains. They are part of the richness of the body of Christ.

SM: This is a challenging experience for our parish communities, but we find that once the pastor begins to share his background stories then things soften. We held a day for clergy. Around 1/3 of them were from overseas. So we asked this 1/3 to tell the others what it was like to be a priest in this diocese. That broke down a lot of barriers. We have developed close links with a Nigerian diocese. Fear is normally our first response. We have to get out of our comfort zone and appreciate that these priests from overseas are on fire with Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

DW: As integration begins to happen, it becomes easier. We need the virtue of patience. We have so much migration and so much merging going on between cultural experiences. The perfect vision should not become the enemy of the good reality. Small steps will get us there.

DR: We are called to be centres of inclusion. I've heard of a Tuscan village where the altar servers have mental disabilities. They stand at the Eucharistic prayer and have their elbows on the altar. How can we become more inclusive?

Br D: Inclusivity is a wonderful concept, which is now politically correct. It is good up to the point that it is cute, fun and OK, but when it brings confrontations…? Zacchaeus wanted in, and Jesus was seeking to find the lost. Are we courageous enough to bring them in? 'I'm going to have dinner tonight at his place.' I have to be open to being changed by those included. We must dialogue, and be open to be changed by the other. We need to be very honest with each other. The cycle of partial inclusion, followed by a road block (obstacle to further inclusion) and an 'I'm out of here' has to end. However there will always be limits to our ability to be inclusive – because of what we stand for, and we need to be absolutely honest about those limits with those on the way in.

DR: How do we advocate for the poor? What is the prophetic role of the local parish?

SM: Advocacy requires walking with people and making ourselves vulnerable. They might have personal issues that are threatening to us. If we look at the Emmaus story we see that Jesus didn't jump in, but that He first asked questions and let them talk. It is necessary for us to meet people where they are at and find out their passions. We are inspired by places like Paris and parishes that don't lock their doors, but leave them open so that the beautiful artworks can touch the soul. In our parish there were migrants who wanted to work hard, so we developed an unemployment help service – a project which is still going on. Other groups came together to help with finance and budgeting. These works did draw people in gradually.

DR: Whom is the Jesus you love and worship? In Benedict XVI's essays on Christology we see Jesus first at prayer. If the world looks at us at prayer, who does it see?

DW: We hope they see what we claim to be: the Body of Christ worshipping the Father thanking for the Spirit and rendering thanks that we are One in that Body. Coming to Mass expresses what we already are through Baptism, and is always an expression of the faith we profess in the Creed.

Bishop Comensoli: We thank our guests and our panel for what they have shared with us. Our thanks goes too to all of the workshop presenters and booth holders. Thanks to the many volunteers present here at the conference and to the other volunteers who worked in preparation for it. This huge team have been evangelising us through service. Thanks too for the representatives from the dioceses of Ballarat and Maitland Newcastle who have been with us. You have been through much pain, and you are hope and encouragement to us. My personal thanks to Daniel Ang and Natalie from our diocesan Office for Evangelisation. Bishops with ideas are dangerous and you made those ideas reality. I acknowledge the Bishops Commission for Evangelisation and thank them for all being here. We are committed to Proclaim 2018, but whether it takes place on the east coast or on the west coast is still to be decided.

David Patterson expressed thanks to the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, the sponsors, Chatswood parish, exhibitors, volunteers, musicians and the Concourse staff.

Daniel Ang: It is coming to an end, our wonderful three days together. To the over 500 delegates who came, thank you for your grass roots work. Thanks to Bishop Comensoli for his confidence and trust and for taking Proclaim 2016 on as a continuing gift to the Church. Special thanks to my personal staff Natalie and Jenny. Thanks to our two MC's David and Alison. We now call upon the Holy Spirit to help us to return and to do.

Hymns, prayers and a blessing followed, together with a reading from Luke 5:1-11

Now it happened that Jesus was standing one day by the Lake of Gennesaret, with the crowd pressing round Him listening to the Word of God, when He caught sight of two boats at the water's edge. The fishermen had got out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats - it was Simon's - and asked him to put out a little from the shore. Then He sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When He had finished speaking He said to Simon, 'Put out into deep water and pay out your nets for a catch.' Simon replied, 'Master, we worked hard all night long and caught nothing, but if You say so, I will pay out the nets.' And when they had done this they netted such a huge number of fish that their nets began to tear, so they signalled to their companions in the other boat to come and help them; when these came, they filled both boats to sinking point. When Simon Peter saw this he fell at the knees of Jesus saying, 'Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man.' For he and all his companions were completely awestruck at the catch they had made; so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were Simon's partners. But Jesus said to Simon, 'Do not be afraid; from now on it is people you will be catching.' Then, bringing their boats back to land they left everything and followed Him.

We were sent to serve the needs of the Church and to strengthen our bonds of communion.
……………………………………………………………….
My response

The panel covered some very pertinent questions that I think most of us would have liked to have heard more in depth discussion on.

One of the things that came home to me as I talked with people at the conference was the dichotomy between the experience of the speakers (mostly leaders and curial officials from large well-resourced dioceses and archdioceses) and the situations of the delegates (mostly pastors and parishioners from regional and remote parishes with extremely limited resources).
​
For Proclaim 2018 I would very much like to see speakers from ordinary non-Cathedral parishes in Australia that have been growing at healthy rates. If time was spent this year finding those parishes and learning their stories and sharing them, the protagonists of them would be just as big drawcards to the next Conference as any 'big names'. I'd like less people to go away despondent because they know what needs to be done, and know what is possible in bigger places, but can't see how to apply it in their own context and more people to leave with true hope 'that if Kincumber, Mount Isa and Geraldton can do it, by George, so can we!'.
 
This is the last issue in the Proclaim 2016 series.

As we look to this momentous Pentecost, #ccrgoldenjubilee2017 can we do better than pray prayers to the Holy Spirit inspired by the very person God chose to remind the Church of the power and action of the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit Chaplet by Blessed Elena Guerra

This prayer to the Holy Spirit originated with the exhortation of Pope Leo XIII. Indeed the same Pontiff in a Papal brief promulgated on May 5, 1895, exhorted all Catholics to devoutly make this Holy Spirit Novena. On this occasion, the Pope suggested a special formula of prayer: “Send forth your Spirit and renew the face of the earth.” He strongly recommended this to be prayed. With this in mind, in 1896, Blessed Elena Guerra, “The Holy Spirit Apostle of modern times,” composed these invocations, to ask the Holy Spirit for the grace of a new Pentecost which renews the face of the earth.

– O God, come to my assistance.
– O Lord, make haste to help me.
– Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, Amen

In Each Mystery, ask for a gift of the Holy Spirit (then)
Repeat seven times on seven beads.
“Father in the name of Jesus, send forth your spirit and renew the world”
Conclude with
“O Mary, who by the work of the Holy Spirit, conceived the Saviour, pray for us.”

The Seven Mysteries invoking the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit
1- Come, O Spirit of Wisdom, detach us from earthly things and infuse in us a love and taste of heavenly things.
2- Come, O Spirit of Understanding, enlighten our minds with the light of your eternal truth and the riches of holy thoughts.
3 – Come, O Spirit of Counsel, make us docile to your inspirations and guide us in the way of salvation.
4- Come, O Spirit of Fortitude , and give us strength, constancy and victory in the battle against our spiritual enemies.
5- Come, O Spirit of Knowledge, be the Master of our souls and help us to put into practice Your teachings.
6- Come, O Spirit of Piety, come to live in our heart to possess and sanctify all of our affections.
7- Come, O Spirit of the Fear of the Lord, reign over our will and make us always disposed to suffer every evil rather than to sin.

O most pure Virgin Mary, by your Immaculate Conception you were constituted by the Holy Spirit a chosen tabernacle of Divinity. Pray for us.
May the Divine Paraclete come soon to renew the face of the earth. Hail Mary…
O most pure Virgin Mary, by the Mystery of the Incarnation you were constituted by the Holy Spirit true Mother of God. Pray for us.
May the Divine Paraclete come soon to renew the face of the earth. Hail Mary…
O most pure Virgin Mary, persevering in prayer with the Apostles in the Upper Room, you were abundantly inflamed by the Holy Spirit. Pray for us:
May the Divine Paraclete come soon to renew the face of the earth. Hail Mary…
Let us pray:
Send Your Spirit, Lord, and transform us interiorly with Your gifts. Create in us a new heart that we may please You and be conformed to Your will.
Through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.
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Our Lady, Help of Christians, Queen of the Apostles, Queen of Pentecost, Spouse of the Holy Spirit, pray for us.
​Blessed Elena Guerra, pray for us.