​In the readings for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C we see both Elijah and Jesus seemingly brusque and impatient with Elisha and with three men invited to become full time disciples. This is confronting behaviour which feels quite unreasonable.

Why is it so?

There are two reasons. The first is that the context of these encounters is rarely explained to us. The second is that none of us like admitting that God has an absolute right to do with us what He wills, because He is our creator and redeemer.

So what’s the context with Elisha?

Prior to this encounter with Elijah, the prophets of Baal have been slaughtered and Queen Jezebel being hopping mad wants Elijah dead a.s.a.p. Elijah having nothing left in the tank tells God that he wants to die. Then the angel of the Lord wakes Elijah up and gives him the nourishment necessary to travel to Horeb, the mountain of God. Here God reveals that Elijah is not alone, others have not bent to Jezebel’s ways, and that God has three strategic tasks for him to do: to anoint two new kings, and to anoint Elisha to continue Elijah’s prophetic ministry.

There are then at least three reasons for urgency:
Jezebel’s henchmen are on the lookout to kill Elijah.
Elijah needs to find and anoint the two new kings before the henchmen catch up to him.
Elijah doesn’t know how much time he has left, and he needs to pass on to Elisha as much training and instruction as possible before that finale comes.

So what’s the context with Jesus?

This is the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus has a lot of time in ministry around Galilee until the time of the Transfiguration, and then Jesus sets out on the one-way journey to Jerusalem to die on the Cross for our salvation. Jesus is not going to pass by these towns again, this is their last chance to see Jesus, and to experience His ministry. The time left is counted in weeks.

On the way Jesus has encounters with 3 men.

The first is attracted to follow Jesus, and Jesus disabuses him of any romantic notions the man has by describing one of the harsh realities.

The second one has definitely been called by Jesus as a full-time disciples, but he wants to fulfil his family duty first, and Jesus doesn’t mince words saying the call on his life to preach the Gospel far outweighs any family obligation.

The third one is also attracted to following Jesus, but wants to say goodbye to his parents first, and Jesus quotes Elijah’s words to Elisha to him. Once you say Yes, it has to be a complete and unconditional Yes.

When you look at the short amount of time of public ministry left to Jesus before Calvary, the need for urgency becomes clear. This is a one-time opportunity which will never be possible again: to walk, and talk, and live with Jesus and the disciples in the last days of public ministry. That time with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem is what will distinguish a valid witness to Jesus from anything less; and the kingdom of God being built needs as many valid witnesses as possible. There’s no time to go and do something else and catch up later.

The call to be disciple to Elijah and the call to be witness-disciple to Jesus are extraordinary privileges beyond fathoming when looked at from our vantage point in salvation history.

The call is worth the cost.
Like the parable Jesus taught us, it is the immense treasure to be had for the price of the field it is buried in.

Now we need to come to terms with why both Elijah and Jesus were so insistent on an immediate and unconditional Yes.

For this we will need an analogy or two.
A very rich and influential king is visiting a far-flung region of his kingdom and comes across a person working in the fields. For reasons of his own, the king invites the worker to come and live at the palace and to become a courtier, dining every day at the king’s table. Would such a worker dare to hum and haw about the offer? Would such a worker dare to delay in giving an affirmative answer? Would such a worker dare to delay entering the king’s service? No and no and no. Any delay and any refusal would be an affront to the king. Even if the worker has only a tiny idea of how immense this invitation is, the king is fully aware of it. Chances are the expectation would be for the worker to join the king’s retinue there and then. Anything in the worker’s life would be set at naught and thought irrelevant compared to the king’s invitation.

Replace the king with God, and Elisha and the three men with the worker, and we begin to understand.

Those of you who watched the West Wing series on TV or DVD would remember how staffers in the White House when given a presidential request would reply, “I serve at the pleasure of the president of the United States”. That is the kind of immediate readiness needed to respond to whatever the King of Kings asks of us. That’s the kind of response the holy angels always give to God Almighty, and which we are called to emulate.

Also consider a high-ranking army officer planning a surprise attack on the enemy. Every part of that strategy would be on a need-to-know basis. Each part of the attack would need precision timing. At least one part of the strategy would need a reliable and trustworthy officer to obey a seemingly weird command immediately and without question. It would be necessary for that officer to not comprehend the bigger picture, and to have no prior knowledge of the command before it arrives. Those kinds of officers tend to be a rare breed. Only a few officers would have sufficient trust in the high-ranking army officer to do that seemingly weird thing immediately and without question. Success or failure of the attack would be dependent on that officer’s prompt obedience.

Replace the high-ranking army officer with God, and the officer with any one of us, and we begin to comprehend the amount of confidence God places in us when He asks us to drop everything to immediately comply with His command. That changes everything, doesn’t it? We will then comply with great willingness.

It certainly goes against the grain of our habitual independence to realise that God has the perfect right at any time to require a big and unconditional Yes from us with next to no prior notice or preparation. But it is the truth.

Thankfully it is far more normal for an awareness of a calling from God to unfold over an expanse of time. But we do need to be reminded that some of God’s perfect plans require that we drop absolutely everything and immediately do what He asks – and that whenever that happens our immediate response is of the utmost importance to the bigger picture that only God can see in fullness.
​
Let’s pray
O God, my creator and redeemer, all wise and all kindness, I acknowledge You to be the Lord of everything and the Lord of me. The thought of dropping everything and going on a completely different path scares me silly. But I will trust in You, because You have been so faithful, so generous and so provident towards all of us. I understand that should You ever ask this of me, that the stakes must be very high. I want to express my willingness in advance, because if and when that moment arrives I might not be capable of rational thought. I also want to express my confidence in Your ability to look after anything and anyone I leave behind so much better than I ever could, and my awareness that it is impossible for You to do otherwise. Help me to never delay my Yes to You. Amen.

For the past 2 years we've all been through a very difficult season, where many of us have felt like our lives have been in a holding pattern. God hasn't been absent. I see His work in the lots of people who have been freed from old patterns of life, especially with regard to dependence on alcohol and nicotine.

But after the desert comes the promised land, and after death comes resurrection, and after sowing in tears comes a harvest of joy.

There needs to be some kind of change in us, to enable us to participate in the torrents of grace that God wants to pour out on all humanity, as promised in Joel 3:1-2.

God seems to have answered this need for an inner change through a talk given by Katherine Ruonala at the Australian Prophetic Summit in Brisbane on 14 Jan 2022.

A transcript of that talk is given below, 10 x A4 pages.

However, if you have the time and technology, watch it via YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYg-ufMJMjI

Details about when that talk starts and stops are on page 1 of the transcript.

And there's a possibility that one of the prayers she prays during that talk is one you might like to pray yourself each morning.

You can download that prayer below, 1 x A4 page, 4 to a page.

I know that there's a special grace upon this talk. It caused me to confront some very deep-seated mindsets. Someone else I know received eye salve from God which has been life changing.

​So, please share it.

In recent days a document containing the proposals arising from the 1st Assembly of the 5th Australian Plenary Council has been released. The updated version, released 15 Dec 2021, has 110 pages. If you would like to read it, the link is provided below:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wi8RrPZPBKSHX-b6jjY3gvMdQQ26tcse/view

Yes, I have read it, but confess to skimming over sections that contained repetition because a few small groups dealt with 2 questions instead of 1 question.

In advance I apologise for how brutal my assessment of this document is.

As I read each page, I did expect something fresh and surprising to galvanise me with enthusiasm. Because that’s the hallmark of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is full of fresh vitality and loves to surprise us with new solutions to old problems and cause all of us to say, ‘Yes! Aha! That’s it! How come we never thought of that before? That’d actually work! Count me in!’.

What I did find were:
lots of personal agendas
lots of special interest group agendas
lots of human solutions, most of them anything but fresh,
lots of expensive requests for best practice research
expectations that formation will solve everything
expectations that better resources will solve everything
expectations that national standards will solve everything
expectations that things are quite OK, with a grudging openness to minor tweaks

So I conclude that the majority of participants were unable to relinquish their own agendas and their own pre-conceived notions.

I further conclude based on the complete squashing of the notion that ‘when considering the success or failure of educational facilities that the percentage of graduates who have become missionary disciples while at that educational facility really matters’ – that really listening to each other didn’t happen.

Listening to majority opinions happened; but listening to minority opinions not so much. Sometimes the voice of the Holy Spirit is in the consensus, (Acts 6:5, Acts 15:23-29) but sometimes the voice of the Holy Spirit is in a Daniel. (Daniel 13:41c-62)

Here are some interesting statistics:
In the document, the Holy Spirit (the One we were supposedly listening to), was mentioned 15 times, and 5 of those times were in the 9 Oct 2021 Concluding Statement.
Family was mentioned 33 times; families 19 times.
Evangelism and Evangelisation were mentioned 31 times.
Formation was mentioned a whopping 163 times.

Several proposals are good, but of the kind that cannot be imposed from without, and can only happen through people anointed by God, in His timing, to make them happen, eg a religious order dedicated to the care and healing of the abused and traumatised.

What we have is a list of very well-intentioned human solutions.

Yet all the questions considered by the Plenary Council small groups were based in Evangelii Gaudium 27

27. I dream of a “missionary option”, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. The renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion can only be understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them more mission-oriented, to make ordinary pastoral activity on every level more inclusive and open, to inspire in pastoral workers a constant desire to go forth and in this way to elicit a positive response from all those whom Jesus summons to friendship with himself. As John Paul II once said to the Bishops of Oceania: “All renewal in the Church must have mission as its goal if it is not to fall prey to a kind of ecclesial introversion”.

And none of the questions considered the source of a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything.

Missionary impulses do not come from man,
they come from God.

Pentecost, (Acts 2), was a missionary impulse that changed everything.
Another missionary impulse that changed everything happened in Acts 4:23-31.
The conversion of St Paul (Acts 9:1-22) contained a missionary impulse which changed everything.

Likewise the conversions of St Augustine of Hippo, St Francis of Assisi, St Dominic, St Ignatius of Loyola and St Teresa of Avila changed the world, and are still changing the world.
The missionary impact of Our Lady of Guadalupe is still changing the world too.

None of these Plenary Council questions considered how to practically cope with the results of a such a missionary impulse (Isaiah 54:1-10).

People who believe that God is initiating a missionary impulse do make room, do enlarge the size of their tents, do spread their tent cloths wider, do lengthen the tent ropes, and secure the lot firmly with tent pegs.

If you really believe that God is going to send you a deluge of rain, then you stock up on umbrellas and gumboots, and you get extra water-tanks, you increase the capacity of your dams, and you clean out the gutters and fix the places that normally leak.

What, sincerely, do we need to do to prepare for a massive missionary impulse?

For example what would need to change if you had 3000 people show up at the parish office in one day; 1200 needing confession, 300 begging for deliverance, 500 begging for baptism, 700 wanting to know how to serve God better and do effective penance, 400 begging to become Catholic/do RCIA, 300 seeking explanation for the weird spiritual experiences they have been having, and 300 wanting to donate goods and large sums of money as evidence of their repentance to God?
What if that happened every day for a month?
Or for 3 months?
What if the numbers of the spiritually needy kept increasing each day?

My proposal is for the 2nd Assembly of the 5th Plenary council to spend half its time in prayer begging the Holy Spirit to grant such a missionary impulse to Australia, and to spend the other half of its time earnestly seeking guidance from the Holy Spirit for how to both effectively plan and respond to the results of such a missionary impulse.

Then we might see this land truly embrace its destiny of being the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit - and see that longed for missionary impulse happen.
​
Amen? Amen!!
..........................................................
​
​A printer-friendly version is available below, 3 x A4 pages

It was put to me that a 3000 person response in a day was unlikely, even with the Holy Spirit as the instigator.

I think that is under-estimating the Holy Spirit and there are numerous historical precedents.

Pentecost, when 3000 were added to their number, is the first precedent.

But we’ve also seen in recent history the extraordinary pulling power of St John Vianney and St Padre Pio, people came from all over the world to see and experience the holiness of these men, and their God-given gift of reading souls.

We’ve also seen the numbers of people who continue to flock to pilgrimage sites like Lourdes, Fatima, and Medjugorje.

Even 30 spiritually needy people in a day would overwhelm the resources of an average parish office, and 300 spiritually needy people per day even more so. But 3000 is mild by Holy Spirit standards.

Our parish is rather average. About 25% of the people in the area might culturally identify as Catholic according to Census records. That’s around 10,000 people, and pre-pandemic we were getting 5-10% of them at Mass each weekend. Could a wave of Holy Spirit power bring 3000 of them to the parish door in one day? Yes, He could, easy-peasy.

You could ask, why doesn’t He? Many parishes have fire evacuation plans, and In Case of Emergency kits. But how many of them have In Case of Revival resources and plans? How much capacity has your parish to welcome and respond adequately to spiritually needy people? If you could only adequately cope with 10, and 300 came to the door, how many of the 290 would persevere until they were helped? How many would walk away? How many would begin doubting that the experience of God they had was real? How many would never return?

After the first Divine Renovation conference in 2014, the parish office in Halifax was getting something like 100 phone calls each day from all around the world asking for more information and asking specific questions. It was to meet that need, and to allow parish staff to attend to parish needs, that Divine Renovation Ministries was set up.

Have a read through some of these accounts of Holy Spirit activity, often called revivals:

The Welsh revival 1904-1905
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1904%E2%80%931905_Welsh_revival
The revival lasted less than a year, but in that time 100,000 people were converted.

The Azuza Street revival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azusa_Street_Revival
The core membership of the Azusa Street Mission was never many more than 50–60 individuals, with hundreds if not thousands of people visiting or staying temporarily over the years.

The 1859 Ulster revival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1859_Ulster_revival
It has been reported that the revival produced 100,000 converts.

The 1859 Welsh revival
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/nostalgia/welsh-history-month-wales-religious-10248368
It is estimated that as many as 100,000 new converts were added to the Welsh nonconformist churches in the year in which the revival burned most brightly.

The Cane Ridge revival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_Ridge,_Kentucky
It was estimated by military personnel that some 20,000 to 30,000 persons of all ages, representing various cultures and economic levels traveled on foot and on horseback, many bringing wagons with tents and camping provisions.
https://www.caneridge.org/

The Jesus People movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_movement
Unlike many other Christian movements, there was no single leader or figurehead of the Jesus movement. Many of the 80,000 young Jesus People attended Explo '72, an event organized by Campus Crusade for Christ.

The Brownsville revival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownsville_Revival
During the revival, nearly 200,000 people gave their lives to Jesus, and by autumn of the year 2000 more than 1,000 people who experienced the revival were taking classes at the Brownsville Revival School of Ministry.

The Toronto blessing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Blessing
Charisma Magazine reported that an estimated 4,000 churches in England and another 7,000 churches in North America had been impacted by this new revival movement

As the song goes….
God can do it again, and again, and again,
He’s the same God today as He always has been
Yesterday, now, forever
He’s always the same.
There’s no reason to doubt, God can do it again.

With the Holy Spirit, the arrival of 3000 spiritually needy people a day is more than possible.

But are we ready, willing and expectant for the missionary impulses He loves to bestow?
​
We do have to do our bit, and work on increasing our capacity to receive His missionary impulses, locally, regionally and nationally.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, comes from the end of Chapter 4 of St Mark’s Gospel after Jesus has been teaching a series of parables to the crowds. It narrates the story of Jesus calming the storm.

Following on from Jesus teaching the parables of the wheat and the mustard seed which invited us to trust God’s process and God’s timing, we seem to have a parable in this event of the massive storm that invites us to trust in Him even in the worst of times.

What comes after this passage is the deliverance of the Gerasene demoniac, which seems to be where Jesus was headed to on the other side of the lake of Galilee. Is this massive storm an attempt by the forces of evil to prevent this deliverance? It does seem likely.

We do know that Jesus set out deliberately for this locality on the other side of the lake, and plenty of witnesses joined Him in other boats. We know that it was evening before the lake crossing even began, and that they only set out after the crowds had been dismissed.

Jesus was already in the boat before they set out, and we know that at times He preached from Peter’s boat close to the shoreline. There doesn’t seem to have been any prior preparation or planning for this journey; and in all likelihood the seamen among the disciples would have expected a rather swift crossing – no more than an hour or two, with landfall before it got pitch dark.

But we see this sudden, intense, physical opposition to their journey’s progress; and they feel they are facing it all on their own because Jesus is in the back of the boat asleep.

The usual translations we read, do not do the original Greek justice, and water down the intensity of the crisis the disciples in the boats faced. What we often read as storm or great gale can also be translated violent wind-storm, squall, whirlwind, hurricane. They are hard enough to deal with in daylight, but in fading light and darkness it must have engendered extra terror.

So violent was it, that the waves were breaking over and into the boat, so that it was filled entirely. Any efforts to bail out the water were proving to be futile. The boat was beginning to sink.

At this point, like them, we are asking, where is God in all this?

How acutely they must have felt the absence of His reassuring presence! They could have also asked; Why is God permitting this to happen to us? What did we do wrong? Where did we go wrong?

‘Teacher, teacher, we are perishing. We are at the point of being fully and totally destroyed.’

And Jesus gets up, commands ‘Silence!’, ‘Be still!’, and the immediate calm that happens is as great as the storm was.

'megale’ is used to describe both the storm AND the calm.

This supernatural calm overwhelms the disciples with fear, awe and reverence.

Only God.
Only God Himself is able to transform utter disaster, turmoil and chaos into perfect peace and order in a single moment. No one else and nothing else can.

And what does Jesus say to them (and to us)?
Why are you so frightened?
Have you no faith?
Have you forgotten Who is in control?

Ummm. Errrr.
We’re still terrified, before and after, and it is human to be afraid.
Gulp. Obviously not as much faith as we thought we had. At all.
Yep. Completely forgot. Utterly failed that one….. Sorry.

May God help us to remember that even in the worst of times, that He is still completely in control.

May God help us to remember that especially in the worst of times, we can be expectant for His sudden divine action to happen to fix everything perfectly– and thus not despair nor become despondent.

May God help us to remember that nothing is going to stop us carrying out the mission we have been given by Him, even if it has been delayed by enemy tactics – and to expect far more spectacular results if there have been delays and opposition.

In our darkest moments may God send His holy angels to remind us of this Gospel event, and through it to remind us that He is completely in control, and that the end He has in mind is far more amazing and more glorious and stupendous than anything that currently terrorizes us.

Amen. Amen. Amen.
​
He alone is worthy of our trust.
Let us place our trust in Jesus.
Let us renew our trust in Jesus.
Let us massively increase our trust in Jesus.
Amen.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, comes from the beginning of Chapter 6 in St Mark’s Gospel. It tells us what happened when Jesus took His disciples to visit Nazareth, His home-town.

This was a very deliberate move by Jesus for several reasons:
He understood that His disciples needed to see where He had grown up, so that they could witness to this later on.
He also needed them to understand this uncomfortable lesson about the likelihood of rejection by those close to us when God calls us in to His ‘more’.
He would have had a natural hankering for home, and would have ardently desired to give to those He loved so deeply as much of what God had been filling Him with as possible.

We see in this passage of scripture that the inhabitants of Nazareth who knew Jesus in His hidden life, were very comfortable with that experience of Him.

They experienced levels of panic, shock and astonishment as this very different Jesus who came to them bearing divine wisdom and divine teaching, and miraculous 'dynamite' power.

In this coming of His to Nazareth, Jesus wanted to give them access to this side, to this experience of Him, as He had done for so many other villages in the surrounding area, but the beloved people of Nazareth were happy to settle for the lesser experience, and didn't want a bar, not one iota, of the greater experience of Him.

In fact it actually scandalised them; the word used in the Greek is ‘eskandalizonto’.

So they sadly missed out on all that Jesus wanted to give them through this coming, and they didn't have a clue just how humongously much they missed out on – because they were not open to the possibility of more.

Recently others have written and spoken about how often when we invite God in to our lives and into times of corporate prayer and worship that we tend to expect something like a tame kitten when as God He has full right to come in as a roaring wild lion and everything in between.

It is the difference between expecting the ‘O good and gentle Jesus’ and receiving the Almighty universal Emperor and majestic Conqueror of sin and death.

He is certainly both, but we definitely have a preference for the former and often too little experience of the latter – much like the inhabitants of Nazareth.

The thing is, if God is going to step in and change our world from the cesspit of malevolent evil to the garden of goodness where His will is done on earth as it is in heaven, then He is going to come as mighty Judge and Ruler.

Are we ready for this?
Are we open to the kind of coming of Jesus that the money changers in the Temple experienced?
Are we open to receive and accept the more that this Mighty All-powerful Jesus wants to give us?

It is possible that this coming of Jesus could be the one foretold in Revelation 20:1-6 that leads to a thousand years of peace, or a precursor to it.

May God grant us the grace to be ready and willing to welcome Him however He chooses to come, especially if that coming of Jesus doesn't match our expectations at all. Amen.
​
Obviously Mary, His mother, was ready and waiting for Jesus on His homecoming visit. May she help us prepare for His coming, and help us to welcome Him properly when that great moment comes. Amen.

As you may, or may not, be aware, the right to free speech is under serious attack.

The most glaring example of this is President Trump’s accounts on social media and email server being shut down. If the right to free speech is taken away from the duly elected leader of the USA, then no one’s free speech is safe.

It used to be said, ‘I may not like what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’.

Now it is, ‘If I don’t like what you say, I will take it (and you) down’.

There seem to be two ways things can go from here, but they both end up with the same result:

Scenario A, there is some kind of social media blackout between now and inauguration day, and possibly for longer.
Scenario B, proof emerges of social media complicity in false election results, an existing executive order comes into play, and the social media owners and their sites all get taken down (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, SnapChat, WhatsApp etc).
The same result is that the days of social media as we now know them are numbered.

So be prepared.

If there are voices on social media that you trust, then find out if they have a blog or website, and if so, sign up for email notification of new blogs and bookmark those websites.

If not, and you have alternative means to contact them, urgently encourage them to get a website and associated blog set up.

Are there alternatives? Yes there are.

Many have migrated to Parler, but because significant verification protocols are in place (in addition to an email address, a phone number must be provided, and to be a verified user images of driver's licence are required) it makes it easier for the enemies of free speech to find you via hacking, and easier for public calls to shut it down to be made.

Others have migrated to Gab, where being anonymous is still possible.

Both are receiving deluges of new members.

I have seen a list of alternatives to YouTube, I can’t recall what they were, but they do exist.

Be prepared

Think about what plans need to be in place to keep in contact with family and friends when social media becomes unavailable; and start putting them together.

Think about whether you still want to be an active part of social media organisations that have shut down free speech.

If your spidey-sense has been twitching, then you have been asking questions like...
How come the security at the Capitol was so poor?
Were they really outraged patriots who stormed the building or Antifa/BLM wearing MAGA gear?
How come Trump’s speech at the 6 Jan rally got glossed over so quickly?

If so, you may find these websites worth a browse
https://mariomurilloministries.wordpress.com/
https://themarshallreport.wordpress.com/
https://www.neonrevolt.com/

Why is this important?
Because the truth has to be important to anyone who follows Jesus who said, 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life', and 'The Truth will set you free'.
And how can you come to the truth unless you have access to multiple viewpoints on the same topic/event? As soon as an alternate narrative is suppressed, freedom departs and persecution begins.

Who would ever have thought that we would see all levels of American government resolutely refuse to investigate allegations of election fraud? Seekers of truth don't do that, they investigate until an unequivocal 'yes there was' or 'no there wasn't' is determined to public satisfaction.

Peace isn't possible unless it is based in Truth. 
Any attempt to build peace based on untruths will crumble. 

​May God graciously help all of us to come to full knowledge of the truth, no matter how disturbing or painful that might be. Amen.

​Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you will have heard talk about God preparing to act in a great and mighty way. This expectation comes from many places and is clothed in all types of language. In Catholic circles we have 'In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph', and talk of the Warning and the Chastisement. There is the 1947 Wigglesworth prophecy that when the Spirit and the Word come together, there will be the biggest move of the Holy Spirit that the world has ever seen. Others talk of a promised billion soul harvest.

As Peter Herbeck reminded us back in 2016, 'Did you know that the Church has an infinite capacity for regeneration? Did you know that? Did you know that the Church has right now all the power, every resource it needs, to conquer every enemy strategy the enemy brings against Her.' And it is precisely when the Church is looking the deadest and most bedraggled that we can expect the resurrection power of Jesus to come upon Her.
There are heightened expectations at the moment for something like this to begin before the end of 2019, with Brexit when it actually happens, as some form of a catalyst.

Consider:
https://lanavawser.com/2019/10/30/i-heard-the-lord-say-the-last-few-months-of-2019-are-going-to-be-explosive/
and https://www.openheaven.com/2018/07/10/three-waves-of-a-coming-baby-boom-and-strategies-for-preparation-by-christy-johnston/

Now for the chicken and the egg paradox: Are we in the 'if and when it happens we will deal with it then' camp or are we in the 'is some of this dependent on us being like Noah and taking God at His word and doing some practical stuff in preparation' camp? Is our lack of preparation part of the delay problem?

Consider the following scenario: an act of God causes 1000 consciences to awaken and they all rush to your church community to get themselves right with God. What do you do?

And what if it is 10,000 people? That's a lot of people who will expect us to know what to do to help them all.

When the active presence of God manifests itself in a place, people have life-changing encounters with God, and no one, but no one, wants to leave a place that is experiencing divine visitation. So expecting people to go down the shops to get supplies just isn't going to work, you need to have the supplies stockpiled already. Call it 'The Noah Storeroom' or the 'When God Shows Up Cache' or similar, expect to get laughed at like Noah was, but do it anyway. Also think long term, God is wanting to add these people to your community permanently. There is also no guarantee that you won't be overwhelmed by God and unable to function as a leader, marshal or administrator, so talk to your teams and make them aware of what your strategy is for when the Flood of Grace comes. Ask God what that strategy should be.  

So here are some thoughts, just looking at things from a practical perspective and a decidedly Catholic one because we need to do more preparation than anyone else.

The number one thing people will want is the sacrament of penance, and lengthy confessions. There might be a humungous crowd, but they each need to hear the blessed words of absolution personally. While they wait for their turn they are going to need some refresher teaching on how the sacrament works, how to prepare, what to confess, why the given penance is important etc. Many of them will be in a blubbering mess, before, during and after they get into the confessional.

A practical thing to do is for dioceses and parishes to audit how many non-active priests are within their diocesan and parish boundaries, get in contact with them, and have them on some kind of group alert system. They may be retired, if so, keep in regular contact with them. They may have been laicised for various reasons, but in emergencies, and this would qualify for an emergency, they can exercise priestly faculties. You are going to need them hearing confessions. If you are a bishop, then you should start working out what needs to be done canonically now to get laicised priests as sacramentally active as possible, as quickly as possible, in such a scenario.

The best people to do the refresher teaching on the sacrament of penance will be those who are already on the parish sacramental preparation teams. Parish priests should talk with the parish sacramental preparation co-ordinator about how to handle such a scenario. They would already have some experience in ushering primary school children for their first confessions.

Do you have brochures for people returning to the sacrament of penance after a long absence? Start looking for good examples of them online, or get new ones written. Have them ready to print. Put all the links and files you need in a special folder on your computer, so that you can quickly find them all in one place. Have a back-up paper version in your filing cabinet.

Begin a stockpile of tissues, a stockpile of scripture booklets (like the ones they provide for World Youth Day pilgrims, with a Gospel, another book from the Bible and a Psalm or two) and a stockpile of toilet paper.

Talk to your parish team about setting up triage protocols, because you are going to need to quickly ascertain who has never been baptised, who can't remember if they were baptised, those baptised under other traditions, lapsed Catholics, fringe Catholics and committed Catholics. Baptism (and conditional Baptism), could reduce the strain on the confessionals, but you will need a diocesan approved video presentation on what living out the Nicene Creed means as a minimum preparation for the baptism of those who have reached the age of reason and beyond.

Purchase additional baptismal registers and baptismal certificates at both parish and diocesan levels.

Space is going to be at a premium, so as quickly as possible, get all the cars out of the parish car parks and make them pedestrian access only. You could have several groups learning from different group leaders across the car park - weather permitting. 

People are going to want Jesus. Setting up a monstrance with a consecrated host in the church will help with that. If you have a spare or secondary monstrance, set up an additional adoration space in the parish hall as well. You may need to set up wardens or guards from the ranks of acolytes and senior altar servers around those monstrances to keep order. People under the influence of religious zeal have been known to do some mighty crazy things, especially if that zeal is coupled with ignorance. 

People are going to need to learn how to pray. Having an area set aside with a Marian shrine/statue and a continuous Rosary being prayed with scripture meditations prior to each decade mystery will help. Stockpile inexpensive sets of rosary beads.

If the repentance is Holy Spirit genuine, then practical steps to change lives will be needed. Wherever you normally have the paschal fire for the Easter Vigil can be the place people can bring unholy objects to have them burned, bad magazines, bad books, crystals, occult items etc.

People in non-married relationships may come under the conviction of the Holy Spirit to get married. You will need teams of people to listen to them, to ascertain if they are free to enter into sacramental marriage, and then organise groups of couples for marriage ceremonies and renewal of vow ceremonies.

Purchase additional marriage registers and marriage certificates, at both parish and diocesan levels.

Under a move of God of such a magnitude, people are going to start manifesting the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit. Make sure you have literature and links on hand for them to be able to begin to understand what the Holy Spirit is doing in them, and how to co-operate with it. You are going to need protocols for how to discern and release prophetic words.

Some people may also manifest demonic influence. To deal with that, the diocesan bishop should have a plan in place. He is the chief exorcist of the diocese, and should have already appointed other exorcists. Training should begin now to enable more priestly exorcists to be appointed, and for all diocesan priests to be trained in what they are already authorised to do in such circumstances, and in what must be referred to those with specialist training.

Once the Holy Spirit activates hearts in repentance, then they will experience a hunger for catechesis. Start researching now to discover what good programmes are out there, and purchase or subscribe to them. Then when God's grace hits, get a quality video series set up for viewing in a large meeting room with automatic repeat.

Mobilise those who have been on team for RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) to be the 'go to' people for those that have specific theological questions or hurdles that they need to overcome in order to take the next step on their journey of faith.

You will need printed and laminated lists of good books for people to download on their mobile phones and similar devices on topics such as prayer, sacraments, catechism, charisms, scripture, conversion testimonies that are highly recommended. The last thing you want is for people hungry for catechesis to find online teaching resources that contain doctrinal errors.

It is our duty to help people get to the best sources of teaching quickly. Many people have mobile phones with internet capability, help them use that technology to help them get the recommended teaching that they need.

People on fire with the Holy Spirit are going to want to be active in evangelisation, immediately. Remind them that even St Paul went off to pray, fast and study first. Work out in advance a way to get them into teams to do the necessary preparation, preferably each with an experienced evangelist as a leader, and then send them out in teams. Each sent out team should return together for debriefing, further teaching based on their experiences, and prayer for those they reached out to.

Real repentance will want to express itself in acts of penance, viz prayer, fasting, almsgiving, service to the poor. It will be far better to give people direction on how to respond to this call to penance and reparation, than to leave them without guidance. Think now about how best such holy responses could be channelled to the greatest good, and pray for divine wisdom as you work on that. Consider where the greatest needs in your community are, and which local service organisations are the best ones with track records of integrity and effectiveness. Some people will want to go beyond what prudence suggests, and they will need to be helped so that they bank that fire a bit so as to become sustainable rather than flaming out quickly.

People are going to need to tell their stories about how God's grace rescued them. So you will need teams of listeners and recorders. The better stories should be publicly told, as ongoing encouragement to the church community and in praise to God. Discernment will be needed for who, when, and how such stories are to be released, and whether his/her conversion has deepened enough for it to withstand notoriety.

When such moves of God happen, it can get very chaotic and messy in a good way. The more we can help people ground the profound God experiences they have had in daily prayer, reading of scripture, and frequent recourse to the sacraments, and in the accountability of regular sharing of experiences in small to medium groups, the more fruitful and lasting that grace will be within them. But it takes all hands on deck to steward extraordinary moves of the Holy Spirit like this, far more than just the priest and a handful of helpers. Training up people now who could be effective leaders of small to medium groups would be very prudent.

Many ministry teams will need to go on 24/7 rostering initially, in shifts, especially the music ministry teams. Whatever normal was will have to be suspended for a while until a new normal settles.

The chances of big increases in people asking questions about the validity of past marriages are significant. Beginning to train extra people for the diocesan marriage tribunals would be a wise thing to do.

What needs to be prevented is a decision making bottle-neck focused on the person of the parish priest. Start thinking carefully about what decisions can be devolved to trusted people in senior parish leadership positions and which decisions absolutely must go to the parish priest, and what kind of communication structures would facilitate that. For common requests maybe a pre-prepared checklist of requirements for approval could be very useful. 

The more preparation gets done, the fewer people will dissipate the extraordinary grace and slip through the cracks unchanged and without being incorporated into the parish community of faith and into the mission of Jesus.

...................................................
​I will add to this when I can, especially useful links and file downloads.
...................................................
​Examples of small booklets of scripture:

Act of Contrition
Three versions suitable for Sacrament of Penance
4 per A4 page

Prayer for a Good Confession
6 per A4 page

How to start (or re-start) praying the Rosary
With a crowd of people hungry for God, helping them learn to pray by learning to pray the Rosary and meditate on the various scenes in the life of Jesus is a good idea. This is also good as an inexpensive follow-up, for how to pray the Rosary at home.
Double sided, tri-fold A4 page

Miracle Prayer
This is a good prayer to lead people into a re-commitment to God with, or to recommend as a follow-up daily prayer for anyone who has just had a life changing encounter with God.
4 per A4 page  

Encouragement to return to the Sacrament of Penance
includes simple examination of conscience
​Double-sided, tri-fold A4 page

More encouragement to return to the Sacrament of Penance
includes excerpts from the diary of St Faustina
about how much God wants us to come and receive His mercy.
​Double-sided, tri-fold A4 page

Well known prayers in common use
Including most of the prayers required to pray the Rosary,
and other prayers that Catholics assume everyone knows 'off-by-heart'. i.e. this is a cheat sheet to help new converts and reverts get up to speed.
Single-sided A4 page

Stations of the Cross, Passionist version
True conversion is accompanied by a desire to reparate for sin, and praying the Stations of the Cross (any version) is useful as a start for satisfying that desire.
​Double-sided, tri-fold A4 page

Stations of the Cross, Everyman version
​In this version, Jesus talks to us as 'His other self' and encourages us to see how we can be united to His Passion in the regular events of every day life.
​Double-sided, tri-fold A4 page

Help for understanding charisms and manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and practical guidance in their use and ongoing development
If there has been a major movement of God, then the natural consequence is people receiving charisms of healing, prophecy, words of knowledge, discernment, speaking in tongues, deliverance etc. Chances are you will have significant numbers of people needing help to understand what God is doing in them and through them, and what is OK and what is not OK. This document which distills 50 years of wisdom from the Catholic Charismatic Renewal will help you get lots of people 'on the same page' quickly, and it will also reassure them that what they are experiencing is normal for the Holy Spirit.
If you haven't read it yet, read it now, so that you are familiar with the contents. That way you will be able to point specific people to the specific parts of the content that they need - when the time comes.
32 x A4 pages

Bible Study - Gospel of Mark
This is the shortest of the Gospels, and is particularly useful for helping people come to a decision about who Jesus is.
At the link below you will find a simple 16 week Bible Study of this Gospel with discussion starters.  
Resources - Study Group