This is a rough transcript of a talk given by Lalith Perera from the Community of the Risen Lord on Sunday 19 February 2017 at Seven Hills, NSW, as part of a weekend conference marking the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal.

(Ed. I am revisiting this talk because some recent prophetic words here and here may make more sense in the light of this talk.)

God is looking for a person to host His presence, to carry Him to the world.

Often we ask, 'If God is love, why is this happening; why isn't that happening?'

God very much wants to be involved – but He needs someone to take Him to that place. If not, then the natural law takes over.

Matthew 9: 27-31. Jesus heals the two blind men. Jesus says, 'Do you believe I can do this?' They reply, 'We do'. Jesus tells them, 'Let it be done to you according to your faith.'

Moses hosted the presence of God. Mary hosted the presence of God. Jesus Himself, obviously, hosted the presence of God. Peter after Pentecost hosted the presence of God.

Moses hosted the presence of God so much that his face glowed and he had to wear a veil Exodus 34:29-35. When Mary visited Elizabeth, she didn't have to say a word, the presence of God in her touched her cousin. Acts 5:15 says that people brought out their sick hoping that the shadow of St Peter might fall on them and heal them, such was the presence of God that he carried.

We are called to host His presence.

If you are grateful for all that Jesus has done, but yet feel dissatisfied and have a desire for more. If your prayer is, 'Lord, I want more', then know that this restlessness is a gift of the Spirit.

If He could use Peter and the Apostles, He can use you and me.

Divine and human partnerships are God's preferred way of doing things.

Isaiah 57.15 'I live in a high and holy place, but I am also with the contrite and humbled spirit, to give the humbled spirit new life, to revive contrite hearts.'

This is the formula for hosting the presence of God.

God is in the revival business and He wants to do it through the contrite and lowly.

Three keys to hosting His presence:
•A heart of repentance; a contrite heart.
•Lowliness: an inner space within to hold Jesus: people not full of themselves.
•A life of praise and worship – to shift the clouds.

We are more prone to see other's faults and not our own (Matthew 7:3, Jesus compares this to the beam in our eyes and the splinter in someone else's eye.)

Go to confession. It is a lifetime journey to repentance. Even after Baptism in the Spirit, we change slowly. It is so easy to judge others – this is a trap. St Francis of Assisi spent a whole night in repentance. The Holy Spirit shines His light into the dark places of our hearts not to condemn or destroy, but to draw us closer to Himself.

When we are reconciled with God, there is a space within that we can fill with the Eucharist, the presence of Jesus, and space for the Word to rest in our hearts. I want Him to live inside me. I want to be sitting at the feet of Jesus. Every so often take a whole day, and spend that day with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

A life of praise and worship is what we need to keep Him with us when we leave our time of prayer, when we leave the Mass. There is a cloud of unknowing, a covering keeping us from seeing God. Many of us are living as atheists who say they believe. The test? How much do you love God after a sleepless night?

Break the cloud above you with the gift of praise – not communal praise but personal praise. Without the power of God we are powerless in all we do. So double your prayer time, and use half of it for praise. Keep praising until worship happens and the cloud of God's glory comes over you. When that happens, everything becomes crystal clear and simple.

In 2004 we were on a 2 day retreat with 75 people. During the morning praise we were given a scripture passage to pray with. As we did, the presence of God descended on that place. Many were weeping under that anointing, with lots of repentance. At that time one of the retreatants was given the lyrics and melody of a song:

Help me climb higher, higher on Your mountain
Hold me as I rise, rise beyond my being
As I feel Your presence surround me
Lord I come to worship on my knees.

Take me from my footprints to Your journey
Take me from my heartache to Your will
Take me from my feelings to Your presence
Take me to the clouds so I may see.

(Ed. This isn't all of the song, just the part I was able to write down.)

God, He is ready to touch anybody anytime.
It is He who will do the work.

At another time we had a village retreat for about 100 people. A special stillness came over us. Then an unusual word of knowledge was given about a bent leg. It was responded to by a mother of a girl who had been in a dreadful accident. The girl was prayed with and her leg was completely healed and restored.

This is an edited transcription of this meeting and panel discussions held in Rome on Friday 2 June 2017 as part of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal #ccrgoldenjubilee2017
 
(Ed. Some parts of the recording were hard to decode, so there's been some light editing to preserve continuity of thought. If anyone wants to translate the Italian and Spanish parts please do so; contact me via www.societyofsaints.net if you need the approximate times on the recording for them. I will update this transcription with the translations as soon as they get sent to me.)
 
This is the link for the video recording: https://youtu.be/w6NjoLJmYsc
 
To appreciate this meeting fully, some background reading is highly recommended because it will give you an introduction to most of the panelists and to the many places and organisations mentioned in the meeting:
 
Firstly this report on what God has been doing in Argentina.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/june/25.38.html
Secondly the transcript of the workshop on spiritual ecumenism held the previous day 1 June 2017.
http://www.societyofsaints.net/blog/fostering-spiritual-ecumenism
Finally the translation of the address by Pastor Giovanni Traettino on the day after i.e. 3 June 2017 at the Pentecost Vigil.
http://www.ccrgoldenjubilee2017.net/pr-giovanni-traettino/
 
Introduction of the panel (edited)
Matteo Calisi, vice president of ICCRS for many years, and president of the Catholic Fraternity for years. He founded the Community of Jesus in Bari.
Sean Larkin, a member of the Community of Jesus in the Anglican tradition, and Anglican archbishop.
Charles Whitehead, a past president of ICCRS, married to Sue who is Anglican.
Giovanni Traettino, pastor of the Christian Fellowship of Caserta and Evangelical Church of Reconciliation
Norberto Saracco, part of the CRECES movement in Buenos Aires (CRECES : Renewal Communion of Catholics and Evangelicals in the Holy Spirit).

All of them have worked for many years for Christian unity, with God-given passion for this task.
 
Let us open our hearts to listen to them, and the Holy Spirit will come down and give us revelation of what this means. Who started ecumenism? Jesus did in John 17:21-23. This is why we are here. This is a journey that Jesus wanted from the night He was going to be imprisoned.
 
Giovanni: Welcome everybody. Why don't we start by giving a worship clap to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? (clapping) Thank you. The first thing I want to say is that I am amazed that we are at this point in history and I consider it a real Kairos of God, the season we are living in; and today, you know, to be together and even tomorrow to celebrate the vigil of Pentecost together, that's amazing! And I believe that this deserves a big clap. (clapping)
 
The second thing I want to say about our ecumenical encounter is that the word oikoumenismos comes from oikos which means house. We are here together on the basis that our oikos is filled with the Holy Spirit. So that the basis of our ecumenism has to do with the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit. Isn't it true in our lives? Amen.
 
On this basis I welcome Matteo, Sean, Charles and Norberto. We are basically going to listen to their experience, because what really puts us together is our experience of God, our experience of the Holy Spirit, which is what we would like to see all of the Church to experience – not only the Pentecostals and charismatics. We believe that this is, as Pope Francis says, a stream of grace, a current of grace for all of the Church, and I believe we should expand our paradigm and see that this gift, this visitation, is for all of the Church. Do you agree? (Yes)
 
Let's start with Matteo. Matteo and myself, we are very good and old friends and we still are after many years. We met together in the early '80s, '83 I believe, was it, and we've been walking together over all these years, and he has stayed Catholic and I've stayed Evangelical Pentecostal. But we are very good friends and I believe God has used us to bridge into the two different areas. So please Matteo, share with us your experience.
 
Matteo: (he spoke in Italian, which was not translated on the recording)
 
Sean: I would like to begin by the reading of two Scriptures. The first comes from Acts 20:28, and we won't look at the context, 'The Apostle says to the leaders, 'Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you guardians, to feed the Church of the Lord which He obtained with His own Blood'. Jesus loves His Church. And the blood that He spilt for you is the same blood that He spilt for us. And if Jesus loves His Church, I must follow, when it is convenient and when it is inconvenience.
 
And in the Gospel reading of the day we get one of my favourite passages where the Lord prophesies to Peter and says this, 'When you were young, you fastened your own belt and walked where you would, but when you are old you will stretch out your hands and another will fasten your belt for you and carry you where you do not want to go'. This is not about us, it's about Him. Now that means we follow the One even in the resurrection and season of the ascension with nail prints. It means that if we are going to embrace His will for us, we will walk the way of the Cross. We don't walk the way of the Cross and then leave it. The way of the Cross is ours to live. So it's sacrificial, and it's very painful, but just like Jesus, the reason He went to the Cross, in part, was for joy, the joy set before Him. He wanted you. He wanted His Church. He died for that very reason. And so there is great joy, but along that pathway.
 
Jill and I were invited to become part of the Community of Jesus and as a good obedient son of the Church I said, 'No'. And Matteo being a good obedient son of the Church smiled and prayed. And then after a while the Community with others in the orthodox world came back to us and said, 'We believe that this is right'. And then they threw in a little, what we call, curved ball or kicker, and they said, 'The Vatican wants you to do this'. Now that's a bit difficult for a non-Catholic mind set. And so what we discovered was a new grace in following of obedience. It has opened some of the most remarkable doors to us. It has taken us to many places and God has filled us with joy for His Church, and I have never cried so much.
 
Charles: As I look at you all this morning, as I sat here, I was reminded of a scripture. It's 2 Cor 3:17 'Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom, and we who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory are being transformed into His likeness with ever increasing glory which comes from the Lord who is Spirit'. I think it's because you got in here and got a seat, but it's still glory.
 
I want to just say a few words in introduction about my own journey because I have been on an ecumenical journey for many years. I was educated at the Jesuits. And when I left school and went to university I had a head full of understanding and good teaching about my Catholic faith. And when we sat in pubs in England as students and people started discussing the Christian faith and God, I was always brought out to explain Catholicism. It was not easy, but I always had free beer, so it was a good opportunity. But I began to realise it was all in my head. It was an intellectual faith.
 
I met Sue, we got married, and we had our first two children and after a while we met – we were invited really – to join an ecumenical discussion group. At the time my wife was an atheist, but they needed a Catholic, so that's why they asked us. When I said to them, 'My wife will say terrible things because she is an atheist' they said, 'We'll just pretend she's another Catholic'.
 
Now what happened in this ecumenical group, it was Baptists, Anglicans, Methodists, we encountered a Baptist couple whose faith was alive in a way that mine was not. They had Jesus in their hearts and they talked about a personal relationship with the Lord. And I felt I had an ecclesial relationship with the Lord. And Sue didn't have any relationship with the Lord.
 
So to make it very short, after some time, Sue gave her life to the Lord. I was away in Scotland on a business trip for 2 days. I left behind a well behaved atheist. I returned home after 2 days to find I had a singing, dancing charismatic. It was a bit of a shock, but of course it confronted me with the reality of my intellectual faith, and my lack of a personal relationship with the Lord. So I started to search, and an Anglican priest prayed for me after some months. And he had a word of knowledge from the Lord, which is why he prayed for me and he told me, 'You don't know the personal love of Jesus'. And I was going to give him a good 'God loves everyone, Jesus died for us all', you know, but I didn't, I said, 'You're right', and he said, 'God is going to change your life.' And this was in an Anglican church where we had gone for a service for Sue.
 
And the next day I was working in London, in the city, and I went out for a walk to think about this, went into a small church, Catholic church, in the city of London, mid-morning there was no body there. I went down to the front, I knelt in front of the Blessed Sacrament and I said, 'Help', and the Lord just filled me with the knowledge of His love. I realised I was loved. I was on the floor repenting of sin, I was up singing and praising God, and as I walked back to my office after an hour or 2 hours, I was still singing. And everybody walking towards me was stepping to one side, and giving me a slightly strange smile. Well, I have to say in the city of London you don't meet a lot of people at lunch time singing praises to God as they walk back to their office.
 
So my simple comment to you really is that I recognise the gift that this Baptist couple had, of this personal relationship with the Lord, and by their example, they shared it with me. And from there I developed a love for the word of God, an understanding of evangelization, baptized in the Holy Spirit, and so it went on. I won't say anymore now but as we go through the morning I'm sure they'll be other opportunities, but it was sharing their gift. And today, our local church, we have a really close relationship with the Baptist church. We now have scripture study groups, they have communion 3 times a week instead of once. And we have shared our gifts. So it's the Lord through His Spirit working among all of us. And that's why your faces are shining this morning. Amen? Amen.
 
Norberto: (In Spanish, not translated on the recording)

Matteo: (In Italian, not translated on the recording)
 
Sean: Matteo said that we would be surprised. At the last Luna Park in Buenos Aires, Cardinal Bergoglio addressed us, all charismatics, Pentecostals and Catholics. He ended his talk. His third point was a question. Have we lost the ability to be surprised by the Holy Spirit? I think many of us have lost that ability. And we are here to be renewed by the Holy Spirit.
 
I love history, because it teaches us so many things, but God has made us to be alive today. This is where He has placed us. So we must not be robbed of the past, or by the past, not must we be robbed of the future or by the future because we live in this present moment.
 
I studied theology at Manchester University and had a wonderful time, and my friend the Rev Russ Parker and I were at university together. And Russ took me to a Catholic charismatic prayer group in the spirituality of St Teresa of Avila. And because in those days those charismatic prayer groups required leadership, a small leadership from a non-Catholic group, we were made leaders within 2 weeks. Not because there was a great anointing but because there was nobody else. So please don't wait to be anointed. You'll wait all day. Now this is the point. By going to that prayer group I was changed. By encountering the spirituality of others, I was broadened in my faith in Jesus. I learned to understand that we need one another and we cannot make it alone. It is not good to be alone. And from that group eventually the dear nuns sent me to be trained as an Ignatian director (shoulder shrug) I believe in penance. Anyway.
 
But I'm thinking just along those lines in the Body of Christ. You see, Jesus is not black and white. He is in His understanding and the doctrines and the truth. But in His grace together in the gifts He is multi-coloured, He is a variegated God. The book of Peter tells us that. God's variegated grace. And God wants you for you.
 
Now as I explored that, I began to go to other Christians. By the way my Catholic charismatic experience left me thinking this, 'Catholics are baptised in the Spirit. Did you know that?' I assumed they were all baptised in the Spirit. I had heard the word Pentecostal, they must all be baptised in the Spirit. Really? We need God. We need the reality of the Holy Spirit.
 
When I wanted to explore the healing ministry, I went to my priest friend in Buenos Aires and he let me minister with him in the Church. By the way, don't go to his healing services. You will be there 4 or 5 hours without a cup of tea. Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous! God knows we stop for a cup of tea, 'cause He's English. But then there was a moment, and I asked the priest and his leaders, I said 'Would you bless me to follow in the way that God has given you?' Never the same again. Changed. Because I don't just want to be formed (pointed to head) I want to be formed (pointed to heart).
 
I look out on Brazilian bishops. I remember my time well in Brazil. I want to thank you. When you open your heart to others, you open the heart of Christ to us all. So as brothers and sisters we place ourselves in the place of the disciples and say, 'Lord, I am here to learn, teach me, and if possible could you use me'.
 
And then very quickly I have learned to pray for the grace of what we would call the virtues. Without the grace of humility, the Spirit would be upset – that's putting it mildly. It's a grace of servanthood, not control. It's the grace of the washing of the feet, not 'look I'm in charge'. It's also the grace, and you will hear Pope Francis speak about this, from Acts 4, we need to seek the Lord together as a Church for apostolic boldness. We need the courage of the Gospel to be ours afresh that in that humility and service we may run together.
 
And lastly, as Charles and I were sharing yesterday in the workshop, the devil uses ignorance. It is time to learn of one another and it is therefore time certainly to listen, even and especially when you don’t agree. It's all right not to agree. I don't agree with myself, so what is the point of dialogue?
 
Charles: Amen. And as a good Catholic I will start with a piece of scripture. I want to just read a few phrases from Ephesians 4, at the beginning of Chapter 4. Paul says, '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.' Amen? Amen. You are supposed to be charismatics - an alleluia would be even better.
 
I'm very excited by the climate in which we are living spiritually. This really is a special time in the Holy Spirit. I honestly believe that. There is a framework for us, particularly I am thinking as I say this of Catholics, but it is true for others too, but there is a framework which makes work for Christian unity is actually totally the teaching of the Catholic Church. We are told in many, many, many ways since Vatican II that this work for unity is one of our absolutely primary tasks today. So we don't have any doubt about that, we shouldn't. And people who question it should simply be taken to scriptural texts, to the teaching of the Church, to the teaching of the last three Popes and Pope Francis, very much today which shows this very clearly.
 
But for me, I've enjoyed that, I like it. I've contributed to it in my own way at international levels. But for me, work for unity is always going to be locally based. It has to be with the people we know and share with in our local areas and in our own lives. And this is why the scripture I just read speaks about relationships, about love for one another, about listening, about humility, and for me this is crucially important.
 
I told you the story of Sue and me, and of course what happened was my atheist friend – sorry –wife returned…we've only been married 50 years, so I'm still learning. The Lord said to us in the first times when we were nailed together in relationship with Him, 'Bloom where you were planted'. Right? Now my wife prior to becoming an atheist because she was a scientist, prior to that had been brought up in the Anglican tradition, so that's where she went. And I was brought up Catholic, so that's where I went. So we've been living an ecumenical relationship now for 40 something years. And it still has its moments of tension, is one way of putting it. I won't go into it, but the virtues that I just read out, we still need those.
 
But what I think is the most exciting thing today is that building relationships with brothers and sisters from other parts of the Body of Christ is one of the most fruitful and rewarding things I know. It's quite remarkable. And in our local church situation we have relationships that have now been running for 25 years where we pray together regularly – the leaders of the churches, we share, we discuss, we go on retreat together for a couple of days once a year. We do a lot of things together. We do not agree about everything.
 
A few months ago I was sitting at a conference with the Archbishop of Canterbury, we were sitting together, and we were being interviewed in front of 3500-4000 people. And I was sharing some particular point when I got a sign from my wife in the front row. The person who was interviewing us gave her the microphone and she shared something that was actually very important. And the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury at the end of this session comes up to me and says, 'I've never done that. I've never interrupted him when he's speaking', she said, 'but I think it's great. I'm going to start doing it.' So I have to say ecumenical relations took a little step backwards, because he put his arm around me and said, 'Dear brother, thank you so much for that'.
 
Sue's point, which is absolutely valid, is that we often come from a total misunderstanding of other people's Christian traditions. I was once flying back from Stockholm on an aeroplane and an American was sitting on my left and when we broke through the clouds I took out my bible and I was reading on of the psalms about the glory of heaven. He's reading it over my shoulder, and he says to me, 'You're reading a psalm.', 'Yes I am' I said. He said, 'I like the psalms' and he started to recite Psalm 23 very loudly. When he'd finished, he said to me, 'What kind of Christian are you?', and I said, 'I'm a Catholic'. And there was a horrified silence. And he said to me, 'You cannot be a Catholic', and I said, 'Well I am', and he said, 'But Catholics do not read the scriptures' and I said, 'Well I'm reading them', and he said, 'That's why you can't be a Catholic'. So I couldn't resist it, I said to him, 'Well, I have my bible here and I'm reading it. Where's your bible?' To which he replied, 'It's in my luggage', I said 'It's not much good there. What kind of Christian are you?' He said, 'I'm a Southern Baptist'. We talked for 2 hours on the flight, and he repeated everything I said, so the whole plane enjoyed our conversation because the Lord had gifted him with this very loud voice. But you know, when we got to the baggage collection point, two people came. One went to him and gave his life to Christ and a man came to me and said, 'You're a Catholic?' and I said, 'Heathrow airport is well aware of that'. He said, 'I am, at least I used to be. I haven't been to church in 30 years.' And I said, 'Do you want to come back?' 'Yes', he said. 'I'll pray for you'. Anyway, but it was very interesting, one of those God encounters, but thank you darling that's used up my time so I don't need to say much more.
 
Just very simply, that the key for me to ecumenical relationships is to invest time in them. We need to talk to each other, we need to pray with each other, we need to understand each other, and then we need to do things together. We can't do everything but we can do a lot, and public witness of churches together is so vital today.
 
And this is what we are doing locally. The clergy come to our house on the first Monday of every month and we pray together, we pray for each other, all the different churches. And we've just started a 24/7 prayer room in our village with all the churches involved. 24/7 prayer if you are not aware of that, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, people are in this room praying for the local area – and that is the fruit of co-operation.
 
So my request, a plea, would simply be to build those personal relationships, because they are the foundation, and the context for it has been laid out already. We know it is the Lord's will, know that the Church supports it, and so we just need to get on and do it. Amen? Amen.
 
Norberto: (In Spanish, not translated on the recording)

Matteo: (In Italian, not translated on the recording)
 
Sean: When Jesus spoke to Peter, and He spoke about the keys He said something that He will make good on, 'I will build My Church' and 'The gates of Hades will not win'. The more I walk in the ecumenical journey, the less I know how He will do this. But this I know. He will do this. So we turn afresh today with confidence to the One who is the head of the Church.
 
And my invitation would be in this season to place yourself afresh not only in the place of repentance which is ongoing, daily and necessary, but what I have learned with this word docility to the Holy Spirit. One of things in the early days of the Anglican renewal was this: Father Dennis Bennett, who was our father figure said this, 'It is not a question, 'Do you have the Holy Spirit?' If you're a Christian you have the Holy Spirit. The question for us today is, 'Can the Holy Spirit have us?'' And I pray that from this gathering in this season, there will be however difficult for us, 'Yes, Lord' and then tomorrow, 'Yes, Lord' and on Sunday, 'Yes, Lord'. The One in whom we place our confidence, who said He can do this, so He will do it. How? (shoulder shrug) Amen.
 
Charles: I believe today that as we build these personal relationships with our brothers and sisters in other parts of the Body of Christ, this takes us to a very important place, and we need then to bring our church congregations together, so we want the local churches to begin to catch the vision in a new way for unity. And I believe that's the challenge that faces many of us today, bringing the local churches together in acts of public witness to the area where we live. This is the most powerful thing I have experienced. People are amazed. The local media write headlines about us being together, and they are surprised because they don't think we can do it. But we can, and the reason we can is very simple, it's Romans 15:13 and it says there, Paul says, 'May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit'. When we come together in individuals but more so in groups, the power of the Spirit flows and gives us hope for what we are doing in witness to our Lord and Saviour. Amen.
 
Norberto: (In Spanish, not translated on the recording)
 
Matteo: (There was some trouble with the translating, so he had a go in English, asking listeners to forgive his poor English)
 
Pope Francis shows us he is a model for unity in the Church. Not only as a teacher but through the gesture prophetic when he asked and gave forgiveness and visited the Pentecostal church and received different leaders of the different parts of the world, and it's incredible because in his person institution and the charisms are joined, not separate. It's an incredible model for us. Ecumenism institutional it needs to recognise its limits. It does not depend on documents, it's the work, very deep of the Holy Spirit, and depends from all us walking in holiness. The ecumenism it depends on interior space. Cardinal Kasper spoke about the phenomenology theology in the unity of the Christians. This dependence totally on dependence in the Holy Spirit, this the part mystical of the ecumenism. The whole depends from our roots, our life, joined with God in holiness. This is number one. This is Pope Francis, spoke about this.
 
The second, Pope Francis spoke many times about the theory of Oscar Cullman, reformation Protestant theologian, about the unity in the diversity – reconciled unity. One difference is not necessarily one division. But the difference, one difference is one richness for us. And John Paul II in his encyclical 'Ut Unum Sint' spoke the ecumenism is one exchange of gifts, one church give me its gift and my church is open to receive, with one heart reconciled. It's not obstacle for unity, it is one commitment for unity. This is another level.
 
And Pope Francis is not asking 'come back to Rome'. Ecumenism is not 'you come back to the Catholic Church' like in the past, but when every church is covenant to Jesus Christ, one Lord one Saviour. But for this our job is the need to confess, the most important to heal inner the memories like John Paul II. It is most important to recognise the division is the diabolic sins, because 'diabolos' in Greek is division.

(Mattteo then continued, but speaking in Italian).
 
Sean: Fr Dennis Bennett and his second wife Rita (his first wife died) were sent around the world with a particular proclamation of the baptism in the Spirit, and many, many people received the baptism in the Spirit from many different situations and circumstances. But then they discovered something – the baptism in the Spirit doesn't heal everything. The baptism in the Spirit is part of our entrance into the kingdom of God, it's just part of being birthed as a child of God's. And so they personally began a healing ministry, but with a particular emphasis within it – and we may argue about terminology, we're good at that – but effectively it was for inner healing, the healing of memories. Now whatever you want to make of that, at the root of inner healing is very simply this: it is taking to ourselves the reality of forgiveness. And we must learn to take the stories that very often are true and cruel and painful, and not say they didn't happen, history is littered with sin in the church, but at the same time, take to ourselves the actualization that God in Christ has forgiven me, God in Christ has forgiven you, and therefore as His forgiven people, we can ask Him to write a new page.
 
But where He brings us back to is the foot of the Cross. Until we keep coming to the foot of the Cross, kneeling, open hands, and waiting there, I believe that is the place that He wants us to position ourselves for the new life. So God in that sense I believe needs to somehow – whatever this looks like – He needs to heal us, in order that we can stop saying the same things, and just going around the same loops.
 
I'll end with this: I've had the privilege again of meeting many Christians from very different situations of circumstances who have taught me so much about Jesus. I say again, I don't necessarily agree with them and they don't agree with me, but this I have learned to do. When somebody else speaks about them and often speaks about them badly, I know better. They are my brother, they are my sister, and we will not speak ill of one another. We will defend one another. We will speak well of the things of Jesus and we will ask Him to bless our mouths to speak well of one another. Amen.
 
Charles: We are dealing with a culture of encounter, as it has been described, with those around us from other parts of the Body of Christ – and one of the primary things is to share our gifts. I think that is so important.
 
I remember when I first became involved with those from other churches. They were really good at spontaneous prayer. It was not part of my tradition. I mean maybe a couple of words, but not a good long spontaneous prayer. So the first time I was leading our ecumenical group I wrote my spontaneous prayer out, because I knew everyone when I said, 'Let us pray', they would bow their heads, join their hands and close their eyes, and I would (he mimed drawing out papers from his pocket). So with full confidence I said, 'Let us pray' and I put my hand in my pocket and discovered I had changed my jacket. It's a good way to learn to pray spontaneously. (laughter)
 
We have learned together how to really praise and worship the Lord with great freedom, which I believe is a wonderful gift.
 
Matteo spoke about greater holiness, and this too is something that we share together, a desire to grow in holiness.
 
The other thing that I think as Catholics we have often learned from our Protestant and Pentecostal brethren is the value of personal testimony. And trying to introduce that into our regular Mass is quite a challenge, but it is possible after Communion at Mass to have someone give a personal testimony. You need an agreeable parish priest. (laughter and clapping). Amen.
 
And then, of course, the love for the Word of God is something that we have so often been blessed with as Catholics and we have shared our love for the Eucharist, and seen a growth in interest in Communion in other churches.
 
Then we've shared our contemplative prayer. Now that's much easier because you don't have to say anything. It's the same kind of challenge we have with spontaneous prayer, but the other way round. I was invited to give a morning's teaching on contemplative prayer to a very evangelical charismatic church, and they loved it and clapped and cheered and everything. And then the minister came up, their pastor, and he said, 'Well, now, let's have a time of prayer', and they all were immediately praying and he said, 'Have you not listened to the last 2 hours?' It's just spontaneously is not what they do. But they have learned, and now it's very interesting because you go and you sit in silence sometimes. I am very moved by this.
 
But I think for me, the thing I have learned – apart from the personal relationship with Jesus, which of course is the key to beginning all this – what I have learned is a lot about being a missionary disciple. I've learned a lot about evangelization from my brothers and sisters in the other churches. How they do it. How they organize it. And it has given us the courage to step out in faith and do some public work out on the streets. But then of course to learn that, we have done it together.
 
So we've been out on our streets where we live, on a Saturday morning, half a dozen different churches together publically witnessing in some simple way to our shared faith, and people are amazed.
 
I don't know, for example, if in all countries you have St Valentine's Day. In many Western countries we do. And this is the day when you think of the person you love, your husband, wife, or girlfriend, boyfriend, and you give a special card expressing this love on Valentine's Day. And this is very normal and common. So we went on the streets, churches together, and we gave everybody a special card with a picture of a heart on the front, and they were very moved by this on Valentine's Day. When they opened it, of course it said, 'Jesus loves you' and then it quotes John 3:16 and then we gave them a little gift of a very nice chocolate wrapped in paper, and people were amazed by this. And they started going round and queueing up to have a second one. We should have had some cards that said, 'Jesus still loves you'. I'm joking. But I mean we have a lot to learn from one another and huge blessing flows as we share together. Amen? Amen.
 
Question and Answer time
 
Andre from Sword of the Spirit in Lebanon: We are in the middle of the East and the West, living and co-existing with Muslims. Alongside the ecumenism of the blood there is the ecumenism of the witness. We all can be witnesses to Jesus Christ to all religions, not just to Christians. Amen? Amen. So what I would say is, when we present the Gospel, present it in a spirit coming from an ecumenical approach. I don't preach my Catholic details to someone who doesn't know the Lord at all. And I present him with our divisions as soon as he walks in the door, come let me show you all our divisions? I show him Jesus Christ. Amen? Amen.
 
Rosa spoke in Italian and then broke into charismatic prayer. From Charles' prayer with her it seems she was asking for prayers for the work of unity to be done in Sicily.
 
Man from South American, Mexico maybe. He spoke in Spanish and Norberto responded to him in Spanish.
 
Nancy an evangelical Presbyterian leader from Pittsburgh: For 30 years I have helped lead, 'Pray Pittsburgh', we walk around in the neighbourhood, from the county jail to the abortion clinics and to the schools and we pray. And I find that unity comes in those kinds of prayer activities. So I have one question for you. How many churches are in your communities? How many? The answer is one. And we need to be together, we need to find unity, we are one body of Christ, we serve one Jesus. And so I would say also that I find unity in the opportunities of service to the poor and the vulnerable. People will readily come together for that kind of Christian service. What are your comments? Pope Francis tells us, figure out who else passionately loves Jesus and then journey with them. Do you passionately love Jesus? (Yes).
 
Bob from Alleluia community, an ecumenical covenant community: We've been together for 44 years and it’s a great blessing. I'm the overall co-ordinator. I'm an evangelical, but most of our community is Catholic. How does that work? It works very well as a matter of fact. I want to bring up one thing that I've heard it mentioned, but that's the absolute centrality of John 17:20-23. That we can become one. Now here we have 2 Pentecostals, 2 Roman Catholics and an Anglican whom you all know one another very well and I know each of you personally and have I not adopted you each as a brother? I feel very close to Norberto and Giovanni and each one of you – Charles, I had a wonderful time with you. This is an amazing thing that God will do. He will allow us to experience the unity in diversity that the Father, the Son and the Spirit experience, of complete difference but complete unity. We can adopt each other. I have 5 adopted children; they are not half-way my children, they are all my children. These brothers are not kind-of my brothers, you are really my brothers and if you have a need I will try to meet it. This message you have presented has fit together very, very naturally because it has demonstrated that we really do need each other to finish our witness to the world, and we can adopt each other and recognize that we are already brothers and sisters in Christ. We need to act that way. Amen.
 
Young man, possibly speaking in Spanish or even Portugese. At one point he quoted a line in English, 'There are many people suffering different pains'.
 
Carole Jones, Canada. I was raised Catholic, encountered Jesus and the baptism of the Holy Spirit under the witness of the Pentecostals. So for 35 years I served God in many capacities and walked with Pentecostals of non-denominational background. Then the Lord called me back to the Catholic church and that's when I realised what a huge problem we have in semantics. I came back but I did not understand the Catholic language or traditions anymore and the first Catholic book I read I wrote a 5 page glossary –typed glossary- of terms I did not understand and I would keep going back until I would Google it just to understand what the Catholics were saying. I think that there's a huge need for books, workshops etc to learn about each other's faith. I ended up going to a Catholic university, Steubenville, for 2 years, just to understand Catholic theology because I had so many questions and nobody really at the time to answer them. So have you developed material to help you in crossing this little language barrier, translate from Christian-ese to Latin-ese?
 
Charles: I think this is sometimes a difficulty we sometimes face in both directions. What exactly do we mean by certain things. I'm not aware of any book that translates Catholic into Evangelical, but I think as we work together we will learn that, and as you have done it, you've made a list that you needed to be translated. When I first brought together all the local church leaders in our area to share and talk together and to build relationships before we could do anything together, we had a lot of examples of people not really understanding. I remember our Baptist pastor, when the Catholic parish priest talked about having a special novena to the Holy Spirit, we went a bit pale – the Baptist pastor, and he said, 'I'm terribly sorry Hugo but you have to explain that, what is a novena?' So when he said it is a period of time – we can decide the time – when we pray daily to the Holy Spirit. The Baptist pastor said, 'We can do that, we'd love to do that, but please don't call it that funny thing because no one will know what it is'. So it is a question.
 
Young man: We haven't spoken about art in the ecumenical culture. You know there's basic symbols for the Holy Spirit in the bible, right? The cloud, the dove, the fire on everybody's heads, in our hearts we hope we have it. What is each of your favourite symbol for the Holy Spirit? And because we speak of the new evangelization, can each of you think of a new symbol that we can draw, paint (we have art above us here) that would inspire the modern eye, the modern heart to unity in our ecumenical work?
 
Matteo responded in Italian (not translated on the recording).

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This is a transcription of parts of the jubilee celebration held in Rome on 1 June 2017 with members of covenant communities as part of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal #ccrgoldenjubilee2017
 
This is the link for the video recording: https://youtu.be/HWuIfaAW0pU
 
This celebration brought together three networks of communities, the Catholic Fraternity of Charismatic Covenant Communities and Fellowships, the Sword of the Spirit, and the European Network of Communities. Michelle Moran of ICCRS gave some words of welcome and explanation. Gilberto Barbosa of the Catholic Fraternity gave a speech in Portuguese (not translated audibly into English on the recording).
 
Jean Barbara of Sword of the Spirit:
Good afternoon brothers and sisters. We are here gathered three networks of communities. And if we were asked to describe ourselves we would say that we are communities of disciples on mission, charismatic and ecumenical. But if you read Pope Francis' exhortation Evangelii Gaudium he would say the same of the Church. That the Church is a community of missionary disciples who are charismatic, and the Church is ecumenical.
 
So what is the difference? And the question is – Why did God bring us out of existence from the charismatic renewal? Cardinal Ratzinger in '98 gave us the answer and he said 'We have a place in the Church because it is the same working of the Holy Spirit, giving us a certain charism'. And what makes us communities in the Church playing a role is that as communities we are committed by covenant to each other, brothers and sisters, we are committed in good times and at difficult times. As disciples we are radical in following the Lord, radical in following His commandments, radical even if it costs our own lives. I come from the Middle East where Christians are persecuted and unless you are radical you are not ready to face death.
 
As missionaries we are evangelists, we evangelise in the streets, we evangelise at home, we evangelise our neighbourhood, we evangelise in the work, at work, we bring people by the power of the Holy Spirit to the Lord, but to a new and better life by helping them become disciples in a community, and we do all that charismatically by being open to the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
 
But we are also ecumenical. We live ecumenism, we do not only discuss it, we do not dialogue about it, but we live it, we love each other across churches and we do that in a co-operative and relational manner.
 
In brief, we are committed, radical, evangelists. Unless we live by the power of the Holy Spirit and be ecumenical we will lose the why that God brought us into existence. So may the Holy Spirit renew us, in loving each other, in following Him to the Cross, in renewing our zeal to evangelise people around us, to renew us in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and to make us in our ecumenism a sign that we are the disciples of Jesus Christ. Amen.
 
Johannes Fichtenbauer of the European Network of Communities:
This is for sure. It was the Holy Spirit who called our communities into being. We are not the product of human thought and wish. We are the product, the fruit of God's creativity, meant to be a tool of the Holy Spirit preparing the Church for the second coming of the Lord.
 
The first communities appeared shortly after the enthusiastic beginnings of the charismatic renewal, already in the late '60s. It was an inspiring time, one Catholic, one ecumenical community after each other.
 
But brothers and sisters, then slowly something dramatic happens. Only 10 years after the good beginnings, instead of enjoying the variety of charismatic expression, communities began to look down on parish prayer groups and parish renewal. Instead of mutual appreciation of the diversity of each of our communities, serving in different ways the same Body of Christ, we began to count, to compare, to value and to de-value. Many of our communities developed a certain pride in relating to each other. We valued our own community network higher than others.
 
Catholic communities and ecumenical communities followed contradicting ideologies. We felt as an elite, being stronger, more dedicated, better equipped and more radical. We didn't want to be behind and being hindered by the slower ones. So better to run the race alone. Instead of being allies, we became rivals. Instead of complementary work we ended in a competition. Instead of serving together, we began fighting for our own victories, our own profile, promoting our own visions.
 
And in the early '80s many of our communities were already isolated and our community networks were separated from each other. Brothers and sisters, this separation was a sin: a sin against God, a sin against the intentions of the Holy Spirit, and a sin against each other.
 
With this separation we missed the meaning of our commission. And this is why we have to ask forgiveness today.
 
Father of mercy, here we stand and here today we confess, we did not serve in unity as we should have. We did not understand the formula 'unity in diversity' which you have offered to us as the principle of unity. Father, forgive. Father, forgive. Father of mercy today we recognise our unity and we want to protect it again. We understand that this afternoon is a moment of grace. Today we are uniting in humility again in our diversity. We want to embrace the other communities and networks, in their different style and gifting. Father, we commit ourselves to learn again to trust, to trust each other. We want to serve as allies. We want to serve together the Church and the kingdom with the best we have. And we understand that each of us is only a part, and not the whole. Father of mercy, today, commission us again, for this common purpose. Father of mercy today grant us a new beginning with one another. Amen.
 
Then there was an extended time of praise and worship, followed by slide presentations from each of the three networks. Before Dan Almeter from the Catholic Fraternity gave his presentation, he gave this word:
 
'The anointing is all over me. The Lord says to us. This is a new day for the communities. Because of your repentance and My love for you, I have bound the demons of disunity and you will experience a new springtime working together. Amen.'
 
Introduction: Bruce Yocum will speak on behalf of the three networks, the Catholic Fraternity, the European Network of Communities and the Sword of the Spirit. We decided on him because he is one of the first witnesses of the charismatic renewal and founder of the first covenant community. His book on Prophecy remains a reference book for all charismatics who want to know more. He is a celibate brother with the Servants of the Word.
 
Bruce Yocum: Good afternoon brothers and sisters. This is a great moment. It's a great opportunity for us to take time together to thank God for a remarkable work of His Holy Spirit throughout the world. This is from Psalm 145:
 
'Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise His
works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts.'
 
One generation shall declare Your works to another and declare Your mighty acts. It is a tremendous blessing to be here and to be thankful first of all to 4 successive Popes who have supported and encouraged charismatic renewal.
 
First of all, Pope Paul VI, who in 1975 invited us to come to Rome for a celebration of charismatic renewal and to conclude it with the Mass together in St Peter's. He was a tremendous supporter for us. He gave us the opportunity.
 
Secondly Pope St John Paul II, who was also a great supporter of charismatic renewal. I can testify that St John Paul II supported charismatic renewal while he was still Cardinal of Krakow. He supported and encouraged charismatic renewal when he was bishop there.
 
Thirdly Pope Benedict XVI who in 1998 articulated in a very important way the relationship between what God does through movements like ours and the ongoing life of the Church.
 
And finally, of course, Pope Francis, who invited us here to celebrate this anniversary in Rome and who is going to be with us in person.
 
It's a remarkable sign of God's work in charismatic renewal. I also want to take the opportunity to thank those who worked in the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services (ICCRS) and in particular Michelle Moran the president and the Catholic Fraternity of Charismatic Covenant Communities and Fellowships and its president Gilberto Barbosa because they are the ones who organized and made possible this celebration we are having today.
 
50 years. It is a great time to look back on what God has done. We've been here long enough to have a real history and we are young enough to have a great future. So I want to look back at what God has done, to look around at what God is doing, and then to look ahead at what God is going to do.
 
We have a duty to remember what God has done. We have a duty to look back at God's remarkable works and to remember them. As the Church tells us in the liturgy, 'It is right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give You thanks, Lord Holy Father, Almighty and Eternal God through Christ our Lord.'
 
We get to proclaim that. It is our duty and salvation to proclaim what God has done. Again in the Psalms, 'Give thanks to the Lord, call on His Name, make known His deeds among the peoples', or again, 'Remember the wonderful works that He has done. Remember them and call them to mind'.
 
To proclaim the great acts of God is worship. To call to mind what God has done and to proclaim it is an act of worship, and therefore we can look upon the time we have, these days we have together in Rome as one great act of worship.
 
Where we are from all round the world can give glory and honour to God by recalling what He has done. But there's more than that. We have a duty to proclaim God's deeds to the generations to come. Now I am going to say something in a minute to the younger ones amongst us. In comparison to me almost everybody here is younger. But I want to say something right now to those of you who have greyed a bit. We're not, us older ones, are not going to be the ones who charge out of here and do great new things – at least most of us won't. But we have a role, and one of our greatest roles, is to proclaim to the coming generations what God has done, to let them know.
 
Again from the Psalms:
 
'We will not hide from their children but will tell to the coming generations the glorious deeds of the Lord and His might, and the wonders He has wrought, that the next generation might know them, that the children yet unborn might arise and tell them to their children, so that they should all set their hope on God and not forget His works.'
 
We are witnesses to what God has done. And what's the role and duty of a witness? It's to give testimony. So we older ones, we have a solemn duty to give testimony to what God has done amongst us.
 
And I want to thank Patti Mansfield Gallagher especially for her book, 'As by a new Pentecost', the new edition of it. It's a tremendous witness to what God did at the beginning of the Renewal. Read it, please. If it isn't available in your language, get somebody to translate it. She's been a witness to what God did in the beginning and she witnesses in particular to the extraordinary ecumenical grace that took place at the beginning.
 
At the very beginning of the 20th century, Pope Leo XIII prayed for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. A few hours later, literally a few hours later, some young Pentecostal students in the United States were baptised in the Holy Spirit. Let us in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal not forget that we are debtors to those in the Pentecostal movement.
 
Now I'm not a witness from the very, very beginning. Somebody asked me yesterday how long I had been involved. It's not 50 years. I've been involved for 49 years and 4 months. But I was there early enough, I was there early enough to see how quickly this all began to happen. The first prayer meeting I attended there was maybe 10 people. 3 weeks later, 3 weeks later there were 90. And a little while after that, a couple of months after that, we had 300. It was remarkable how rapidly this all happened.
 
I used to take vacations, holidays, in the mountains, in the Appalachians in the United States and there in springtime you see these mountain rivers racing down, and they're powerful. The speed and power of these rivers is amazing. You can't step into them and stay on your feet, you're swept away. That's what happened to me, and happened to us at the very beginning of the Renewal. We were swept away by what God did.
 
But you know, when that happens you are just caught up in this stream that you stepped into, you can't see anything else, you are fending off rocks as you go racing down, and when you are self-absorbed as the river gets further downstream. At the beginning I was caught up in this racing river of what God was doing with us and I thought that what God was doing with us was what God was doing.
 
When the river gets further down it gets bigger and more powerful, but more peaceful. When that happens you can get your head up and look around. Well we got our heads us and looked around, we realized that we weren't the only stream on the mountainside. There were many, many, many new rivers of God's grace in the Church.
 
I had the great privilege in 2007 of attending a meeting in Stuttgart in Germany of Together for Europe. Over 250 new movements and communities, all of which began within the last 100 years. Extraordinary, what God was doing! So when I looked around, and saw all of this that was taking place I realized what God is doing in the Church is much greater, much broader, than what God is doing with us. We need to look around and view where of the rich diversity of gifts that God is pouring out through His Holy Spirit right now amongst us.
 
We've had a little bit of an opportunity to witness it today, a little bit, as we've heard from representatives of these different networks of communities. But let me tell you there is far more going on, far many more works of renewal in the Church than are even represented here this weekend.
 
So we need to look back at what God's done with us and be thankful for it, we need to give witness to it and pass it on, we need also to look around and recognise what God is doing in the Church. Recognise one another. We need to be not only grateful for what God has done with us, but we need to be respectful, reverent toward what God is doing among others. I'll say something more about that in just a minute.
 
What does the future hold? I don't know. I really don't know very much about what the future holds. I used to think I did. Back at the beginning of the Renewal I thought I could see a little bit of what God was trying to do in and through the Renewal. But I couldn't. I never would have foreseen what we see here today. That at the beginning of the Renewal, one of the things that we commonly said was that the future of the charismatic renewal is to disappear. Why? Because charismatic renewal isn't a movement like other movements in the Church, it is simply a stream of grace that God is pouring out upon people and we should disappear because what God does through charismatic renewal should just become normal in the life of the Church.
 
You know what? It's becoming pretty normal. It's becoming pretty normal. When you have 4 successive Popes who speak about what God is doing in charismatic renewal. When you see seminaries full of young men baptised in the Holy Spirit. When you see many bishops who take for granted the reality and the exercise of the charismatic renewal, something's changing. This grace of the Renewal is becoming a normal part of the life of the Church. We spoke about that in a theoretical way, but I never would have recognised what we see here now. So I don't know.
 
I do know that we are going to experience more hard times and more days of darkness. 1975. I want to take a minute or two to tell you a little story. In 1975 we had that Conference in St Peter's in Rome and on the very last day we had a Mass together for charismatic renewal in St Peter's. And we had a group there, gathered together to be able to give prophetic words and sharings. After Communion when the time came for prophetic words, Ralph Martin came to me and said, 'I have a very strong sense of prophetic anointing'. At that very moment, at that very moment all of the microphones stopped working. All of them. They just stopped. As far as I could tell, the only microphone that worked was the one up on the main altar. So I said to Ralph, 'Well, Ralph, go up there'. I didn't know if I should do that or if I could do that. But I said, 'Ralph, go up there and give the prophecy'. And he did. And as a result of that, when Ralph prophesied it was in a very dramatic setting. And I think God was in that. I think God put him, because right after these prophecies, about darkness and hard times, the microphones came back on. There were other prophetic words but from down below the altar. But these words of darkness and hard times were given from that dramatic setting under the baldacchino near the main altar in St Peter's.
 
So I'm going to read from one of those prophecies that we received. I am sure many of you are familiar with it.
 
'A time of darkness is coming on the world, but a time of glory is coming for My Church. A time of glory is coming for My people. I will pour out anew all the gifts of My Spirit. I will prepare you for spiritual combat and I will prepare you for a time of evangelization the world has never seen.'
 
That's a remarkable word. Now I don't know what form or what forms days of darkness and hard times will take. Ask our brothers and sisters from Aleppo. Unbelievable what they've been through in the last couple of years. But that's not the only part of hard times. We, here in Europe, live in an era of deepening moral darkness. Deepening moral darkness, it's hard times, it's difficult times, but, so we don't know what form that the hard times will take, but we do know that it's a time of glory coming for His Church. Gilberto Barbosa from the community in Lebanon could testify to you the 17 years of war in Lebanon were terrible, but for the community there it was a time of tremendous spiritual fruitfulness. Great spiritual fruitfulness. And we can expect the same if we enter into times that are difficult times of trial, yet God says, in those times I will make you fruitful. So yes we are coming into hard times, perhaps some of us are already experiencing them but we will also see great works of God, very great works of God.
 
We also know that God will continue to pour out His Spirit and I'm going to read out to you a prophetic word that I received years ago but time and time again in gatherings like this I hear the same word from God. So this is from many years ago, but it is a promise of God for us now.
 
'When I poured out My Holy Spirit on you, how did I pour it out? Did I give it to you in small measure? No! I poured it upon you as the beginning of a river which I intend to widen and deepen and to grow in strength, in current and in volume. I am zealous for My people's sake. I am zealous to save them and change them, to restore them. I will pour out My Holy Spirit upon you more and more until this is accomplished.'
 
We have not seen the end of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and I don't think we will see the end of it for quite a while. Count on that. Count on the promise of God that He will pour out His Spirit again and again and more and more.
 
And I want to say something to the younger ones amongst you. There's.. there's…I don't know what the average age is, but there are a fair number of us grey haired ones here. We experienced back in the beginning of this Renewal times of tremendous exhilaration. We can tell you about them, but we can't help you experience that. You have to go out and evangelise. You have to go out and tell others of the gift of God through baptism in the Spirit, of the gifts of God through the power of the Holy Spirit active in your lives, then you will see the same kinds of miracles, you will see the same power of God, you will experience for yourselves not the story of exhilaration in the past but the reality of exhilaration right now in your lives and in your groups. So go out, and be witnesses.
 
Just 3 points.
 
God has poured out His Spirit time and time again in the history of the Church for the work of renewal. Have faith and trust that what God is doing among us is not an isolated time but part of a great work of renewal. Trust in God for that. If you ask why God stood up, I mentioned 250 new movements and communities since the beginning of the 20th century. If you ask, why so many? It's because God wants to transform the Church. He doesn't want to do a small work here and there, He wants to transform the Church. So first of all, trust in the grace of God to continue, and live in it.
 
Secondly, stay clear and faithful to your call. It's been said several times today: we're not all the same. God didn't call us to be the same. It's unity in diversity. We're different from one another and we're different for a reason. Stay faithful to the call God gave you. That's where grace is for you. Don't look to someone else's call. Don't envy somebody else's call. Don't disparage someone else's call. Stay faithful to your call and live it out as well as you can. That's where grace is for you.
 
Finally, live out your call charismatically. We're charismatic renewal. We believe in the power of the Holy Spirit. We believe in the power of the experience of the Holy Spirit coming into people's lives. We believe in the reality of charismatic gifts of miracles, of healing, of prophecy, of revelation. We believe that. So live out your call, but live it out charismatically. Go back to the Lord and confess to the Lord your confidence, your trust, your belief that His Holy Spirit is active today and live it out. Then 50 years from now we'll have much more to thank God for than we do today. Amen.
 
Summary of the prophetic word collected from communities and networks prior to this celebration; delivered by Shayne Bennett.
 
Brothers and sisters of the charismatic communities, listen to the word of the Lord. Look around you, the Lord asks. Do you see what I see? Do you see the brothers and sisters whom I have called from towns and cities and nations. These are your brothers and sisters, and the people whom I have chosen to do a great work of renewal in the life of the Church, in the life of My Church. It is important that you see with My eyes, understand with My mind, and not be blinded by the divisions and fractured relationships of the past. This is a new time, a time of restoration, a time of moving forward in the power of the Spirit. The long winter is giving way to springtime. My Spirit is the Spirit of unity and your power is totally dependent on being united to Me, Jesus your Saviour and Lord. My Heart for you is that you seek a greater unity in worship and in mission. Distance will never separate you if you are united in Me. What will separate you and dissipate the work I have for you are hearts which are closed or hardened towards Me and to one another.
 
Today I would remind you of who you are and the purpose for which I have called you. You are truly My people whom I love. You are also a people I have chosen to reach out to My Church and to reach out to the world that has lost sight of Me. I have called you to be bulwarks, strong, fortified, and to be arks, places of rescue and safety. You cannot do and be these things without an intimate relationship with Me, without the power of My Spirit.
 
For those of you who are weary, weary in the journey, I desire to renew My vision within you. I want My people to dream dreams again. I want My people to experience overwhelming visions of My plans. I want you to be captivated and swept forward by the excitement that I have in renewing the world. I want you to have a new expectancy of victory and favour.
 
This is a time of moving outwards into the world that I love. Some of you have lived too long in the original containers and structures in which you were planted. This has led to fear and tepidity. You struggle to maintain what was previously planted but you must realize that it was only the beginning. There is much more that I desire to give you; more freedom, more capacity, a greater clarity of the mission I prepare for you.
 
Today I ask for a new response from you, a response which is founded in humility. Your character as individuals and communities must be a witness to a profound humility which claims nothing for yourselves. You are My people and I am the One who does great deeds among you and through you. You are not to claim My actions for yourself. You are not to place yourselves above each other or in opposition to the others I have called to fulfil My purpose on the earth. You are to honour and respect one another. You are to honour and respect My actions within each of your communities. You are to take your place and stand shoulder to shoulder with other brothers and sisters in My Church.
 
And yet even as I pour out My Spirit upon you and renew you for the journey ahead, I warn you of great struggle and suffering. The anointing of My Spirit does not rescue you from the struggle and suffering which is to come. My Spirit is poured out upon you so that you can shine My light in the midst of pain and suffering. You are My witnesses. I call you to speak My life into the pain and suffering of the world around you. Be encouraged by the testimony of those who gladly suffer for My Name and who sacrifice their lives for My Name. Where ever I have placed you in towns and cities and nations, I call you to sacrifice your lives for Me and for the Kingdom which I have come to bring upon this earth. I tell you these things today as a call to action. I am shaping and molding you, so that you may stand in the time of testing. I am anchoring you in My Truth. I am anchoring you in a wisdom which is beyond your understanding. I ask for obedience in your hearts and in moving forward.
 
I would speak a word to those who are leaders among you. Know that the evil one seeks your destruction. The evil one seeks to sow the seed of disunity and destroy the work I have planted. Guard your hearts. Guard your hearts against disunity. Work for unity. Seek unity in your own communities and among your communities and today My word of unity extends beyond the walls of your communities.
 
Today I desire that you carry the burden of unity for My whole Church. Allow your hearts to be converted. The grace which I poured out at Pentecost is a grace of unity, a unity which can only be found in Me. Seek unity with your Pentecostal brothers and sisters, seek unity with your Protestant brothers and sisters, seek unity across denominational boundaries. Allow me to give you a deep love for your brothers and sisters which will witness to My presence and action among you.
 
My people I call you to receive the fire of My love, the intensity of My love which comes to you in the power of My Spirit. My love will burn away what remains of the fleshly and wounded motivations, worldly thought patterns and broken histories out of which you still react and operate. My love will give you a fiery passion for the Church and for the world. I want to share with you My desire for all My children. My love will bring a massive increase in anointing and power to the ministries I have given to you, going beyond anything you have seen to this point. Will you drink the cup of My love? Will you drink the fire of My Spirit?
 
Following this summary was a time of pre-prepared intercessions as a response.
 
Loving Father, we thank You for pouring out afresh upon us the power of Your Holy Spirit. We ask You to give us humble and obedient hearts to joyfully receive the power of the Spirit.
 
We pray for the gift of unity. We ask that our hearts would be opened to one another and that we would be one, that we would love one another through the loving gaze of our heavenly Father.
 
Father, we remember our brothers and sisters who are suffering for the name of Jesus Your Son. We pray that You would reassure them of Your love and in their moments of trial that they would know that You are with them and have not abandoned them.
 
We pray for the work of ecumenism, and in a particular way for our Pentecostal brothers and sisters. Father help us to be open to finding new ways to express our unity and love for one another and for a world which is longing for Your love.
 
Father, we pray for ourselves and for our communities that we would remain faithful to You, and to Your call. Help us walk each day close to Jesus Your Son in the strength of Your Holy Spirit.
 
Father, we pray for those who do not know You. May they come to know the saving power of Jesus in the fullness of life which He freely offers.
 
Father, we pray for our leaders, leaders in our communities, leaders in our Church, and for leaders of nations, pour out Your grace upon them giving them wisdom, discernment and a thirst for justice and peace.
 
Father, may Your kingdom come upon earth and may we be witnesses to Your kingdom in our midst.
 
Our Father….
 
This was followed by Mass at St John Lateran, for the memorial of St Justin Martyr, presided over by Cardinal Paul Cordes. He has been a great friend to the Renewal and to the communities. The homily, sadly, was given in Italian and without English translation on the audio recording.
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Below is a printer-friendly, slightly edited version of this transcript which runs to 8 x A4 pages. 

​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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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.
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​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.

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.  
 

Homily by Archbishop Christopher Prowse at Our Lady of Lourdes, Seven Hills, Sunday 19 February 2017.
This Mass was the final event of a weekend-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal #ccrgoldenjubilee2017
 
(As usual, this is only the gist of the Archbishop's homily.
The content of this homily he expressly asked to be distributed far and wide.)
 
The readings for this Mass were from the 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
Leviticus 19: Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. You must not bear hatred for your brother in your heart. You must love your neighbour as yourself.
Psalm102(103): Who heals every one of your ills: with the Response: The Lord is kind and merciful.
1 Corinthians 3: You are God's temple The Spirit of God is living among you. You must learn to be  a fool before you can be truly wise.
Matthew 5: Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you: You must be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.

It has been lovely to have been with you over these days.
God is not interested in our acts but in our deeds. Let us not muck around with God. Be serious with Him. Be hot or be cold, don't be lukewarm, because as you know the lukewarm get spat out.

I want to talk to you about how to have healthy prayer groups and communities.
 
Be holy
In 1965 Vatican II ended and in 1967 the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) began. The CCR prayer groups are at the heart of the Church. Pope Francis says that the apostolate of the prayer groups is to bring the Baptism of the Holy Spirit to every Catholic and beyond. To live out the vocation of the laity you need to start with the sacrament of Baptism. Let us take seriously the sacrament of Baptism. If we get that right everything else falls into place. The reason the modern controversies about the priesthood get it so wrong is that they start thinking from the sacrament of Holy Orders, when they should start their thinking from Baptism. 'God has no grandchildren. He only has children' David du Plessis used to say.

The waters of Baptism have brought us into the very heart of God. It does not need to be earned. We do not have to prove to God that we are worthy to be loved by Him. He doesn't love me for what I have done. The Father loves me because when He sees me He sees His Son. We are to draw people to Jesus by attraction, by talking to others about what Jesus means to me personally. We are the sacrament of Jesus. We are Christ in the world. Baptism is what animates us. Through Baptism into Jesus I am loved as first born in God, and inheritor of all His gifts.

Bring that Good News experientially into people's lives. We are an encounter religion. We say that we can encounter God like Thomas and Mary Magdalene. What about you? Jesus asks these questions of each of us. Who do you say I am in the depth of your being? When we experience Him, and encounter Him, our response is surrender, 'I surrender myself to you'. Mary the mother of Jesus, is The woman of Pentecost, the Yes woman, the first charismatic. Every parish should have at least one of these groups: Life in the Spirit Seminar; 4 Step Retreats run by The Community of the Risen Lord: Alpha: RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults). Say Yes if you are invited to become involved in them. It doesn't matter which one, they are all ways of sharing Jesus with others.
 
Just as Priscilla and Aquila, lay people, saw the potential in Apollos and assisted him to come into full relationship with the Holy Spirit, that is your task too. There are lots of ways of doing this. It is always good for us to pray for our bishops, but we don't have to go to the following lengths: There was a diocese in another country which had lots of prayer groups, but a very resistant bishop. In his curial office he had a bronze bust of himself on display. One of the prayer group leaders was a cleaner, and it was his regular task to clean the bishop's office. On one occasion when the premises were thought to be empty, he smuggled in members of his prayer group. In the bishop's office they prayed for their bishop. They prayed over the chair he usually sat in, asking God to guide his decisions. They prayed over the desk asking God to bless the deliberations that took place there, and knowing their slim chances of ever praying over the bishop directly they placed hands on that bronze bust of his and prayed for him personally. The Vicar General of the diocese came by and asked what on earth was going on. In some fear and trembling the prayer group said they were praying for the bishop. He let them off by saying, 'It is good to know that there has been some prayer in that office, but you had better be off and I don’t recommend you trying this again'.
 
Servant Leadership
You belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. Our starting place is with our wounds and our vulnerabilities. It isn't easy to do because no one wants to talk about weakness, failure and losing. Everyone is in haste to succeed. Someone asked an 80 year old nun, 'When did you decide to become a nun?' and she gave a very wise answer, 'This morning'. Activate your baptism every day, today. Christianity is a today religion. We leave the past to God's mercy, and we leave the future to God's providence, and we trust God today. In this moment you can act in God. Say Yes to God in the present moment, now. If you have messed up – go to confession, do penance and get on with it. Have faith in Him. If you have been to see the tomb of St Mary McKillop you know that on it is written, 'Trust in God'.
 
You need to be a prayer group. Don't be a 'lonely hearts' group or a 'remember when' group. Don't be a gossip group. If there is something causing division among you, deal with it. Change your leaders every so often. Having the same leader for 20 years is not a good thing. Your prayer group will die out if you don't keep yourselves young. Prayer keeps you young. Seven days without prayer makes a person weak. Getting new younger members keeps you young, too. When we share our vulnerabilities we build trust. Regularly taking part in opportunities for leadership formation keeps you young. Having an apostolate for the poor keeps you young.
 
Love
Only love matters. Offer no resistance to the Holy Spirit by getting rid of all competition and jealousy. Fr Raniero Cantalemessa, the preacher to the Pope, reminds us that if all the bibles in the world vanished except one, and that one was burnt except for a barely legible page, and a single readable line, 'God is love', then the entire message of the Gospel would have been preserved. I invite you to think about all those who have been love to us in prayer groups. Be inspired by them and imitate them. How can we activate the laity? How can we grow in servant leadership? Only if we are animated solely by God, Who is love. Lay people of the Church, Awake! Revive!

In the book of Genesis we read how God breathed (ruah) into the nostrils of Adam, and he became a living being. To feel a gentle breeze or to hear a whisper we need to be still and to listen carefully. In John's Gospel we read that when the Risen Lord appeared to his apostles, He breathed on them. Our mission to be salt and light to the world began at Pentecost – the beginning of God's new creation. Without the Holy Spirit we become robotic and greedy. We need the Holy Spirit to breathe on us afresh. Take time regularly to be still and to know that God is here with you.

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At the end of that Mass, the prophetic word that emerged throughout the weekend was shared in summary form:
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•A call for unity among us as children of God. This is the third year in a row for this message: Do not ignore it!
•God is unity and love – there should be no more divisions among you.
•Be united in the one Spirit.
•The Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart were embracing us all.
•You have been given wings to fly, that the Church may be awakened and become vibrant once again.
•The future is not only in adults but in the children.
•The call to holiness is for all of us.