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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prayer for a Good Confession
6 per A4 page

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Write Non Fiction In November : #WNFIN Day 9

This one's from the heart, and it probably will read like a lamentation. Thankfully there are such precedents in the Old Testament, and thankfully some of the psalms allow us to express our frustrations.

As you may have guessed today was another day of not seeing action from God on the horizon. Some days I cope with that better than others. Today isn't one of those days. Today being the feast day of the Church universal (a.k.a. Anniversary of the dedication of the Lateran basilica) was a day for renewed hope that something new and wonderful would start for the little corner of the Church where I live and further afield.

Nada.

The liturgy this morning, which should have been full of solemnity and prayer for the welfare of the whole church, and thanksgiving for her existence, was a disaster. A green chasuble was only narrowly avoided, two altar candles rather than the requisite 4 (despite a reminder to that effect yesterday) and we only had one reading prior to the Gospel rather than the 'in the rubrics' two. There's a special logic to this feast day being an octave distant from All Souls. 1 Nov we celebrate All Saints as in all the residents of heaven, 2 Nov we celebrate All Souls as in we pray for all the residents of purgatory, and 9 Nov we pray for the Church universal, which includes all the baptised (water, blood and desire), whether they are this side of eternity or the other side.

It wasn't a good start.

And nothing has changed that I am aware of. The telephone is silent. The emails are absent of opportunities, ditto for the social media feeds.

Where is this great and wonderful move of the Spirit of God that we have been promised?

It didn't help that we used Acts 5: 12-21 for lectio divina today. It tells the story of how the apostles and early disciples disrupted the regular temple worship so much that they got arrested and put in prison, and how an angel let them out and told them to keep preaching.

They really did cause a 'holy riot' by gathering in the portico of Solomon in the Temple and praising God loudly (read 'noisily' and 'with lots of shouting') and by drawing to Jerusalem all who were sick because news was getting out that everyone was getting healed, even if only the shadow of St Peter fell upon them. If there was order in this messy chaos, only the Holy Spirit who caused it could see it.

What it most certainly wasn't, was boring!

Yet how would we react if a group marched down the main street of our town shouting and singing God's praises, and healing people's sickness as they passed? How would we react if they came into our Church buildings to join their worship of God to ours? Would we applaud and join them, or would we huddle in a corner and pray fervently that they'd push off to another location as soon as possible?

If it has been the Holy Spirit's modus operandi in the past, are we ready for Him to do it again but on a much larger world-wide scale?

A lot of singing, shouting and healing goes on in Pentecostal and Charismatic circles, but usually within church buildings and at conferences, and definitely behind closed doors. But what if a line I read today is true, 'God's charisms weren't just given to be used in meetings, but every day of the week'. What if God wanted what is going on inside those church walls to start happening spontaneously outside those church walls, and not in some secluded place but in places of high pedestrian traffic? Could we see this as the Holy Spirit's work, or would we be calling the police to lock up the weirdos?

Since we're on a roll with scary thoughts, how about this one...What if God wanted you to be a ring leader for such a team of wonder workers?

The chief characteristic of this Acts 5 group was that it was one in heart. It was united in love and in full sync with the Holy Spirit. If we long to see these things in our day, it means that unity has to be a priority and not the 17th thing on a priestly or pastoral agenda after church maintenance, squabbles in the music ministry, seeking more catechists, fixing the printer, what to do about the youth group and visiting the sick etc.

So here I sit, at zero, feeling just how far away we are from those Acts 5 heroes. In the natural I see no way of changing this. But God is God, and He can do the impossible, and more than the impossible. We are talking Pentecost 33AD levels of transformation here.

Such mighty moves of grace don't happen without the preparation of prayer.
​
Would you commit yourself to praying each day for such a movement of grace?
Would you pray with others, regularly, for the same intention?
Please do.

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

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