Baptism Holy Spirit and a new Pentecost
ICCRS Colloquium, March 17-20, 2011

adapted for our community study.

Rediscovering the Need for God.
Ralph Martin

The Church needs to turn more ardently to God himself.  "Whether it be heart-felt repentance or Pope Benedict's recurring calls for a new Pentecost, the challenges of the time are causing us to be aware of our great need for God."
 
How his presence and active role can be better understood and experienced.

The purpose of the Charismatic Renewal, Martin said, is not to get people to "join it", but to be a witness in the Church to what belongs to the Church: the Holy Spirit and his gifts.

Many people who have been baptized and confirmed don't experience the reality of God, his love, his presence, his action in their lives. The biblical meaning of "Baptism in the Spirit" is rooted in the sacraments of Christian initiation. We are now facing a challenge in the Church of helping many who are already baptized and confirmed to activate the graces of the sacraments.

In order to understand what a "new Pentecost" might involve, we need to have a clear understanding of the first Pentecost, and the fulfillment of Jesus' promise to "baptize in the Holy Spirit", that occurred for the first time- but not for the last time- that day.  It is hard to desire what we don't know as beautiful, in some way; it is hard to pray for what we don't understand is essential.

Other Speakers

Where will the power come from?
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa

What will give the Church the impetus to carry out the new evangelization called for by recent popes? What will enkindle in Catholics a burning zeal to proclaim the good news of Christ to the ends of the earth? Nothing other than a new Pentecost -a renewed experience of the baptism in the Spirit promised by Jesus in Acts 1:5 and fulfilled on the day of Pentecost.

At Pentecost the disciples were all filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4), which means they were filled with the love of God. They had an overwhelming experience of being loved by God. That alone, he said, explains the unexpected and radical change that took place in them. Pentecost is the moment when the heart of stone is shattered to bits and its place is taken by the heart of flesh and this "heart-transplant" didn't take place under total anesthesia!

This interpretation of Pentecost is confirmed in the uncountable number of people today who describe the moment of their baptism in the Spirit as feeling "a torrent of love" coming down upon them. The first effect of the Spirit's coming is the irresistible urge to proclaim Christ and the existential re-discovery of that elementary teaching in the Bible, that Jesus Christ is Lord!

In contrast to many other charismatic and prophetic groups in Church history, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal has had a strong ecclesial bent. It aligned itself with previous renewal movements through the capacity it brought for a change of life, but differed from them in its fidelity to the institutional Church. Credit for this belongs not to the Charismatic Renewal alone but also to the hierarchy, and particularly to the courage of popes Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Fr. Denis Biju-Duval
Professor at the Pontifical Lateran University

On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit took the initiative to manifest his presence with an interior dynamism that prompted those who received him to glorify God, speak in tongues and announce the good news.

If confirmation is truly the sacrament of Pentecost for the Christian in the Church, how can it not produce the effects found at the beginning?  Part of the reason is that the secularized atmosphere of western culture does not favor the integration of faith into a person's life. For spiritual growth to take place, it is necessary that the graces of baptism and confirmation unfold at the level of experience.

Part of the mission of the Charismatic Renewal is to help bring about a greater appreciation of the experiential dimension of Christian life, especially in preparation for the sacraments of initiation.

Baptism in the Spirit and the Church Fathers

Bishop Michel Santier of Créteil, France

For Justin Martyr, Origen and Cyril of Jerusalem, baptism in the Spirit was synonymous with Christian initiation. Many of the Fathers regarded the reception of charisms as integral to the sacraments of initiation. St. Cyril urged baptismal candidates, "Let each one prepare himself to receive the divine gift (that is, prophecy)", and St. Hilary of Poitiers wrote, "We who have been reborn through the sacrament of baptism experience intense joy when we feel within us the first stirrings of the Holy Spirit. We begin to have insight into the mysteries of faith; we are able to prophesy and speak with wisdom."

The ancient Syriac church, like the Church today, practiced infant baptism and faced the need for a way to "activate" the grace of initiation in adult life. The eighth-century Syriac mystic Joseph Hazzaya spoke of a "sign by which you will sense that the Spirit received at baptism is at work in you", and mentioned effects familiar to charismatics today: "a flow of spiritual words" and "a knowledge of two worlds, with joy, jubilation, exultation, glorification, praise, song, hymns and odes."

Hope for the Downtrodden

Beatriz Spier Vargas
Leader of the Charismatic Renewal in Brazil

The vicar general of her diocese once remarked to her about a poor, crime-infested neighborhood controlled by drug dealers, "The local authorities, the police and even the Church, we all have tried our best to change that reality, but we have failed. I think the only hope for that place is the Charismatic Renewal." Spier said she took his words as a challenge and opened a prayer group in that community. Later, a resident who began to attend the prayer meetings shared that she used to think of herself as poor, miserable, and hopeless, "but ever since she had started to come to the prayer meetings, she would look around and see beauty and see the love of the Lord at work in herself and in the lives of her neighbors, and she now felt rich and dignified."

A man in the same neighborhood who was a drug dealer and criminal. At the prayer meetings he had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ and was baptized in the Holy Spirit. He said to us: "Every time I come to these prayer meetings I take one more step towards the Lord and away from crime and drugs". The man decided to turn himself in to the police because he wanted to pay for his crimes, and is now in prison evangelizing his fellow inmates.

Antidote to the Culture of Narcissism

John Duiker
enewal leader in Melbourne, Australia

Contemporary western culture (is) a culture of narcissism, which is the antithesis of a living reality of Pentecost. Such a culture places a huge emphasis on material wealth, physical appearance, the worship of celebrities, fame at any cost, and extreme individualism. It results in shallow and short-term relationships, leaving people beset with isolation, loneliness and an inner emptiness and despair.

Through baptism in the Spirit, the abandonment to Divine Providence, to the will of God, yielding to the Spirit has a significant part to play in countering these destructive trends.

Baptism in the Spirit, through its rediscovery of the beauty of prayer, the release of the charisms and our dependence on our providential God, has given parents the opportunity to lay hands and pray with their children. There have been many times where I have prayed with my children when they have been sick with high fevers, rebuking the fever, and seeing their sickness leave them immediately. Praise God.

Differences in terminology

Different terminology is used among different groups in the Renewal. Most of those in the French and Italian-speaking world prefer the term "effusion" or "outpouring" of the Spirit. Those in the English-speaking and Latin American Renewal usually prefer the term "baptism in the Spirit". Other terms such as "renewal in the Spirit" and "release of the Spirit" are also used. All agreed, however, that these terms refer to the same reality: an experience of the love of God the Father poured into a person's heart, leading to a transformed life in the lordship of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, and bringing alive the graces of sacramental baptism and confirmation.