A Miracle in Brooklyn!
It is a hot, steamy, July night in the Brooklyn Correctional Facility (BCF) in Brooklyn, New York. It is Thursday night in BCF and that means it is time for Catholic services. We are a group of laymen who come to BCF every Thursday night to run a prayer meeting for any inmates who come to the services. There are approximately 1500 inmates packed into BCF waiting for trial for every offense from illegal aliens to murder one. Life in BCF is not nice! The inmates are packed 75 to a 100 at a time into dormitories, where anything goes. Fights are routine, and you could lose your life for your sneakers or a place in line.
This night we are meeting in a small mess hall where cockroaches could be seen running along the walls even in the bright light. Our "podium" is four plastic milk carton holders turned upside down and stacked one upon the other. They are so sticky from spilled "bug juice", that I don’t like to touch them or lay my Bible on them. About 30 inmates show up for the meeting which is about average. They are a typical group, young, most of them in their twenties, and practically all of them in for some drug-related event. We begin the prayer meeting as we always do by binding satan and all his demons in the name of Jesus and casting them out of our presence. We lead the inmates in very simple songs like "This is the day" and "Praise the name of Jesus" and we lift our voices in loud praises to God. After a time of praise, a short Scriptural teaching or sharing will be given. At first, like every Thursday night, the inmates look on in disbelief. However, by the time the meeting is over in about an hour, they will be joining right in, a sure sign of God’s grace!
It is immediately obvious that something is bothering one of the inmates in the back of the room. He is moaning and wailing and is in a very agitated state. I decide to go back and see what I can do to help him. He is a young, skinny Colombian and he is speaking half English and half something else. After talking to him, I learn that he is extremely disturbed about being locked up and had tried to commit suicide a few days earlier by hanging himself with his belt. Nothing I say to him seems to help him at all; in fact, he isn’t even listening. He just keeps moaning, mostly incoherently. I call over a couple of my brothers and we take authority over that suicidal spirit in the name of Jesus and command it to leave this inmate now! We ask the Holy Spirit to come to the aid of this brother of ours and fill him with the love of Jesus. The whole episode takes about 30 seconds. The inmate calms down immediately and begins to listen to us. By the time the prayer meeting is over, you wouldn’t recognize this man as the same person who walked in. He is relaxed, peaceful, and asking for a Bible on the way out! Over the next few weeks that we saw this man, it was obvious that God was at work. He asked Jesus into his life and to baptize him in His Holy Spirit. The last time we saw him he was telling other inmates about Jesus and witnessing to the power of God in his life! He had received his miracle!
Jesus said: "I solemnly assure you no one can enter into God’s kingdom without being begotten of water and Spirit. Flesh begets flesh, Spirit begets spirit. Do not be surprised that I tell you, you must all be begotten from above." (John 3:5-7)
Jesus is saying we need a miracle to enter the kingdom of God. We cannot enter the kingdom of God on our own efforts. If we could, Jesus’ crucifixion and death on the cross was a tremendous waste of time. We can fall into a rut and live our lives as if it was true that God only helps those who help themselves and everything really depends on me and my efforts. But Christianity is more than keeping a set of rules in our own strength. It is more than a series of do’s and don’ts. Christianity is primarily miracles. Personal miracles. The first miracle is our new birth. As Catholics we believe that our new birth had it’s inception in the waters of the sacrament of Baptism. We believe that God at that point began the process of saving us from our sins. We believe that Baptism was the gateway to a life in the power of the Holy Spirit, a life lived on high with Christ Jesus. (cf Ph 3:14)
The Bible teaches that life on high with Christ Jesus should be an exciting, joyful experience of God’s personal love for us that carries us forth to love others. St Paul says "the love of Christ impels me." We are not meant to lead a dull, lifeless, intellectual routine of trying to be a good person.
The Bible says: "May Christ dwell in your heart through faith and may charity be the root and foundation of your life Thus you will be able to grasp fully with all the holy ones the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love and experience this love which surpasses all knowledge so that you may attain to the fullness of God himself" (Eph 3:17-19)
Christianity is primarily a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. It is a Damascus-road experience like the one St. Paul had. It is a personal Pentecost like the Apostles had in the Upper Room. Everybody’s experience may be different, but experience the love of Christ we must, or we will end up in a dry, brittle, intellectual head-trip. We will succumb to will power Christianity, the ultimate oxymoron and try to work our way up to God. That will eventually crush us under the load, and we will give up the fight in some significant way.
The Bible says: "The Spirit himself gives witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (Ro 8:16). "I am a new creation in Christ Jesus, old things have passed away, behold all things are made new" (2 Cor 5:17). "The law of God has been written upon my heart, no longer do I need anyone to tell me how to know the Lord.all from least to greatest, shall know me, says the Lord" (Jer 31:33-34).
The person who has experienced the love of Jesus for himself can say without a shadow of a doubt, that Jesus exists and He exists for me! No one needs to tell them that God is real... they know - that they know - that they know, that Jesus is their Lord! If all this is true, one might ask why is so much of Christian experience today dull and lifeless? Why do we have such a crisis of faith and such a lack of vocations? Why do so many of our children reject church as dull and boring? Why is there so little power in our preaching from the altar? What happened to us? What is the answer to our current situation?
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa is the preacher to the papal household for Pope John Paul II. He writes in an article entitled "The Baptism in the Holy Spirit", that what God is doing in these days is renewing and making real Christian initiation through the Baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Fr. Cantalamessa: "At the beginning of the Church, Baptism was such a powerful event and so rich in grace that there was no need normally of a new effusion of the Spirit like we have today. Baptism was ministered to adults who converted from paganism and who properly instructed, were in the position to make, on the occasion of Baptism, an act of faith and a free and mature choice. It is sufficient to read the mistagogic catechesis on Baptism attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem to become aware of the depth of faith to which those waiting for Baptism were led. In substance they arrived at Baptism through a true and real conversion, and thus for them baptism was a real washing, a personal renewal, and a rebirth in the Holy Spirit.
The favorable circumstances that allowed baptism, at the origins of the Church, to operate with so much power was that the grace of God and man’s response met at the same time and there was a perfect synchronization. But now this synchronization has been broken, as we are baptized as infants, and little by little this aspect of the free and personal act of faith no longer happens. It was substituted instead by a decision by intermediary parents or godparents. When a child grew up in a totally Christian environment this faith could flourish, even though at a slower rate. Now however, this is no longer the case and our spiritual environment is even worse than the one at the time of the Middle Ages. Not that there is no normal Christian life, but this is now the exception rather than the rule.
In this situation, rarely, or never does the baptized person ever reach the stage of proclaiming in the Holy Spirit, "Jesus is Lord. " And until one reaches this point, everything else in the Christian life remains out of focus and immature. Miracles no longer happen, and we experience what Jesus did in Nazareth: "Jesus could not perform many miracles because of their lack of faith. " (Matthew 13: 58)
Here, then, is what I feel is the significance of the Baptism in the Spirit. It is God’s answer to this malfunctioning that has grown up in the Christian life in the Sacrament of Baptism. Its effectiveness in reactivating Baptism consists in this: finally man contributes his part - namely he makes a choice of faith, prepared in repentance that allows the work of God to set itself free and to emanate all its strength. It is as if the plug is pulled and the light is switched on. The gift of God is finally "untied" and the Spirit is allowed to flow like a fragrance in the Christian life."
Are we ready for our gift of God, our miracle? Are we ready for our own Damascus-road experience? Do we want to experience the love of Jesus personally and live in the power of the Holy Spirit as the Apostles did? Do we want to receive the Baptism in the Holy Spirit as millions of other Catholics have? If so, what must we do?
The Bible says: "While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul passed through the interior of the country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples to whom he put the question, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?" They answered: "We have not so much as heard that there is a Holy Spirit. " Well, how were you baptized? he persisted. They replied, "With the baptism of John." Paul then explained, "John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He used to tell the people about the one who would come after him in whom they were to believe - that is, Jesus. " When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. As Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came down on them and they began to speak in tongues and to utter prophecies." (Acts 19:1-6)
We need to repent of will-power Christianity, our lack of faith in Jesus, any known areas of sin, and any involvement in the occult (horoscopes, Ouija boards, fortune telling, tarot cards, palm reading, etc). We must forgive everybody who has hurt us in any way, and ask Jesus to forgive our sins. We place our lives in His hands and ask Him to save us. We make that leap of faith into the hands of God. We confess with our mouths that He is our Lord and Savior and ask Him to baptize us in His Holy Spirit. We must put our faith and belief in the truth of God’s Word to release that explosive grace of Baptism that lies dormant within us. The Sacraments are not magical rituals that act mechanically without any response required on our part. We must synchronize our faith with God’s omnipotence to renew and release more of the latent Baptismal graces in us.
Since God is in the family-making business, and He makes us brothers and sisters of Himself, it is helpful to make this declaration of faith verbally in the presence of other Christians. Jesus is the Baptizer in the Holy Spirit. We come to Him and ask Him to baptize us in His Holy Spirit. Our brothers and sisters can join us in this prayer, while laying their hands on us and praying for us.
Jesus said: "Here I stand, knocking at the door. If anyone hears me calling and opens the door, I will enter his house and have supper with him, and he with me." (Rev. 3:20)
Jesus’ last words on the cross were"it is finished." He has provided everything that we need for a victorious life, even while picking up our own cross and following Him. Our miracle is waiting for us to claim. Are you ready for your miracle? Cry out from the depths of your being: COME LORD JESUS!
***** JESUS IS LORD *****
