Breathing Problems
"But how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe unless they have heard of Him? And how can they hear unless there is someone to preach? (Ro 10:14)
One sunny October morning many years ago, I was driving to work in my Volkswagen bug. It was a few months after asking Jesus to be my personal Lord and Savior and praying for the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. I was thanking God for the new found peace I was experiencing in my life since making that prayer, when an astonishing event took place in my car. I wasn’t looking for it, but all of a sudden my car filled up with the presence of God. I was experiencing this tremendous love of my heavenly Father for me, being poured all over me. It was like football coaches being doused in Gatorade in victory celebrations, except this was the love of God flowing all over me! In an instant I knew that God was very real and very personal and He loved me!
Why did this happen to me some 40+ years after being baptized as an infant; after years of instruction in Catholic grammar school, Catholic High School and Catholic College; after years as a practicing Catholic, some of it as a daily communicant? Why now? Why not years ago? How did I miss such a tremendous blessing, an encounter with Jesus Himself and the power of the Holy Spirit? What triggered it now, so relatively late in life?
The answer is, it was a response to hearing the gospel preached in the power of the Holy Spirit at a Life in the Spirit Seminar. This caused expectant faith to rise in my heart and allowed me to believe that an intimate encounter with Jesus could happen to me. A personal decision to make Jesus Lord of all my life was the triggering agent. Many years later I am still experiencing my Father’s love for me, not always in that dramatic a fashion, but every bit as real to me. I am no longer empty and searching for meaning for my life, I am fulfilled in Jesus! I’ll never stop thanking Jesus for filing my life with His presence and power.
Fr. Ranerio Cantalamessa is the preacher to the Papal Household. He preached an Advent Meditation in December, 2005 to the Pope and his household entitled "Faith in Christ Today and at the Beginning of the Church". You can find the full text at: www.cantalamessa.org/en/2005Avvento1.htm
Fr. Cantalamessa in the meditation makes the point that at the beginning of the Church the proclamation of the Kingdom contained two parts, the preaching or gospel (kerygma) and the teaching or ethical norms (didache). Cantalamessa says that "faith as such flowers only in the presence of the kerygma and what is preached is the Kingdom of God has come, Jesus is Lord! It (preaching of the gospel) alone can bring one to salvation. To come to faith is the sudden and astonished opening of the eyes to this light. "
Fr. Cantalamessa goes on to say that the general situation in the Church today is "low awareness of the importance of the initial choice by which one becomes a Christian, since Baptism is normally administered to children, who do not have the capacity to make it their own choice. What is most accentuated is not so much the initial moment, the miracle of coming to faith, but rather the fullness and orthodoxy of the content of faith itself."
The Catholic Church today has a collapsed lung. We have breathing problems. The lung of teaching is operative but the preaching lung has lost its air, it is empty. We assume today that everyone is converted since they were baptized as an infant. It’s all maintenance now. Therefore most sermons today are of the teaching nature only. We are breathing with only one lung.
Preaching of the need to make Jesus MY Savior and MY Lord is non-existent today. We are never taught that it requires a decision to be able to say Jesus is MY Lord. A decision as to what I am going to do with all of my life. If Jesus is not Lord of my life He is not my Savior either. It’s a package deal! It’s not about just coming to Church on Sunday. It’s a decision to recognize that Jesus has full authority over me. I hand the reins of my life over to Him. I decide that I don’t want to live anymore for myself but to live for Him.
Are we Christians today driving the car of our life, with Jesus in the back seat presumably? Jesus is in our lives we believe, but He’s not our life! No need to be a fanatic for Jesus we say. We are running our lives thank you very much Jesus. Well, I don’t think Jesus rides in the back seat for anybody. Salvation means to give Jesus the keys to the car, hop in the trunk, slam it shut and tell Jesus to fill the car up with anything He wants and go wherever He wants. Anything short of that makes me a baptized pagan, no matter how often I go to Church.
There is a great need in the CatholicChurch for a bold, challenging proclamation of the need to make a decision as an adult for Jesus as Lord of all your life. We need a vehicle like the Life in the Spirit seminar or something similar to lay all this out for adults and allow them the opportunity to decide for Jesus as Lord of their lives.
If we don’t resurrect dynamic preaching of Jesus as Lord, we will continue to hemorrhage Catholics to other Christian Churches, while we remain the Church of One Lung. Fr. Cantalamessa says: "Many Catholics leave the Catholic Church for other Christian realities; they are attracted by a simple and effective announcement that puts them in direct contact with Christ and makes them experience the power of his spirit." Remember He said that face to face with the Pope! And he still has his job!
Forty years ago at Duquesne University, the Holy Spirit ignited the flame of a new Pentecost within a small group of faculty and students which resulted in the "baptism in the Holy Spirit" and the beginning of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. The flame leaped and spread across theUnited States, and around the world. Today, the lives of over 100 million Catholics have been touched by the power and love of the Holy Spirit.
However here in the United States, the fire is just about out and the Charismatic Renewal is history. The Church and its pastors never really made a place in the Church for what the Holy Spirit was doing. The renewal was looked at as a kind of a weird, emotional spirituality. People like that were allowed to meet in the Church basement or the school etc.
The only problem was it was a not a movement of man, but a movement of the Holy Spirit to renew the Church! When the Holy Spirit is not welcomed, He leaves. Today we have millions of Catholics who sit in pews, along with many pastors and priests, who have never had a personal encounter with the blazing love of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. Not only that, there is no vision preached for that kind of life, a life of miracles in Jesus.
What are we to do? Is there any hope to rekindle that fire in our Church? Yes, of course there’s hope. Jesus said: "I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing" (Lk 12:49). Jesus will set the fire, but first there must be a sacrifice laid on the altar before God. Fire needs something to consume. We h ave grieved the Holy Spirit and the first thing we all must offer is a sacrifice of heartfelt repentance. We all must accept responsibility and corporately repent and beg God to let the fire fall again.
Then we need a place in the heart of the Church for the "Baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire" (Mt 3:11). It must have a built-in place in our sacramental life so that all Catholics are given an opportunity to routinely experience it. If that happens we will have a new Pentecost! If it doesn’t, many Catholics will continue to leave the Church for other Christian realities as we continue to breathe with one lung.
Let us pray:
Lord, let the fire fall again! We repent of grieving your Holy Spirit by not throwing the doors to our hearts wide open to you. Lord make us breathe again with both lungs. Restore to us anointed, powerful preaching of the gospel. Reign over us with your love! Cause us to experience and enter into a deep personal relationship with you. Give us life in the power of your Holy Spirit to do what Jesus commanded: "proclaim the kingdom of Godis at hand, heal the sick, raise the dead, cure the leper and cast out demons". In Jesus name we pray, Amen.
**** Jesus is Lord ****
