Afternoon Session, presented by Fr. Bob Hogan, S.M. and Obie Nicolini of the Incarnate Word Community in Dayton.
Q: [inaudible]
A (Fr. Bob): It all depends on the person that’s involved and how they’re going to react to it. There’s nothing in the Catholic Church that says we shouldn’t be learning things from other Christian faiths. But we need to be discerning.
Q: When I tell people from other faiths that I’m a Catholic, they say, “You don’t talk like one!” How can I explain it to them if I can’t use the term “spirit-filled”?
A (Fr. Bob): If I get the opportunity in the right way I explain to them why I think that “spirit-filled” is inappropriate. First of all, it’s not Biblical! It’s not Biblical! Do you realize that? There is nothing about a “spirit-filled” Christian anywhere in the Bible! It’s not a Biblical term. It’s a creation of us. The Bible talks about being filled with the Holy Spirit, but it doesn’t talk about that just as an end in itself. We know they received the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, but in Acts 4 the early Church begins to be persecuted and they gather together and pray, “Lord, now we’re under persecution. We have a new thing we’ve got to deal with that’s different than we had before.” They pray and it says, “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and the place shook.” They Holy Spirit continues to be imparted for each new challenge; we need to bring the Holy Spirit into every situation, every part of our lives—our pride, our prayer, our family—it’s an ongoing process.
So that’s why I think you just need to be able to ask, “Have you experienced the Holy Spirit making Jesus personally real for you?” That’s the heart of baptism in the Holy Spirit. Fr. Francis Martin says it like this: the baptism in the Holy Spirit is a grace of revelation by which we come to understand Who Jesus Christ is, that we realize Him truly as Lord and Savior, and we begin to have an experiential knowledge of that inside. This does not mean I’m perfect! But something new is there, so there’s nothing wrong in saying, “it’s a new experience of the Holy Spirit making Jesus more real and alive for me.” But to give it the general term “spirit-filled” causes problems. If I call myself “spirit-filled” then it means there must be others who aren’t “spirit-filled.”
Q: Could we say “born-again”?
A (Fr. Bob): We can’t say it too short—we Catholics are long-winded! A good starting basis for explaining what has happened to us is: 1) “I’ve had an experience of the Holy Spirit being renewed, awakened and made alive in me in a way that made Jesus more personally real”; 2) “I now experience God as someone Who actually is guiding me”; and 3) “I experience God’s power and strength to follow His ways, a strength that I know is more than myself.”
A simplistic example may help: we’re like a glass of milk. When we are baptized in the Holy Spirit, chocolate syrup (Jesus and the Holy Spirit) is poured into us, but it needs to get stirred up. As we exercise faith, hope, and love through prayer and the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit begins to affect more and more of us, just as a spoon stirs the chocolate syrup into more and more of the milk. That is what being open to the Holy Spirit is meant to do.
Q: How do we encourage a person who is new to the gift of prophecy to exercise their gift? What if they are too shy to come up to the microphone in a large meeting; how can their gift be discerned and encouraged?
A (Fr. Bob): In any large gathering you need to have a discerner. You need to have someone to go to. At any big National meeting there are always one or two people on the team who are discerners. A person goes and shares at least the gist of what they’re saying and those people discern if this fits, how it fits, when it should fit. . .
Q: That’s not what I’m asking. Let’s say a person has just gone through a Life in the Spirit Seminar and they feel they have received the gift of prophecy. But they feel too bashful to go up to the microphone. Should they just speak it out from where they are in the prayer group body? Or should they be told to wait until they can come up and share it with everybody?
A (Fr. Bob): It depends on the order of the group. If the order of the group is that we always speak in the microphone, then they all need to speak in the microphone. If the group’s order is that they can speak from their place or from the microphone, then they can do either.
We can encourage people by once in a while bringing together those who feel they have been receiving gifts of prophecy, or who feel the Lord wants them to be open to prophecy. Those who are more experienced with prophecy can teach the less experienced. It even talks in Scripture about prophets discerning prophets, so they can get some teaching and can be open to how the Holy Spirit works.
The complete tape of this teaching and others presented at the Leader’s Day at Incarnation Parish in Centerville on March 23, 1996, is available from the Regional Service Team. Please write: Regional Service Team, 1025 Carson Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45205 or call (513) 471-5483. HOME | GEOCITIES