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| GOODNEWS | Issue 164 March/April 2003 |
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What is the Spirit saying to the Churches? Come Back to the Cenacle!
Call to prayer everywhere being proclaimedEverywhere I turn I seem to hear this same call to prayer being proclaimed - prayer for cities, prayer for nations. Everywhere I look I see writings calling the people of God to intense worship and adoration and intercession. Many new prayer initiatives are being called forth - houses of prayer are springing up, prayer mountains and prayer vigils are being held in response to this prompting of the Holy Spirit. Now is the time and the trumpet is being sounded to the whole people of God. We are being called to awaken from slumber and be empowered anew by the Holy Spirit. We must become once again passionate adorers of the Lord and powerful instruments of intercession for the Church and the world.
As the Pope has expressed, again in Novo Millennio Ineunte, "the men and women of our day - often perhaps unconsciously - ask believers not only to speak of Christ, but in a certain sense to show him to them" and as he further explains this will be ineffective if "we ourselves have not first contemplated his face." In the last century hundreds of millions of people in every part of the Christian body, encountered God in their own cenacle experience and had a personal Pentecost. In the Charismatic Renewal we call this "the baptism of the Holy Spirit" through which the Holy Spirit becomes not just a theological belief but life changing experienced reality. Through this great grace, the gifts of the Spirit were also poured out with great force equipping God's people for mission and service. I believe God is calling his people to return anew to the Cenacle, not in nostalgia, not looking back to those beginning experiences, but with a new maturity and with a servant's heart. The usual scope of our prayer for most of us has often been our own small world - our family, our friends, our group or our community, but I feel the Lord is asking for a renewed fervour in prayer for the needs of our Church and the world, which is undergoing great travail. This will equip us for the next phase of the Lord's plan, which must involve us going out in love and service. As the Pope reminds us "contemplation which does not give birth to mission will eventually wither, and mission that does not spring from contemplation is doomed to frustration and failure." Field needs to be prepared for ploughing by prayer Why I asked the Lord, does the call seem so intense and key in this season? Hasn't prayer always been needed? Isn't evangelising supposed to be the Renewal's main focus? Isn't there a danger that too much prayer can be escapist? Then one day in prayer I received a vision of a field that had been harvested. As I meditated on this image, I remembered that the time needed for a harvest varies according to the crop, and once the crop has been brought in, the field must be prepared again by ploughing it, in order for the new seed to be sown. So maybe this flurry of prayer initiatives that I was seeing was simply the preparation of the field for the next great harvest - the "new Springtime" that the Pope talks about. A friend of mine further explained, that in farming there comes a time after various seasons of planting and harvesting, when a special kind of plough is needed because the earth has become so hard that water is not even able to penetrate to the needed depths to bring forth a good harvest. Thus a special blade has to be attached to it, a longer one, that will cut deeper into the ground to turn the earth over. Is this renewed call to prayer to turn over the ground so that we will be more open to the life giving water of the Holy Spirit when it comes? Blessed Elena Guerra, a nun who lived in the 19th century, received profound insights about the role of the Holy Spirit in the Church. She was a great influence on the then Pope, Leo XIII. In her many writings to the Pontiff, she exhorted him to invite the faithful to rediscover life lived according to the Holy Spirit. She called and prayed for a renewal of the Church, the reunion of Christianity, a renewal of society and thereby a renewal of the face of the earth. We need a perpetual Pentecost
I feel that the Lord is again at this time calling for the renewed fervency of this novena, to pray for the world in this hour of crisis, and this is something that those in the Charismatic Renewal, with their experience and tradition of prayer, are particularly suited to spearhead, for the good of the Church. Also our experience allows us to enter into the upper room during this time with an uninterrupted chain of unceasing day and night prayer. Put out into the deep of prayer in order to put out into the deep of mission (John Paul II) In his letter to the Catholic Fraternity of Charismatic Covenant Communities and Fellowships in June 2001, the Pope writes. "I pray most fervently that your communities and the entire Charismatic Renewal will "put out into the deep of prayer in order to put out into the deep of mission. Then you will help the whole church still more to live that life of action and contemplation which is the womb of evangelisation." For further details of the Burning Bush project or a copy of her book "Burning Bush, A return to the Cenacle in Intercession and Adoration" Kim Catherine Marie Kollins
Pope John Paul II
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The cover of this issue features a painting
by Yvonne Bell, a full time Christian artist and vestment maker. She
creates stoles, chasuble, copes, altar cloths and banners and uses a
variety of medium, painting on silk, wood and canvas. She also gives
talks and runs workshops. She is perhaps best known for the striking
banners she creates every year for the Celebrate conference in Ilfracombe.
Prints of her work are available from her and she can also be commissioned
to create original work. For further details visit
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In this issue Articles Come Back to the Cenacle Keeping Sunday Special Marxist Discovers Jesus Holy Spirit Tales Divine Mercy St Faustina Unsung Heroines The Ways of the Lord The Eucharist & Christian Life Fr Raniero Cantalamessa Catholic Bible Studies Mysteries of Light - The Baptism of Jesus
Healing Flower for Jesus Sandymount
Regulars The Other Half
GOODNEWS is the magazine from the Catholic Charismatic Renewal serving the Church. It is published on behalf of the National Service Committees for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in England and Ireland. The NSCs of England and Ireland do not necessarily endorse all the views expressed therein. Managing Editor: Charles Whitehead Editor:
Kristina Cooper Marketing/Subscriptions: Lucia Ossa Goodnews Editorial
Team: John Edwards, Anna Querci della Rovere,
Shaun Growney, Fr Pat Collins CM, Fr Chris Thomas, Eileen
O'Kane The composition of the National Service Committees and details of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland can be found here. Contact details for GOODNEWS are given here. Subscribe to the printed GOODNEWS magazine here. CREW TRUST |
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With
so much bad news - famines and wars and rumours of wars all around
us, what is the Holy Spirit saying to us at this time? What should
our priorities be? From my own experience and looking at what I see
happening, it would seem that in the midst of all our problems, the
Lord is calling for a renewed fervency in prayer. In a sense this
is nothing new and the Church must continually come back to the Cenacle,
the Upper room, to be enlightened again and become a burning bush,
as it was on the day of Pentecost. For Pentecost is not a one off
event. The Church needs a permanent Pentecost. This is the message
of Pope John Paul II too in his Apostolic letter, Novo Millenio Inuente.
"It Is important that what we propose with the a help of God,
should be profoundly rooted in contemplation and prayer. Ours is a
time of continual movement, which often leads to restlessness, with
the risk of "doing for the sake of doing." We must resist
this temptation by trying "to be" before trying "to
do."
She
wrote, "Pentecost is not over. In fact it is continually going
on in every time and in every place, because the Holy Spirit desires
to give himself to all men and all who want him can always receive him,
so we do not have to envy the apostles and the first believers; we only
have to dispose ourselves like them to receive him well, and He will
come to us as he did to them." She wrote again, "Oh if only…
unanimous and fervent prayers could be raised to Heaven in every part
of Christendom, as they were in the Cenacle of Jerusalem for a rekindling
of the Divine Spirit." In response to her prompting Pope Leo called
for the institution of a special novena between the feast of the Ascension
and Pentecost with the intention of the reunion of all Christians. 
