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Fanning the Flame
Sr Maria Natella OP tells the story of Fanning the Flame, a ministry to children which introduces them in a natural way to the gifts of the Holy Spirit in a Catholic context
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I didn’t quite understand what this meant, but in the mission preparation we asked people to prepare some banners to illustrate the theme “Fanning the Flame”. I had told nobody apart from my spiritual director and my superior about the pictures, but 12 out of 15 of the banners that were submitted all depicted a child flying a kite. This was a huge confirmation about what I was trying to do. After the mission, which was a great success, we arranged as a follow up a Fanning the Flame summer camp for children and young people. The purpose of the camp was to give the young people some solid Catholic teaching about the traditions of the Church and the sacraments in an atmosphere of fun and fellowship. We had no intention in talking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit but only to teach them about their Catholic faith so they could hold their own in discussions when questions came up. About 38 young people came aged 10-18 years old. The first night of the camp the team had arranged a time of prayer accompanied by a slide show with stills from the film Jesus of Nazareth. The last slide was left on the wall which was of Mary kneeling down with her hands open and resting on knees at the moment of the Annunciation. At the end I told the young people that they could either go to bed, go to the chapel or play some quiet games, or they could stay where they were and I would ask God’s blessing on them for a quiet night and a good sleep. “ Children resting in the Spirit” They all elected to stay and so I invited them to assume the position of Mary depicted on the slide. I put my hand on the young child in front of me. To my surprise she gently rested in the Holy Spirit. The rest of the team looked at me, wondering what was happening, as they were as surprised as I was. The young people, however, weren’t fazed at all. I went to pray a blessing for the next child and she rested in the spirit too. Then I saw out of the corner of my eye, two twelve year olds in the corner. They had laid hands on another child, who was also resting in the spirit. Within 20 minutes, every young person in the room was resting in the Holy Spirit. As a team we had a brief discussion about what we should do. We decided we would play the whole thing down and not mention it again. But on the Wednesday five 14 year olds turned up to speak to me and asked, “Do we pray in tongues every time we pray over people or not?” Once again I was shocked as we hadn’t told them anything about tongues but somehow it had naturally emerged among them. I realised then the meaning of the word and the picture I had received earlier about “Let the children run with the Spirit.” Fanning the Flame was not just to be about teaching the Catholic Faith but also about providing an environment where God could move. Our job as a team was simply to be open enough to the Holy Spirit, so that we could explain to them what was happening as the Spirit manifested itself. This became our way of working. The young people would experience the Holy Spirit acting and then I and the team would explain what this was. The young people particularly loved prayer ministry and being prayed over. They told me that this was the time that they felt at their safest and they could express themselves and feel there was no barrier between God and them. After praying with them, we would encourage them in their turn to pray for others, which they were only too happy to do. “Small children praying over parents” After the camp we had a weekly youth fellowship and a children’s fellowship in Southampton. Then because of links we had with a group in Christchurch, we started a Fanning the Flame group there, and after running a confirmation group in Ledbury, the children there wanted a Fanning the Flame camp there too. It was wonderful to see how this developed. During the day the children would learn about the gifts of the Spirit, and in the evening they would put them into practice and you would have very small children praying over their parents. Out of this grew a parish mission and from that the Hereford Catholic Family conference which now takes place every autumn. New groups have also started in Gateshead and Stockton-on-Tees initiated by a priest, Fr Sean O’Neill, who spent almost a year with my religious community and who shadowed me and my work and took it back there. As well as the annual camps in the three locations, we still run a weekly children’s fellowship at Springhill R.C. Primary School, Southampton. We don’t do the teenage group as a separate group any more. Instead, in the Priory, we have a monthly meeting for all ages: children, youth, young adults and adults. The young people are really on fire with zeal to spread the gospel. Their latest dream is to fund raise for a couple of vans or a bus so they can go out evangelising outside pubs, clubs, university campuses, etc. where other young people are, rather than having to organise events in church buildings. For these young people the gifts of the Holy Spirit are just a normal part of their Catholic faith, and not something separate or strange. As leaders we see our work simply as a matter of helping them develop their gifts, both natural and spiritual. The spiritual gifts are not confined to prophecy and healing, but all those mentioned in the scriptures such as administration and works of mercy. The important thing is to provide an environment where they can explore these gifts and have an opportunity to use them. Young people often have both natural and spiritual gifts but they don’t have an outlet to put them into practice and grow in them. One of the problems in the Church is that although we are good at imparting knowledge about the faith, we often don’t see the need to help people experience God themselves. When you give God permission He can do all sorts of things. The challenge for leaders is to be open enough to what God wants to do, and then give Him the space to do it and not try to regiment and control things so much that the Holy Spirit has no place to move. Our favourite prayer is the one from Ephesians 3:14-21, which we print as a prayer card for all our missions, and which reminds us that God can “do more than you can ask or imagine…”
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It
began about 15 years ago when I was the youth chaplain to the city of
Southampton and I thought it would be really good to have a mission
and bring together the whole Catholic community in the city. I needed
people to help and most of the people who volunteered were members of
a catholic charismatic group called the Burning Bush Community. The
title for the mission, which took three years to prepare, was “Fanning
the Flame”(2 Tim 1:6-7). In my prayer time I began to receive a
series of pictures, which culminated in one of an old lady with a stick.
Eventually the Lord revealed to me that the old lady represented the
Catholic Church and He revealed to me that although she was old, her
heart was as young as Pentecost. I prayed and asked the Lord how I could
show people this vibrant heart of an institution 2000 years old. Six
months later in another picture I saw a young child with a kite running
past the old lady which was accompanied with the words, “Let the
children run with the Spirit.”