Serving the Orlando Catholic Charismatic Renewal THE CHARISMATIC NEWS FALL 2015 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation Ephesians 1:17 this movement [Catholic charismatic] does much good for the Church overall. Pope Francis Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ. Peace be with you. What an awesome conference we ve just experienced. How blessed we are to have had such awesome speakers, Father Bill Halbing, Father Trevor Nathasingh,Sister Lucy Lukasiewicz, Caroline Gambale -Dirkes,and let us not forget the matriarch of MC s, Valli Leone. We had about 800 people in attendance and 41 young adults for the one day young adult track. God is so good; we have all been touched in a special way at this conference. The theme, Matthew 5:14 you are the light of the world Let your light shine before men, is a call to action. A call to preach about Jesus in what we say and what we do, to be that beacon of light that always points to and highlights Jesus. Let us not rest, but take up your cross and live each day to the fullest for Jesus. Next year s conference will be a week earlier on September 16-18, 2016. Mark your calendars and save the dates. May the Lord bless you for your support of the renewal in Orlando. Don't forget to be beacons of light for Jesus. Your brother in Christ, Vince Maldonado, Administrator of Operations Catholic Charismatic Renewal of Orlando By CNA Vatican Observer, Andrea Gagliarducci Evangelizing evangelicals why Pope Francis loves to meet with charismatic movements Vatican City, Jul 3, 2015 / 11:38 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis attendance for the second consecutive year at the Catholic charismatic movement s Renewal with the Spirit convocation shows his attention to charismatic movements as means to foster ecumenical path. Not by chance, Renewal with the Spirit styled the convocation to be heavily ecumenical. Dialogue with evangelical groups, especially Pentecostals, has been called the fourth ecumenism by several authors, including the Catholic sociologist Massimo Introvigne, an international authority on religious sects. According to Introvigne, the fourth ecumenism that of the new Protestant sects born at the beginning of the 20th century is perhaps the most fruitful ground for ecumenical dialogue. continued on page 2 Chairman s Corner Following every annual conference, there is a spiritual glow we always feel. It may not be visible like the glow Moses experienced following his meetings with the Lord, but nonetheless wraps us with a fresh dose of the Holy Spirit. This residual grace is a result of praise and worship, prayer and adoration, surrender and repentance, and offering to God all we are and are not. Each day of the 3-day conference this happens, in addition to teachings exhortations, and prophecy. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are opened, renewed, and shared through the power He has given to each one of us. All of this is not a coincidence. Since the day of Pentecost, the Spirit has been igniting us with the fire of His love. It is not a one time event. Every time we sing or pray "Holy Spirit, fill us with your fire", we are renewed and the Church is edified (built up). The Spirit is with us doing all He says He can do 365 days a year and when we are in community, such as a prayer group, He reveals Himself and comes in power to lift up all who seek Him in love. When we utter that "YES", as Mary did, and invite the Holy Spirit to dwell in us, He will come over us, as of tongues of fire, and Jesus will be conceived in us, spiritually, and we will be born-again. continued on page 6
Attempts at such dialogue have limits: for example, a search for parties to represent the Pentecostals. Although they make up three-quarters of Protestants in some parts of the world and as much as one-third of all Christians, Pentecostals are very fragmented. The diversity within the group presents difficulties for dialogue. This might be why Pope Francis has chosen to foster dialogue specifically with individuals and small groups. On July 28, 2014, the Pope paid a private visit to the evangelical pastor Giovanni Traettino s Church in Caserta. The two had met in 2006 and have maintained good relations ever since. That meeting came at the end of a series of meetings Pope Francis had with evangelical leaders in 2014. According to the prominent Italian vaticanista Sandro Magister, through these meetings Pope Francis is putting into action a broad effort to win the favor of the worldwide leaders of those evangelical and Pentecostal movements which especially in Latin America are the most fearsome competitor of the Catholic Church, from which they are snatching enormous masses of the faithful. Attending the Renewal with the Spirit convocation is part of this effort. Pope Francis himself acknowledged during his trip back from World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro that he used to look at charismatic movements with suspicion, and that he later changed his mind, and now he believes that this movement does much good for the Church overall. Renewal with the Spirit president Salvatore Martinez, an academic of music and musician, who has been committed to the movement since his youth, had the occasion to meet with Pope Francis at the very beginning of the pontificate, after the Mass the Pope celebrated in the Vatican parish Sant Anna March 17, 2013, four days after his election. After that, Martinez had a private meeting with Pope Francis in September 2013, and there the invitation to the 2014 annual convocation was forwarded directly to the Pope, who accepted, probably considering it as a part of his ecumenical commitment. Speaking in front of the convocation June 1, 2014, the Pope voiced hope that both evangelical and Catholic charismatic groups, gathered in the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services, would share the same office as a sign of ecumenism. They did it. Meeting with them Oct. 31, 2014, the Pope praised the decision, and stressed that unity is not uniformity it does not mean doing everything together, nor thinking the same way, nor losing identity. Pope Francis went further. Last May 23, he sent a video message to the participants of the Day of Dialogue and Prayer organized by the Diocese of Phoenix, which gathered Catholics and evangelical Pentecostal pastors. In the message, the Pope asked them to pray together for the grace of unity, that unity that is flourishing among us, and begins with the only Baptism all of us received. All of these signals suggest that Pope Francis has indeed changed his mind and, starting from an initial skepticism, he later found in charismatic movements a privileged path to seek ecumenism. There could be another pressing factor in the Pope s enthusiasm for such meetings a wave of conversions, particularly in Latin America, where it is estimated that 100 million Catholics have converted to evangelical Christianity. Now, it appears that Pope Francis would like to evangelize the evangelicals. His spiritual ecumenism, putting prayer at the center, and even making it a diplomatic tool, represents the most logical meeting point with the Protestant world. Attending a large Catholic charismatic event could be the bridge the Pope needs to reach his final goal, to turn the evangelicals from rival to allies and push ecumenical efforts forward. UNITY IN THE CHARISMATIC RENEWAL By Charles Whitehead I m sure we are all well aware that one of the greatest weaknesses in the Charismatic Renewal is the visible lack of unity we often find between our different groups and ministries. Where there is disunity and division the work of the Holy Spirit is undermined. When Pope Francis addressed more than 50,000 Catholic charismatics at the Olympic Stadium in Rome on June 1st 2014, he gave us his six expectations of the world-wide Renewal. His final expectation was this: Seek unity in the Renewal because unity comes from the Holy Spirit and is born of the unity of the Trinity. From whom does division come? From the Devil! Division comes from the Devil. Flee from internal fights please! They must not exist among us! These are powerful words from the Holy Father who clearly sees division of any sort as a work of the Devil which must be consciously and deliberately resisted, and we do well to remember that these are also the words of someone who loves the Renewal and who knows us well. He sees what happens when there is division among us, and how it undermines the life-changing work of baptism in the Holy Spirit. Most of us know he is absolutely right because we too have seen for ourselves the results of division and negative attitudes. We may even on occasions have contributed to the problem. continued on page 3 2
Charismatic Renewal has something essential and very powerful to give to the Church, baptism in the Holy Spirit, and has produced a rich harvest of visible fruit prayer groups, many different kinds of communities, organizations promoting and training people for the new evangelization, special ministries, houses of prayer and formation, and much more. The list is impressive. The Lord has given the vision. for each of these to individual men and women, but it s important to remember that all are inspired and empowered by the same Holy Spirit and have been established to extend the same Kingdom. While each of us has a clear responsibility to be faithful to our God given vision, we must never become critical of what others are doing just because it s different. There s no place in God s plan for narrowminded people or for personal empire builders. The vision he s given us recognizes our individuality but requires us to co-operate with others. This means we have to invest time and energy in building positive relationships with those in the Renewal who may not share our particular vision. There are four key values which must be present in every relationship: Trust, Respect, Understanding, Love. Of these, Trust is the most fragile. It s both a decision and a process; it depends on character and demands honesty rather than perfection. Respect means we recognize someone s dignity, value and worth; it s all about who they are, not about what they do, and it calls for concrete expressions of encouragement and affirmation. Understanding does not mean agreement, but when someone knows I understand them it releases them from the on-going need to justify their beliefs and actions. Finally Love a greatly overused word which in this context is simply a decision we make and to which we remain faithful no matter what may happen. Our claims to be filled with the Spirit are meaningless if our attitudes and behavior do not show love. Love bears all things, believes the best and holds on even when people let me down again and again (1 Cor 13). If we are perfect in doctrine, abundantly gifted by God but lacking in love, then we have failed. Love lies at the heart of all our relationships. It s easy to maintain a loving relationship at arm s length to meet on a rather superficial and trivial level. But when we get close and involved with each other we soon discover how good our relationships really are. We will often find it difficult to relate to certain people, and this is where we need to turn to God for help. Why am I pushing this point? Because good relationships are the key to avoiding disunity in the Renewal but they demand our time, effort and commitment, often for little obvious personal gain. They may be very costly, but they re essential. I need to work out my particular God-given vision alongside all the others in the Renewal. There s nothing new about this, even though I often meet people who think that anyone who doesn t share their particular vision must be wrong. But the Lord has always given many different visions; just look at the rich variety of the religious orders. The parts are many but the body is one (1 Cor 12:20). We all share in the common mission to live the Gospel and to make disciples of all the nations. If I do my part and encourage other people to do theirs, the Renewal will be much more effective, but all our efforts are undermined when there are internal fights, as we know to our shame. So let s be supportive, encouraging and speak well of the many other groups, organizations and movments in the Church and particularly of those in the Renewal who are called to a huge variety of ministries and areas of service. Let s invest time and effort in keeping our relationships strong, our love flow and commit ourselves to praying for one another. Then we ll see even more fruit and the Kingdom of God will be extended on many fronts. We need to see things as God sees them and to work side by side with those who have different visions and callings to achieve together his divine purposes. So much more is possible when we enjoy good relationships. As Pope Francis exhorted us, Flee from internal fights please! They must not exist among us! PRAYER Heavenly Father, hear our prayer for unity: to live in peace and harmony with one another united with one mind in Christ. Through the power of your Holy Spirit let us not bring division but unity to the peoples around us. Help us to understand and live out the truth that there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all (Eph 4:4-6 RSVCE) and let us bring that unified spirit to the world. Pentecost Today, Charles Whitehead, Summer 2015, Vol. 40, Number 3 OVERCOMING THE FEAR OF MEN BY GREG TRAINOR One of the most basic problems to overcome in sharing the Gospel is worrying about what others will think. What has helped me to overcome this fear is that God revealed to me that there is nothing that we could ever do for anyone that is more loving than sharing Jesus with them. Even if we are rejected by the person that we reach out to, we must always see their salvation as the most important thing. We should not be so concerned with what the other person might think about us. Rather, we should ask the Lord in what way he desires to use us to bring that person closer to him. continued on page 4 3
In my last year of teaching, I taught in a public high school. That year I taught science to all of the special education students in the school. Frequently, as I was teaching, God would inspire me to share something with the students. I remember one day when the biology lesson that I was teaching was about hearing. The closing paragraph in the chapter went something like this: "Your hearing is a beautiful thing. Take good care of it. Once it is gone, it is gone forever." As I read that sentence aloud, God impressed upon me that I should share what he had done at church the night before. The night before there was a healing service at our parish. My wife, Lydia, and I prayed as one of the prayer teams. A lady who had come up in our prayer line was totally deaf in one of her ears. When we prayed for her in the name of Jesus, she was instantly healed and her hearing returned. I related this incident to the students. I told them that we do need to take good care of our hearing but, if anyone ever loses it., there is always another chance with Jesus. Just then, one of my students blurted out, "Oh, come on man! You're supposed to be teaching us biology and all you ever give us is Bible, Bible, Bible. Don't you know that I could have you fired?" Several days later, I had a message in my mailbox that one of the assistant principals wanted to see me in his office "before I did anything else that day." It didn't take a genius to figure out that he wasn't going to give me the Teacher of the Year Award or an all expense paid vacation to the Bahamas. Either one of those could have waited until clear past lunch time. This meant trouble. As I walked to his office, I prayed. I remembered the words of Luke 12:11-12: "When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say." I told the Lord that I was depending on him to give me the right words to say in this meeting. As I sat down in the assistant principal's office, he said, "I hear that you have been teaching the Bible in your classroom. Is that true?" My heart almost stopped. It was easy to depend on the Holy Spirit for the right words to say because I was speechless. "Yes," I said, "that's true." Then the assistant principal asked, "Don't you see that teaching the Bible in the public school could lead to serious problems? If I ever needed inspired words, I needed them then. Yes, I said, I can see that teaching the Bible in the public school can lead to serious problems. The serious problem that came to my mind most immediately was my getting fired. The assistant principal seemed satisfied at my answer and let me go on to class. I thank God that he didn t want me to tell the assistant principal that I would never again speak the truth of the Gospel in my class. Otherwise, we would have had a serious problem that very morning. As l walked to my classroom, I prayed: "Lord, help me to follow your perfect will. If there is something that you want me to say in my classroom, let me know. Give me the courage to speak it out." I asked God to help me know for sure when he was leading me or when I was speaking on my own. After all, I figured, if I was going to lose my job, it ought to be over something that God wanted me to say and not over something that I had conjured up on my own. As the weeks went by, God continued to give me things to witness about to the class. Most often, the leading to witness would come during the biology class from which the complaint had come. I would pause for a minute, ask God to give me the courage to speak out, and then say what I felt God wanted the students to hear. I kept expecting another note in my mailbox, but it never came. One day, while we were in a meeting at church, a girl from the youth group came in and told me that there was a boy who wanted to talk with me. It was Tom (not his real name), the boy who had complained about me to the administration at school. He was too shaken up to talk. Tom's friend (also a student of mine) had come with him. The friend spoke up, "Mr. Trainor, I brought Tom here so that you would talk to him. He told me that he is going to kill himself tonight. He said that he'll listen to what you have to say." We went back to our house. Lydia and I talked with the two of them. We told Tom that God loved him and had a beautiful plan for his life. We explained the Gospel message, telling Tom that he could share life in heaven with Jesus forever. We told Tom that God could greatly change his life that night if he would open his heart and give God the chance. Tom let us pray with him. I thank God that he gave me the courage to continue to witness to my class in the face of the fear of losing my job. I know that, because I was able to speak up, there is one young man who is alive today and walking with Jesus Christ. Shortly after that night, he was baptized in one of the Christian churches in our town. Praise be to the Lord Jesus Christ! When I think of how many people die every day without ever coming to know Jesus as their Savior and Lord, the fear and pride that try to keep me from witnessing seem trivial. The Word of God tells us: "Nevertheless many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, lest they should be put out of the synagogue: for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God" (John 12:42-43). I pray that I will always be obedient to God's leading to share his love and his Word with others, no matter what the cost. Jesus gives us a beautiful promise in his Word: "Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven." (Matthew 10:32-33) Prayer: Dear God, I want to be a witness for you and your Gospel. Make me bold, deliver me from the fear of what others think, and use me to proclaim your greatness. Amen. Greg Trainor is a Catholic Lay Evangelist 4
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CALENDAR ======================================================================================================================================================= An Evening of Healing Prayer When: The first Monday of each month at 7 p.m. Where: St. Bernadette Hall at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, Daytona Beach. All ministers in healing have been trained in the MacNutt s Christian Healing Ministry School of Healing Prayer. For more information contact: Gary Bowden: 386-673-1330 ======================================================================================================================================================= Healing Service St. John the Baptist in Dunnellon has a healing service every 4th Wednesday at 7pm. Fr. Kevin MacGabhann is the presider. Included is benediction and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. For more information contact the church office (352) 489-3166 or email mail@stjohncc.com The Catholic Church of St John the Baptist, 7525 S US Highway 41, Dunnellon, FL 34432, (352) 489-3166 ======================================================================================================================================================= Blessed Trinity in Ocala. Presented by Fountains of Living Water Prayer Group Friday, November 20, 6:30-8:00pm & Saturday 21, 8:30am-3:45pm ending with the 4PM Mass! In the Community Center. For more information: 352-307-9009 email: i2bxtn@gmail.com Details on Event information are published on the DOCCRC WEBSITE: www.orlandocharismatic.net Chairman s Corner continued from Page one What do we do to keep the fire burning once it has been ignited? While personal prayer, adoration, praise and worship, bible reading and study are presupposed, gathering with like-minded Holy Spirit-filled people is important. When we gather with oneness of purpose "things happen", that is, the Ho;ly Spirit comes in power. Whether it is 2 people standing in the parking lot or a conference hall full of Charismatics, the result can be nothing short of divine. The flow of the Holy Spirit is constant. We need to just move into the flow. So here is a plan. Attend a prayer meeting regularly and strive for continued edification, building up. If there is no local prayer group, the CCRC of Orlando will work with you to start one. If there is a prayer group, plan with leaders to attend our quarterly diocese-wide commission meetings. The Spirit is always moving and the picture just gets bigger. As the CCRC of Orlando helps guide central Florida into the spirit, the NSC (National Service Committee) does for the entire USA, and the ICCRS, International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Service helps millions of catholic Charismatics through out the world from its' office in Rome. So step into the Holy Spirit flow and join us for our next quarterly meeting on Saturday Nov. 6th. Check our website, www.orlandocharismatic.net for details. May God do something new in your life today. See you there, Paul. Charismatic Resources Available online The Charismatic media resources are now available online. Using the Diocese of Orlando Media Center host, you can reserve and checkout media from the diocese website (link below) and receive it at your parish office. Previously, media were available only at the DOCCRC quarterly meetings, so this will make them widely available to anyone in your prayer group, or even in your parish who wishes to borrow them. Information on the procedure is also found on the Media Center web page. On the diocese website under Ministries/ Offices, click on Media Center to navigate to that page. Use search to find the item you want, then click on the specific item. For example, search for Charismatic to get a listing, then click on a specific item to get the details. Use the Media Request Form to actually request it be sent to your parish. Link: www.orlandodiocese.org 6
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DIOCESE OF ORLANDO CATHOLIC CHARISMATIC RENEWAL CENTER P.O. BOX 1800 ORLANDO, FL 32802 Return Service Requested Non Profit Org. U.S. POSTAGE PAID Orlando, Florida Permit No. 235 TO CONTACT US ADMINISTRATOR OF OPERATIONS Vince Maldonado Phone 407-610-1012 E-mail orlandoccrc@aol.com NEWSLETTER & DATABASE & WEBMASTER & MEMBER AT LARGE Philip Turgati E-mail newsletter@orlandocharismatic.net ADMINISTRATOR FOR PRAYER GROUP DEVELOPMENT Gary Bowden Phone 386-673-1330 E-mail bowdengary@aol.com COMMISSION CHAIR Paul Avizinis E-mail pavizinis@gmail.com VICE CHAIRPERSON Marge Dubuc E-mail amdubuc71@aol.com SECRETARY: Maria Devallo E-mail mariaccrc@aol.com Address Catholic Charismatic Renewal of Orlando P.O. Box 215 Windermere, FL 34786-0215 WEBSITE www.orlandocharismatic.net 8