A Second
Baptism in the Holy Spirit
.
by Father Raniero Cantalamessa
You are known in Italy and
abroad not only as a preacher but also
for belonging to the Charismatic Renewal
Movement. How did you learn about that
movement, and how did you decide to be a
part of it?
Between the time of my appointment to the
Theological Commission and becoming the
Preacher to the Papal Household, an event
occurred that changed the course of my
life, so I want to spend some time on it.
It all began in 1975. I was the spiritual
director for a lady named Vittoria
Cagnoli. Returning one day from a retreat
house, she told me about having met some
strange people who prayed in an unusual
manner, lifting up their arms and clapping
their hands. As a cautious spiritual
director, I told her, “Don’t go to that
retreat house anymore.” She obeyed, but
she was not easy to persuade.
One day when I was in Rome, I was invited
to a meeting being held in a house of
sisters. I was there as a critical
observer. On the one hand, I was
disconcerted, just as anyone who was
formed according to a certain
pre-conciliar style would be. On the other
hand, I was fascinated because what I was
seeing happen before my eyes seemed
exactly what I, as a scholar of Early
Christian History, knew had happened in
the first Christian communities.
“A
very big critic of
charismatic renewal”
The
leaders of the meeting advised those
present, “Don’t go to that priest because
he is our enemy; he is a very big critic!”
But the people, seeing a friar, came to me
for confession. And hearing the confession
of these people was a shock for me. I had
never encountered such sincere and
profound repentance. After their
confessions, sins seemed to fall off like
stones from the hearts of these people,
who at the end seemed reborn. It was
evident that this was the work of the Holy
Spirit who, as Jesus said, “will convince
the world of sin” (John 16:8).
I continued with this attitude of being an
observer for almost two years. I chose to
teach a course at the university on the
topic “Prophetic and Charismatic Movements
in the Early Church” in the hope of
understanding something more about what
was currently going on. The members of the
movement invited me to give teachings to
their groups, even though they knew that I
did not accept speaking in tongues (the
gift mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles
and by Paul about expressing oneself in
diverse languages they did not know), the
lifting of hands, the embracing of one
another….
Invited to
the Kansas City Charismatic
Conference
In
1977 another lady from Milan offered four
tickets, all expenses paid, to go to
America to attend an ecumenical
charismatic conference being held in
Kansas City. One of these tickets was
offered to Professor Giovanni Saldarini,
the future Archbishop of Turin. At the
last minute his mother became ill and he
was not able to go, so his ticket was
offered to me. Wanting to go to the United
States for my own sake to learn English, I
accepted, saying to myself that it would
all be over after a week.
On the plane from Milan to New York and
from there to Kansas City, I read an issue
of the magazine New Covenant
published for the tenth anniversary of the
beginning of the Catholic Charismatic
Renewal. There was an article by someone
named Patti Gallagher, one of the students
who had participated in a retreat at
Duquesne University in Pittsburgh where
the movement had originated in February
1967. She summarized her experiences with
Jesus’s words: “Blessed are you who see
what you see and the ears that hear it”
(see Matthew 13:16). That troubled me. I
thought, “These people must have
discovered a secret that is bigger than
themselves.”
...There were 40,000 people in Kansas
City; 20,000 were Catholic and 20,000 were
from other Christian denominations, many
of them evangelical and Pentecostal. Every
morning each church group met separately
to celebrate their own liturgies. At
night, everyone gathered together in the
same stadium to hear the Word of God,
sing, and pray.
There is a power in 40,000 people singing
charismatic songs together that shakes the
walls around one’s heart…. If on the one
hand, I was convinced that certain things
were coming from the Spirit of God, there
were other things, especially on the part
of Evangelicals, that I found myself still
unprepared for and that left me perplexed.
I was
witnessing a living prophecy
One night one of the presenters took the
microphone and began to speak in a way
that was strange for me at that point. He
said, “Mourn and weep, bishops, priests,
pastors, for the body of my Son is broken.
Weep and mourn, laypeople, men and women,
for the body of my Son is broken!” I began
to see people fall to their knees all
around me. In fact almost all the people
in the stadium were on their knees,
sobbing with repentance for the divisions
among Christians that were so obvious. All
of this was happening while an electric
sign from one end of the stadium to the
other read, “Jesus is Lord!”
That scene has always impressed me as a
living prophecy. I said to myself, “If one
day Christians will truly be reunited in
one single church, it will be like this:
everyone on their knees in repentance
under the lordship of Christ.” It was
there that I began to discover the kingdom
of the lordship of Christ—that is, what it
means to proclaim, “Jesus is Lord!” The
companions who had come from Italy with me
knew my state of hesitation. Therefore,
when the assembly sang the song about the
fall of Jericho at the sound of Joshua’s
trumpets, they elbowed me and whispered,
“Listen closely, because you are Jericho.”
They were right!
“I am giving
you this last chance to
convince me!”
From
Kansas City they invited me to go to a
retreat house in New Jersey. I thought
about staying there for a day and then
visiting my Capuchin brothers in
Washington. I looked forward to being by
myself in the environment of my community
to reflect on what I was seeing. But an
Irish priest named Fr. Brendan Murray
invited me very gently, saying, “Stay with
us this week; there’s a retreat on the
Trinity!” I remember saying to myself,
“This is not a house of prostitution but a
retreat house; it cannot hurt me to stay!
Lord, I am staying. I am giving you this
last chance to convince me!”
One day I was participating in a prayer
meeting. So many objections were echoing
inside of me. I said to myself, “I am a
son of St. Francis; I have him as my
father and a rich spirituality in my
religious order. What am I looking for?
What do I lack? What can these brothers
possibly give me?” But first and foremost
the idea pounding in my head was, “I
already have St. Francis of Assisi as my
father!” At that point one of those
present, without knowing any of this,
opened the Bible and began to read a
passage at random. It was the passage in
Luke’s Gospel where John the Baptist says
to the Pharisees, “Do not begin to say to
yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our
father’” (Luke 3:8).
I understood that the Lord was answering
me. I stood up, and although I did not yet
speak English, everyone seemed to
understand as I said this prayer: “Lord, I
will no longer say that I am a son of
Francis of Assisi because I realize that I
am not. And if to be a son it becomes
necessary to make myself a child and
accept that these brothers pray over me, I
accept.” That is how I began to
participate in the meetings that precede
what is called “the baptism of the
Spirit”; they are meetings about the great
truths of the faith, about the love of
God, conversion, holiness, and the
charisms.
“Would you
give me the reins to your
life?”
In the
course of preparing to be prayed with, one
evening I was walking in the park near the
house when an image formed itself in my
mind. The Lord sometimes speaks through
images, which is a very simple way to
communicate with human beings. Nothing
miraculous, but altogether unforgettable.
I saw myself internally as a man on a
coach who is holding the reins of the
carriage and is deciding whether to go to
the right or to the left, whether to go
quickly or slowly. I understood that it
was the image of myself as a man who wants
to have control of his own life. At a
certain point it was as though Jesus
climbed up next to me in the carriage and
gently said to me, “Would you give me the
reins to your life?” There was an instant
of panic because I understood that this
was serious. However, through the grace of
God, I realized in the same instant that I
could not be the one to control my life;
neither could I be sure of tomorrow.
Therefore I said, “Yes, Lord, take the
reins of my life!” Then the moment came
for me to receive prayer for a new
outpouring of the Spirit….
During the prayer those praying asked me
to choose Jesus as the personal Lord of my
life. At that moment I lifted up my eyes
and saw the Crucified One above the altar.
Again there was a flash and an inner voice
that said, “Be careful; the Jesus you are
choosing as Lord is not a nice rose-water
Jesus; it is I, the crucified Christ.”
That was a help to me, because I still had
some doubts that all of this could be
something emotional and superficial. In
that moment I understood, instead, that
the Holy Spirit goes right to the heart of
the Gospel, which is the cross of Christ.
How many times in later years did I need
to remind myself of that word!
“The
Bible became a
living book for me”
At
the moment of the baptism of the Holy
Spirit, many people experience particular
emotions; they can burst into tears of
repentance or of joy. For me, nothing in
particular happened outwardly except the
clear decision of entrusting the reins of
my life to the Lord and renewing my
baptism. Some brothers, while the prayer
was going on, spoke some prophetic words
over me. Someone said, “You will
experience a new joy in proclaiming my
Word.” Another person opened the Bible and
read the passage where the risen Lord said
to Ananias about Paul, “Go, for he is a
chosen instrument of mine to carry my name
before the Gentiles and kings and the sons
of Israel; for I will show him how much he
must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts
9:15-16). Up until that point, my
preaching consisted almost entirely of a
Sunday homily. I was not a preacher but a
professor.
The next day I took a plane from Newark to
Washington. On the plane I began to
realize that, despite appearances,
something new had happened. Opening up the
breviary, the psalms seemed new to me,
written just for me the day before. Later
I realized that one of the first effects
of the coming of the Holy Spirit is that
the Bible becomes a living book. It is no
longer a repository of doctrine, an object
of study, but the living Word of God that
sheds light on situations and the state of
one’s soul and opens up new horizons.
[Excerpt
from Serving
the Word: My Life, (c) 2015 by Raniero
Cantalamessa, English translation by Marsha
Daigle-Williamson, published by Servant
Books, an imprint of Franciscan Media.]
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Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa,
O.F.M. Cap. (born July 22, 1934) is
an Italian Catholic priest in the
Order of Friars Minor Capuchin. He
has devoted his ministry to
preaching and writing. He is a
Scripture scholar, theologian, and
noted author of numerous books.
Since 1980 he has served as the
Preacher to the Papal Household
under Pope John Paul II, Pope
Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis. He
is a noted ecumenist and frequent
worldwide speaker, and a member of
the Catholic Delegation for the
Dialogue with the Pentecostal
Churches.
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