Michelle Moran, ketua ICCRS [Pembaharuan Karismatik Katolik Sedunia], sebagai keynote speaker membawakan renungannya pada penutupan Konferense pertama ISAO . Acara ini dihadiri sekitar 7,000 orang termasuk lebih dari 400 orang delegasi dari 18 negara di JITEC Mangga Dua 18 September 2008. Terima kasih untuk rekan Mungky atas kirimannya.(RA)
It’s good to be here!
And I am sitting thinking maybe the Lord has sense of humor. That the beginning of this first Asia conference, the opening talk should be given by someone from England. But I feel very at home and I know you are my friends. So I am going to trust God to speak through me.
Sometimes when we come to a big conference like this, there are so many things happening, that we can get caught of in the experience and sometimes almost miss the things that God is saying to us at a deeper level. So I think it is part of the role of the speaker to remind you.
Yesterday in our opening speeches, I think from brother Cyril we had a prophetic word and the prophetic word was that it’s a new spring time in the church in Asia. Now I want to ask you this morning do you believe this word? Do you believe it? We need to live it.
Brothers and sisters if this is a new spring time, we need to be signs of that new spring time. We were reminded of Isaiah 43: Behold I am doing a new thing. Now do you believe that God is doing a new thing? We do, amen? So we need to pray that into our heart, we need to pray that into our lives.
It begins with each one of us. You see when God word, goes forth, it needs to be received, it needs to be embraced, it needs to be lived. So if God says I am doing a new thing we need to say do it Lord in my live this day. Do you want to pray that with me? Maybe you can just stand. We had some beautiful singing this morning, and I am no good at singing, but the Lord said to me lead a song, so pray for the gift of music here, I want you to pray this with me this morning. I’ll try it.
“Do something new in my life, do something new in my life, do something new in my life oh.. God… do something new in my life, do something new in my life, do something new in my life oh.. God”.
Lord we want to be responsive to your word, we want to be part of that new spring time here in our church today Lord I ask you to give each one of us the grace that we need to be part of the new thing that you are doing. Lord we pray this from our heart Lord, we want to live it in our mind in reality. Lord we want to be obedient to your word, so come Holy Spirit do something new.
Do something new in my life, do something new in my life. Do something new in my life oh.. God. Do something new in my life, do something new in my life, do something in my life oh.. God. Amen.
That’s a real moved of Holy Spirit to me to lead you in song. My husband is musician and he will be surprised when I tell him. I have the privilege to share with you reflections upon our conference theme:
Born Yesterday, Living Today, and growing tomorrow.
Let me offer a very short reflection on our history ad today is not the day for a big detailed history lesson. But I just want to share a couple of reflections. We know that in a sense our birth as charismatic renewal began at Pentecost. That Pentecost event that transformed the world has changed our lives and perhaps we are privileged to be living in the time that we live today, because in the 20th century we have seen un- precedented outpouring of the Holy Spirits. The Holy Spirit has been poured out in many different ways,
they have been many Kairos moments in the church.
And I just want to pick out 2, in 1897, Pope Leo XIII in response to a heartfelt prayer from a religious sister brought out an encyclical focusing upon the Holy Spirit. And in that teaching Leo XIII encouraged the church to pray the Pentecost novena and said the main intention should be for the reunion of Christendom.
At the same time when the Pope published that encyclical in the United States in Topeka, there were group of people from holiness movement who came together to pray and seek the Lord and Holy Spirit came in great power and that was the beginning with what we know today as the Pentecostal movement. So we had 2 things happening. Maybe it’s a divine coincidence, maybe it is a sign from the spirit but the pope was encouraging the whole church to pray for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
And then the spirit began to fall. And remember the intention was for the reunion of Christendom; for unity.
Now we need to ask, so what was God doing? I think the messages are very simple. That if the prayer of Jesus in John 17, is to come true, “Father may they all be one”, that is only possible in the power of the Holy Spirit. So we need to be people today who are people of unity. We need to be people who are committed to unity in the body of Christ. And that has an important ecumenical dimension, but it also has an important human dimension. Because I have to say this morning and I don’t know Asia, I am not speaking about you. But as a travel around to the world I go to many conferences and I meet many beautiful brothers and sisters in the Lord, and we all praise the Lord together, we all say halleluiah, but sometimes we said negative words about our brothers and sisters, sometimes there are divisions in our prayer group, in our renewal, there are conflicts, there are break ups, and none of that is of the Holy Spirit. The grace of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and in the new Pentecost is a grace of unity.
And as we moved through our morning, I know that we are going to have our holy hour today, and I as your speaker this morning are going to be on my knees and I am going to be saying to God: “God forgive me,
forgive me for the words that I speak that do not build up your body, forgive me for anytime when I am part of the problem in your church, forgive me for anytime when I am not an instrument of unity, and if I was in my own country, maybe at the end of that holy hour I would meet along side some brothers and sisters and say I am sorry. You see in a sense it is easy to come before the Lord and be all holy but part of repentance is looking at my brothers, looking at my sisters and saying I am sorry, please forgive me, and then having that forgiveness received.
So I am not prophesying at this stage the day but I am just suggesting that maybe so that we can moved with the new freedom and conference, we can use our morning to become more and more people of clean lips, people of righteous heart, and people who are united in God’s grace.
2 years ago the Charismatic renewal celebrated what we call our 40th anniversary. And often we dates our existence as a movement in the church back to 1967. When the Holy Spirit fell upon those students of
Duquesne University in America. And then began a whole series of time when God was pouring out his Holy Spirit. When we had our ICCRS conference in Fuigi that year. One of the people who was around at the beginning of the renewal in America, put before us 4 characteristics of the charismatic renewal. 4 foundations if you like. Things that God laid down in the beginning and as we think about our origins this
morning, I just want to share these things with you. The first thing she said was, the grace of the charismatic renewal is the grace of unity and reconciliation and unity in the body of Christ and in ecumenism.
The second grace, we will be looking at this in our workshops was the grace of the Lord reminding us of his gifts, the charisms, and the Lord inviting us to be open to his gifts. To use his gifts, to move in power as a body, using those gifts for the building up of the church.
The third foundation, was in those early days the Holy Spirit come upon the students in university, so charismatic renewal began as a lay movement. Now I want you to be careful how you hear this because sometimes people think. Oh she does not like priests and religious, I love all the body of Christ. But the grace of the charismatic renewal was a grace to renew the whole church. Bishop Cardinal, priests, religious brothers, religious sisters, and lay people. And remember in 1967 we were just beginning to get a grasp on the teaching of the second Vatican Council and I believe that one of the graces that we need to be continually hold on to in the charismatic renewal is the grace of our baptism. The grace that calls each one of us into ministry. And as each one of us embraces the ministries, the vocations, and the charisms that we have been given, so we will be built more and more into the body of Christ
The fourth foundation in the beginning of the charismatic renewal, was that the Holy Spirit fell upon university students. Now technical questions, how old do you think they were? University students –
young people. Sometimes people ask me: In the charismatic renewal where are your young people? And in some part of the world not here in Asia, I have to say they got old. Everybody is welcome in the charismatic renewal, we need our grandfathers, when need our grandmothers, we need every generation, but remember the Holy Spirit first come upon young people in that wave in 1967.
So I would like to suggest to you that young people should have a special place in the renewal. And I want to tell you that as the president of ICCRS, this is one of my main concerns, this is one of my main visions. And I want to share with you that in my experience back home in England, I am committed to this and I am trying to live it and I want to say to you it is difficult. I am the founder of a community in England, a community for evangelization, I have been working for 25 years and I have been there since the beginning and it is easy to think that I know everything, I’ve got the answer for every question, I have dealt with every problem, there is nothing new for me, if only!! But the Lord says, raise up new people. The Lord says pass on the mantle, no I am not old but the Lord said to me move out of the way, make room for others, invest in them, build them up, share with them and then give them the responsibility to lead.
Today I have no leadership responsibilities in my community in England. Theoretically at 25 years old person can say to me don’t do this, do that. And I founded the community! But the Lord said to us pass on to others, share with others. The good news is there is no retirement in the church. So just in case you are all feeling insecure and redundant, the Lord says he needs each one of us to be the people that he called us to be. So yes we empower others, yes we make room for others and yes we stay along side them. Not to oversee them but to be with them in the body. So in the charismatic renewal make sure you’ve got some Timothy’s. Who are Timothy’s in my life? Who am I investing in, who am I raising up? And maybe also you can look the other way and say where are the people that I am looking to, who are my elders because we need everybody in the body. Don’t we?.
As I move to look at how we are living the charismatic renewal today, again I am trying to look in the prophetic sense. Sometimes people say to me renewal not as strong as it used to be. Now maybe that’s not
true in Asia, I don’t know. But what I do know is, that there are different stages in the development of things. I spent a long time on the airplane getting here. And one of the very basic observation that I had was you need more power to get the plane off the ground. Now, in this charismatic renewal, the plane is off the ground, we are in the air, we are flying. This means that we are going to experience the Holy Spirit in new ways today.
Maybe we don’t need the take off engine, maybe we have taken off already now how far have we taken off is a question I leave you with. But now I feel that the Lord is saying to us: I have given you my spirit and now it’s your responsibilities to go with the spirit that I have given you. And he will give us what we need for each of the journey. And our responsibilities is to track the Holy Spirit. To find out what God is doing today and get behind it.
There are many who started the race with us and then dropped out, they are no longer running in the spirit and that is a sadness for each one of us. That are many if you like who came out of Egypt, who crossed the sea, who came in a place of liberation, but then somehow they didn’t make it, they got lost on the journey. And maybe if we are honest there have been times in our lives when we felt a little bit lost, wandering in the wilderness, maybe dried in the dessert and those are the times really when we were tested, when perhaps the Lord was saying to us, are you really serious? Do you want me really to be the Lord of your life? And in those times we need to press into the Holy Spirit, we need to submit more deeply to the grace of Holy Spirit and I believe in this day in the charismatic renewal, God is calling us to be people of enduring faith, to be people of perseverance, to be people who keep running the race, to be people of sacrifice, and this is not easy. James 1:2-4 says my brothers you will always have your trials, but when trials come treat them as a happy privilege.
I have to say to you that I am not reached at that level of faith yet, I have not reach level of faith where I say trials, difficulties, persecutions HALLELUYA Lord! I find myself more like the Israelite in the dessert, moaning, grumbling, feeling sorry for myself. So, when trials come treat them as a happy privilege, when your faith succeed in facing such trials, the result is the ability to endure, be sure that your endurance carries you all the way without failing then you will become fully developed complete with nothing lacking. The Lord wants us in the charismatic renewal to become fully developed, to become mature with nothing lacking and therefore we need enduring faith. Just stand for a moment and pray.
Lord we want to thank you that you have been with us on this journey so far with you. Lord we want you to do new things in our life but we know Lord that our faith is weak. Lord we pray this morning that you would give us a new wave of Holy Spirit, that you would give us the gift of enduring faith. Faith in difficulties, faith in challenges, faith to keep running the race, so that we can be mature and lacking nothing. Come Holy Spirit. Thank you Lord that your word is true and with that true endurance we will win our lives in you, thank you Lord for your strengthening Holy Spirit. Amen.
You see what we experience in the renewal as we lived with it, we experienced the liberation that the Holy Spirit brings us, the newness, the freshness. We have been set free, many of us can give great testimonies of all kind of freedom which came through in our lives. When we realized we were set free from slavery that was only the first stage. Second stage from liberation to formation. They spent 40 years going around that wilderness, the journey to the promised land did not take 40 years. But the Lord needed it to train them and
to form them. And that stage of journey was very important.
And sometimes in our lives we like the freedom that the Holy Spirit brings, but sometimes we’re resistant to the discipline that God then wants to bring into our lives. But with the freedom of the spirit comes the discipling of the spirit as we are formed on the journey and when we need to continue to say yes to the Lord. Sometimes when we look at the life of our blessed Mother Mary, we look superficially so at the annunciation and we look at Mary’s Fiat, her saying yes. But when we look at this in context, we might see actually that was the first fiat in Mary’s life. The first yes. A crucial, vital, yes. But not the only yes, we said yes to the Lord, we said Yes Lord come in the power of Holy Spirit and fill me, a crucial yes, a vital yes, but
not the only yes in our lives, the beginning. The problem is some of us think the beginning is the end!
I said yes to the Lord and I can’t understand why there are not 24-7 blessings. It’s not 24-7 blessings if you living a real life because the Lord calls us, he pours out his spirit on us then He says follow Me. Some days are halleluiah a 24-7 blessing. I think I had won yesterday, yesterday for me is just getting better and better. In the wonderful Mass last night I thought I was going to float in the sky, and praise the Lord for days like that, wonderful days of blessings for which we thank God but there will also be days when you know not a 24-7 blessings. I won’t dwell on this because I can see it a familiar experience but the important thing is that we keep going with the Lord, that we allow Lord to keep working in our lives. Rm 12:2, do not be conformed to this world but let your lives be transformed. If we are going to be trained and discipled by the Lord, we need to make sure that we keep our eye fixed on Jesus. We need to make sure that yes we are in world, of course we are, that’s where we live and move but as we are living in the world we have keep our eyes on the Lord. It’s so easy to allow the world to evangelize us. It’s so easy to compromise the Gospel. It’s so easy to go for Gospel of comfort rather than that radical transforming grace of the spirit. That enables u to live, that supernatural grace. This not only transforms my life but ultimately transform the world in which we live.
Brothers and sisters we can make a different in the world in which we live and we can make different if we choose to, choose not to be conformed to the world but choose to be transformed by the Holy Spirit day by day. Sometimes I feel as we live the graces of the charismatic renewal, there can be times when we become dependent on “experiences”. You can tell if you are mature in the spirit, it’s when you go to the prayer meeting and you don’t feel like going. When you go to meet your brothers and sisters and you don’t feel like being with them. Because the charismatic renewal goes beyond experience. It’s not about what do I feel like, do I feel the Lord close to me, it’s about living the life of the committed disciple who said if you lead me Lord, I will follow no matter what I feel Lord, I will follow. So sometimes the Lord as it were almost hide his face from us, so that we can get to know the God who is beyond all experience. That the sign of growth spirit. When we go so deep in the Lord that we get to know God who is beyond our feeling and our experience because he is God. That’s what God is calling us to be a mature people.
When I look at growing tomorrow, when I look at where the charismatic renewal will go in the future there are so many things I could share with you but I am very obedient to time so I am going to concentrate on three. When I look to the future I want to be part of the charismatic renewal, that’s is growing mature, that’s open to the new thing to the Lord, and that continues to move in the power of spirit. Gal 4:3 is a wonderful reminder here. What began in the Spirit has ended in the flesh. I don’t want to be a part for the ‘human’ charismatic renewal,
I don’t want to be part of charismatic renewal that is run by efficient leaders who know everything. And I am speaking to you as leaders today, I ask you as leaders to continually grow, I ask you as leaders to continually keep striving for the success that God calls us to do , I ask you as leaders to be faithful to what God has called you to, to be people of humility and to be people of obedience. And that obedience really is to keep moving in the power of spirit to never tire of praying the prayer ‘Come Holy Spirit’. Try to make everyday a day when the first thing you say is ‘Come Holy Spirit’, it’s a wonderful prayer for us as leaders to make.
And as leaders looking to the future of the charismatic renewal, we need to be faithful to our initial grace, that grace of the baptism in the Holy Spirit or whatever phrase you want to use for that and I have been very encouraged by the number of ways in which pope Benedict XVI has spoken about is.
At the beginning of this year in one of his homilies the holy father said Christ entire mission is summed up in this: ‘To baptize us in Holy Spirit and that on the feast on the baptism of the Lord’ pope Benedict said Jesus was revealed us the one who came to baptize humanity in the Holy Spirit. I want you to hold on to that because sometimes people said oh.. you know all this charismatic thing is only for some people.
Christ entire mission is to baptize people in the Holy Spirit. I don’t hear an escape clause, I don’t hear that it is something who like that kind of thing. Brothers and sisters we share today in the entire mission of Jesus Christ, our role today is to preach the baptism in the Holy Spirit, to preach it, to proclaim it and to live it. Looking to the future, 3 things we need to remember First of all and these were the words of Cardinal Rylko to us on the 40th anniversary of the renewal. He said first of all keep youthful, you don’t need me to elaborate on that, keep youthful!
Secondly be amazed at God. Be amazed! Sometimes we have seen it all before so we sit back and we said oh.. that was nice. God doesn’t want us to get used to these things, he wants us to be amazed. We have an awesome God who can do more than we can ask or imagine. We have a God of amazing grace, let us allow ourselves during this day to be amazed at God.
And finally the encouragement we received was to be committed to the mission the church. The grace of the charismatic renewal is not just for me, is not just for you, is not just for my prayer group or your community. The grace of the charismatic renewal is for the whole church. We are called to share that grace with the whole church and indeed with the whole world. The grace of Pentecost was a grace that make those people spill out onto the street. My prayer at the start of our time together is that the Lord will further empower us to be a holy people who look to the Lord and transform the world. Amen.