Pentecost Experiences | 5 Keys to Freedom

A Pep Rally for Lovers of the Holy Spirit!

by Chris Boersma Smith | Jul 26, 2017 | Encouragement and Inspiration, Gratitude, Holy Spirit, Pentecost Experiences

The Call Went Out

Two years ago, Pope Francis called charismatics around the world to travel to Rome to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and Pentecost. (This means that of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, he invited roughly 120 million Catholics whose lives have been touched by a fundamental experience of the love of God being poured into their hearts by an extraordinary movement of the Holy Spirit, as better explained here.) The Pope and the other presenters at the Jubilee all reminded us we were there in response to a calling, and they exhorted us to return home, boldly bearing witness, testifying to what God has done in our lives through the Holy Spirit!

Inspiring Talks and Huge Masses

At talks the first day, we heard how to grow our charisms (supernatural gifts) and were urged to “go beyond” like Phillip performing miracles among the Samaritans and Peter and Paul laying hands on believers baptized in water but not yet baptized in the Holy Spirit. [See Acts 8:15-17.]

The next morning we attended a conversational ecumenical symposium where we heard the story of Cardinal Borgolio attending a prayer meeting at which the future Pope Francis asked to receive prayer for baptism in the Holy Spirit! We asked questions and the panelists engaged in storytelling, so we felt like insiders, which reinforced the value of personal witnessing.

Donna MacKay and Chris Smith with beautifully dressed Congolese women we met at the symposium.

From 3 until 11 pm that day, at an ancient chariot-racing stadium, with tens of thousands of pilgrims from 128 countries, we attended Mass concelebrated by about 200 charismatic priests and 50 bishops (at an altar as filled as the night before at St. John Lateran Basilica). I’ve never been so happy that I love languages and have absorbed more Latin than I’d imagined, as well as still understanding a lot of Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Italian. I was incredibly grateful that I could understand much of what was said or sung in its own language, though I was lost with German and Swahili!

In the Presence of Pope Francis

Back at the Circus Maximus the next day, awaiting the Pope’s arrival, the heat of the sun and fire of the Holy Spirit electrified the crowd! The holiness and universality of the kairos celebration transported us to new heights. We heard detailed testimony from Patti Gallagher Mansfield and David Magnin, the first two to experience the “dynamite” release of Holy Spirit at the Duquesne University retreat where the Catholic Charismatic Renewal began. Others at the 1967 retreat also experienced a personal Pentecost. From there, the Renewal began spreading like wildfire, surprising the Pentecostals who addressed us; they couldn’t believe Catholics were experiencing the same fullness of the Spirit as they did, and that the Catholic Church respected it before Protestant leadership did!

A few hours after this pep rally for God began, the enormous crowd rose in acclimation and excitement as huge screens revealed the Pope approaching the stage. His flowing white garments stood out in a sea of colors — flags from many nations, bright African fabrics proclaiming the wearers’ faith, banners, hats and scarves waving — and the Pope not surrounded by dozens of bodyguards and men in black clerics, but rather, to our delight, flanked on both sides by lay women: the President of International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services, and Patti Mansfield. Many of the laity, especially women, were moved to tears, as was I.

With the Pope seated center stage, the Preacher to the Papal Household and various Pentecostal Christians addressed the Jubilee crowd. Stressing unity and reconciled diversity, at one point the thousands shouted together: “Jesus is Lord!” Then, “God raised him from the dead,” and in response to “What does that make us? — “REDEEMED!” — repeated in one language after another.

Then to the song “Spirit of the Living God,” the Holy Father extended his hands over us and prayed for the Spirit to fall afresh on us. Bliss!

When Pope Francis gave his meditation, radio transmissions provided translations. Great joy erupted when he said:

Either the Christian experiences joy in his or her heart, or there’s something wrong!
Baptism in the Holy Spirit, praise, and serving one another are inseparable.
This charismatic renewal, what he calls a “current of grace,” is for ALL the Church, not just for some!

Pope Francis thanked all who’ve entered this current of grace for what we’ve given the Church, and he emphasized that the Church relies on us. He directed us to share Baptism in the Holy Spirit with ALL Christians, praise God ceaselessly, serve in unity, and bear witness to lives transformed by the Holy Spirit. We felt One in the Spirit. If you’d like to hear his talk, in Italian, click here! Spontaneous dancing could be seen everywhere — religious, laity, pilgrims all – previously unacquainted brothers and sisters hugging and exchanging high fives!

Pentecost Celebration at St. Peter’s Square

The following day at St. Peter’s Square, rejoicing continued in a glorious Pentecost Mass. We were blessed to stand within a few feet as the Pope passed by, sharing his joy with the crowd under a cerulean Roman sky!

Click here for a quick video clip.

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About the Author

Chris and her husband in St. Peter’s Basilica after a tour of the Vatican Museum

This was written by Chris Boersma Smith, one of 24 pilgrims on the tour sponsored by the Archdiocese of San Francisco Catholic Charismatic Renewal — www.SFSpirit.com — led by Fr. Raymund Reyes and coordinated by Letty Ramos. A spiritual director and 5 Keys to Freedom in Christ UNBOUND Prayer Team leader who was baptized in the Holy Spirit during Confession in 1989, Chris gratefully reports that the pilgrimage did indeed release greater zeal and boldness in her! It’s already bearing juicy fruit in her San Francisco parish—St. Dominic’s—whose mission is to radiate the Joy of the Gospel in the Heart of the City.

“Responsibility” is a Loaded Word

by Chris Boersma Smith | Jun 20, 2017 | Creative Expression, Empowering and Freeing Choices, Encouragement and Inspiration, Holy Spirit, Overcoming Obstacles, Pentecost Experiences, Transformational Breakthroughs

I was the oldest of five siblings and responsibility was so impressed upon me that my shoulders became a luggage rack. Try as I might — and occasionally do — I can’t shirk responsibility. Still, I know that this weight of the world isn’t really mine to bear alone. I can ask for help from family and friends or even get online assistance. I can also yoke myself to Jesus who promises to take burdens upon himself and lighten my load [Mt. 11:30]. I can turn to the Serenity Prayer and wisely accept things I cannot change, putting down some burdens as a result. But what difference does our attitude toward responsibility make when it comes to creativity? For one thing, putting down or sharing burdens frees up time and energy that could be put to creative use.

Also, whether you already carry huge responsibility or you chronically avoid it, the fear of responsibility can sometimes subconsciously sabotage your creativity or productivity. If you fear responsibility, you may avoid completing goals through procrastination (another way fear rears its head). Or you may repeatedly quit when you’re ahead but not yet at the finish line.

Let’s say you have a big creative idea, a vision you’d like to see manifested. If you’re typically very responsible, you may plan or start but then set aside your big creative vision as you handle a series of smaller responsibilities you “must” attend to, telling yourself you “can’t” put in the time or effort to move forward on the big creative idea. Or you may think you already have so many responsibilities on your plate that you can’t take on one more thing (not wanting to admit that perhaps you need to let go of something else).

Indeed, responsibility can be both an outright block in the form of excuses for attending to lower priorities as well as a fear that impedes your creative progress. I must admit that I’m easily caught in the former, and that there may be less conscious component of the latter . . . because how could a responsible person like I’ve been all my life fear the responsibility that might come with creative success?

Because we were all divinely meant to be creative in some way, each of us has the responsibility to carry out our mission. Christians have just celebrated Pentecost, reminding us that we are summoned to live all our lives “in the Spirit” [Rom. 8:9, Gal. 5:16,25]. We are to get out of the fear that keeps us waiting in the Upper Room; we are to get out there and live big and bold, doing what God’s called us to do. We are to get up and act without fear, not to push off onto others what we can do and are called to do, and not to leave our light hidden away where no one can see it [Mt. 17:7, Mt. 5:15]. So yes, sometimes doing our creative thing means responsibility. In this post-Pentecost time, how about praying for the Spirit’s guidance and the power of the Spirit to do what you’re being called to do, relying on gifts and fruits of the Spirit like fortitude and perserverance.

It also means using our personal gifts and talents and our unique circumstances that add meaning and beauty, serve and uplift the world. When that comes from the heart, it feels more like play and joy than like work and burden. So we need to get over the notion that creative success means increased responsibility and stop sabotaging creativity to protect our so-called freedom from increased responsibility. When we prioritize our writing, music, art, crafts, dance, performance, hospitality, entrepreneurship, leadership, ministry or service — whatever our calling involves — the creative triumphs we experience will lighten the weight we may perceive responsibility to be. And there’s tremendous freedom in knowing you’re doing what you are here to do!

Awareness is very powerful. Just realizing what your attitudes are towards responsibilities, big and small, informs your decision making, giving you the power to decide from a place that is more conscious, more considered, more intentional. It creates momentum and it empowers you to walk out your purposes.

Visualize feeling lightness and relaxation and creative success all together — even if just for a few seconds or just a tiny bit more than you usually do. Invite Jesus and the Holy Spirit to be present as you close your eyes and breathe with that visualization. Pray to experience the combination of lightness and relaxation, joy and creative success. And then during your creative process lighten up as needed for breaks and self-care. Perhaps add some uplifting music in the background as you work or create. Give thanks as you use your “bodyguard energy” to resist excuses to back away from your creativity, even or especially when the alternative activities come justified in your mind as “handling other responsibilities.” As you do that, you grow your ability to be responsible not just for the quotidian obligations of your household or job but, more than that, for creative causes ordained by the Great Creator and entrusted to you for completion. This is highly spiritual and transformative, which is good for you and for others.

Each successful step you take along a spiritually blessed creative path will encourage and uplift you and others and will be worth the responsibility taken to move forward. If you’d like help in overcoming obstacles and journeying on the spiritual path, perhaps you might pray about and consider signing up for an Unbound prayer session and then getting some spiritual direction.