Talking Holy Spirit with a Pentecostal

I have had many mutual faith sharing moments with Uber drivers and the last one I didn't even know how it began, but I found myself saying I wish I had known sooner the reality so basic as the Second Coming. I mean, this is so fundamental in Christianity, I couldn't comprehend why it took 38 years of being a baptized Catholic to know and understand it. Because it was relatively new in my worldview, I even want to make sure I can still articulate it so here it goes: Jesus when He returns as He promised will return not as a God of Mercy but of Judgement. His act of Judgement will result in a new heaven and a new earth after the old one, ravaged by calamities, tribulations and specific events such as the arrival and the defeat of anti-Christ, has reached its ebb. Christ will assume those who are still alive at this time in both body and soul, and those who are dead--are are in heaven or hell--will be given back their bodies ('glorified' bodies), and everyone will be judged. Those who are worthy will be called to eternal happiness with the Bridgegroom. Those who are not will be utterly destroyed, gone, eliminated forever, that not even their souls--made for eternal bliss, will have a speck of memory left of them.

My driver, who is a Pentecostal Christian, agreed with me about its importance that he said people should live their lives accordingly. My brother here had just been to his high school reunion and reunited with his longtime crush and so is talking to me with the innocence of a school boy on occasion but with the wisdom and honesty of an adult, minority, male. He said temptation via his phone had besieged him the other day and he cried to God that he doesn't want to start the day with a sin and the moment he put in his heart the right thing to do, his pastor called, and boy, he said, he called out to him man! It feels good to be able to talk to you.

For ultimately, just as I have been stirred and and strengthened in the faith by others--academic and personal encounters--it is others too that will lift and build us up heavenward, so we must chose out companions wisely. My new friend said for five years he has been attending a weekly life sharing and encouragement session in his church led by two ministers. I tell him too of our Church's weekly prayer group in our charismatic Catholic Church--which for tomorrow will host the first female graduate of Mundelein Seminary in Chicago. As I ask him about the great praise and worship that could happen where the Holy Spirit is celebrated--as it is fifty years jubilee in the Catholic Charismatic movement I said to him this year, with celebrations in the Vatican, US especially Pittsburg, PA where it started and where our church will send a delegation in July. I didn't get to tell him our church is an anointed place where the founding pastor Fr. Jim Ferry was so filled the with Spirit, the parishioners have to tiptoe around the "slain" (by the Holy Spirit) folks who were just receiving communion as they were. He tells me that he had a high prayer moment in his church when he felt literally being lifted up by the Holy Spirit that he had to grab to the pew. I tell him that where I work, the Pentecostal men play praise songs and I sing along as I have been made familiar with the songs too, the charismatic tradition building on community singing and lively expression. I told him that once two ladies from my church prayed for me in front of the Blessed Sacrament--the Real Presence of our Lord--in a difficult moment, but they healed me in great power that their mellifluous singing, speaking in tongues, imploring and Scripture quoting for me sobbing in front of Jesus in the Eucharist has grooved deep in my consciousness. I asked my brother in Christ if he had ever spoken in tongues and he said, I do not know and maybe I do not want to know.

God is so big, I do not even know how to understand Him, he said. I wanted to tell my brother, Church will help you understand, the Bible, the traditions. oh, I wish you would have the fullness, that you can understand that in the reception of the Sacraments Jesus comes intimately and easily and you will understand. God speaks quite clearly. The Church Fathers have laid it all out. Jesus speaks frequently and easily if we give him the time. But I was only telling my friend, "I too could not speak in tongues even though I initially thought it was easy and I could fake it. But the Holy Spirit is the truth and He resists fakery. It wasn't truly when this gift was given to me was I able to have it and only after the Life in the Spirit seminar and after I read a book where a priest, long in the renewal, was having a hard time understanding it, was describing his journey at discovering the gifts. And there in baby steps, he begin babbling sounds, allowing his tongue to be free, and his lungs surrendering to the making of nonsense sounds that is only for the cry to God in the depths of our soul, and not so much for the prophetic hearing of the community to be interpreted by another one who has the gift of interpretation of tongues. No, this gift of tongues is simply a gift of prayer. My mother-in-law prayed this at the death bed of her husband; to her, it comes unwilled. To us, it is mostly willed, because we control this gift and use it in also situations where we are wordless and most desperate."

As I was telling this to my driver, I wished I could render his car a prayer-packed molecule, that we would sing and pray, but mostly we talked. There are many people desiring of the fullness. I wish he would be like many of my Protestant brothers and sisters who loved and hungered for Jesus so much and ultimately become Catholic. At the end, I told him of the great peace, the sweetness, the bliss that comes from eating of the Bread and Body that is Christ Himself. I told him about our pastoral associate who was a former Assembly of God/ Pentecostal bishop who converted when he was asked to chose between ministry and truth and he chose as Jesus had shown Himself to be fully and wholly n the Catholic faith. I told him about the high praise and the gifted ministers, religious and lay. I told him about adoration, that he can be in God's very presence 24/7 in a chapel somewhere (therealpresence.org) but mostly we shared the love which we bore to our God and to those whom we love or will love--my spouse for me, and him for his new-old crush. I gifted him with a Miraculous Medal telling him about Jesus's momma and hoped for them best.