“Have you had a personal experience of Pentecost?”

This was the question that Fr. Jim Ferry asked me 46 years ago. It led me to pray to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, changed my life and gave me a new ministry. I left teaching about World History and began traveling the world to teach about Jesus and the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father.

What I have seen and heard speaking at conferences in over 60 countries is that when we come to God with expectant faith asking for a new Pentecost, he hears our prayer and pours out his Holy Spirit and the charisms in great abundance.

However, I’ve also experienced a tendency to focus on praying for healing and neglecting to continue to lead people in prayer to be baptized in the Spirit. At the first Pentecost the crowd asked Peter, “What do we have to do to receive this Holy Spirit?” St. Peter’s answer, “Repent, accept Jesus as Lord and you will receive the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38) frames the way I learned to pray with people to be baptized in the Holy Spirit.

In our healing services we experience many signs and wonders (resting in the Spirit, healings, etc.) and these are wonderful manifestations of God’s love.  However, leaders of such services should work to encourage repentance and a desire to be baptized in the Holy Spirit among the participants. Baptism in the Holy Spirit is so much more than healing or resting in the Spirit.  It is “a life-transforming experience of the love of God the Father poured into one’s heart by the Holy Spirit, received through a surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ…and equips a person with charisms for service and mission” (ICCRS, Baptism in the Holy Spirit, p. 13).

We have taught effectively about God’s healing love but I’ve experienced a need to teach our people about the purifying fire, about embracing the cross, about finding God in the valleys and desert in our prayer and our life.

The call of the Church to a new evangelization is one the Charismatic Renewal has heard from the Holy Spirit and has responded to generously for many years. Our Holy Father recognized this recently when he said, “The Charismatic Renewal is a great force at the service of the proclamation of the Gospel, in the joy of the Holy Spirit.” The challenge now, as leaders age, is to pass on the responsibility and the work of service to younger leaders and for those younger leaders to, in turn, raise up new leaders. We need to move on to today’s anointing of the Spirit for us and leave yesterday’s anointing to those new people whom God is raising up…and I believe that in this way we will all experience a new Pentecost!

Sr. Nancy Kellar, SC

Sr. Nancy Kellar, SC

Sr. Nancy Kellar, SC, a Sister of Charity of New York, has been involved in full time ministry in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in 1971. She was a member of the first Charismatic House of Prayer in the United States. Today she continues her ministry of teaching sent out and supported in love and prayer by her charismatic community of Sisters of Charity in Scarsdale, NY where she again resides. Since beginning this work, she has spoken at Conferences and given retreats in more than 50 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and South America as well as the U.S.A. Her frequent theme is, “There’s always more of God’s Love and gifts.”