 Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. Now and at the hour of our death, amen. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Awesome, awesome stuff. Once again, thank you for being a part of this. Let me just do a quick survey. I love hands. How many people hear this Holy Spirit thing is kind of new? And last night, when Bishop Jacobs started speaking in tongues, you were like, Holy Moses, what is that? I'm not sure I like that. I don't know about that. That is just weird. He's, you know, maybe he's having a stroke or something. Oh man, it's always, God's, I love when God catches us off guard. And I'll talk about praying in tongues and what that is as a gift to the Holy Spirit later on. But I just want to start with coming around a basic idea. How many people remember, you know, the old school days of the Charismatic renewal? How many of you met some old school Charismatics? How many were frightened by them? They always look like they were so into it, like very enthusiastic and it can be overwhelming. And I think there was a time when something happened. God was pouring out His Holy Spirit on the church in a powerful way and manifesting these signs, these wonders, these gifts. And what happened in my opinion is all things Charismatic, which were supposed to be dispersed amongst the entire church, to renew it and refresh it and keep it on mission and keep it effective in the world, it really became like a smaller movement within the church and almost branded a particular spirituality. Like you were Charismatic or traditional, but you can't be both. Because Charismatic, you know, that's way out there. I mean, they're on the fringe. You need to be right here. This is where you need to be spiritually. This newness of what God was doing, you know, there was like this reaction from a lot of people who just stepped away from that and said, that can't be authentic. That can't be real. That's got to be something, you know, protested that's infected the church. And yet we gather here on Pentecost weekend and we read in the Acts the Apostles that the church was born out of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. He came down, tongues of flame, a mighty Russian wind rested upon the Apostles. They burst forth from the upper room where they were hiding with a boldness. Peter who denied Christ three times, Peter who kept sticking his foot in his mouth, Peter who couldn't get anything right before the Holy Spirit came, stood up, preached the gospel and 3,000 people entered the church. That's dynamic growth. Wouldn't it be great if the next time you're at a hockey game or a football game, you stood up and preached the gospel and 3,000 people said, okay, I'll join your church. Let's go. That'd be pretty amazing. But it also said that the preaching was accompanied by the signs and wonders. They were speaking in other tongues. And so we see this as the birth of our church is very foundation is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. If we want to label that charismatic, we can. But we have to understand that being open to the Holy Spirit, life in the spirit, charismatic, however you want to label it, it's not a brand of spirituality. It's not a book or a seminar. It's not a retreat. It's not a training. It's not these two sessions. It's not an eccentric spirituality for the wannabe mystics. It is not an us versus them. But it is the foundational experience of transformation that Christ wants each one of us to have. He wants us all to be alive in the Holy Spirit because after he died and rose from the dead, he told his apostles, wait, because what's been promised is coming. And he goes back to heaven. We just celebrated this last week, the ascension where Jesus goes back body and blood, soul and divinity. His complete person goes back to heaven. And then he sends forth the Holy Spirit. And what we see is man being reinserted into the Godhead through the person of Christ. He's the firstborn of all creation. So he goes in first body, blood, soul and divinity. And what happens then is the reverse. On Pentecost, the body and blood receives the divinity of God in our person through the power of the Holy Spirit. That is what completes the work of salvation is when we allow the Holy Spirit to run rampant in our lives and we become just alive in that spirit because it's God's life, His love poured into our souls. So what life in the spirit is, it's a way of life. It's the whole picture. It's what gave birth to the church and what's going to give birth to the sainthood in your life. It's what's going to cause you and help you to move forward, to overcome, to become like I said, everything God intended you to be when he created you. And it begins in baptism. You know, I think part of the confusion of baptism in the Holy Spirit is we already have baptism as infants or when people enter the church. So people are like, well, is this a second sacrament? And it's not. It's not a sacramental experience, although it does awaken what happened in baptism. Listen, these are some passages from the Catechism. This is 1996 in the Catechism. It says, grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to His call, to become children of God, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life. So this grace is God looking at us and saying, I love you. I choose you. I want you. And I'm going to send you this grace, this grace of the Holy Spirit, so that you can have the help that you need to respond to this gift. The response to baptism. When we go to receive communion, the priest says the body of Christ and we say, which means I believe. There's a response there. When we go to confession, what's our response? We confess our sins, we do our act of contrition, and then we do our penance. There is a response that's necessary. First, you have to be sorry. You have to want to change. You have to mean it. So what is the response to baptism? If there's a response to all these sacraments, what's the response to baptism? Because baptism requires a response from us. And I believe that response that God gives us is called life in the spirit, that continual yes to the grace of our baptism. Stir it up. Manifest it in my life. Expand it. Let it change me. It goes on to say in the next paragraph, it says, by baptism the Christian participates in the grace of Christ. He receives the life of the spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the church. So the Holy Spirit, at the moment of your baptism, he's breathing love into your life, divine charity. God's perfect love. And he's bringing you as a living stone in the temple of the church. Informing us to be a member of the body of Christ. It goes on to say in 1998, it says, this vocation to eternal life is supernatural. Now does anyone ever watch the show Supernatural? It's about the two brothers that drive around that hot rod and fight all sorts of demons and spiritual stuff. And that kind of is what we use as our benchmark for defining things spiritual, supernatural. Remember that word we automatically think of the dark side. But supernatural means above nature. Supernatural means above nature. So we're talking about God's grace to help us to live above our nature. For what is our nature? Selfishness? Pride? Greed? Lost? You know, unchecked appetites, unchecked emotions. They seem to be kind of out there and left to our own devices. We are going to fail over and over and over again. So we need to rise above our nature, the sin nature that the concupiscence as they call it, which is just the effects of original sin on you and me. And what gives us the ability to rise above that is the grace that came to us in baptism, namely the grace of the Holy Spirit. And so Pentecost and talking about life in the Spirit is going back to God once again and saying renew, restore and expand that gift that I received in baptism. For too many Catholics that gift lies untapped, unrealized and unused in their soul. It is like there's an atomic bomb in each one of us that has never been triggered. And when you see a saint, you're looking at somebody who triggered that bomb of grace that was put in their life when they were baptized. It is saying yes to what's already there. And it's also about asking God to do something new. It says, you know, finally it says in 1999, it is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in baptism. Deifying to make us like God. And what is the visible image of our invisible God? It's Jesus Christ. So the ultimate goal of life in the Spirit of being more open to the Holy Spirit is this. The great paradox of our faith is that if we want to live for Jesus, we need to die to ourselves. There is no heaven except through the cross. And just because Jesus did that for us doesn't mean that there are not crosses waiting for us. And some of you are already carrying them. You know what I mean. You're carrying these burdens. You've got things in your life that are weighing you down. But the Holy Spirit has been given to us that we can pass through the crosses that God has chosen and allowed us to carry so that we can be made worthy of the promise of Christ is that those who die with Christ will live forever. To be filled with the Holy Spirit, we need to say yes to this grace and empty ourselves. I know in my life, the thing that has blocked the Spirit's work in my life more than anything is I've just been so full of myself. My concerns, my worries, my pride, my desires, my ego, my desire to be noticed, my desire to be recognized, my desire to be loved, I'm so full of myself that even if God were to come and knock on the door of my heart and I was to pull it wide open to God, he'd be like, John, there's no room in there. You need to get rid of some of your stuff. You need to get rid of some of you. Some of the stuff that you're carrying, your pride, your ego, your self-love, your self-loathing, your self-self-self, whatever it is where I'm focused on myself and take my eyes off myself, put them on the cross and say, Jesus, I empty myself before you. Fill me with life, fill me with the Holy Spirit. These spiritual principles seem so profound and people ask me, well, John, how do I know I'm doing that? How do I know I'm emptying myself? Because I don't always feel like anything's happening. I'm praying, God, I empty myself before you, but I don't feel any emptier. And I ask God to fill me and I don't feel any more full because I will explain this very simple. It's an act of the will based in faith. It's not an emotional high. Now, there are times when God is very consoling and will put joy and peace and love in your heart and you will know he's there, but most of the time God operates like this. Just pray it in faith as an act of your will and God matches you and meets you where you are. And the beautiful thing about life and the Spirit is you've got your whole life to figure it out. This is not like, okay, by the end of this conference we're going to have a little quiz on the Holy Spirit and those who pass the quiz will get their official, I'm now officially filled and full of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life in the right way and I'll never make mistakes again and those who you can't pass will fail miserably and you'll have to come back next year and repeat the course. It's not like that. We all walk out of here under the care of God. You know, when we say Jesus is the Lord of the universe, that's a great thing to say. But more importantly than that is to be able to say Jesus is my Lord. It's one thing to say Jesus is the good shepherd. It's another thing entirely to say Jesus is my shepherd. And it comes down to this, if Jesus is Lord, is he Lord of your relationship with him? The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to make Jesus Christ even the Lord of our relationship with him and what I mean by that is we stop tap dancing in front of the Lord trying to earn his love. We stop trying to be something that we're not meant to be. And I'm not talking about choosing disobedience or walking away from God. I am talking about this idea that we need to trust that the one who made us through the power of his Holy Spirit can lead us to where we want to be. And that when he started in baptisms, he put an indelible mark on each one of our souls. Just like Michelangelo signed his name to his paintings, to his masterpieces, God has signed his name to the masterpiece that is you. And his job and his work is to lead you and guide you. It says in paragraph 1699, and I love this, because if you go into the catechism, which I recommend, if you don't own a catechism, buy one. Next to the Bible, I don't think there's a better book out there. It has so many truth bombs in it. I love it. But you know, you go to the one section and it talks about man's vocation. That's a whole section of the catechism. What does man's call? The first section under that, sub hunting under that is life in the spirit. The primary vocation of man is life in the spirit. And this is what it says in paragraph 1699. It says, life in the spirit fulfills the vocation of man. This life is made up of divine charity and human solidarity. It is graciously offered as salvation. So think about this. If you're a priest, life in the spirit fulfills your vocation. If you're married, life in the spirit fulfills your vocation. If you're single, the single state is a vocation to live a particular way and the Holy Spirit is what can give that state meaning, purpose, and just an extraordinary experience of grace. I mean, when we think about what life in the spirit does for us, the most important thing and the most important gift that the Holy Spirit wants to give each one of us is himself. Why? Because there's nothing greater on this earth that we can experience, nothing greater than communion with God. This is why the sacrament of the altar is the source and summit of our faith because we are communing with Christ. That's why they call it communion. There's nothing better than communing with Christ. This idea of communing with Christ is not a theological concept. He wants it to be a lived reality. He wants each one of us to have an intimate personal relationship with him and the Holy Spirit is what makes that come alive. It says in paragraph 260 of the Catechism, it says, Think about that. When you hear the words divine economy, that refers to everything that God has done since the creation of the world, from the covenants that he made after the fall of Adam and Eve, through the prophets that he sent to preach his way and to call people back to his heart, to the incarnation, that moment when Christ came into the world and God became man, all the miracles that Christ performed to show us the love and power of God the Father. Jesus' passion and death upon the cross, him making the ultimate sacrifice for you and I so that the wall that separated God and man could be torn down. And like I talked about, his rising from the dead, his rising from the dead teaches us that there is nothing in this world to fear. Amen? His rising from the dead said, even death is nothing for us to fear. We can live without fear. We can live without anxiety. This is why in the Bible, the words be not afraid are recorded 366 times. One for every day of the year and an extra one in case you forgot or weren't listening one day. Be not afraid. That is the good news and that is what Christ's resurrection teaches us. But it wasn't done, the work of salvation, of His new creation. You and I happened on the day of Pentecost when His life and love was poured out on the church in superabundance. It enables us to develop our abilities, our character, our spiritual nature which is part of our vocation. You are a spiritual being primarily. But as we've drifted as a society more and more away from God, we put all our stock in the flesh and in science and that which we can touch and see and smell and taste and forgot that before we got so caught up in the passing things of this world, people were obsessed by the eternal nature of who they were and were trying to find the meaning and purpose in the eternal God who made them. But Satan and his deviousness, his cunning has caused us to be driven to distraction by all the little bells and whistles and trinkets that just keep our eyes focused on this world instead of our hearts and minds set on the things above. But when we have the Holy Spirit what we gain is the ability to form this spiritual nature to have it called out. As I've walked with the Lord I find myself caring less and less about the things of this world and more and more about just pleasing God. I care less and less about my plans and my agenda and want to be able to say God I want to do your will and hear God tell me what his will is and then accomplish it and that happens through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has been given to us to guide us to lead us to take us from where we are and take us to where Jesus Christ wants us to be. Where God the Father intended us to be when he created us. The author of life has a plan for each one of us. The Holy Spirit is our personal life coach and the indwelling of the love of God that will guide us to where that needs to be. When we receive the Holy Spirit it completes us. It makes us more fully human because a human without a Holy Spirit is incomplete. We were created as St. Paul said to be temples of his Holy Spirit. A person, an empty temple without light is just another dark building. It doesn't matter. You ever go by a cathedral at night when there's no light inside of it? The stained glass just looks dark. It looks foreboding. It doesn't look inviting. But you go on the inside and the sunlight is going through the stained glass window. It's glorious. Or when you go by at night and it's all lit up from the inside. The Christian without the Holy Spirit burning in his soul without his life set on fire by God is like a cathedral with no lights. There's nothing attractive about it. There's no beauty there. It's only in the light of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit that we find this beauty. The next thing that the Holy Spirit does is it makes us holy. Holiness is God's exclusive property. There's only one thing that's holy and it's God. You and I, we can strive for holiness but it says in scriptures even our righteous deeds are like filthy rags before God in his holiness. So we need to just kind of dial back a bit and say, okay, if I am going to be holy how am I going to become holy then? By allowing the Holy Spirit to dwell in you. Call it osmosis, spiritual osmosis but when we're attached and filled with holiness then we take on the righteousness of Christ. We become holy because the Holy Spirit is one with us. Not through our own efforts. Our efforts in attaining holiness absolutely necessary. Apart from the Holy Spirit absolutely ineffective. We can try because God will not be mocked. He will not let you become something especially holy that he's not a part of. How could we ever hope to be holy apart from the Holy Spirit? So it's this holiness that we desire and I know some of you hunger for holiness. You've made these commitments coming out of confession. Never again. Give me the grace. I promise I will never do this again. I'm turning God. I'm coming back to you and we fail and we fail and we fail. And I say it's time to stop trying and time to start dying. I die to my efforts to try to fix myself. Holy Spirit come upon me a new way and transform me from the inside out. And when you prompt me Holy Spirit give me the grace to cooperate with what you're doing. You pray that. You do that. You'll become holy. You will become holy. It is your destiny to become holy and blameless in God's sight. That passage from Ephesians. He's given us everything. He wants this for us. Not from us. Okay. Remember that. Holiness God wants that for us. Not from us because it doesn't come from us. It comes from God working through us. Amen. This is why this life in the Spirit is so important. Because if we do this without the Holy Spirit if we try to be church without the Holy Spirit we might as well just be the Peace Corps or another social club. Because we won't be the mystical body of Christ because the mystical body of Christ is alive in the Holy Spirit. It's the Holy Spirit that makes the body of Christ mystical and powerful. It makes you as individuals and it makes us as a body, the church. This is why we say Pentecost is the birth of the church. And finally I'll just tell you and this has been my experience and this has been the experience of so many other people. Life in the Spirit is satisfied. We are constantly needing to drink from the fountain of the living water, the Holy Spirit. And the reason we have to is because like me and like most probably everyone probably agree we're pretty broken. We have a lot of cracks and we leak a lot. As soon as we drink it it just leaks right out of us so we have to constantly drink, drink, drink, drink. And that's alright. That's the way God intended it to be. Because if we could take a week's worth of water, of the living water and store it up inside of us and walk away and ignore God for a week how would we be in relationship with him? He's made us utterly dependent upon him to make any spiritual progress to receive any kind of joy. What is joy? What is peace? What is love? Well Galatians chapter 5 teaches us that they're the fruit of the Spirit. And the Catechism teaches us that the fruits of the Spirit are those special graces that the Holy Spirit forms in us. He forms them in us. You want more peace? Pray to the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, form peace in my heart. Because part of that formation of peace in your life may be okay you need to let go of these three things that you're hanging on to. When you're clenching onto something, bitterness, pain, anger, a hurt, a wound, you know you can clench your fist as tight as you can until your knuckles turn white. If you do that long enough when you finally release it it actually is a little painful to let it go. To expand your hand like that. And sometimes letting go is there's a little bit of pain in all. But as soon as you get there your hand relaxes. And you know what your hand is now? Empty and open to receive something from Jesus Christ. The clenched fist before God hanging on to what we need to let go will never allow us to be receptive to what God wants to give us. And when we go back tonight into the field house and we have this healing service I want to invite you. I want to encourage you. Open both your hands whatever you're hanging on to just let it go because I'll tell you something. You have no idea how much joy God wants to pour in your heart. You have no clue how happy God wants to make you. The saints who experienced ecstasy talked about it being so overwhelming that they could almost die from the joy that they were experiencing in Christ. We are created for that joy and the more we're letting go and receiving of the Holy Spirit the more it's going to be a lived reality in our lives. And not just a concept between our ears. This is the best thing that the Holy Spirit does is he takes everything that we believe and gets it out of our head and puts it in our heart where it belongs. Your faith is primarily between your ears. That's where Satan attacks you. That's your weak spot. It's always through negative thoughts and lies and tricks in our brains. This is why a faith that's up here Satan can easily go in there and try to twist it and twist you against God and twist you against the truth of God but once you ask the Holy Spirit to confirm and convict and take that faith from between your ears and put it deep into your soul and deep into your heart then you become rock solid. That's where faith comes from. Your will, your heart the deeper part of who you are. Your intellect's a beautiful thing but your faith is not supposed to reside primarily in your mind. It needs to go deep in your heart. Because while we are sent to truth and we choose to love love comes from the deepest part of who we are and when the Holy Spirit pours his love into us then we can love God and return him because 1st John 419 says we love because you first love does. You ever have God come up and smack you alongside the head with a 2x4 of love? You need that. You need to be surprised by how awesome God's love is for you. I pray you have that experience as we can have nothing else. If nothing else, because the greatest gift that God can give us is not to heal people or to raise people from the dead or to speak in tongues or to prophesy the greatest gift that God can give us is his love. It satisfies everything the deepest parts of our soul. To better understand the work of the Spirit let's look at what Jesus said at the Last Supper. He calls the Holy Spirit the advocate. The advocate. The only time we ever use that word is when we're needing a lawyer, right? A judge advocate, you know? So what does the word advocate mean? It means literally the translation of the word advocate is he who is called to one side. So the Holy Spirit has been called to walk alongside you in this life. Like I said, he's the personal trainer that God has given each one of us. He's your life coach. He's your spiritual mentor. He is the one that will enlighten your mind to see things. Why did Jesus spend his time on earth opening the eyes of the blind in the ears of the deaf? To show us that that's our spiritual reality as well as a physical reality. We can be spiritually deaf and spiritually blind and if you don't come to the understanding that you might be spiritually blind and cry out to God for the gift of spiritual sight you may never truly see what God wants you to see. It's the Holy Spirit that brings about spiritual sight. He's the one who attunes our ears to hear God's voice. I pray I don't hear God. Ask the Holy Spirit. Help me to understand what I need to do. The apostles asked Jesus Lord, teach us to pray and they taught him the Lord's prayer. We need to be going to the Holy Spirit and saying, Holy Spirit, teach me to pray. Open my ears. Open my heart to understand the scripture that I'm reading because sometimes I read these passages from the Bible they don't seem to make any sense. Well, we can't unlock the spiritual mysteries of God, the spiritual truths of God with human intellect. It doesn't work that way. The Holy Spirit is like your translator that will take the words in that page and make it live reality in your heart. This is why we need the Holy Spirit in so many ways. Honestly, someone should write a book why we need the Holy Spirit. He says in John 14.16 this is Jesus speaking if you love me you will keep my commandments and I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate who to be with you always. So when he says another advocate well, who's our first advocate? We got two advocates? Yes, two people have been called to your side. You've got Jesus on your right Holy Spirit on your left. You can't lose, you're covered. We are not alone in this world and if you feel alone and I know many of you do you feel so alone sometimes like is there anybody there? Is God there? We need to ask once again open my heart open my eyes open my mind to see where you're working to hear your voice because sometimes I think God is like six inches from our ears shouting, I love you do you get this? I mean if we could have spiritual ears and look upon this we would hear the Lord shouting this is how much I love you I did this for you I wanted to be with you forever in heaven and in order to do that I had to pay the sin the price for sin every sin ever committed so I did it for you because I don't want heaven without you I don't want heaven without you and I've done all that I can to open the doors to heaven for you by paying the price for your sin but I need you to say yes to the Holy Spirit and for those of you who might have stood up last night for the first time and gave your life to Jesus Christ that is the gateway into all this first giving your life to Christ and then opening your heart to the power of the Holy Spirit opening your life for a fresh outpouring what does an advocate do an advocate is someone who defends it's someone who mediates it's someone who's an intercessor a counselor and he always acts upon the behalf of another for their good you know the public defenders who have to defend people they know are guilty can never act in the except in the best interest of their client always they're bound by oath to protect the rights of the person they're representing even if they believe 100% in their heart that they're guilty and you may be 100% guilty of some awful stuff but guess what God is always on your side and he will mediate and redeem and restore and forgive and set you free because he's bound by his oath of love the covenant that he signed with the blood of Jesus Christ that was ratified on the day of Pentecost when he poured his Holy Spirit into us it can't be broken the mark on your soul is indelible it can never be erased and it says this child is property of God the Father paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ and sealed by the power of my Holy Spirit and they are mine and when we step into that as the Holy Spirit to make that lived reality our lives change forever we're not the same Jesus said he wanted to send us this advocate because he knew how fragile his apostles were he says in John 14-26 the advocate the Holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you so he will teach you everything Jesus knew the weaknesses of the apostles he knew that they would soon forget the miracles they would soon forget that he had the power to feed 5,000 people and raise people from the dead and sure enough right after the Last Supper they all scattered except for a handful you know anyone who doubts that women are tougher than men there were more women that followed Jesus to the cross than men it's truth but it also is like a challenge for us guys man like we gotta step up we've gotta be better followers of Christ we've gotta have a more passionate love for Jesus Christ in our life men he knew that they you know they would be assaulted by the lies of the enemy we are always under attack the only people who don't get attacked by the devil are those that are already firmly in his grasp or who have set their hearts so far away against God that Satan already owns them he looks at somebody that he owns and says I don't need to bother this person they're mine I've already got them chained into a cage it's you crazy people who want to stand up against the kingdom of darkness and say I stand for Jesus Christ and I'm gonna make a difference in the world that make him so angry and because you're here and even open to the possibility of giving more and more of your life to God Satan is gonna try to find ways of putting lies into your heart to take you away from this truth that you were loved by God and your life can change forever through an encounter with the Holy Spirit but it's the Holy Spirit that will defend us because that's what an advocate does he defends us against the lies he comforts us in our times of fear and anxiety we reject anxiety we push fear away but it's the Holy Spirit coming into that emptiness that fills us and protects us from that anxiety from coming back we're not created to be empty we're created to be full at all times and we're either gonna be full of the Holy Spirit or gonna be full of anxiety, full of fear full of doubts, full of confusion and when we're full of the Holy Spirit there's no room for that other stuff and when those other stuff try to break down the walls and start coming back into our life the Holy Spirit defends us because that's what the advocate does he comforts us and he defends us in times of attack this is why we need the Holy Spirit Jesus sent the Holy Spirit because he would be the one to counsel them to build the church the Holy Spirit has been active in the church even with all our warts and ugliness and I'm telling you there have been days when I've been so angry by the bad behavior of some of our priests and bishops so frustrated and angry and so hurt but the Holy Spirit if he could build this church and it's withstood all it has for over 2,000 years knows how to do the divine renovation that it needs to be restored, redeemed and renewed and be brought back even stronger than it was before amen this is why you and I don't have an option of saying well this Holy Spirit might be for some people and they might love that but it's not for me hey we're all in this together we're all on the same ship we all have a role your heart is an access point of grace for the church God wants to pour grace into the church through your soul and through the Holy Spirit we're organically connected through the Holy Spirit we are one and if one of us is suffering we're all suffering we don't get the luxury of saying well I've got Jesus in the Holy Spirit to heck with everyone else I'm just going to stay over here and do my little thing and God's going to hug me and it's going to be so nice the Holy Spirit push the apostles out of that locked room out to preach the gospel if you say yes to the Holy Spirit he's going to preach the apostles he's going to do signs and wonders and he's going to use you to lead other people to faith we've become such creatures of comfort in the United States we you know people say oh the United States is awful they have 10% of the world's population and 90% of its wealth we also have 10% of the world's population and consume 90% of the mood altering drugs that are produced in the world because we have so much weak and miserable all the time none of it is satisfied we have a mass great wealth and yet we are so impoverished in our souls because we've chosen the world over God and so many of our fellow Catholics have stopped going to mass have given themselves over to a life without God and they are miserable don't let anyone's Facebook feed or Instagram post make you think that they have this beautiful life anyone with the proper filter can make themselves look awesome the reality is when you look beyond the surface we have just so many broken people looking for happiness and as the old son goes looking for love in all the wrong places and this is why we need the Holy Spirit because when we are filled with the Holy Spirit it's going to overflow from us it's going to overflow from us and that will become our ministry and the Holy Spirit will be overflowing and love will splash on them accidentally like oops sorry I'm just overflowing with love and you got hit I love you man it just happens because that's what God does that's what God does and the thing is whatever it is that you need to know however you need to change however you need to grow and how you're going to get there like people say I know I need to change I don't know how why because it says in John chapter 14 he will teach us everything your personal life plan is already known by the Holy Spirit exactly what you need not just to survive but to thrive in your faith is known by the Holy Spirit he knows you better than you know yourself he knows what he's and he's longing to teach you he's longing to teach you what you need to know he knows our sins he knows our weaknesses he knows our rough edges that need to be smoothed out he knows the gaps in our soul that need to be filled with grace he knows it all and he wants to teach you because he can't do it without your collaboration and cooperation you're in this together the Holy Spirit is not pixie dust it's not a magic wand that gets waved over somebody's life and automatically everything is fixed he becomes your partner the one that you work with the one that you pray to who will guide you and will help you and sustain you on your journey of faith from this world into the next that's what the Holy Spirit wants to do but he also wants to to go beyond that he wants to give you so many things you know Jesus says I tell you it's better for you that I go because if I don't go the advocate will not come to you but if I go I will send him to you and when he comes he will convict the world in regard to sin and righteousness and condemnation see God wants to convict us of our sin not for the purpose of shaming us but to convert us let me give you a little little secret guilt is not a bad thing if you've done something wrong and you feel guilty that's God telling you go to confession if we didn't have that in our hearts we might never move to change but what I don't want to hear is people say I feel shame which means I'm not good guilt and conviction from the Holy Spirit means I need to change my behavior because it was wrong shame says I'm unlovable I'm a mistake I'm not good that's a lie from the enemy you're good and you're loved God convicts us so we can change this to the Holy Spirit that doesn't he wants to awaken our faith he wants to enable us to have deeper communication with Jesus Christ he wants us to grow in spiritual freedom not being bound by sin for his father Lewis said today the true freedom is the ability to do what is right not to do whatever we want but it's not just for us and our salvation it's that we can be a blessing to the church like I said we are all created to be portals of grace to the rest of the body and the Holy Spirit brings these unique gifts that bless the church called Charisms and that's why we got to the point where we called it the Charismatic renewal because we were open to the Charisms and you're like well where did they come up with this idea of Charisms? Number one they're very scriptural first Corinthians chapter 12 13 and 14 talking about the spiritual nature of the body and the spiritual that God wants to pour out on the body but they've been affirmed in the documents of Vatican II and they've also been affirmed in the Catechism this is chapter paragraphs 801 and 802 whether extraordinary or simple and humble Charisms are graces of the Holy Spirit which directly or indirectly benefit the church ordered as they are to her building up to the good of man into the needs of the world Charisms are to be accepted with gratitude by the person who receives them and by all members of the church as well they are wonderfully rich grace for the apostolic vitality and for the holiness of the entire body of Christ in short to sum this up Charisms are gifts that God gives individuals for the benefit of somebody else every gift that God gives is not for us you know I think sometimes I've seen people pray for the Spirit and say well God I want this because I need this and it's not about your need it says here it's for the good of others and the needs of the world the church around us what does the church need right now I think the church needs three things faith love and holiness people who belong to the church that have deep faith deep love for Jesus Christ and holiness that's what's missing this is why people don't look to our clergy right now in a lot of places for direction because they don't see the clergy as being faithful, loving and holy and it's a shame because I know countless beautiful men who are serving our church faithfully who have never broken their vows and yet because of the salacious nature of some of these sins and the media publicity that they've received a vast portion of our society is written off the priests and the cleric as having any kind of spiritual or moral authority so what is going to win people back to the church is when lay people like you like me when we live lives of faith love and holiness and those are all gifts of the Holy Spirit those are all things that the Holy Spirit wants to form in us this is what Jesus says in John chapter 7 on the last day of the feast the great day Jesus stood up and proclaimed if anyone thirst let him come to me and drink he who believes in me as Scripture has said out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water what Jesus is saying is like if you're thirsty come to me and drink deeply because you're going to overflow like I said you're going to overflow out of your heart will come a stream of living water and all the people that you know who are thirsty and for Christ will come to you and you will pray with them and you will speak with them and you will love them and they will drink the Holy Spirit this is what ministry is it's simply the overflow of what we let God do in us I received the Holy Spirit when I was 18 years old and I'll talk to you more about it in the session I'm going to wrap up in one minute so you guys get your break and then we'll come back at 3.30 and finish up but I was 18 years old when I first experienced the power of the Holy Spirit and it came upon me very powerfully why because what I didn't realize is that God gave me this huge portion of grace because three months later I'd be serving with the national evangelization teams out of St. Paul Minnesota spreading the gospel for a year traveling across the country doing retreat after retreat after retreat one a day every day for ten months and I needed a lot of grace and a lot of stamina I wasn't very strong in my faith and God needed to do something mighty and quick and he did it probably not the way God works in lives of most people it's more gradual as we continue to grow in Christ but he was equipping me here for a mission this ministry and I realize this right away all the ministry is what God does in us and we can go on I had no idea how to share the gospel when I said yes to be on net I don't even know if I fully understood the gospel when I first said yes to God it didn't matter because God had asked me and I had to say yes because he did it in such a convincing manner I could not say no to the Lord and I could have come up 100 different reasons up here where I should have said no why I could have said no I had already been accepted to college I had already paid all my deposits I already knew what fraternity I was going to pledge I had my ten year plan planned out when this happened and God intervened in my life and said you've been heading down this path I've got something different something better you're not going to understand it but you've got to follow me down here and you're going to regret this path that God has put me on started with just this outpouring of the Holy Spirit and every time he's called me to do something he's called me to do something that I haven't been equipped to accomplish he's never called me to something I felt comfortable in doing I wish he would once in a while but he knows me God knows me enough to if he calls me to do something I know I can do I'm going to go okay God I got this take a rest I got this God I'm that prideful sometimes God has been humiliating me and humiliating me and humiliating me and I say that because the only way to grow in humility humility is to be humiliated and God has done it over and over and over again to get me to this point but I share this with you to give you great hope and great courage to say yes to God to do something crazy for the Lord to not be afraid because we never lose and the Spirit is about gaining the grace to continually say yes to God no matter how ridiculous the request is from him because every time we step out of our comfort zone we step into joy we step into excitement we step into just a thrill of knowing we're somewhere with Jesus that we've never been before and life is good so anyway I'm going to wrap up here when we come back the second half I'm going to talk a lot less and we're actually going to pray we're going to pray first that God pours out His Holy Spirit and then we're going to pray with one another because not only is God wanting to bless you in the next session He's going to use you to bless somebody else in this room through your prayer just wait and see you're going to be amazed it's going to be exciting I can't wait for you all to come back we got about