The Spirit cannot withhold itself from any heart that longs to know the presence of God.
—Richard Rohr, The Good News According to Luke
In 1971, Father Richard was placed in charge of the youth retreat program for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Ohio. For most of the very first retreat, Richard says that he thought all the boys—“a bunch of jocks”—were just tolerating him. But as Richard finished preaching on the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32), “a perfect story of how Jesus saw God,” the boys began to cry and embrace each other. Richard recounts being rather afraid of this unexpected appearance of the Holy Spirit:
I moved back; I didn’t know what to do with this. You’d think I’d be grateful that one of my sermons worked! And then they began singing in tongues. I’d never heard someone speaking in tongues before. My mouth fell open. What did this mean? I’d never heard anything so beautiful, and no one was orchestrating it!
I endured it for about ten or fifteen minutes. Although I was delighting in it, I was also scared. I didn’t know what to do; I didn’t know how to join in, so I just watched. Finally, I broke in and said, “Guys, I’ll put the pizzas in the oven next door. Come over in twenty-five minutes.” No one paid a bit of attention to me. I put those pizzas in the oven. Twenty-five minutes later, I took them out and there were no boys. I couldn’t understand why they were not on time!
I’ll never forget walking back across the parking lot into the chapel and opening the doors. Now they were all kneeling around the high altar of St. Anthony’s Church (where I had been a novice), still singing in tongues. They never left the church the whole night.
That was the birth of the New Jerusalem Community. The next Friday, many of these boys brought their girlfriends and it grew quickly by word of mouth. Soon the girls were singing in tongues, too. The next month they brought their parents and grandparents. [1]
Friends of Richard’s, Andreas Ebert and Patricia C. Brockman, summarized how the Spirit was at work during this period of Richard’s ministry:
The young people he taught and led on retreats were overwhelmed with the gospel message. They gathered around this enthusiastic young priest, hungry for Scripture, increasingly eager for the shared life described there. Their weekly prayer gatherings began with fervent charismatic prayer and expanded from a group of teenagers to, at times, more than a thousand persons of many ages and diverse backgrounds. All the signs and wonders of the early church flourished among the prayers. It eventually became clear that enthusiasm was not enough, and among those followers some desired to live in a closer bond and within the discipleship of Christian community. Thus, New Jerusalem came into being, a laboratory-church where many came to commit themselves to the dream of a church that follows and trusts Jesus. [2]
References:
[1] Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Love, selected by Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Orbis Books, 2018), 92–93.
[2] Richard Rohr: Illuminations of His Life and Work, eds. Andreas Ebert and Patricia C. Brockman, (Crossroad Publishing, 1993), xiii.
Image credit and inspiration: Arman Khadangan, untitled (detail), 2019, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The Holy Spirit kindles our inner fires: enlivening, inspiring, and sustaining all throughout time.
Story from Our Community:
Father Richard’s reference to the Holy Spirit as “filling the gaps” in our lives reminded me of a prayer for Pentecost I had written about a year ago: Come Holy Spirit, ever renewing, God beyond the one we thought we knew. Flowing like water, free as the wind, found in the margins, not in the text, hidden in corners, seen when not looking, present in absence, but found in Jesus…. Come, Holy Spirit, break down the walls of the words we know. Teach us to speak God’s love in new tongues … to everyone, everywhere…. Come, Holy Spirit, let us know we are not weighed down by all our yesterdays, but may soar with you, wind, fire, can, will, live now in the freedom of resurrection given us through Jesus, our Lord.
—Francis G.
