Praying for Holy Spirt to lead renewal

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

WORCESTER – God is doing something new.
That message emerged as Catholics met to seek God’s will for the charismatic renewal locally.
Anglo communities have not been active in the renewal in recent years, but Hispanics, Brazilians, Africans and Haitians have, according to Father Diego A. Buritica, who was appointed episcopal liaison to diocesan charismatic renewal communities last October. He’s also associate pastor of St. Leo Parish in Leominster.
Sunday’s meeting for Anglos – “Lord, Light the Fire Again!” –  drew about 50 people from at least 10 parishes to Blessed Sacrament Parish’s Phelan Center, he said.
“The Holy Spirit is here and we are so ready to do this,” he told them. “The purpose of this meeting is to pray.”
He’d told The Catholic Free Press, “I have a lot of ideas … but … the first thing we have to do is pray, to be open and attentive to the voice of the Lord, and to follow his leading.” He spoke of a need for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the renewal movement and the diocese.
Asked about the significance of Sunday’s gathering given last week’s clergy sexual abuse discussions in Rome, Father Buritica said, “I think the Holy Spirit is giving us new directions, new insights into how to solve the problems in the Church.… This is one of the ways the Holy Spirit is leading the Church now – the renewal in general … whether the charismatic renewal, John XXIII or Cursillos, all the movements in the Church.”
“I’m excited about what the Lord is doing,” Delima Pelletier, of St. Cecilia Parish in Leominster, told The Catholic Free Press after Sunday’s meeting. “I’ve been praying about this.” She said she’d been in the renewal, attending a prayer group at St. Cecilia’s in the 1970s, and other prayer groups when they existed, and hopes to get involved again.
“I used to go to St. John’s prayer group … I was heartbroken when it stopped,” said Joseph D. J. Vancelette, who said he goes to St. John and Sacred Heart-St. Catherine of Sweden parishes in Worcester and St. Mary Parish in Jefferson. He said he’d been trying to get something going again.
“I’m hoping to be more involved with this,” he said. “I think it’s going to change the fabric of the city. … Things happen at God’s pace and God’s time and the time has come to renew the city.”
On Sunday Father Buritica prayed for the Holy Spirit to come upon those gathered, and they prayed simultaneously, “Come Holy Spirit,” sometimes speaking quietly in tongues. Musicians led songs, including ones once popular in charismatic prayer meetings.    
“Why are we here?” Father Buritica asked. “Let me share a little of my story.… I grew up in the renewal. When I was little … my mother used to take me to the Masses.” Children attending those charismatic Masses in his native Colombia were given maracas and tambourines, positioned around the altar and made part of the liturgy, he said. It was an experience of joy and celebration.
“In my teenage years I went away from the Lord,” Father Buritica continued. He was sad. When a friend invited him to one of these Masses, memories returned and he realized this was where he’d been happy.
He said he received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, which refers to an experience of the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. Often this happens when one takes a Life in the Spirit Seminar and is prayed over by others for a new openness to the Holy Spirit and his gifts, listed in 1 Cor 12:7-10.
“It was like an open door for a new life,” Father Buritica said. “Then I was very involved in youth ministry in the charismatic renewal. … My heart was so joyful. … In Latin America the renewal is a huge deal. … Everybody has in some way experienced it.”
He went to seminary and later was invited to consider priesthood in the Worcester Diocese, he said.
“Are there charismatics over there?” he asked. The person who’d talked to him didn’t know. Father Buritica said he prayed about it, thinking, “I need the fire; I need this joy.”
He came anyway, and met Deacon Francisco Escobar and his wife, Fanny, of St. Paul Cathedral Parish, who had been involved in the renewal in the Hispanic community there for years.
“I said, ‘Where are the American people?’” Father Buritica recalled, saying the renewal started in Pennsylvania in 1967.
Father Buritica said he prayed for inspiration for the renewal with Father Lawrence J.  Esposito, pastor of Good Shepherd Parish in Linwood and St. Augustine Parish in Millville.
Later, Father Buritica told Bishop McManus he wanted to do something informally with the renewal. But, he said, the bishop told him, “If I appoint you liaison it gives you power to act in my name.”
“This is not my personal project,” Father Buritica realized. “I’m working for the bishop, for this diocese.”
Father Esposito said he was charismatic renewal liaison for more than 20 years and there was a gap with no liaison.
“Diego, I can’t think of anybody I would rather hand it off to,” he said.
‘It’s not about going back to the golden years of the charismatic renewal” decades ago, “but to be open to something new,” Father Buritica told meeting participants. “The Holy Spirit is the creator of something new. … So we pray together today for vision, purpose and mission,” not ours, but God’s. “He’s not helping us; we are helping him.”
He invited them to open their Bibles to Is 43:16-19, and read: “Forget the former things. … See, I am doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness. …” He said America could be the wilderness spiritually.
Father Buritica told participants he didn’t know if they were using gifts of the Holy Spirit they received years ago, such as prophecy, and invited them to share prophetic words they’d received.
“I was at the very first prayer meeting in Worcester 51 years ago,” said Therese Boucher, a renewal leader and member of St. John’s Parish with her husband, John. She read Eph 4:1-4, urging Christ’s followers to act worthy of their call, striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit.
Mr. Boucher said many times God gives people images or one word and asked attendees to share in small groups.
“After all these years, this really feels good,” Father Esposito said.
“I was a little skeptical about coming,” said Paula Kistler, of Holy Family of Nazareth Parish in Leominster, noting that charismatics have been called “quacks.”
“But we need a lot of those ‘quacks’ today,” added Sylvia Pepin, of St. Leo Parish in Leominster.
One man said the word “rosaries” came to him.
“Mary is certainly part of the renewal,” responded Mr. Boucher. “She was the first person baptized in the Holy Spirit.”
One prophecy included this message: “My children, I delight in you. … Be attentive to my voice and I will transform you.”

– Upcoming meetings with the same format are: 7-9 p.m., March 20, for Hispanics and 2-4 p.m., March 31, for Anglos, both at St. John Parish in Worcester.