The power to proclaim: Speaker reflects on Holy Spirit in evangelization

By Rebecca Omastiak The Catholic Spirit

Mary Healy, who has a doctorate in Sacred Theology, wants the faithful to soak everyday encounters in the scent of the Holy Spirit and share the fragrance with those around them.

“It’s not first and foremost about words,” Healy said as she addressed over 1,500 people gathered in Minneapolis May 20 for the Activated Disciple Seminar. “It’s not first and foremost about having the right credentials, or the right catechetical or theological preparation. It’s first and foremost … about being filled with the Holy Spirit and before you even give some explanation of the Gospel, the Holy Spirit will overflow and people around you will sense the fragrance of Christ, will sense the Holy Spirit.”

Healy was the keynote speaker for the seminar, which drew members of parish-based Synod Evangelization Teams from across the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and included Mass, talks, testimony, prayer and adoration.

It was Healy’s sixth time participating in the seminar during the past three years. She said her preparation for her talks included prayer. “I asked the Lord, ‘What is your word? Give me the word on your heart, Lord.’”

She also reflected on Archbishop Bernard Hebda’s post-synodal pastoral letter, “You Will Be My Witnesses.” The letter outlines the Archdiocesan Synod implementation, and it is what brought SET members to the May 20 seminar. “I was so moved by the (pastoral) letter; it is so powerful,” Healy said.

Jeff Cavins — speaker, author and director emeritus of The St. Paul Seminary’s Archbishop Flynn Catechetical Institute in St. Paul, which offers the Activated Disciple Seminar through its seven-week formation programs School of Discipleship and subsequent 40-Day Challenge — introduced Healy as a person “in love with Jesus … in love with the Holy Spirit.” A professor of sacred Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Healy is an international speaker on Scripture, evangelization, healing and the spiritual life. She is a general editor of the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture series and is author of two of its volumes.

Healy also is chair of the Theological Commission of Charismatic Renewal International Service in Rome, and a member of the Pentecostal-Catholic International Dialogue, serving the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. In 2014, Pope Francis appointed Healy as one of the first of three women to serve on the Pontifical Biblical Commission.

Addressing the gathering during the first of her two keynote talks — “The Holy Spirit in the Life of

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As described in Archbishop Hebda’s post-synodal pastoral letter released in November, “You Will Be My Witnesses,” as the love of Christ spreads, the 12 will grow to 72, and the 72 will multiply into still more activated disciples; those who are equipped with knowledge and inspired to share the faith.

Bishop Williams, who attended the School of Discipleship when he was pastor of St. Stephen and Holy Rosary parishes in Minneapolis, urged people to be bold in sharing Christ’s love and teaching and encouraging others to do the same.

“You can only be a disciple by doing discipleship. Right? You have to do it,” Bishop Williams said. “That’s why you have to practice the disciplines. That’s why you need a 40-Day Challenge. You have to put it into practice. Mary Healy mentioned that one word: boldness. And it’s wonderful to contemplate boldness here, but you can only be bold by doing boldness. And that’s what the archbishop is asking of all of you over the next four months. Can you imagine if an arena full of Catholics were in small group leadership formation this coming September? Can you imagine that? Not just preaching Jesus from the temple, but Jesus being a Disciple” — Healy demonstrated the important movement of the Holy Spirit in the mission of Mary, the Apostles and the disciples. Two effects, she said, were “they can’t keep Christ to themselves” and their joy overflowed.

The examples of biblical figures receiving the Holy Spirit are models for modern Catholics, Healy said.

“When we pray for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and we are giving our unqualified yes to Jesus, and we are inviting the Holy Spirit into our lives … Christ will be present within us in a deeper way … and we will be newly empowered and impelled to share him with others,” she said.

After the talk, Erica Skeate, 22, of St. Patrick in Oak Grove, said the giving of an “unqualified yes” was a message that struck her.

“I have a newfound love for the Magnificat, Mary’s yes and the fiat,” Skeate said. Mary’s example encouraged her to foster “that desire to say yes to God more so that others can know him.”

Healy said it’s important to remember that “Every one of us has a particular anointing of the Holy Spirit that is exactly tailored to the place where the Lord has placed you — your parish, your family, your workplace, your circle of acquaintances … Because you have a mission to bring the presence of the kingdom to places where it is not yet.”

That mission is bringing light to darkness and confusion; truth to deception; healing to physical, emotional and spiritual brokenness. Doing this, Healy said, requires more than goodwill, catechetical training, teamwork or good planning; “You need the anointing of the same Spirit who anointed him (Jesus).”

Healy encouraged the crowd to stay submerged in the Holy Spirit. She said a tendency can be to say, preached from house to house without tiring. That was the vision of the early Church. That’s the vision of our archbishop.”

In his homily May 20, Archbishop Hebda asked for prayers that the Lord’s work would continue to bear fruit in the archdiocese. “There is a need to go forth and to preach and to teach and to baptize,” the archbishop said. “It’s the way in which our Church grows.”

And the Lord’s desire is that everyone evangelize, “not because of our gifts, but because of his mercy, for the way in which God invites each of us to be part of his plan,” the archbishop said.

Healy spoke of Mary as the first disciple of Jesus, for she “was the first to hear the good news of the Gospel and to share it.” The Apostles followed, as well as St. Paul, who in essence proclaimed, “the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, but of power,” Healy said. That power is manifested in the ability to heal the sick, drive out demons, cleanse lepers and raise the dead, and that power remains today, she said.

Invited to share their experiences in the School of Discipleship and through the 40-Day Challenge, more than a few described feeling the Holy Spirit’s presence as they helped and prayed for people in need.

Barbara Pena of St. Ambrose in Woodbury stood up and said, “This has been to me one of the greatest invitations for love, trust and relationship.” With a big

“been there, done that” having already received the sacraments of baptism and confirmation, “but there’s always more.”

Referencing an ancient document from before Christ’s time — a recipe for making pickles that uses the word baptize — Healy asked the crowd, smiling, “Do you want to taste like the Holy Spirit? So, you have to be plunged into him and stay there and get pickled in the Holy Spirit.”

The Holy Spirit introduces an intimacy with God the Father and an experience of love outpoured; the Holy Spirit also reveals the lordship of Jesus, Healy said as she opened her second talk during the Activated Disciple Seminar — “Clothed with Power from on High.”

“When you know, in the core of your being, that Jesus truly is lord over all things, then you can’t be dominated by anything else anymore,” Healy said. In fact, Healy said, St. Paul’s biblical texts highlight what happens to the Apostles when the Holy Spirit arrives: “fear leaves, anxiety goes out the window; there’s a holy boldness that comes upon them.”

Healy said the Apostles are like new wineskins filled with the wine of the Holy Spirit and they go out from the Upper Room to proclaim the Gospel, witnessing conversion but also facing opposition and persecution along the way. She said this should prompt Catholics to reflect on the cost of missionary discipleship.

“Sometimes it can be the highest possible cost. … We can make that decision today: I am in, no matter what the cost.”

Healy said a person need not be a priest, a scholar, a saint or even an adult for God to work miracles through him or her.

“Just come to him with a simple faith and prayers of a child and be willing to boldly proclaim the good news and to step out in faith that God will stand by it with his power and see what the Lord will do.”

Amee Heigl, 30, of St. Patrick in Oak Grove, said she is eager for the Lord to work in her life. “I’m just so excited about this fresh outpouring of the Spirit to just do the work that God has set before me and us (gathered at the event).”

Healy said her hope for those attending the seminar would be that “every heart is set on fire,” that it marks “a new season for everyone here.”

“As I’ve seen what the archbishop has been leading all of you into,” Healy said to the crowd, “I really believe that you are on the cusp of maybe the most fruitful era of missionary dynamism that this archdiocese has ever seen.”

Closing her second talk with a prayer, Healy invited all present “to write him (Jesus) a blank check. To say, like Mary ... ‘Here I am, Lord. I’m ready. Whatever you say, even if it’s totally new, outside the box. Here I am.’” smile she proclaimed she feels not only like an activated disciple, but an “ignited disciple.”

Jim Cahill of Our Lady of Guadalupe in St. Paul described being alert to his surroundings as looking for “tickles” of inspiration from the Holy Spirit, and as a result recently praying for people in a restaurant, in a liquor store and in a men’s group. Prayers in the liquor store were for a man’s girlfriend who was dying of cancer. Cahill and the man remained in the busy checkout line while they prayed, “but you’re not aware of that, I mean, you’re just there in the moment,” Cahill said.

Later in the parking lot, the man rolled down his truck window and the two talked some more, Cahill said. “I said, ‘How about the sacraments?’” for his girlfriend, and the man replied they would probably “take care of that.”

“So, I just prayed again,” Cahill said, “and he looked up and he was crying. And he said, ‘thank you for bringing the faith back to me,’ because it had been 21 years.”

Before the seminar began, Viviana Sotro, Latino ministry coordinator at Guardian Angels in Chaska, said that the School of Discipleship inspired her to evangelize more than sporadically.

“I was doing things here and there,” Sotro said. “Now, I feel like, it is ‘blast off!’ This experience is not for me, but for the Church, to bring people to Christ.”