Ann Shields - More of the Holy Spirit: How to Keep the Fire Burning in Our Hearts

I n 1960, Pope John XXIII announced the upcoming Second Vatican Council and asked all Catholics all over the world to pray this prayer:

Renew your wonders in this our day, as by a new Pentecost. Grant to your Church that, being of one mind and steadfast in prayer with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and following the lead of blessed Peter, it may advance the reign of our Divine Savior, the reign of truth and justice, the reign of love and peace. Amen.

We prayed it often in our parishes during the three years of the Council. I don't think we had expectations of something tangible or miraculous happening. But the Lord was clearly aware of his people's need. In 1967, two years after the Council ended, God poured out his Spirit in a sovereign actas in a new Pentecoston a group of college students at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

As the students gathered in the chapel for a weekend retreat, they simply asked God to bring alive those gifts given to them in Baptism and Confirmation. At the time, many people knew little about the documents that had been issued by Vatican II or were, unfortunately, indifferent to the Church's teachings. But these students somehow knew that Pope John XXIII's prayer for a fresh outpouring of the Spirit upon the whole Church was a prayer they wanted to see realized.

After dinner on the first night of that retreat, some returned to the chapel. There they again put their request before God. For the next hour, some fell to their knees before the tabernacle, some prostrated themselves; all were overcome by an almost tangible sense of God's presence. That night a few of them committed their lives to the Lord by the power of the Holy Spirit and have never turned back. Quickly did the work of God's mercyin the Person of the Holy Spiritbegin to spread among college students, first to Notre Dame, then to Michigan State in East Lansing, then to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and then all over the world, involving literally millions of Catholics!

I, too, experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and my story is similar to many others. I will tell it here, as it shows in many ways the state of the Church at the time as well as the mercy of the Lord in granting this great gift to the Church.

At the conclusion of the Council in 1965, I was twenty-six years old, a recently professed religious sister assigned to teaching in a Catholic diocesan high school. I had undergone what I would now call a fairly rigorous formation in which the emphasis was on the externals. The sisters who trained me were good women who loved God and were glad to serve, and so, at the completion of my formation, I thought I was a woman in love with God who wanted to serve him and his Church. But within two years my strong faith was badly shaken. In what seemed like a whirlwind, I heard many religious and priests describing our theology as badly outdated. There was much we needed to do to get up-to-date, they told us. So I began to take advantage of courses and talks to understand the Council in earnest. The many interpretations of the Council documents and other courses on the themes of Vatican II began to confuse me. Some interpretations were very good, some not, but all, good and bad, were often lumped together under the banner of the teachings of Vatican II. I hesitated to jump on any bandwagon to promote or teach this or that new interpretation of theology, but I was urged by peers to get on board. Everything was new and exciting, and we didn't have to live any longer under strictures or rules. We were adults; we could form ourselvesdecide for ourselves what to believe and what not to believe.