"You people don’t know the Holy Spirit," Catherine used to tell us from time to time. She had been longing to make the Holy Spirit, whom she called "the Crimson Dove," known and loved at Madonna House and throughout the world.

So in 1968 when she heard about small groups of people in the United States experiencing the Holy Spirit, she invited a team led by Jim Cavnar and Steve Clark from Michigan, to come and speak to us. They came for August 20th and 21st .

We moved the tables against the wall so that 140 people could cram into the dining room to hear their talks.

The first evening, these visitors told Madonna House staff about their experience of the Holy Spirit which had taken place at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the previous year.

On that occasion, a group of about thirty students were on retreat. On that retreat, they experienced a dramatic outpouring of the Holy Spirit. They praised God in new languages, sang, and overflowed with joy. They felt a new strength and interiority in their lives.

The Michigan team spoke at length, witnessing to the power of the Holy Spirit they were experiencing in their lives since they were prayed over for the release of the Holy Spirit.

They explained the "gift of tongues," a mysterious prayer language, which St. Paul refers to in 1Cor.12. It is, they told us, a sign given by the Holy Spirit that something greater than our humanity has come upon us.

Most of us had never heard of lay men and women of university age witnessing about the Church, their personal experience of Jesus Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit.

It was quite natural then that on the second night, some of the Madonna House priests, lay men, and women asked these young people to pray over us. Fr. Callahan, the director general of our priests at the time, and Catherine Doherty were also prayed over.

The four or five young visitors, using the gift of tongues, prayed over about 25 to 30 of us individually. A mini-Pentecost flowed throughout the dining room. Some of us sang in tongues, others in hymns of praise. Some had tears of joy while others had inner experiences hard to describe.

The Madonna House diarist at the time found it difficult to put the experience into words. "How to describe the presence of God in the midst of the community? How do you describe the undescribable, the intangible and yet very real sense of unity and God in the very midst? … This is the difficulty in trying to…record on paper for posterity a very deep and real conversion…to God—a change in our whole life."

As a priest, I had acquired an intellectual appreciation of the role of the Holy Spirit in Scripture. I knew Luke 4 where Jesus was "led, inspired and empowered" by the Holy Spirit as well as Acts 1:8 where Jesus tells his disciples that "you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you." But it was quite another experience to be prayed over.

I had expected perhaps an emotional response, but what I experienced was a deeper sensitivity to God’s presence. It was like after receiving Holy Communion, when I hear Jesus best.

While I didn’t manifest any gifts such as speaking in tongues, there was no doubt that something important had happened to me. The Lord was moving lightly in my heart.

It was my custom at the time to spend my mornings before the Blessed Sacrament. One morning, during this prayer time, much to my surprise, I heard a voice in my heart saying, "I want you to take the knowledge and experience of the Holy Spirit to many places and other countries in the days to come. I will be with you."

I didn’t share this word from God with anyone simply because I didn’t understand its meaning.

Two months after I was prayed over, in October 1968, I was assigned to be the chaplain of Marian Centre, our house in Regina, Saskatchewan. Our main work there is feeding street people, whom we call "Brother Christophers."

Laying a fleece before the Lord, I decided not to say anything in Regina about this new experience of the Holy Spirit unless six people asked me.

The first six months passed quietly. Then one person here and another there asked me about it. Finally, six people had asked me to have prayer meeting.

Mike Lopez, the director of the house, gave his permission for the first meeting to take place in Marian Centre, and about 8 or 10 people came. This was the first prayer meeting in western Canada.

We continued to have prayer meetings, and the numbers increased rapidly. Soon, Msgr. Jake Kuterna, the rector of the cathedral, invited us to use the cathedral hall. Then when a young man named Adrian Popovici became co-leader, his music ministry helped to make the meetings more prayerful and meaningful. It wasn’t long before the hall was filled.

Word spread to the convents, and soon I was sharing about our experience of the Holy Spirit in different parts of the diocese.

A request came from Marian Centre, our house in Edmonton, asking me to come and pray over the staff there, give my personal testimony, and explain what the Holy Spirit was doing in the Church.

I hesitated. How could I lead others, I asked the Lord. I didn’t have the gift of tongues. Then that evening the first time I prayed over someone, I heard myself pray in tongues. It was so natural; the others thought I was a veteran.

My next invitation came from a Protestant minister in Vancouver, Bernice Gerard. She asked me to come and speak on her Pentecostal talk show—a radio program, which was on from midnight to 2 a.m. and had an open phone line. I went.

She introduced me by saying, "My guest this evening is a Catholic Pentecostal priest." Immediately the telephone lines lit up. "If he’s a priest," said one caller, "he can’t be a Pentecostal!" or "If he’s a Pentecostal, he can’t be a priest." My hostess understood the seeming paradox of my position, and we laughed together on the radio.

Soon after that, a priest friend of mine from Milwaukee, Wisconsin asked me about this new movement called "Catholic Pentecostalism."

Soon after that, the name changed to Catholic Charismatic Renewal. (The word "charismatic" comes from the Greek word for "gift.")

Two years later, I was transferred to our house in Carriacou. (Carriacou is part of the nation of Grenada in the West Indies.) This time, Fr. Callahan gave me a strict admonition: "Do not say one single word about the movement of the Holy Spirit for at least one year."

I was actually relieved because I had no intention of doing anything except serve the needs of the house in Carriacou, a house whose work was already well-known throughout the West Indies.

But my relief was short-lived. That first year of getting acquainted with the people had hardly passed when I received my first request to "share about the Holy Spirit."

to be continued