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Today's
Question
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What happens at an Ordination?
Part 2
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Sunday
January 22,
2012 |
What happens at an Ordination?
Part 2
(Letter to Mrs. Penny Quostal - continued)
(This
is ultimately going to be a disquisition on the nature of sacraments
and in particular, the relationship between the diaconate and
priesthood. Why then, you may well ask, has he veered off into
religious strangeness? Simply because about one out of ten Christians
alive today has had some experience with Pentecostalism, Catholic,
Protestant and everything in between. This is particularly true in
Africa, Latin America and Asia where lies the future of the church and
the world. American Christianity is now the victim of the convenient
theologies of the mega church which largely cater to popular feeling
and are often a kind of “Pentecostalism lite.” This stuff is
everywhere. The question with which I am dealing can be paraphrased:
“How come when Pentecostal preachers pray over somebody, something
happens? When Catholic bishops do, nothing appears to happen.” Fair
question. I will continue now...)
So
then, in order to answer the original question, I have to explain what
it means to be “slain in the spirit?” It sounds a little frightening.
Catholic Charismatics try to make it a bit more palatable by calling it
“resting in the spirit.” A rose by any other name would still have
thorns. In the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, there is a
statue called “St. Teresa (of Avila) in Ecstasy” by Gian Lorenzo
Bernini. Her heart is being pierced by an arrow of love and she is
falling back, not unconscious, but absolutely aware only of the arrow
of God’s love held by an angel.
We have examples of something similar in the Bible:
 | In the Apocalypse, we read about St.
John’s vision: “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then
he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the
First and the Last. I am the Living One.”(Rev. 1:17,18) | | In the first book of Samuel, the
nineteenth chapter, we find the story of Saul who, on his way to kill
David, meets a group of prophets and is seized by the Holy Spirit and
he rips off his clothes and falls to the ground where he lay naked,
prophesying all night and all day. | | When the temple guard came to arrest Jesus
in the garden of Gethsemane we read something similar. “Jesus asked,
‘Whom do you seek?’ They answered Him, ‘Jesus the Nazarene.’ He said to
them, ‘I am He’... They drew back and fell to the ground.” (John
chapter 18) | | Then we have the story of the conversion
of St. Paul. In the ninth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we read,
“He (Paul) fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul,
Saul, why do you persecute me?” |
Interestingly
the experience seems to happen to bad people, more often than
not. Saul, Paul and the Temple guards were all on their way to
commit murder. They were stopped in their tracks by an experience of
the power of God to which they responded by falling to the ground. One
may presume St. Teresa of Avila to be a different case.
I have
witnessed and experienced the phenomenon. I remember one Pentecostal
faith healer who would just touch a person, often on the arm and start
talking about the glory of God and over they would go. I’ve seen whole
rows of people collapse like puppets with their strings cut. This
particular faith healer even used this odd gift for the purpose of
crowd control, not unlike the Lord when he stopped Saul, Paul and the
temple guards.
The questioner mentioned that when a charismatic
preacher prays over someone, that person “fall(s) unconscious for some
time.” This is not quite accurate. The sensation is not one of
unconsciousness, but rather one of complete peace. It’s as if the
person says to himself “I’m standing, but there is no particular reason
to do so because I feel so absolutely peaceful!” and down they go! It’s
a real thing. I have no idea whether it is natural or supernatural. I
suspect it is a bit of both, but it does happen. It is not illegal and
when it is a spontaneous response to the sense of the nearness of God,
I don’t think it is immoral.
Now, on to the abuses of the
phenomenon which, quite frankly are immoral. I have attended
countless prayer meetings and revival meetings during which there is
prayer for the healing of the sick. People routinely fall over, and if
they don’t fall over the faith “healer” will pray with great intensity
until they do. Sometimes when the “healee” is not cooperative, the
“healer” will give them a little shove when they have wasted enough
time with that particular supplicant. I have had disconsolate people
come up to me saying, “Father, God didn’t bless me! When they prayed
over me, I didn’t fall over!” This makes me want to turn out the
lights and send everybody home. It’s absolutely nuts! The phenomenon is
real and when it’s real it’s full of joy and peace. Often it is faked
and contrived and even dangerous. I have known people who injured
themselves when shoved by a faith healer. I have never known anyone who
was injured when the experience was spontaneous and genuine.
You
may think from all this that I disapprove of Pentecostalism. On the
contrary! I miss Pentecostalism. There isn’t much of it around any more
either in its Catholic or Protestant form. There are a lot of
showy non-denominational churches that are all about making people feel
good. There are a lot of Catholic prayer group leaders who try to get
people excited like in times past. The means by which they harangue the
crowd into a kind of hysteria is the microphone. I remember one prayer
group that had fallen on hard times. They really believed that if they
felt it, it must be true, and if it was louder they would feel
it. Needless to say a lot of the leadership had fallen into
terrible sin and the group which had numbered in the hundreds was down
to 15 or 20 members. They insisted on having the meetings in the large
empty church and on using five microphones. If only they could make
things louder, everyone would come back and the glory days would
return. It never occurred that if they got quieter, that might actually
happen. A really good prayer meeting is where everybody is going nuts
and there’s no amplification. If the Holy Spirit doesn’t show up at the
meeting, well, there’s always electrical noise.
When most people
think of Pentecostalism, they think of noise. Pentecostalism is really
about quiet. Profound and expectant quiet. Pentecost was one afternoon
of supernatural ministry that changed the world. It was preceded by
nine days of expectant waiting. The heart of the Pentecostal
movement when it still had anything to do with Pentecost was the
“tarry” service. The old King James’ version of the Bible in Luke 24:49
reads “And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry
ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on
high.”
Tarry is an old word meaning “wait” the Pentecostal tarry
service was the very heart of the movement. People would lock
themselves into a church or wherever they happened to meet on a
Saturday night and just wait on the Lord. Sometimes they would wait for
days. They weren’t going to do anything until the Holy Spirit arrived.
There were no hymn books, no prayer leaders, no sermons, no “order of
service.” They just waited.
I remember with fondness the Puerto
Rican grandmothers who would lock themselves into a church on the west
side of Chicago with a coffee pot, a few blankets and pillows and just
prepare to wait out God, and as they put it, they would “pray through.”
There is none of that now. There are music ministries and preachers and
healing Masses. There are mega-churches with theater seats and
membership drives. There are programs and seminars and what began in
the Spirit is sadly ending in the flesh. (Galatians 3:3)
Next
week: More interesting Pentecostal weirdness. Also, the finest defense
of classical Pentecostalism out there is the movie “The Apostle” by
Robert Duvall.
Rev. Know-It-All
The
Question Was
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What happens at an Ordination?
Part 2 |
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