The Second Conversion in My Spiritual Life - Part III - Series End
In which Teófilo ends reminiscing about his experience of Baptism in the Holy Spirit, and further reflects about it.
The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.
Then the word of the Lord came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. (Jeremiah 18:1-6, NRSVCE)
Telling the Dream to Others Didn't Help
I've followed Mom's advice and went to talk to our neighbor Efraín Hernández. He'd either inherited or purchased the house from his parents whom had moved out some time before. He was a math teacher at another Catholic school in town. His wife was Helmi, and they were a young married couple I looked up to.
I told my dream to Efraín and his response was lukewarm. He took the psychological route and warned that my dream was a product of something I've read. Yes, I'd read several works about the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, Catholic and Protestant. But, my reading came after the dream, not before.
I'd even read Run, Baby, Run to the end and found it even more fascinating. Nicky Cruz had been a gang banger. Then he became an evangelist. His conversion was total. Then I read the book by his mentor, the Pentecostal minister David Wilkerson. In his book, titled, The Cross and the Switchblade I read Wilkerson's story. It was the story of a hillbilly pastor from Kentucky who went to minister to New York's worst gangs. He did so because God called him.
I've found out that the miracoulous conversions were still taking place. I've read about many such conversions in the lives of saints were still taking place. Yet, these were taking place in Protestant bodies! I filed the cognitive dissonance in my mind for later analysis but I knew I wanted that kind of power in my life. What better place than the Catholic Church to find it, I thought. And the Lord proved my insight correct. In fact, the insight must've come from Him.
Anyway, Efraín gave me a cautious positive answer to my dream that I took then as validation. I told Raúl again about the dream's actual reality. He smiled and nodded but had nothing to say.
After the dream's lukewarm reception by Efraín and Raúl, I told no one else about it except for my Mercie. This essay is my first attempt to share my experience with a wider audience as a personal testimony.
What is this "Baptism in the Holy Spirit" and what did it do to me?
Father Francis Sullivan, SJ, defines "Baptism in the Holy Spirit" as:
A religious experience which initiates a decisively new sense of the powerful presence and working of God in one’s life, which working usually involves one or more charismatic gifts. (1)
The experience triggered in me a new desire to pray long and in depth. My prayer became a river of spontaneous praise, adoration, and thanksgiving. I acquired a thirst to read Holy Scripture and they became alive both in my intellect and heart. I became an evangelist, in the sense I'd wanted to share to everyone the Good News of God's love in Jesus Christ.
The experience of "Baptism in the Holy Spirit" also transformed my reading habits. I wanted to progress in prayer and evangelizing by example. Two books by the late Capuchin Franciscan, Fr. Ignacio Larrañaga, became my go-to books on these matters.
Fr. Larrañaga's Muéstrame tu Rostro became my primer into my pursuit of God's face through prayer. His El Hermano de Asís was my first introduction to Franciscan spirituality. There I learned how to follow the Lord in radical self-surrender and deep prayer.
I started to study Bible and Church history in depth. Reading Problemática de la Biblia introduced me to the scientific study of the Bible. The Problematica's author was Maximiliano García Cordero. There I first saw the Documentary Hypothesis of Pentateuchal composition. Also, he shared the contrarian notion - to me - that the Pharisees and Sadducees were good, not all evil. It planted in me the idea that Second Temple Judaism in the time of Jesus had a right to exist. It was a religion worthy of respect, not an object of contempt.
Mr. García Cordero also smashed the scholarship of Rudolph Bultmann. I didn't know who Bultmann was but I learned to dislike him then and there. Much later, when I finally read the man, I found that my prejudice against him wasn't a bad thing. Bultmann was a pioneer in biblical criticism, one of a long breed who saw their inferences as facts. This is not a good mindset from which to approach bible studies, yet it's a mindset shared by many ever since.
I also started to pray with the Bible. Psalm 51 became my psalm. I was unaware of the Church's long use of Psalm 51 in the liturgy. I didn't know Psalm 51 was one of the seven penitential psalms of the Church. No, Psalm 51 was mine. Only mine.
The Gospel of John and his letters became my favorite New Testament writings. In these works I found Jesus in his full humanity and divinity. John 1:1 became a powerful reminder of what God has done for us. 1 John 4:8 became my definition of who God was, and is. John exemplified to me the highest insight about God in Jesus the New Testament had to provide. In turn, the view of God's essence as love would transform my own self-estimation, as you'll see.
My knowledge grew and transformed
God blessed me as la Academia's library had Hubert Jedin's multi-volume Manual de Historia de la Iglesia in its holdings. I became good friends with Mrs. Yolanda Santiago, the librarian. She would let me borrow more books than was the rule, including reference books. I read most of Jedin's volumes in this manner. She also sold ceramics and inexpensive jewelry, a service I would avail myself of later on.
I also dove into the non-Latin rites of the Church. At that time no one around me had any conception of these rites and their histories. Few knew anything beyond the post-Vatican II Latin Rite celebrated we all knew. I only elicited blank expressions from those few I talked to about these rites. It was like we were oblivious to the full history and diversity of the Catholic Church.
Apologetics also became a passion. I learned how to defend Catholic belief and practice from its biblical roots. I found joy as I learned about dogmatic development. I saw how doctrines grew from their Biblical roots into the Church's formal teaching. I didn't know it then but I was learning theology, "the science of God." I then learned how to use this knowledge against sectarian attacks. I hadn't met thoughtful unbelievers back then. Facing their challenge demanded deeper study. That would came later.
New music invaded my soul and I learned how to play them on my guitar. I remember to this day the first song I ever learned to play: Den al Señor. The song was a straight translation from the 1970's song, Sing to the Lord (A New Song). The Aguas Buenas Music Ministry, a charismatic musical group from Puerto Rico, recorded an album that included the song in the late 1970's. I couldn't get enough of it. I practiced playing and singing the song day and night until I had it down pat. I did the same to many other songs, most of which the parish printed on their own songbook. It's a song book I've kept to this day.
The most important fruits I reaped from the baptism in the Holy Spirit
One of the most important effects the baptism in the Holy Spirit had on me was a new sense of personal integration. The pieces of my personality began a slow coalescence around a fortified self. God cured my inner self.
How did He do it? By making me realize He loved me, I was lovable, and that I can love Him and others in return. I was an object of God's love. In my newfound self I was able to love God in fullness. If God loved me I was, in turn, lovable. The Holy Spirit dredge the depths of my soul and in them I discovered a new power to love. I became aware I wasn't an extension of Mom's personality. I was a separate creature, able to love and pursue virtue. Because God saw me, I became myself.
This is a point that demands repetition: we are because God is. At the core and source of creation there lies a transpersonal Ego: He who is. This absolute statement of Being is the Name that God revealed to the Hebrews of yore:
But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:13-14, NRSVCE, emphasis mine)
This truth permeates my life even now: I am because God is; because God sees me. He was the Living Light who surrounded me in my dream, my vision of the night (cfr Job 4:13-14). My ego is no illusion: He made me to live forever as me because He loves me. The universe isn't absurd anymore because He see is it and in seeing it, He loves it.
The way ahead for me was to grow and develop the seed of myself in God. Loving others as myself, as God loves me became the core of my identity. This realization is the greatest commandment as it became actualized in my life. I understood I had to unleash His love in my love to Him and to others.
What the Holy Spirit Left for Myself to Do, With His Help
I want to make clear that the Baptism in the Holy Spirit neither made me an instant saint. I didn't become an accomplished mystic either. I knew I wanted to be holy but to paraphrase St. Augustine, not yet. The notion I had of holiness back then included extreme acts of asceticism. I thought ascetics were extreme heroes and believe me, I was no hero. At that time, I didn't know how to love enough to renounce the things of this world. I know now, but didn't back then.
My character defects didn't disappear overnight. To start resembling Jesus, I had to work to overcome it. I'm still working at it. It seems to me that the more defects I remove from myself, the more powerful the remaining ones become. Rooting them out is an everyday chore, but now the Spirit is within me, helping me. With His help I can't fail.
God made me understand that I am like clay in His hands. I am a work in progress. He will shape me, break me, and re-shape to His satisfaction. I came to understand that breaking and reshaping would be painful experiences. Hence, I came to understand that pain and suffering in my life were part of God's redemptive love for me. Before making me a participant in His Son's divine nature (cfr. 2 Peter 1:4), He must conform me to His mortal nature. That's a lifelong task. I'll complete it at my point of death. Tempus fugit, memento mori, that's now a living sentence for me.
I was neither special before nor after the grace of the second conversion and the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Grace is a gift open to all. If God gave certain graces He can give the same graces or more, to anyone. You just have to ask Him. God will respond!
Yes, God has granted me many graces. But there are those who have received as many graces who have responded with more generosity to Him than me. These surpass me in holiness by so much more.
Even so, divine grace and my human nature had become intertwined within me like never before. This second conversion in marked axial, pivotal moment in my life. You'll see how this intertwining took place in the rest of my story.