Pentecost Reflection in 2010 By Bob Struzynski

I have been a prison chaplain for 16 years now and one thing that has impressed me is the number of men who have had genuine religious conversions in prison. This is not the “jailhouse religion” often spoken about in a pejorative sense, but a real, deep experience of God as a much needed “higher power.” There is first an experience of powerlessness over some addiction and an experience of an absolute need for a power greater than oneself, followed by a surrendering to a Higher Power. The result is a relationship with God now that is real, personal and meaningful, often for the first time in one's life.

It seems to me we all need such a conversion today without going to prison to find it. We need a fresh experience of our need for the “Power on High” - the Advocate who will be with us always, teach us all we need to know and remind us of all that Jesus taught us. We need to realize that we cannot do it on our own. When the test comes we fail without the help of the Holy Spirit.

Pope Benedict while flying to Portugal for his recent visit to the shrine at Fatima, told reporters that the church has always been tormented by “problems of its own making, a tendency that is being witnessed today in a truly terrifying way.” The prosecution of the church today connected with the clerical sex abuse scandal the Pontiff said is “born from the sins within the church” and the church needs to “profoundly relearn penitence, accept purification, learn forgiveness, but, also, justice.”

I think that means that, above all, we need to realize our need for our higher power, the Holy Spirit, in order to meet the challenges of our day. We simply cannot do it on our own, yet if we live on the surface level of our culture that is the message we “absorb.” That, perhaps coupled with a tendency toward arrogance in us, can cause a terrible fall when the challenge comes our way. You don't need to be a Bishop to know that!

Nor do you need to be a priest, but recently this priest has been led by the Spirit to pray more fervently than ever the last part of the prayer that Jesus left us. I still say it as we did in Jamaica with a few additional words: “do not bring us to the test we cannot pass but deliver us out of the clutches of our own created evil”. 

Come Holy Spirit. Come!