Receive the Power

"You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses." (Acts 1:8)

I don't know how anyone tries to witness to Jesus Christ without the Holy Spirit. That's like running a marathon through the desert without any water! I remember a great conversation on this topic that I had with Fr. Francis Martin, a Scripture scholar from the Mother of God community we did a podcast with, about evangelization. He said rightly that "evangelization" is never used in Scriptures - but the idea of "witness" is. And Peter and the other apostles were excellent at this (after being baptized with the Spirit at Pentecost). Remember in Acts after being persecuted by the religious authorities for preaching Jesus - they exclaimed "how can we not speak of what we have seen and heard!"

But you say: I have never seen Jesus physically, etc. I say: the Holy Spirit is the one who makes Jesus present to us - and in a way, through faith, just as tangible as seeing someone physically. Because I've seen extraordinary things - and the problem is that weeks, months, years later - the memory grows dim - especially if there is persecution - unless I have the Holy Spirit.

I write all this because the next World Youth Day's theme is the verse from Acts I started with in the blog - and the official theme song recently came out in a video form - check it out... what do you think? I think its a great inspiration for the Catholic Church.