My story

President of the INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC CHARISMATIC RENEWAL SERVICES

Born in 1942, I was educated by the Jesuits and left school to go to Durham University with a good intellectual understanding of my Catholic faith.

But because I had no real experience of the love of God or of the presence of the Holy Spirit in my life, I gradually drifted away from the regular practice of my faith and only went to Mass on special occasions.

At Durham I met Sue and after we had finished our studies and found work we got married. Sue had been brought up in the Anglican Church but was now an atheist. Fortunately she was happy for us to marry in a Catholic church because that was important for me and my family. We started our married life outside Manchester but soon moved near to London, where we bought a house and had our first two children. I still went to church occasionally, but my faith was not very important in my life. This began to change when in 1975 we joined a small ecumenical discussion group organised by some friends, with the aim of exploring the beliefs and practices of Christians of different churches, and the role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of all Christians. We had not been very interested in joining the group but had found it difficult to say no to our friends. They asked us because it was a group for married couples and they needed another Catholic, so they were prepared to accept Sue as an atheist. I think they thought it might make the discussions more lively, which it did!

At the second meeting of the group we were very challenged and excited by the testimony of a couple from the local Baptist church. They spoke of their living faith – Jesus was with them every moment, in all that they did. They spoke to him and he guided them and helped them in everything - we had never heard people speak about their faith with such conviction and certainty. The Baptist lady realised that her story had affected Sue deeply, and the next day gave her a modern translation of the Bible, suggesting she read some of the letters of Peter and Paul. I went away on a short business trip and Sue read some of the New Testament letters, finding them both interesting and relevant to her and to people she knew. She watched a Christian TV programme, in which a well-known Catholic woman spoke of her faith in the same way as our Baptist friends had done a few days earlier.

When she went to bed she prayed for faith and God lit a fire deep within her which has grown stronger and stronger over the years. At that moment she knew she was a child of God, that Jesus had died for her, and that the Holy Spirit was alive in her.

I came back from my business trip to find I no longer had an atheist wife but a Christian one whose faith was fully alive, much more than mine was! She had changed in a number of ways, and this challenged me and my faith deeply. After all, I was the one who was supposed to be the believing Christian in the family but she had suddenly overtaken me. In a very quiet way I decided to search for a deeper understanding and experience of God for myself, but I was not really sure how to do this.

One Sunday Sue suggested we should go to a local Anglican church which we had heard was very lively and good for families. We arrived at the morning service a bit late and found ourselves in the front row. It was an excellent service, with appropriate parts for our children as well as for us, and I enjoyed it. As we were leaving the church I shook hands with the priest and thanked him for his sermon which I had found very helpful. He did not reply to me but held on to my hand. I told him I liked his church – still no reply, still he held on to my hand. After my third attempt at conversation he finally spoke:

“Do you know how much God Loves you?” he asked me. I was tempted to answer that I knew God loved everyone, but I simply said “No”. “God wants to change your life” he told me, “I would like to pray with you”. He took me back into the church. We knelt down, he put his hand on my shoulder and prayed that I would know God’s love and that my life would be changed. Then he prayed in a strange language and I thought he must be from a foreign country, not from England. The prayer finished and we went for coffee, but he would not answer my questions except by saying that God would reveal his purposes to me.

The next day I went to work in London as usual, but I could not get these events out of my mind so during the morning I went out for a walk and found my way to a small Catholic church near my office. It was empty and I went to the front and knelt down before the Lord. “What is going on?” I asked him, “I’m very confused”.

At that moment I was overwhelmed with the love of God. It was like being wrapped in a warm blanket - I had never known anything like it and I found myself kneeling, weeping and repenting of all my sins, asking the Lord for forgiveness. I prayed in a strange language, but stopped because I had no idea what it meant. I stood up and sang some old hymns at the top of my voice – thank goodness the church was empty! After a while I looked at my watch and discovered I had been there for three hours! I hurried back to my office, and noticed that everyone coming towards me was stepping off the pavement. Why? I was still singing hymns at the top of my voice.

That evening when I went home, I told Sue all that had happened and I telephoned the Anglican priest. “I’ve been waiting for you to call me” he said “get in your car and come over”. I went, explained the events of that morning, and asked him to explain his words to me in the church the previous morning. “Well,” he told me “I’m learning to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit. I don’t always get it right but when you stood in front of me yesterday the Spirit told me to hold on to you – so I did. You were saying things to me, but I was trying to hear the words of the Holy Spirit.

Eventually I felt I knew what he was saying, and told you. Now that you really know God’s love for you, your life will never be the same again”. How true those words have been!

We joined a local ecumenical prayer group, and started going to Mass with a completely new understanding of what it was all about. For two years I read the Bible from cover to cover, underlining texts which really spoke to me, learning the truth of God’s Word. Within a few years I became a member of my diocesan Service Team for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and Chairman of the English National Service Committee. After a few more years I was elected to ICCRS (International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services) and almost immediately became the President, a position I held for 10 years. During these years I had an office in the Vatican and enjoyed regular meetings with Pope John Paul II, a great supporter of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal.

The Charismatic Renewal has taken me all over the world; I have written books and pamphlets about the work of the Holy Spirit; I sit on many church committees at parish, diocese, national and international levels; I’m a director of a lot of Christian groups, and have founded a number of new organisations. All this began in 1976 with some prophetic Words of Knowledge from an Anglican priest who had never seen me before, but who was learning to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Our lives certainly changed – it has been and still is an exciting journey of faith, one which we would not change for anything. Thank you, Lord!

© Charles Whitehead, April 2012.