CHARLOTTE — Father Maurice Emelu, EWTN media evangelist and spiritual retreat preacher, visited Our Lady of Consolation Church for the Ladies Guild’s annual Spiritual Day of Reflection May 19. Father Emelu, who comes from Nigeria, filled the parish hall with joy by sharing his message, “Word for a Wounded World, Holy Spirit Come Heal and Energize Us!”
Pictured: Father Maurice Emelu, EWTN media evangelist and spiritual retreat preacher, spoke at Our Lady of Consolation Church for the Ladies Guild’s annual Spiritual Day of Reflection May 19. Father Emelu, who comes from Nigeria, filled the parish hall with joy by sharing his message, “Word for a Wounded World, Holy Spirit Come Heal and Energize Us!” (Lisa Geraci, Catholic News Herald)
For over an hour, Father Emelu shared song, laughter, analogies, stories and testimonies with the 150 attendees at the annual event, which is designed to coincide with the celebration of Pentecost.
He started with a warning about the dangers of a Church without the Holy Spirit: “Remove the Holy Spirit from the apostolate, it will become a jamboree. Remove the Holy Spirit from the apostolate, it becomes a social club. Remove the Holy Spirit from the apostolate, it will become like a dead body! It cannot be revitalized, because the soul of the apostolate is the Holy Spirit!”
He continued, “The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of love from the Father and Son. If you are attentive to the Spirit, you can discern when God is wanting you to do something. Listen!
“Often we are so emerged in our worldliness that we don’t listen. We are concerned about ego. There is less discernment because the ego is popping up and the Church is suffering. People are disgruntled and disjointed. The Church is not flourishing because we are thinking about me, me, me, I, I, I! But the Holy Spirit wants us to think about us, us, us.
“The Holy Spirit is all about love. When we allow that love to flourish, He begins to direct us how to make our community a better place. I tell you, Church, we cannot build this community all alone. We need one another to build this community. When we walk together, the Holy Spirit speaks louder and clearer. Where there is peace, there is the discernment of the Spirit.”
He encouraged parishioners, “Many of us carry baggage and histories of our past that seem impossible to be healed. There is no cure in the Bible; there is healing in the Bible. Healing will lead to cure, but healing begins from spirituality. Healing that brews from the Spirit. We are healed from memories of the past, we are healed from those things that pull us down, the depressing spirits, so we can look at tomorrow with a sense of hope.
“Humans can forgive but never forget. God forgives, forgets and moves on. You cannot pass somebody when you are kicking them from behind! You cannot continue to kick people from behind and move forward. Pass them and move on.
“Let us invest more time in thinking how to move forward and less time thinking (about) how we get back. The Holy Spirit is love and makes us fall in love with God. And because we are in love we don’t care what people say, we don’t care about the past, we just move on.”
“March forward on forever, backward never,” he urged people. “We don’t care, we are boldly Catholic and we have no apologies for it because we are in love.”
Father Emelu later explained that his desire to preach about the Holy Spirit stems from a spiritual experience he had while praying in church one day.
“When doing the novena, I thanked God for thinking so generously for my poor self. During that prayer, I did not know what happened to me,” he recounted. “I saw myself crashing down on my knees, crying. With my knees, I was walking around that church. I was jumping on my knees. I jumped the steps, towards the sanctuary, kissing the sanctuary.
“I was speaking a language I could not understand. I could not even hold my tongue. I was seeing things. I could not believe what was happening to me. All of my emotions, I could not contain. I could not control myself. For two hours, I was deeply in this experience.”
“After that, my life would never be the same again,” he said. “The Holy Spirit touched my heart. I could see many things in the Word of God, I could appreciate the rosary, the Mass, the Church. I have what I have today because of that experience, and that experience does not go away. It changed me forever.”
“I am passionate about introducing people to the personal relationship of the Holy Spirit because it changes everything,” he said.
“The Holy Spirit is yours,” he said. “The Lord promised the Spirit, not only to the apostles but also to you as a person. Why not accept this invitation? Why not trust God? You may say well it is only for the evangelicals or the Pentecostals, you may say well it is only for the people from over 2,000 years ago. The Holy Spirit flows in this Church because this is the Church of the Holy Spirit too.”
Organizer Chanele Jackson said Father Emelu was invited speak at this year’s event after she met him at the National Black Catholic Conference last year. The encounter really moved her, she said.
“Mostly it was the Holy Spirit. I had the pleasure of attending his workshop, which exposed me to the dynamic of his faith,” she said. “I just thought it was wonderful for us to all be exposed to his way of teaching.”
In celebration of Pentecost, Ladies Guild members dressed in red and white. Helen Reid read an evangelization prayer and Deacon Curtiss Todd read a scripture passage. Elijah Wylie performed “Sweet, Sweet Spirit” on his trombone, and Cirsten Nimmons performed a dance routine intended to invoke the Holy Spirit.
— Lisa Geraci, correspondent