By Father Mark McCormick
Director of Vocations

I enjoy walking through the Cathedral rectory these days as there are signs posted not only on the Cathedral staff doors, but you will find them hanging up, too, in St. Joseph Hall, reminding everyone of the call to “Live Supernaturally.” This is the rally cry for the Cathedral of Our Lady Perpetual Help parish this summer.

This call to supernaturally living is an ongoing awareness of the active presence of the Holy Spirit and God’s grace in our lives. Fr. Brian Christensen, cathedral pastor, shared, that often we live lives that are too segmented and not integrated as a whole into the life of God’s grace and in the life of the Holy Spirit. He said, “In a sense, we often say our prayers in the morning and then we go about our day without the conscious decision to live in the grace of God throughout our day.” The call to live supernaturally for me, can be summed up in the Doxology at Mass, “through Him, with Him and in Him.” To have awareness that everything we do or say throughout our day should be through Jesus, with Jesus and in Jesus.

Jesus says in Jn 10:10 that, “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Dr. Mary Healy, who is a professor of Scripture at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Michigan, was one of the keynote speakers this summer at the Encounter Ministry Conference in Toledo, Ohio, July 16-18. Dr. Healy speaks of this abundant life in light of the Greek word “zoe.”

The word “zoe” expresses the Divine Life of God, life that is eternal, abundant and filled with joy. Zoe is the life embodiment of Christ. Zoe is not just a future promise but a present reality that transforms a believer’s inner being and enables them to live by God’s Spirit, to truly live supernaturally. Dr. Mary Healy describes the free gift of zoe is imparted to believers through the Holy Spirit. This gift of zoe is a source of transformation, enabling Christians to live a life overflowing with God’s love, joy, and power.

At the Encounter Conference, she spoke on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. She reminded us that the word for baptism in Greek is to immerse or to plunge. Dr. Healy tells a wonderful and amazing story of a Greek physician, Nicander of Colophon, who lived two hundred years before Christ. He uses the word baptism in a quite simple, ordinary, and, I think, in a delightful way. He uses it in a way that we can all understand, but perhaps often we forget or even take it for granted.

Nicander of Colophon describes the process of taking a cucumber, dunking, and immersing it in boiling water and “baptizing” it in vinegar. Dr. Healy shared with us at the conference that it is not enough for that cucumber to just take a quick dunk in the vinegar. “If that were the case, it would just remain a nice little cucumber with a light coating of vinegar,” Healy said. She further elaborated, “no, that cucumber needs to be immersed and remain there in order for it to be fundamentally changed into a pickle. It is not enough for us to receive a one-time, brief dunking into the Holy Spirit and then forget about him or hold him conveniently at arm’s length. The Holy Spirit wants us to remain in him and be fundamentally changed, indeed, “pickled,” all the way through!”

To help us do that, to live life supernaturally, abundantly we need to be more aware of our own baptism into the grace of Christ through the Holy Spirit. As Dr. Healy said so wonderfully, “to be pickled all the way through.” Personally, I try to pray this “pickling prayer” every day. I learned it from our former Bishop Robert Gruss, during the Year of Faith in 2013.

All praise, honor, and glory to you, Most Holy Trinity! Thank you for your many blessings and gifts. Please send an outpouring of the abundance of the Holy Spirit into my life. Release the Holy Spirit in my life. I want the Holy Spirit to live in me. May the gifts of the Holy Spirit given to me at Baptism and Confirmation be stirred up in my life today. Use these gifts to help me share your love with everyone I encounter today, all for the greater glory of you! Amen.

Here is to living life supernaturally — being mindful that you have been pickled through and through with the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. I encourage you to start praying daily for this pickling prayer of the Holy Spirit.