Episode Details

Fr. Tom Sparacino: Let the Hot Coals Touch Your Heart

Preached on the memorial of St. Agatha, as the group prepares to go ashore for a day of mission, this homily asks a plain question: what are we actually equipped with?

Fr. Tom Sparacino starts with the gifts. Those in the Charismatic Renewal have them, he says — the trouble isn’t receiving, it’s using. Each of us has been given something different, and the Lord asks us to embrace it.

Then he tells on his own formation.

Men spend seven or eight years in the seminary, and on ordination day he tells them the truth: “Congratulations — we’ve prepared you for a priesthood that doesn’t really exist.” Books don’t equip a priest. The school of the Spirit does. And that school, he says, is the one all of us are enrolled in.

So what does the Spirit equip us with? Two things. Holiness — not the position of our hands or the clothes we wear, but a focus fixed on one and only one, Jesus. And fear of the Lord — not being afraid, but knowing our lives are nothing without Him, that nothing we could ever want or dream of compares to Him.

That’s where St. Agatha comes in.

She focused on one and only one. She was tortured with hot coals — which is why she’s invoked as a patron of firefighters, and why Fr. Tom, watching the water that morning and thinking about the graces flowing, decided she ought to be a patron of the Charismatic Renewal too. “We want those hot charcoals to touch our hearts today. We want to burn. We want to be consumed by the fire of the Holy Spirit.”

He’s honest about how asking works: tell the Lord what you want — he does, all the time, and it usually doesn’t go his way — but trust that He gives what you need, because His grace is always sufficient. The gifts and the fruits begin with fear of the Lord and grow into a life of piety: honoring God, and nothing else.

He closes with St. Paul: “We pray for you always, that our God may make you worthy of His call and fulfill by His power every intention and work of faith.” Live in the Spirit today. Be dependent on Him. And with these gifts, do the one thing we were made to do — exalt God forever.

Key quotes

• “We’ve got the gifts. We just need to use them.”
• “Congratulations — we’ve prepared you for a priesthood that doesn’t really exist.”
• “It’s the school of the Spirit that equips our guys — and equips us.”
• “What does holiness look like? Is it the position of our hands, or the clothes we wear? Or is it our focus on one and only one — and that is Jesus?”
• “Fear of the Lord: not to be afraid, but to realize that our lives are nothing without Him.”
• “We want those hot charcoals to touch our hearts today. We want to be consumed by the fire of the Holy Spirit.”
• “He will give you what you need, because His grace is always sufficient.”

Scripture & liturgy references

• Memorial of S