I may speak in the tongues of angels.

The wind blows where it will. You hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.--John 3:8

I sat in the chair, eyes closed, head down, hugging myself. A circle of women stood around me, praying for me; each had one hand on my shoulders or back and one hand extended over my head. I was being baptized in the Holy Spirit.

As they were praying, some of the women would periodically speak softly in tongues. The sound, though unintelligible, was soft and melodious. The praying continued for about five or six minutes as they asked the Holy Spirit to fill me. When they had finished, I moved to a nearby pew. I was crying. I felt joyfully overwhelmed, aware of the great presence and power of God.

I had been told I might receive the gift of tongues, but I did not and I was glad. The thought of speaking unintelligibly was strange and uncomfortable. I had never known anyone with that gift before I had taken a Born in the Spirit seminar offered by my parish, and I had many questions about it.

The topic of tongue speaking, or glossolalia, had rarely come up in my life. I never heard it mentioned in church, and when my friends and I discussed it, we mostly assumed speaking in tongues referred to the gift the apostles received at Pentecost when anyone listening to the apostles was able to understand them in their own language. Or, if it ever had meant incomprehensible speech, then I felt relatively certain that existed only in the very early church.

I did wonder about this baptism in the Spirit. Why was it necessary? What about my Baptism into the church as an infant? And what about the sacrament of Confirmation? I thought I had received the Holy Spirit more fully then. Wasn't that enough?

I learned during the seminar that Spirit baptism in no way replaces or substitutes for Baptism and Confirmation. Rather, it is a request on our part to know God much more intimately, to have God fill every second of our lives. God responds to our prayers by sending the Holy Spirit in a special way, just as promised by Jesus in Luke, chapter 11, verses 11 to 13: "If you, with all your sins, know how to give your children good things, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask."

After the seminar was over, my curiosity about glossolalia increased. I began to read as many books on the subject as I could find. I learned that glossolalia, since the Pentecost, never really left the church. In the fourth century Saint Augustine said, "We still do what the apostles did when they laid hands on the Samaritans and called down the Holy Spirit on them by the laying on of hands. It is expected that converts should speak with new tongues."

In the early centuries of the church praying and singing in tongues was a regular part of public worship, says Ron Ryan, pastoral administrator of Western Washington Catholic Charismatic Renewal and editor of the national newsletter Chariscenter USA. According to Ryan, "Praying in tongues, called jubilation or glossolalia, was often incorporated as part of the eucharistic liturgy, probably where we have the Gloria today."

After the time of Constantine, Ryan says, there was a trend within the church that localized the charismatic gifts into the offices of the church. "It became expected that those gifts would be found within Holy Orders, but so many of the gifts faded away. And you could see them only in the lives of the saints."

And so it remained for years, until a weekend in February 1967 at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh "when a group of college professors and students decided to spend that weekend seeking a closer union with God," according to Ryan. "Unsure exactly what they were looking for, by that Saturday evening they, one by one, began having different experiences until eventually a large portion of them did experience what we today would call baptism in the Holy Spirit."

Some received the gift of tongues; for others, a profound experience of the presence of God made them realize something had changed within themselves. Since that Duquesne weekend, the number of charismatic Catholics has risen to 75 million worldwide. Today the movement continues to grow.

As I realized that the gift of tongues was not new or foreign to the church, I talked to God about it one day: "Okay, God. I still don't think this speaking in tongues is necessary, but if you think it's so important, let it happen." And I waited. Nothing happened. I opened my mouth a little. I blew out a puff of air. Nothing. "I knew it. That's just not for me. Glad you agree, God."

More months passed. Then one day I happened to find my Born in the Spirit journal. I reread it and also many of the recommended scripture passages, some of which referred to ecstatic language. I recalled the joy I had felt all during the seminar and the great power and love I had sensed when I was prayed over.

I remembered the final night of meetings--when we had all been baptized in the Spirit and had gathered again into our large group for a final prayer. I remembered how the people who already had received the gift of tongues and those who had received it that night began to pray in tongues. They started one by one, and then their voices joined and began to sing and swell, to rise and fall, to harmonize. I remembered how I hummed along, how I felt chills, and how I knew this must be the sound of angels.

About a month ago I was praying alone at home and opened the Bible to 1 Corinthians. I read chapters 12 and 13, where Paul speaks of the gift of tongues. "I should be pleased for you all to use the tongues of ecstasy," Paul says. "Do not forbid ecstatic utterances."

Closing the Bible, I prayed, "Saint Paul, you seem to think a lot of this gift. You seem to think it's pretty important. So, if this is something that God wants for me, then pray for me to be able to receive it."

Searching my heart, I knew I feared ridicule, I feared looking and sounding silly. I had to be willing to be absurd for God. I had to trust God enough to offer all that I am, including control over my own voice.

Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and prayed, "Dear God, I love you and I trust you. If you want me to worship you in this way, I'm ready."

And then it happened. Very quietly, very softly, I began to praise God in ecstatic language. And in that instant I understood that in giving myself to God, I was not consumed but fulfilled, completed. The Spirit was singing for me the inexpressible love I felt, just as Paul promised it would happen: "We do not even know how we ought to pray, but through our inarticulate groans the Spirit is pleading for us, and God who searches our inmost being knows what the Spirit means, because the Spirit pleads for God's people in God's own way."

Since that day I've continued to pray in the Spirit more and more frequently, and at times I find myself overwhelmed by the love I find when I pray in tongues. All efforts at grasping for the right word or phrase are removed as I allow the Holy Spirit to speak for me.

But I am also holding fast to the rest of Paul's teachings in 1 Corinthians, where he reminds us that the gift to tongues is the least of the Spirit's gifts--one that builds up the receiver rather than the entire church.

The value of tongues and the other charismatic gifts is "the extent to which these experiences impel us to become part of the community and render us more actively Christian," says Sister Barbara Bowe, R.S.C.J., an associate professor of biblical studies at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. "But they shouldn't make us step out of this world into a spiritual realm that has no relationship with the ordinary," she cautions.

Why would Paul want us to seek and receive the gift of tongues today? Bowe says, "It's a sign of the Spirit. Paul would want tongues to be present because he would want the Spirit to be alive and powerful and dynamic in our midst. But when individuals or groups see tongues as the only demonstration of the Spirit, then they blind themselves to all the other ways in which the Spirit manifests itself in the community."

According to Bowe, "I would put tongue speaking in context, as Paul does, in relationship with all the other gifts of the Spirit." Paul tells us: "Thank God, I am more gifted in ecstatic utterance than any of you, but in the congregation I would rather speak five intelligible words, for the benefit of others as well as myself, than thousands of words in the language of ecstasy" (1 Cor. 14:18-19). And Paul reminds us of the most important gift of all--love. "I may speak in tongues of men or of angels, but if I am without love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal" (1 Cor. 13:1).

Should we seek this gift of ecstatic speech? God has made each of us unique and different, and we must each listen to the prompting of the Spirit in our own souls. If that Spirit leads us to praise God in ecstatic language, that is good. And if not, we can be certain that that, too, is good for "God has arranged the parts of the body, every one of them, just as God wanted them to be" (1 Cor. 12:18).