What is Ablaze?

Ablaze is a non-profit ministry that was started by a Catholic Priest by the name of Fr. Michael Voithofer. This ministry is dedicated to building up and strengthening the Culture of Pentecost within the Church. In John 17, Jesus prayed that "they may all be one." The Holy Spirit unites and brings believers together for the sole purpose of glorifying the Father through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. And, when this is happening souls are being saved!

​What does the Culture of Pentecost look like? This is Jesus' dream for the Church! It is a Church filled with people who are filled with the FIRE of the HOLY SPIRIT. People who are filled with the Holy Spirit live transformed lives! The Holy Spirit and his gifts are not optional! Every believer must be filled with the Holy Spirit if he or she is going to live a transformed life. This is normal Christianity!

"It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard him, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his own will. "(Heb. 2:4)

Have you had an experience of the Holy Spirit? Would you like to grow deeper in your relationship with the Holy Spirit? 

Without the Holy Spirit, the Church is a dead institution filled with people who look no different than the people who are living in the world. With the Holy Spirit, the Church gives witness to the LIVING JESUS. We pray for members of the Church to be awakened by the person and presence of the Holy Spirit. We pray that the Church become a BURNING HOUSE OF PRAYER for all peoples.  

The ministry of Ablaze was born through an inspiration Fr. Michael received while praying the scripture verse Luke 12:49. The scripture reads: "I have come to cast FIRE upon the earth; and how I wish it were already ABLAZE." God wants his Bride, the Church, to be a living flames of love for all peoples, a house of prayer for all peoples. We should all desire to live more fully in the power of the Holy Spirit.  ​

​At Ablaze, we welcome all people to join us as we enter into Jesus' longing to bring more people into a personal revelation of the Father's Love. Listen to Romans 8:26-27:

"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God."

During Ablaze, we invite people to enter into offering a sacrifice of praise, which leads us into a deeper worship and this deeper worship leads us into deeper knowledge of how to pray. Once God reveals how he is inviting us to pray, then we enter into intercessory prayer. 

Our prayer is always to God the Father through the Son by the Power of the Holy Spirit! It is the prayer of Jesus born in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. During our time of praise and worship the Holy Spirit forms the prayer of Jesus within us. We listen for and seek to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit as we are led to intercede for the nations. 

The spirituality of Ablaze imitates the upper room. Who was in the upper room? The God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, Blessed Virgin Mary and the Disciples. The Holy Spirit desires each believer to allow Jesus to be born again and again... The Blessed Mother prays for the Church to echo her initial YES. No Mary! No Jesus! Therefore, through each 'yes' we give to the Holy Spirit, we imitate Mary and we allow Jesus to be born again. We allow God's Word to become flesh in our flesh and He is allowed to offer our humanity to the Father. At every moment of everyday, we are invited to allow Christ to be born so that he can live his Eucharistic mission in and through our bodies which is to take away the sin (selfishness) of the world. 

Our mission is to imitate the Immaculate Heart of Mary by allowing Son of God to become flesh... to live the Holy Mass... To allow ourselves to be transformed by the Holy Spirit, to be broken and shared. Like Mary, the Church humbly invites God into humanity so that Jesus Christ can be born again and again and again (John 3:3). Filled with the Holy Spirit, we (the Church) become sacramental (visible) extension, in time, of Christ's Incarnation and perpetual offering to the Father. This is Good News!

There is a thirst in every human heart to give ourselves away. This holy thirst is the beginning of a Eucharistic centered prayer life. The Eternal Father designed humanity to live the Eucharist...to make the Eternal Word flesh! We are each created by the Eternal Father through his Eternal Word by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Heart of the Church is Eucharistic! Therefore, Ablaze evenings are filled with vibrant praise, worship, and adoration of Jesus truly and substantially present in the Most Blessed Sacrament. O Sacrament Most Holy, O Sacrament Divine, all praise and all thanksgiving  be every moment Thine!

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world...​ We pray with him, in him, and through him to the glory of God the Father for the salvation of souls! "Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name thy Kingdom come thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven..."  

Praise is the souls proclamation that God is alive! Praise is the exercise of the supernatural gift of Faith! Let each sing Mary's words, "My Souls Proclaims the Greatness of the Lord" (Luke 1:46).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church #2639 says, "Praise is the form of prayer which recognizes most immediately that God is God. It lauds God for his own sake and gives him glory, quite beyond what he does, but simply because HE IS. By praise, the Spirit is joined to our spirits to bear witness that we are children of God, testifying to the only Son in whom we are adopted and by whom we glorify the Father. Praise embraces the other forms of prayer and carries them toward him who is its source and goal: the "one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist."