”The time is fullfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand" - retreat in Järfälla wanted to break chains and equip all the baptized to spread the Kingdom of God.

Holy Trinity Parish in Järfälla has a lively activity with many volunteers, children's activities in the spirit of don Bosco, teaching about life in the Holy Spirit, a liturgy characterized by uplifting praise and many young people who are renewed in their spiritual life. Every Wednesday evening, deacon Pancho Chin A Loi gathers people from all over Stockholm for charismatic prayer.

Young people in the parish with Deacon Pancho and Terry Quinn

On October 3-5, the parish hosted a charismatic retreat with foreign guests invited by Bishop Anders Arborelius: Deacon Larry Oney and wife Andi from the USA, evangelist Terry Quinn from Ireland. Larry Oney is a permanent deacon in the Archdiocese of New Orleans and serves in Divine Mercy parish. He and Andi have a strong proclamation about the Kingdomof God and that God has a plan and purpose for everyone.

Andi and Larry Oney

Andy and Larry also run the mission Hope and Purpose Ministries with the aim to participate in the New Evangelization through preaching, teaching, leading retreats, conducting parish missions, and fostering the baptism of the Holy Spirit using excellent media initiatives thereby offering hope and purpose to all individuals through encouragement and knowledge sharing.

Terry Quinn has an amazing ability to preach and bring the gospel to life. His mission is to ignite the fire of the Holy Spirit in Europe and to re-evangelize the world. He is a member of the CHARIS Ireland National Service of Communion.

Larry Oney talked about what the kingdom of God is. It is not Heaven, but it is God's administration of the Kingdom here on earth. The believers represent the Kingdom.

• The kingdom of God has come – through the Incarnation, through the "Yes" of the Mother of God Mary, to give birth to the Savior.

• The kingdom of God is in our midst and it is growing all the time – through the "Yes" of all believers to represent the kingdom of God and to take on the authority they have in Christ to let it break forth with ever greater power.

• The kingdom of God will come – at Jesus' second return in glory. The time for this no one knows, only the Father in heaven.

We live in the time between the first coming of the kingdom of God and its completion at Jesus' return in glory. It is the time of the Holy Spirit. The presence of Christians on earth represents the Kingdom of God. God wants us to expand the kingdom increasingly. For that, we need the power of the Holy Spirit. We need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:5) and grow in practicing the gifts of the Spirit.

Andi Oney spoke about the baptism in the Spirit and the spiritual gifts. She also spoke of the Mother of God as the first person to receive the full life of the Spirit, demonstrating with Bible references how all the spiritual gifts were present in Mary's life.

Terry Quinn encouraged us to have an expectant faith. Jesus came to transform us, not just so that we would go to Mass and then passively await our transport to Heaven after death. Jesus' plan for believers is that they should all participate in his priestly, prophetic, and healing mission. All baptized people are responsible for evangelism by proclamation, explanation, and demonstration (preaching, teaching, practically demonstrating through intercession, healing, breaking spiritual chains). Terry emphasized that the Mass is not the goal of our faith. The Mass is the sum of our faith, the highlight, the peak of the mountain where we refuel, draw strength to live our faith. It is necessary that we go down from the mountain, that is where evangelization will take place, and the kingdom of God will spread.

On Saturday evening a service was held where what we had learned was demonstrated and the spiritual gifts were in use: Praise, prayer for healing and several testimonies from people who were healed, prophetic words, prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all those gathered. A mission to go out into the world and pass on what we have received.

An important theme was to break chains. Symbolically, we had to cut off the chains that hold us spiritually captive. Larry Oney explained that it is a prophetic sign we proclaim.

[Video recordings from the conference can be found here]

The musical team

Terry Oney, Zoltan (interpretator), Terry Quinn, Andi Oney

(This article is from CHARIS Nordic Newsletter Oct 2025.)