Born Again from Above by Being Lifted Up With Jesus, 2nd Tuesday of Easter, April 30, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter
Memorial of St. Pius V
April 30, 2019
Acts 4:32-37, Ps 93, Jn 3:7-15

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• Today in the Gospel, Jesus continues his dialogue with Nicodemus, the “reluctant disciple,” who came to Jesus by night because even though he knew that God was working through Jesus, he wasn’t courageous enough to make a commitment and risk being seen with him during the day, something that might compromise his prestige and status among the members of the Sanhedrin. In yesterday’s excerpt of their conversation, Jesus told him that unless one is “born from above” he cannot see the Kingdom of God. But rather than trying to assimilate what Jesus was indicating with images and how the analogy of physical birth related to the mystery of spiritual regeneration, Nicodemus responded by trying to treat the mystery of rebirth as an absurdity: “How can a man once grown old be born again?,” he asked. “Surely he cannot reenter his mother’s womb and be born again, can he?” Nicodemus was too smart not to grasp that that was not what Jesus was implying.
• So Jesus tried to help him to accept the fact of the need for rebirth from above without the necessity of understanding how by means of another analogy, the one that begins today’s reading. “Do not be amazed that I told you, ‘You must be born from above,’” Jesus said. “The wind blows where it wills and you can hear the sound it makes but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” When we feel a cool breeze outside, we don’t spend time wondering whether it originated in Chicago or Philadelphia or whether it’s on its way to Connecticut or to New Jersey. We just accept acknowledge the breeze and are grateful for it. Jesus says we should approach the way the Holy Spirit blows with the same acceptance and not get distracted by how the Holy Spirit is bringing about our spiritual rebirth or where he wants to blow us later. We’re called to acknowledge what he’s doing with trust.
• But Nicodemus doesn’t buy that either. “How can this happen?,” he retorts. That’s where Jesus seeks to humble him, because it was his pride that was preventing him from being a true disciple in the light. “You are the teacher of Israel,” a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, “and you do not understand this?” … If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?” He wasn’t really even buying what Jesus was saying about the wind; how could he accept what Jesus was saying about the divine Ruah (Holy Spirit)? Jesus indicated the reason why he wasn’t understanding: because he wasn’t accepting Jesus as a witness who spoke the truth. “Amen, amen, I say to you, we speak of what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you people do not accept our testimony.” Because he wasn’t humbly accepting Jesus as a divinely sent witness to these things, he wasn’t accepting what Jesus said. Jesus would point to a similar truth elsewhere in the Gospel with regard to his teaching by parables. He taught spiritual truths by using images of mustard seeds, yeast, soil, and wedding banquets so some may understand but others may “hear but not understand [and] look but never see” because their heart was “fat” and didn’t want to convert (Mt 13:10-17). Jesus used images as spiritual litmus tests to expose people’s hearts and see whether people would put in the time to search for the truth the images contained, whether they really wanted to convert or just to have a “dialogue” or “learn a thing or two.” That was Nicodemus’ essential problem. He didn’t want to convert. He was fascinated. He was drawn. He didn’t really want a new life to the extent of willing the means. His lack of comprehension began in his heart, not his head.
• Jesus finishes the dialogue by describing to Nicodemus and us how we will be born again from above. One wouldn’t have to re-enter his mother’s womb, but rather the Lord’s tomb. “No one has gone up to heaven,” Jesus said, “except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” In order to be born from above, we need to be lifted up with Jesus and that happens, as Jesus alluded, when he would be lifted up on the Cross. It’s from Jesus on the Cross that we see our need to convert like the Jews in the desert who had been bitten by saraph serpents since they had been following and worshiping the “serpent” instead of God. It’s from Jesus on the Cross that we learn how to unite all our sufferings, hardships, contradictions and difficulties to God. It’s from Jesus on the Cross, ultimately, that we learn how to live with love, because the Cross is not principally a sign of pain and suffering but of the self-giving love that made even that much pain bearable. We’re born anew from his pierced side from which flowed the water and blood that is the source of the Sacramental life of the Church, the water of baptism and the blood of the Eucharist. That points to the reality that it’s not merely about being “born” again from above through the Cross but “living” from above, living by the Holy Spirit who helps us to be buried with Christ so that we may have a newness of life, as St. Paul tells us at the Easter Vigil (Rom 6). After we’re reborn, the Holy Spirit helps us to grow from above. Since we have been raised with Christ seek the things that are above and set their mind on the things of the Spirit (Col 3, Rom 8).
• Once the Holy Spirit leads us to birth and life from above, once he helps us to learn how to love like Christ, everything changes. We see a glimpse of that change in today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. St. Luke tells us, “The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. … There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, and put them at the feet of the Apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need.” Once they were willing, like Christ, to die out of love for God and others, selling and distributing their property was easy. Moreover, because of their rebirth by the Holy Spirit they related to each other differently. They looked at each other as spiritual brothers and sisters, as beloved family members, for whom sacrificing for them in their need was as natural as a parent or sibling’s sacrificing for a beloved family member by blood. We see three characteristics of life from above. First, we see that they were of “one heart and mind,” because the Holy Spirit brings about unity. Second, we see generosity. And third we see the trust that encourages that generosity: they were laying the proceeds at the feet of the apostles, trusting that they would distribute as good stewards for the sake of the whole family like any good father of a big poor family would. The Church is meant to be in every age the type of loving, sacrificial family we see among the early Christians and to the extent that’s not what we find in a particular community or religious institute, parish, diocese or the Church universal, it’s a sign that not everyone has allowed the Holy Spirit to help them grow and live in accordance with the rebirth they’ve received.
• Today celebrates the feast of St. Pius V, who certainly highlights for us what it means to live born again from above by entering into Christ’s death and resurrection and living by the Holy Spirit. A Dominican priest, he was elected mainly due to the work of St. Charles Borromeo who saw him as the one who would help the Church truly reform after the Protestant Reformation by implementing the Council of Trent. He reformed the way the Church prayed the Mass, prayed various of the Sacraments, and prayed the liturgy of the hours. He helped form the first seminaries to train future priests (before they were trained in apprenticeships, and if the priest teacher weren’t holy, it would be hard to produce future holy priests). His example of sanctity, through prayer and fasting, and his strong leadership in the Church, helped reform Rome and beyond. At his coronation, rather than distribute money lavishly to the crowd as was the custom, he gave it to the directly to the poor; rather than a banquet for the cardinals, prelates and civil leaders, he sent food to the convents of the city. And he sought to help the Church become of one heart and one mind in prayer, imitating the early Church around the Blessed Mother. When Christians were battling Muslims off the coast of Greece in October 1571 as Muslims were seeking to invade Europe, Pope St. Pius V led the Church in prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary  at Santa Maria sopra Minerva by means of the Rosary and God would grant him images of what was happening in battle hundreds of miles away, images that proved true when triumphant Christian sailors returned to Rome months later. Mary is ultimately the one born from above, the one who was lifted up with her Son as co-redeemer on Calvary, the one who moves by the Spirit wherever he wills, the one who shows us how to believe so that we may have eternal life.
• As we begin our day the way St. Pius V would begin his, at Mass, we ask that we may correspond as fully to the work of the Holy Spirit as the first Christians did, as the Holy Spirit seeks to lift us up to be with Christ on the Cross, so that we may live from the blood and water flowing from his side, so that we may unite our whole lives to him including our sufferings, so that we may receive and imitate his self-giving love, sacrifice our things generously and with trust in him working through the Church, and come to be one mind and one heart with Him and with each other in this world so that we may be united in the communion of saints and each other forever.

The readings for today’s Mass were: