Bearing Witness to the Resurrection, Second Tuesday of Easter, April 9, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter
April 9, 2024
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:

• The Easter cycle of readings at daily Mass are meant to be a mystagogical catechesis of the newly baptized and all the baptized about the meaning and practical consequences of the Resurrection. During the Octave, we focus on Christ’s appearances and the conversion that took place among the apostles, disciples, and the first members of the early Church. Yesterday, if we did not have the translated celebration of the Solemnity of the Annunciation, we would have begun a cycle on how we enter into Jesus’ resurrection through baptism. After that, we will then have an octave of focus on receiving Jesus’ risen Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist. Then we will focus on relating to the risen Jesus as our Good Shepherd who seeks to lead us through life to eternally verdant pastures. Then we will enter deeply into what he told us during the Last Supper, looked at from within the prism of his resurrection and the fulfillment of all his words, especially with regard to what he says about the Holy Spirit’s work within us and within the Church as we prepare for the culmination of the Easter season on Pentecost. That’s our itinerary between now and May 19.
• We begin with the mini-cycle on baptism, which takes place through Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. Yesterday, if we had had the Gospel for Monday of the Second Week of Easter, we would have seen Nicodemus come to Jesus timidly at night and meet Jesus as a “teacher who has come from God.” Jesus immediately tried to help prepare Nicodemus for a new life, for a totally new wineskin in order to receive what Jesus was outpouring, by means of speaking about what he wanted to do in us through our sharing in his death and resurrection by baptism. “Amen, amen, I say to you,” Jesus told him, “unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” He described that to enter the kingdom, one must be “born of water and Spirit” “born from above.” Rather than trying to assimilate what Jesus was indicating through those images and to understand 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, as we see today, tried to help him to accept the fact of the need for rebirth from above without the necessity of understanding how. He did so by means of another analogy: “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 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?” Nicodemus 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 Nicodemus 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 was resisting 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 and was drawn, but 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 through faith to be lifted up with Jesus; that happens, as Jesus alluded, when he is 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 to believe in God’s love and how to live with similar 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 the Christian life not just 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 that “With great power the Apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.” He was doubtless describing miracles they were doing, but perhaps the greatest miracle of all was what the Spirit was doing among all the Christians, which became the means by which everyone was bearing powerful witness to the new life Christ’s resurrection brings. St. Luke says, “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, as we see in the example of St. Barnabas mentioned. 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 parish, diocese, religious community 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 at Mass, we ask the Holy Spirit for the grace to correspond as fully to the work of the Holy Spirit as the first Christians did. We ask him for the divine gifts we need to give witness, with great power, to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, just like they did. We ask him to lift us up by faith to be with Christ on the Cross, so that we may live more and more from the blood and water flowing from his side, unite our whole lives to him, receive and imitate his self-giving love, sacrifice our things generously and with trust in him working through the Church, and become one mind and one heart with Him and with each other in this world so that we may be united with the communion of saints forever. This is what Christ’s resurrection, and our entrance into it through the death and resurrection of baptism, makes possible!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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