Monday, March 31, 2008

Homily -03-31-2008 – Second Week of Easter Monday

We begin now our continuation of the seven week Easter Season – both, to give proper significance to the great event of our faith and salvation; but also as a fitting preparation for the Feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost that will occur at the end of these seven weeks!

Our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles is a continuation of events the followed the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Peter and John took up the commission given them by Jesus and began first to preach the name of Jesus to the Jewish people: the original chosen recipients of the Good News of redemption in Christ.

The power of the Holy Spirit that acted through them was quite certainly felt and experienced: by the power of their words, by the results of their prayers for healing, but also by the fact that the place where they gathered to pray shook as a direct and tangible sign of the Spirit's abiding presence.

Sometimes, when we are used by God to deliver messages small and great, when we are used to bring about healing and reconciliations, when we are used to spread the Gospel message of hope, mercy and forgiveness – we too can feel a trembling within us that can be attributed only to the presence of the Blessed Trinity within us!

In the gospel passage today, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be "born again" of water and the spirit. All Nicodemus hears is "born again" – and does not understand how he can get inside of his mother and be born again now that he is an old man – but Jesus emphasizes the water and spirit. He is talking of baptism: he is talking about the pouring of water, and the coming of the Spirit with power – power to make the recipient a child of God, a brother or sister to himself, a member of his own Body, a member of the Church – one who lives his / her life hidden with God in Jesus himself.

What an amazing position to be in: to be safe, secure and protected by the very life, favor and presence of God himself beginning in the spiritual realm and then overflowing into the material.

God wants to take care of all of us: our bodies as well as our spirits! But we have to die to both our bodies and our spirits so that his life can be enabled in both! All it takes is our permission, our go ahead, our willingness, our word! Let us give God that word today!

If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

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