Our
first reading today gives us the beautiful phrase: the community of believers was of one heart and mind! This
unity is the very real manifestation of Jesus’ wish at the Last Supper. In his High Priestly Prayer prayed shortly
after giving them Eucharist for the first time, Jesus says: Father, make them (the Apostles) and all who
would come to believe in me because of them, one: make them one as we are one,
Father. And this is no ordinary unity: this is a dynamic unity producing love, producing works of love, producing works
of self-sacrificial service!
It is therefore wonderful to
read in the Acts of the Apostles that the early community was indeed influenced
very strongly by the Eucharistic Meal that they shared, by the works of charity
that they performed: as is witnessed in the fact that no one in the community went without, and in fact there began a common
pool of resources so that no one would be without. Would that today’s
parishes would set aside a certain amount of resources both financial and
personnel-wise to regularly help those in their midst who are one in heart and mind with them, and who
go without because of economic shortfalls.
In
the gospel passage, Jesus continues his conversation with Nicodemus
about being baptized and “born into” the supernatural life of the spirit. He
tells him that he of all people should be able to understand what he is saying
because he is a teacher of natural and spiritual things and ought to be able to
make a leap of faith to understand
the teaching of supernatural things. Then Jesus briefly refreshes a lesson for
Nicodemus that, being a good Jew familiar with Scripture already knows, “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!” This was meant to be a kind of switch or signal
for Nicodemus to see things from the
heavenly perspective of the Cross of Christ: which makes everything
different! May we have this vision, may we have this perspective today!
Being “born again” is then not
such an impossible leap after all as seen from the height and depth and width
of Christ’s love for us as demonstrated on the upraised Cross of Calvary!
The
Lord is king; he is robed in majesty
and his disciples are of one heart and mind!
No comments:
Post a Comment