Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter

April 29, 2003

Today’s gospel continues the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus in which these two individuals seem to be talking past each other on two different levels. It might be somewhat like an old black and white photograph in which a man is seated behind a cow on a milking stool and the only things visible are his feet and legs. The woman sends the photo to a refinishing company with a note pleading: can you please move the cow so that I can see what my grandfather looks like.

Faith is about living without seeing the whole picture. As much as we yearn to know and understand we can only see small portions of who God is and why our life unfolds as it does. We can comprehend only tiny portions of the meaning of events and circumstances that affect us in life. We can never fully explain the divine mystery that is both within and beyond us; but as we pray and study the scriptures more pieces of the puzzle help form a clearer and more complete picture. You might even say they help move the blockage of the cow.

Many of you are probably aware or perhaps remember the great Chicago fire started by a cow tipping over a lantern in a barn. In the Book of Acts it is not a cow but a dove. It is how the Holy Spirit brought an explosion of transforming power to a group of frightened people and turned them into a community of faith filled and loving disciples.

They were so transformed that their petty rivalries and jealousies among one another now took on a sense of responsibilities for one another with a desire to share all of their resources.

Reading this passage one might wonder, why not today? Though few would be ready to hand over houses and wages, and live in a commune we can lay our talents and our time before the community. As reluctant as we might be to surrender our material possessions perhaps, we are even more reluctant to surrender any lack of security, much less our lives for the sake of the gospel.

Is it perhaps because we have lost the sense of what it means to remember. But we need not become discouraged. The power to unite in the midst of all our discord is available to us as it was to the first disciples. Remember the words of Jesus: "If you believe you will see the glory of God."

Generosity, unity, love can all be ours as we experience the power of the Holy Spirit. Hearts changed from hardness and selfishness to love and generosity begin by discovering that the risen Christ lives in me and you and all of us.

We can begin today to reach out to members of our families from whom we feel alienation or tension. We can pray the Spirit into those lives both ours and theirs.

The power of the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins that we heard Jesus give to the Apostles on Sunday is a gift that keeps on giving. The more you give it; the more you receive it.

As our families and, all of our relationships begin to fill with the Spirit, God’s light will shine brighter and brighter, and more will come to recognize it and the world will once again remember.