Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.
This statement of Jesus refers to baptism in which one is born from above by water and Spirit. But it means something more than that one can't see salvation without baptism, although that is normatively true, and a consequence of the statement. Nor does it mean merely that baptism grants access to the Church and the Sacraments, though that too is true.
Do not be amazed that I told you,
'You must be born from above.'
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."
Baptism gives is how the gift of the Holy Spirit is given. And this Spirit living within us makes us able to see the unseen realities of the Kingdom of God. He attunes us to spiritual realities which go unrecognized by others, though they nevertheless have their effect on everyone, just like the wind. He gives us a new mode of perception and a new way of thinking that enables us to see God's logic playing out where before we could only see randomness. He reveals to us the true struggle in this world is not against flesh and blood, but rather against "spiritual forces of evil" (see Ephesians 6:12). What we see is at one level still the same reality. But now we perceive the deeper logic at work behind it. And this perception enables us to participate and cooperate with God's own plans.
Peter and John were met with opposition to the spread of the Gospel message. But they did not interpret this in a human way, as one without the Spirit would have done, did not consider it even to be a setback. They were able to perceive the deeper plan at work.
Herod and Pontius Pilate,
together with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,
to do what your hand and your will
had long ago planned to take place.
The Spirit helped them to understand the reality of their present situation by seeing how it fit into the larger story centered around Jesus himself. Jesus was himself face resistance and opposition to his message, leading to his suffering and death. But this suffering was allowed in order to bring force the greater good of the resurrection and forgiveness of sins. Now something similar seemed to be happening in the early Church. And so they prayed, not that they would be able to avoid suffering necessarily, but rather that, like Jesus himself, they would persist in boldness with fidelity to the Father's will. They prayed that their own fidelity would be accompanied by the healing hand of God, with signs and wonders. These signs were like those of their master himself, invitations to believe for those willing to have faith, and occasions of scandal for those whose hearts with hardened. They were in fact the aftershocks of the resurrection itself.
As they prayed, the place where they were gathered shook,
and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit
and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.
It is no exaggeration to say that none of the success of the early Church would have been possible without the gift of the Holy Spirit. It was the Spirit himself who brought the disciples from fear to courage. He was the one who guided them out from a locked upper room into a world which was in many ways hostile to their message. But because they saw things from his perspective they didn't simply notice all of the problems and liabilities and turn back around and give up. They were able to recognize where they were meant to be, what they were meant to do there, and by whose power alone they might hope to do it.
What is born of flesh is flesh
and what is born of spirit is spirit.
We who have been reborn in baptism are challenged to ask ourselves if we are living the full promise of that baptism. Are we living according to a new and spiritual way of thinking where our lives make sense because of their relation to the story of Jesus himself? Or are we still living the same way as before, still simply living from our flesh, surviving day to day, but not thriving? If the later, then every new instance of pain or disappointment will take us by surprise, and our lives themselves won't make sense because we won't see them in the context of the larger unseen reality of a world transformed by the resurrection.
For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life (see Galatians 6:8).
The invitation to us is to do precisely what the disciples did: to claim our part in the story, and pray for the transformation by the Spirit that empowers us for our role.
Ask of me and I will give you
the nations for an inheritance
and the ends of the earth for your possession.
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