Winds from Above

In today's Gospel, John3: 7-17, Jesus tells Nicodemus and us: “You must be born from above.”This birth is a birth in which we are born of the Spirit of God. Jesus goes on to say:  “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.” 

Just as the impact of wind upon the earth can bring many surprises, so, too, does the wind of the Spirit.  A person born from above will amaze. When I allow the Spirit to rebirth me into the spiritual being  one with God great things can happen.  My world will be turned upside down.  As  truly as the winds of a tornado or hurricane can rip apart material things, the Spirit can tear away that within me and around me or within others that which  is not of God or that which is attempting to block God’s designs!  

Persons  remade in the Spirit’s power can be unpredictable, as is the winds of a tornado or hurricane.  Suddenly, for instance, the Spirit-filled individual offers forgiveness to someone against whom he or she held a grudge for weeks, months, years. All of a sudden, the most lethargic of individuals puts his/her minds to seeking a job and finds one in which he/she blossoms. Without warning, a person borne from above makes the necessary adjustment that softens a hardened heart, that transforms denial of a serious problem into willingness to accept the needed help. “The wind blows where it wills.” May I welcome this Wind into my life. May I look for It, cherish It, be grateful for It and cooperate with It!

The deeper purposes of things

The opening line of today’s first reading, 1 Peter 4: 7-13, is “Beloved: The end of all things is at hand.”  Keeping our end in mind, knowing that the day of our rebirth into eternal life could be any day, would we, I wonder, live today differently?  Believing the end time was imminent, St. Peter instructs us to “love intensely”, to “be hospitable to others without complaining,” and to use the gifts we have been given “to serve one another.” 

Wow!  What a message for all of us awaiting, if you will, our end time here on this earth.  We are here for one thing and one thing only, to love intensely, not half-heartedly or lukewarmly.  What happens to a person on this journey of love and transformation by Love when a person’s innate ability to love as God loves, to forgive as God forgives, to make whole as God makes whole, to serve others as God serves us,  when a person has been taught that life is solely about  filling it with material things, about never saying “no” to oneself, about using sex as an experiment, a thing of pleasure and instant gratification with no commitment or responsibility, with little or no love for self or others. What if one has been taught to perceive life from purely a narcissistic, consumeristic, materialistic, pragmatic, scientific end and only for personal aggrandizement and glorification of the self  with the deeper purposes of existence being ignored, avoided and untaught.

Seeing us misunderstanding and abusing the end for which we have been put here on this earth—to love as God loves—would Jesus not do for us what He did when, in today’s Gospel, He saw how the Temple  was converted  into a “den of thieves”? Would he not teach us the real purpose of life on this earth, its sacredness, its holiness, as He taught the moneychangers the real purpose of the Temple?