Tuesday April 26, 2022

Tuesday of 2nd Week in Easter

 

One Heart and One Mind                                                   

We know from our disappointing experiences how difficult it is to be a real community. We have different personalities with different ideas, attitudes and potentials. The great obstacle is we ourselves: we want people to go our way, and we impose our own views. In our Christian communities, there is one who can unite us in himself. It is Jesus, our model and our Lord. We believe that we come together here in his name and for his sake. He is alive and present among us. He brings us together in one faith and one love. It is a lifelong task. Can we be one heart and one soul in him?

 

First Reading: Acts 4:32-37 

The whole congregation of believers was united as one—one heart, one mind! They didn’t even claim ownership of their own possessions. No one said, “That’s mine; you can’t have it.” They shared everything. The apostles gave powerful witness to the resurrection of the Master Jesus, and grace was on all of them.

And so it turned out that not a person among them was needy. Those who owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of the sale to the apostles and made an offering of it. The apostles then distributed it according to each person’s need.

Joseph, called by the apostles “Barnabas” (which means “Son of Comfort”), a Levite born in Cyprus, sold a field that he owned, brought the money, and made an offering of it to the apostles.

 

Gospel: John 3:7-15

“So don’t be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be ‘born from above’—out of this world, so to speak. You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it’s headed next. That’s the way it is with everyone ‘born from above’ by the wind of God, the Spirit of God.”

Nicodemus asked, “What do you mean by this? How does this happen?”

Jesus said, “You’re a respected teacher of Israel and you don’t know these basics? Listen carefully. I’m speaking sober truth to you. I speak only of what I know by experience; I give witness only to what I have seen with my own eyes. There is nothing secondhand here, no hearsay. Yet instead of facing the evidence and accepting it, you procrastinate with questions. If I tell you things that are plain as the hand before your face and you don’t believe me, what use is there in telling you of things you can’t see, the things of God?

 “No one has ever gone up into the presence of God except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man. In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up—and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life.

 

Prayer

All praise and thanks be to you,
Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
You have given us your risen Son
to be alive in our communities.
Make us see him with eyes of faith,
that he may unite us, heart and soul.
May his dynamic presence among us
move us to become with him,
each other’s bread of life,
that no one among us may hunger
for food or help when in need.
We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

 

Reflection:
Cross is the antidote to the poison of sin

Today’s Gospel passage is part of the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus. Nicodemus is presented as the representative of all those who got tangled with their traditions and customs. He was a reputed rabbi, but his reputations and qualifications prevented him from walking out the darkness of the wrong traditions and customs into the light of Jesus. The newness of life offered by Jesus was beyond his understanding. The prophets of Israel had consistently challenged the futility of their scrupulous observance of the Thora while refusing concern, compassion and love for the brethren.
Nicodemus would fade from the story at least temporarily; and dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus would now turns into a monologue of Jesus.
Though placed on the lips of Jesus, the actual discourse is the composition of the evangelist. He wrote the Gospel around the year 90 – i.e., over five decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus. He speaks as a disciple of Jesus and as member of the Spirit-filled community, and he had experienced the new birth promised by Jesus. He experienced exclusion from the Jewish religious system and had lived with fellow members of the community of believers whose lives had radically changed ever since they had been born from above, as Jesus told to Nicodemus.
Today, the Gospel invites us to be born again, to leave the old that is in us: when this happens, the Spirit takes us and the miracle occurs. New birth in the Spirit would be birth to eternal life, a way of living within the material world but transcending it, and enduring beyond death. Eternal life that the Gospel speaks of would mean entering into the values of truth, love and mercy of the ever-living God.
The incident about the snake in the desert had been recorded in the Book of Numbers and had occurred while the Israelites were wandering through the desert of Sinai, before they arrived the Promised Land. In the community of John, the symbol of the snake raised on the pole evidently became a cherished symbol, helping them to make sense of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
The Gospel brings us the message of hope – a hope that tells us that there is something more beautiful and profitable on the other side of our struggles in life. Our various life experiences are our baptism through which we will be born again. And in this journey, keep our gaze fixed on the Cross – which is the only antidote for the poison of sinfulness.

 

Video available on Youtube: Cross is the antidote to the poison of sin