Monday of the Second Week of Easter
Acts 4:23-31  +  John 3:1-8

“Do not be amazed that I told you, ‘You must be born from above.’”

Today through Thursday, we will hear at weekday Mass from the third chapter of St. John’s Gospel account.  Today and tomorrow we hear the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus.  Wednesday and Thursday we will hear directly from St. John the Evangelist, giving us deep spiritual insight into the mystery of Christ’s life.  Those four days hearing from John 3 will prepare us for the sixth chapter of John, which we’ll start hearing from this Friday.  Over many weekdays of Easter, we’ll continue to hear from John 6, in which Jesus preaches to us about the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.

So with that as a backdrop, reflect upon how in today’s Gospel passage, Jesus teaches Nicodemus about the Holy Spirit.  Today’s First Reading shows the members of the early Church living this lesson.

The Holy Spirit animates the soul of the Christian, who lives her or his life within the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit is metaphorically called the soul of the Body of Christ.  This image helps us recognize how completely we are to live within the Church.  This image also helps us see how the Holy Spirit must be the source of our every thought, word, and action.

When the first Christians received the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, they surely never imagined themselves experiencing the conflicts that we read about in the Acts of the Apostles.  The Holy Spirit led them where they may not previously have been willing to go, provoking conflict because of their unwillingness to deny Christ in any way.  In our own lives, we need to allow the Holy Spirit to animate our lives.  When we do, the Holy Spirit will make the virtue of humility easier to live, since both the conflicts and victories in our lives are His.