Homily for Tuesday, 2d Week of Easter

Homily for Tuesday
2d Week of Easter

April 29, 2024
John 3: 7-15
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

Nicodemus & Jesus on a Rooftop
(Henry O. Tanner)

“The wind blows where it wills…” (John 3: 8).

St. John is fond of wordplay, and his fondness is at work when he compares the Spirit to wind.  It’s the same word in Greek, pneuma.  It’s the same Spirit, the same “mighty wind” that “swept over the waters” when God began creating the universe (Gen 1:2), the same “breath of life” that God “blew into the nostrils” of the “man he formed out of the clay of the ground” (Gen 2:7) as his creation culminated in humanity.

The life breath of God, his creative wind, his Holy Spirit continues in the work of Jesus—a mysterious work that neither Nicodemus nor anyone can understand, any more than we can grasp “where the wind comes from or where it goes” (John 3:8).

We see and hear the wind’s effects—leaves swaying, windows rattling.  In Harriman last week I saw dozens of trees laid prone by violent storms.  Likewise, Jesus suggests, we behold the effects of the Spirit’s work.  Where did John XXIII come from, and where did God mean for him to take the Church?  Ditto Francis.  What’s next for God’s creative work among his people?  We certainly don’t want Jesus to say of us, “How will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?” (3:12).

“The Son of Man has come down from heaven” (3:13) to reveal heaven’s workings to us and to unleash the Spirit of God in the Church, in his saints like Catherine of Siena, and in us.  In these days, of course, we’re praying that the college of cardinals (we SDBs have 5 electors) are listening to “the sound it makes” and trying to perceive “where it goes” (cf. 3:8) so that Christ’s Church may continue to lift him up for the world to see and believe (cf. 3:14-15).