April 24, 2017 Monday, 2nd Week of Easter
ST. PETER CHANEL1st Reading: Acts 4:23–31
Gospel: Jn 3:1–8
Among the Pharisees there was a ruler of the Jews named Nicodemus. He came to Jesus by night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you have come from God to teach us, for no one can perform miraculous signs like yours unless God is with him.” Jesus replied, “Truly, I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again from above.”
Nicodemus said, “How can there be rebirth for a grown man? Who could go back to his mother’s womb and be born again?” Jesus replied, “Truly, I say to you: No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Because of this, don’t be surprised when I say: ‘You must be born again from above.’
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in
the Assimilated
Life Experience)
The power of Easter is not in granting us immunity from physical death. Nobody would want to stay in this temporal world any longer than a meaningful lifetime anyway. Our life is seventy or eighty for those who are strong (Psalm 90:10). The number is not to be taken literally, but the message is that life is short. Life is actually best if kept short. Beyond a certain age, the quality of physical life becomes less and less manageable. When Cebu Archbishop Emeritus Ricardo J. Cardinal Vidal’s father, for example, came close to the age of a hundred, he asked the Cardinal to inquire from the Lord if he had already forgotten him. From all practical considerations, temporal life must end in natural death somehow, someday.
In any case, death does not have the final say. Those who are covered by the benefits of Jesus’ resurrection enjoy immunity from the sting of death. For them death is transformed into a mode of transition into everlasting life.
But in order to be covered by this transforming power of the resurrection the necessary consequence of which is rebirth in the Spirit, one needs to be baptized in water and in spirit (Jn 3:1-8). We have complied with this requirement when our parents had us baptized while we were still infants. So theoretically we are all covered by the resurrection’s promise of eternal life.
Being baptized in water and spirit, however, imposes upon us the continuing requirement of openness to life in the Spirit. Now that we are grown ups and are on our own, everything already depends on us. God has deep respect for human freedom. Even if we have been baptized, the resurrection will have no power over us if we use our freedom to take exemption from the resurrection and settle for a life under the shadow of death. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.
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