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| Photo: Being Born Again (Source: CatholicJules) |
John 3:7b–15
7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew.’ 8 The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.” 9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can this be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this? 11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen; but you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
Cited in the Catechism: In promulgating the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Blessed John Paul II explained that the Catechism "is a statement of the Church's faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church's Magisterium." He went on to "declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion" (Fidei Depositum). Passages from this Gospel reading are cited in the Catechism, paragraphs 423, 440, 505, 526, 591, 661 and 2130.
Commentary
3:3–8. Nicodemus’ first question shows that he still has doubts about Jesus (Is he a prophet? Is he the Messiah?); and our Lord replies to him in a completely unexpected way: Nicodemus presumed he would say something about his mission and, instead, he reveals to him an astonishing truth: one must be born again, in a spiritual birth, by water and the spirit; a whole new world opens up before Nicodemus.
Our Lord’s words also paint a limitless horizon for the spiritual advancement of any Christian who willingly lets himself or herself be led by divine grace and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are infused at Baptism and enhanced by the sacraments. As well as opening his soul to God, the Christian also needs to keep at bay his selfish appetites and the inclinations of pride, if he is to understand what God is teaching him in his soul: “Therefore must the soul be stripped of all things created, and of its own actions and abilities — namely, of its understanding, perception and feelings—so that, when all that is unlike God and unconformed to him is cast out, the soul may receive the likeness of God; and nothing will then remain in it that is not the will of God and it will thus be transformed in God. Wherefore, although it is true that, as we have said, God is ever in the soul, giving it, and through his presence conserving within it, its natural being, yet he does not always communicate supernatural being to it. For this is communicated only by love and grace, which not all souls possess; and all those that possess it have it not in the same degree; for some have attained more degrees of love and others fewer. Wherefore God communicates himself most to that soul that has progressed farthest in love; namely, that has its will in closest conformity with the will of God. And the soul that has attained complete conformity and likeness of will is totally united and transformed in God supernaturally” (St John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, book 2, chap. 5).
Jesus speaks very forcefully about man’s new condition: it is no longer a question of being born of the flesh, of the line of Abraham (cf. Jn 1:13), but of being reborn through the action of the Holy Spirit, by means of water. This is our Lord’s first reference to Christian Baptism, confirming John the Baptist’s prophecy (cf. Mt 3:11; Jn 1:33) that he had come to institute a baptism with the Holy Spirit.
“Nicodemus had not yet savoured this spirit and this life. […] He knew but one birth, which is from Adam and Eve; that which is from God and the Church, he did not yet know; he knew only the paternity which engenders to death; he did not yet know the paternity which engenders to life. […] Whereas there are two births, he knew only of one. One is of earth, the other of heaven; one of the flesh, the other of the Spirit; one of mortality, the other of eternity; one of male and female, the other of God and the Church. But the two are each unique; neither one nor the other can be repeated” (St Augustine, In Ioann. Evang., 11, 6).
Our Lord speaks of the wonderful effects the Holy Spirit produces in the soul of the baptized. Just as with the wind—when it blows we realize its presence, we hear it whistling, but we do not know where it came from, or where it will end up—so with the Holy Spirit, the divine “breath” (pneuma) given us in Baptism: we do not know how he comes to penetrate our heart but he makes his presence felt by the change in the conduct of whoever receives him.
3:10–12. Even though Nicodemus finds them puzzling, Jesus confirms that his words still stand, and he explains that he speaks about the things of heaven because that is where he comes from, and to make himself understood he uses earthly comparisons and images. Even so, this language will fail to convince those who adopt an attitude of disbelief.
Chrysostom comments: “It was with reason that he said not: ‘You do not understand,’ but: ‘You do not believe.’ When a person baulks and does not readily accept things which it is possible for the mind to receive, he may with reason be accused of stupidity; when he does not accept things which it is not possible to grasp by reason but only by faith, the charge is no longer that of stupidity, but of incredulity” (Hom. on St John, 27, 1).
3:13. This is a formal declaration of the divinity of Jesus. No one has gone up into heaven and, therefore, no one can have perfect knowledge of God’s secrets, except God himself who became man and came down from heaven—Jesus, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Son of man foretold in the Old Testament (cf. Dan 7:13), to whom has been given eternal lordship over all peoples.
3:14–15. The bronze serpent which Moses set up on a pole was established by God to cure those who had been bitten by the poisonous serpents in the desert (cf. Num 21:8–9). Jesus compares this with his crucifixion, to show the value of his being raised up on the cross: those who look on him with faith can obtain salvation. We could say that the good thief was the first to experience the saving power of Christ on the cross: he saw the crucified Jesus, the King of Israel, the Messiah, and was immediately promised that he would be in Paradise that very day (cf. Lk 23:39–43).
The Son of God took on our human nature to make known the hidden mystery of God’s own life (cf. Mk 4:11; Jn 1:18; 3:1–13; Eph 3:9) and to free from sin and death those who look at him with faith and love and who accept the cross of every day.
The faith of which our Lord speaks is not just intellectual acceptance of the truths he has taught: it involves recognizing him as Son of God (cf. 1 Jn 5:1), sharing his very life (cf. Jn 1:12) and surrendering ourselves out of love and therefore becoming like him (cf. Jn 10:27; 1 Jn 3:2). But this faith is a gift of God (cf. Jn 3:3, 5–8), and we should ask him to strengthen it and increase it as the Apostles did: Lord “increase our faith!” (Lk 17:5). While faith is a supernatural, free gift, it is also a virtue, a good habit, which a person can practise and thereby develop: so the Christian, who already has the divine gift of faith, needs with the help of grace to make explicit acts of faith in order to make this virtue grow.
The Word does not stop being God on becoming man: even when he is on earth as man, he is in heaven as God. It is only after the Resurrection and the Ascension that Jesus is in heaven as man also.
Source: The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries. Biblical text from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and by Scepter Publishers in the United States. We encourage readers to purchase The Navarre Bible for personal study. See Scepter Publishers for details.
"Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." St Jerome
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