Thursday in the Second Week of Easter, April 11, 2024

John 3, 31-36

The one who comes from above is above all. The one who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of earthly things. But the one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. Whoever does accept his testimony certifies that God is trustworthy. For the one whom God sent speaks the words of God. He does not ration his gift of the Spirit. The Father loves the Son and has given everything over to him. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains 

upon him.

The Lord Jesus continues speaking to Nicodemus and this gives us the Gospel reading for today’s Mass.  The Lord has been speaking of the Holy Spirit, whom no one can see directly, but who can be seen in the acts of faith performed by those who believe.  The Lord has also spoken of the chasm that exists between the heavenly and the earthly, and he continues on this theme here.

“The one who comes from above is above all.”  This might be translated better as, The one who comes from above is superior to all.  We Christians can understand this as the Son of God who comes into the world transcends all things.  The Son is not simply a greater thing; he is a substantially different thing, and in this way he is “superior” to all others.  He is divine: without beginning, without end, “the Alpha and the Omega”.  As he himself says, “I am Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 22, 13).   Compared with the eternal Fire of God, humans are not even the sparks of the fire: those are the angels.  We are the bits of ash on the hearth floor.

“The one who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of earthly things. But the one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard.”  This is a phrase that sounds like it was first uttered in Hebrew, and, indeed, the Lord often argued with the Pharisees in Hebrew, not in Greek or Aramaic.  Thus, from the Hebrew we might translate this as, The adam is of the adamah and speaks of the things of adamah.  Adam, the man, and adamah, the earth. The human knows only earthly things because it is all he can know.  The one from heaven transcends the one from earth and so testifies to what the one from earth cannot imagine.  “But no one accepts his testimony.”  That is, unaided, no one of the earth has the ability to understand and to accept his testimony.  And yet, there are those who do, not through corroborating knowledge of what the one from heaven says, but through faith in the words of the one from heaven.  We may not be able to comprehend heaven, the angels, and grace, much less the mystery of the Holy Trinity, but we can believe in the one who tells us of these things, and we do this through the aid of the grace he gives us.  In accepting the word of the Messenger, we believe in the One who sent him, and that he is trustworthy.  “For the one whom God sent speaks the words of God.”  We believe what the Messenger says of himself because of the works he performs by the power of the one who sent him.  “He does not ration his gift of the Spirit.”  The grace which enables us to believe is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and to the human who wants to believe and is prepared to believe, abundant grace will be given.  We recall how the Lord Jesus fed the five thousand, so that there was enough food left over to feed a town.  God is not sparing with his gifts; it is we who are sparing in our reception of them.  

“The Father loves the Son and has given everything over to him.”  These words sound so prosaic in our human ears.  The heavenly reality they hint at cannot enter our minds.  If it is true, as St. Paul said, that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard: neither has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for them that love him” (1 Corinthians 2, 9), then how much less we can conceive of the love of the Father for his Son.  The Father, in his love, gives everything to the Son — “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving, honor and power and strength” unto eternity (Revelation 7, 12).  The Son will share these with those who believe in him: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.”  This belief is not merely acceptance of a body of knowledge but signifies a relationship.  We do not simply believe the Son, but believe in the Son.  We give ourselves to him, body, soul, and mind.  “Whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him.”  The wrath of God “remained” upon us all through original sin, which is only taken away by baptism, the remission of sin won for us by the Blood of the Lord which was poured out for us.  That is, we recognize God’s choice of us to be his friends, though we have sinned against him both in our First Parents and personally, and we become his sons and daughters through the cleansing water of baptism, which confers a new birth upon us.  

In considering the ways in which God transcends us, we marvel at how we become his sons and daughter by adoption, and heirs of heaven.  All this occurs by the Life, Death, and Resurrection of his Son.

The fourth article in our continuing series on the Holy Mass: How Does the Mass Begin?

The Mass originally began with the simple greeting of “The Lord be with you” or “Peace be with you” followed by the ancient Hebrew response of “And with your spirit”, meaning that the priest offered the greeting of the Lord to them through himself, and the congregation responded in a way that showed they were praying for him to accomplish the great work of the Mass.  Ever since the late 300’s, the Mass celebrated in Rome opened with the Sign of the Cross.  Right after the Sign of the Cross and the Greeting, a litany was chanted.  Scholars think that visitors from Rome saw the Mass in Jerusalem celebrated with a litany and they brought it back with them, at this time the language of the Mass in Rome being Greek so that the Greek litany fit in well.  Over a period of decades though, and as the language of the Mass in Rome became Latin (as most people living in Rome now spoke  Latin) the Greek litany was dropped with the exception with the first three lines: Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison.  In the German lands, in the 1400’s, priests began to say their preparatory sacristy prayers before the altar before the beginning of Mass and at the Council of Trent in the 1500’s these were officially made part of the Mass, and were set just before the Kyrie eleison.  In the Missal promulgated in 1970 after the Second Vatican Council, the Confiteor [“I confess”], was combined by the Kyrie in a Penitential Rite, although for many hundreds of years the purpose of the prayers was distinct.  The inclusion of the Confiteor at Trent shows good sense, allowing people to be relieved of their venial sins before the Sacrifice and subsequent Holy Communion.  Unfortunately the prayer of absolution said by the priest following the Confiteor was not included in the 1970 Missal.  Now a simple prayer is offered that God will forgive us our sins.

Next: The Readings