Tuesday in the Second Week of Easter, April 9,  2024

John 3, 7-15

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus answered and said to him, ‘How can this happen?” Jesus answered and said to him, “You are the teacher of Israel and you do not understand this? Amen, amen, I say to you, we speak of what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you people do not accept our testimony. If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

We know very little about Nicodemus apart from what we find in St. John’s Gospel.  He was a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, and a member of the upper class.  He was given a Greek name, a not uncommon practice among the Jews of that time.  From his conversation with the Lord we learn that he was eager to learn but careful in evaluating what he heard, and from his collaboration with Joseph of Arimathea in burying the Lord’s Body after he died on the Cross, we know him to be loyal to the truth once he accepted it.  His feast day — for he is considered a saint — falls on August 31, although for centuries it was celebrated in the West on August 3.

St. John quotes the Lord Jesus as saying to Nicodemus, “If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”  John was fascinated by the way the Lord used ordinary “earthly” things to teach about heavenly things, and we see John giving several examples of this throughout his Gospel.  In fact, in his prologue to the Gospel, John refers to the Son of God as “The Word”, himself using a familiar “earthly” idea to talk about the divine reality of who the Word is.  We think of a word as an expression conceived by the mind, formed on the tongue, and spoken, accompanied by a breath: the Father, who conceived the Son from all eternity, speaking the Word — “generating” or “begetting” him — and the accompanying breath, the Holy Spirit (from spiritus, “spirit” or “breath”).  The Lord himself uses the wine at the wedding of Cana to teach about grace; the Temple in Jerusalem, to teach about his Body; the bread with which he fed the five thousand, to talk about the need all have to eat his Flesh; and the water in the Samaritan well, to teach about the water of baptism.  More examples could be given.  I would suggest that he also was teaching when he called his Mother, and also Mary Magdalene, “woman”. This was not a common way of addressing a woman, so when Jesus does this, it sticks out in our minds.  We ought to think of where the word comes from, and we should think back to the early pages of Genesis, where it says that “Adam said: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’, because she was taken out of ‘man’ ” (Genesis 2, 23).  Perhaps Jesus, by addressing these women as “woman” was identifying himself as Adam, or, rather, the New Adam, as St. Paul would do (cf. Romans 5, 12-21).  And, in the case of the Virgin Mary, identifying her as the New Eve, as St. Irenaeus taught in the second century.

All around us figures of the divine cloak themselves in ordinary, earthly things: the sunrise, the wind, clouds that sometimes hide the sun, the sand of a beach, a mountain, a river, the rain, sleep and waking, birth and death.  This is not accidental but something we should expect from God, who leaves his tracks even for the godless to follow so as to find him.  By looking for the deeper meaning of earthly things we can begin to think with a spiritual mind which will allow us to grow in our faith and to see God here even before we see him in heaven.

Part 2 on the Mass: Why is the Mass called “the Mass”?

The earliest terms for the highest worship of God offered by the Church include: “the breaking of bread”, “the gathering”, “the Mysteries”, and “the Sacrifice”.  From the 400’s onwards, following the Roman persecutions, it began to be called “the Sacrifice of the Altar”.  By the time of the Alcuin (d. 804), the Latin term missa had been widely adopted.  Missa comes from the phrase Ite missa est, was used to announce the conclusion of the Church’s worship and to dismiss the congregation.  The phrase is an idiom and does not readily translate into English, just as the English “good bye” does not readily translate into other languages (compare with the French farewell au revoir, which means, roughly, “until we meet again”).  Ite missa est was used by the Romans to signal that a public meeting was completed.  From the early days of the Church the deacon sent out the catechumens and other non-baptized persons after the first part of the Mass, which included the readings, was finished and before the actual Sacrifice was begun.  He would solemnly intone, Ite missa est.  And then this was given at the end of the Sacriffce.  Since the sacrificial part of the Mass began with the dismissal of the catechumens it became known as the Missa, evolving over time into the English “Mass”.  Medieval commenters on the Mass had interesting explanations for the meaning of Ite missa est.  St. Albert the Great taught that the priest said this in order to indicate that the Sacrifice had been sent to heaven to God, which follows from the prayer in the Canon (today called the First Eucharistic Prayer): “In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God: command that these gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty, so that all of us, who through this participation at the altar receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son, may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing.”

Tomorrow: What is a priest?