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Check Your Holy Spirit Connection
4 min
Gospel
Jn 3:7b-15
Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew.’ 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.” Nicode′mus said to him, “How can this be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this? 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. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
Readings are taken from Dynamic Catholic’s Bible: RSV Catholic Edition.
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Transcript
Check Your Holy Spirit Connection
I love Nicodemus. Just love this guy. I love his sort of childlikeness, his curiosity, the way he interacts with Jesus. I think it is vulnerable. I think it is honest and real and human, all those types of things. And he's baffled. And he's baffled, and he knows he's baffled, and he isn't too proud to admit to Jesus that he is baffled. And I think we should all be baffled from time to time. I think the scripture should baffle us. I think the teachings of Jesus and His church should baffle us. And when we get baffled, that's a beautiful invitation to explore curiosity, a beautiful invitation to really delve into whatever it is that's baffling us. What jumps out at me here today, other than sort of that meta-narrative around Nicodemus, is this idea of being born in the Spirit. Sometimes there's arguments among various Christians, who has been born in the Spirit, who hasn't been born in the Spirit, these types of things. We believe as Catholics we're born in the Spirit through baptism. But the question then becomes, are we living in the Spirit? Are we living in the Spirit? And as I've shared with you in the past, I think a great question to ask ourselves in that is how much do we rely on the Holy Spirit? How much do we rely on the Holy Spirit to help us make decisions? How much do we rely on the Holy Spirit to guide us in moments of the day? How much do we rely on the Holy Spirit?
My experience is that most of us don't rely on the Holy Spirit very much at all, and that it's a skill we need to develop. It's a muscle we need to exercise in our spiritual lives. My other experience has been is that I have never met anybody who relied on the Holy Spirit too much. Never met anybody actually who even got very close to that predicament. And so it shows the gulf of opportunity that exists between how little we rely on the Holy Spirit and how far we have to go before we rely on the Holy Spirit too much, which, actually, I think is probably impossible. So we have a great journey to go with the Holy Spirit. And so today's invitation is to a renewed relationship with the Holy Spirit. Who is the Holy Spirit? Who is the Holy Spirit to you? How does he want to work in your life? How are you allowing him to work in your life? Have a great day. And remember, Be bold, Be Catholic.
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