A reading from the holy gospel according to Saint John. A certain Pharisee named Nicodemus notice he's a Pharisee, a member of the Jewish Sanadrin came to Jesus at night. Of course, this now goes back. This is before the passion and so forth. And Nicodemus said to Jesus, rabbi, we know you are a teacher.
Come from God. For no man can perform signs and wonders such as you perform unless God is with him. Jesus replied, I solemnly assure you, no one can see the rule of God unless he is begotten from above. Nicodemus on hearing this replied, how can a man be born again once he is old? See, takes it literally.
Can he return to his mother's womb and be born all over again? Jesus answered, I solemnly assure you, no one can enter into God's kingdom without being begotten of water and spirit. Flesh begets flesh, spirit begets spirit. Do not be surprised that I tell you, you must all be begotten from above. The wind blows where it will.
You hear the sound that it makes, but you don't know where it comes from or where the wind goes. So it is with everyone begotten of the spirit. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. This theme of our blessed lord, however, you want want to wish to express it and it has various modes of expression is a constant theme of the whole New Testament.
The whole new including the four gospels and the epistles. That the kingdom of our blessed lord is not of this world. Saint Paul speaking to the Colossians said, seek the things that are above. That's that's just another expression of it that our blessed lord is telling Nicodemus today. Seek the things that are above.
My kingdom is not of this world. Now, we've heard this so often that it becomes meaningless. But if you think about it, it's it's a frightful thing. Really, it is. Because we are living in this world, that's we have to begin with that.
We are living in this world of sight, touch, taste. We have our jobs to do. We have our responsibilities. We have the happinesses that we seek. The joys that we wish we could have.
We have our sorrows. We have our tragedies. We live not only from day to day, but sometimes from hour to hour. Literally. There are people right now who are not sure what's going to happen to them within an hour.
Plenty of them, that includes us. And yet, so that we are in this world, we can't escape that. And yet we are asked to be not of this world. Over the weekend, I saw this movie picture called Gandhi. Now, I don't pretend to be an authority on Gandhi, but I have read up a little bit on it.
And the the the the picture itself brings out fairly well. His single mindedness about God. You see, the thing that gone the thing that that no one could understand who had to deal with Ghanai including the British was, he just didn't fit into their mold. Because here was a man who really believed in God. This much is for certain, there's no question about it.
Secondly, everything else was secondary. It did not it was not meaningless. It had significance. But compared to to his thrust, to his comprehension of God, and God's place in his life, and his place, let us say in the drama of of God for him. Everything else was secondary.
Everything. Everything. And the people he had, his friends, his enemies, the indie the different political parties, and above all the British, they didn't know how to deal with this kind of thing. How do you deal with a man who doesn't give a wrap for this world? How do you do it?
All you can crush it, all you can get a hold of is his body. And you can crush his body, but you can't touch his soul. That was a revelation. Now, and I've just been reading the life story of Parsons and Saint Edmund Campion. And this particular group of martyrs, there were 16 of them, all priests.
You see, we're we're with those guys. We're one with them. But you know when you read this, it's frightening because you say, would in heaven's name, would they ever recognize me as one of them? You know, this is a serious question. Our blessed lord said, my kingdom is not of this world.
Paul says, seek the things that are above. We are baptized and we say we have we we were buried and now we have risen with Christ. We have all the words, you know. We have words galore. But do they hit us smack in our daily living, in our convictions, in our persuasions, in the way we face life, in the way we face the things that we that bring us happiness and joy, and also the things that bring us the reverse, that cast us down, that depress us, that brings blindness to us.
In some cases, literally blindness. There are people in this parry today who are fighting blindness. Do we bring this attitude that I am not of this world? That the things of this world are important but of secondary importance? That I must seek the things that are above.
That this is not my true home. That this is just a kind of a waste station. That I am destined to be with God for eternity. This is all familiar lingo. See, lingo, that's what it is.
It's verbiage. Verbiage. It is verbiage until it becomes meaningful in my daily living, in my daily choices. It's so easy to say seek the things that are above. You say, of course I seek the things above.
And for most of us, it it means about forty minutes on a Sunday or coming to church. I mean, in the practical things of living. I was in this parish only a few weeks when when father Bazan, whom some of you remember, he said he could never get over the difference between the attitude of the people in the pews and what you could hear on the parking lot right after mass. You see, we we we haven't we haven't integrated our lives. And as a matter of fact, don't ever think you're going to accomplish it perfectly.
Don't think for one minute you're going to accomplish it perfectly. All we can do is to try. But our lord sure expects us to try and the penalty is damnation. See, this is what we're facing. And so at this Easter season when everybody gets so Easter, you know, is a great time because corresponds to the rebirth of nature, you know, and all of this kind of thing.
The birds are singing and once in a while you see the sun. If you don't see the sun, at least you see the bursting budge, know, and the the flowers are opening and all of this. It is rebirth and there is a joy to it, but that's not the stuff that daily living is made of. Daily living is made of the stuff which these 16 martyrs faced when they went to to trial. Because it is it means that we we daily sacrifice ourselves.
You say this is a hard doctrine. It surely is. And I'll call I can say is that's what Christ told us that we gotta take up his cross. Did he ever say anything different? Did he ever promise us paradise in this life?
And if you talk about the peace of Christ, remember it's the peace of Christ. And look at his life and look at the peace he had. And yet that's what we're praying for. That's what we wish each other. See it's a it's a pretty you can easily become kind of pessimistic about things if you only see one side.
But you see we're in the company of Jesus Christ. And the basic truth there is that Jesus Christ, the son of of Mary, is god. God. In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit. Amen.