[00:00] The Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. So much along the same theme that we saw throughout Lent, we come back to during this first week

[00:30] after the octave of Easter, in that our Lord presents to us the principle of life by which we're able to be children of God, His sanctifying grace that we receive at baptism. Saint Augustine said that it's one thing to be born of the flesh or born of the womb, water from the womb. It's another thing to be born from water and the fire of the Holy Spirit,

[01:04] one by which we live in this life. The other gives us the capacity to begin now to live in the next life, and also obviously gives us the capacity to live eternal life with God in heaven. So the gospel today tells us that we must be born from above. Our Lord is trying to teach Nicodemus

[01:37] about baptism, and then there's different things that Nicodemus says to him. He doesn't understand how it is that someone could be in another gospel. He says, well, you know, how is this to happen as a man to go back into the womb and be born again? And our Lord is sort of God deriding his incredulity and also his lack of knowledge, being a teacher of Israel.

[02:08] And he speaks to him of being born of the Spirit. It's not something that is tangible. You know, it's like the same thing that we say, or that we read about, that you can't put God at the end of a telescope or at the end of a microscope. No matter how much science progresses, it's only going to be a greater indication of the possibility of God. But in order to truly

[02:39] believe that God exists and believe that Jesus is a son of God and believe that there's such thing as a baptism and the effects of baptism, it is only through revelation, through faith. It doesn't mean it's unreasonable. It just means it's different science. It's the highest science. Faith is the highest science. Then you have philosophy, which is the highest, I guess you could say, science knowledge by which we can come to through the light of

[03:13] natural reason. Then you have the empirical sciences below that, which is the knowledge that we get from experimental knowledge. It's like Jesus, he knew as God how many rocks were at the bottom of a riverbed. But if he wanted to, through empirical science, he could go and count each one. So he would come to the same knowledge, but through a different manner. It's the same with us. Faith doesn't go against reason. It perfects reason. It's reasonable for

[03:50] us to see miracles, to see the work of our Lord. It's reasonable for us to see the early church and how they acted after they received the Holy Spirit. It's enough for us to read the lives of the saints, to understand that Jesus Christ truly lived historically. And after that, after we open the door of history and see that Jesus truly lived and all the criteria is there to believe that,

[04:25] then the rest is very easy. Because as our Lord said, it's like the wind. You can't see the wind, but you can see the effects of it. You can feel the effects of it if the wind is strong enough. And you don't know where it's coming from or where it's going. And it's the same as the life of the Spirit. So we have all the criteria to believe. And, you know, it's frustrating to hear people who are just embedded in the empirical sciences that they think is the greatest science

[04:58] when really it's the third stage down. And then they think everything can be explained through science and they reject faith as something that's almost like, you know, this unreasonable belief. But it's not unreasonable to believe in the things that we see. In fact, we use the same senses and everything that you would use empirical science to reason to the fact that, well, I mean, this guy walked on water and he raised the dead. You know, that's pretty obvious.

[05:32] It's like the blind man said, I don't know what you guys are thinking, but all I know is this guy, I was blind and now I can see. And it would be unheard of that God would not approve or support someone by miracles that's false. So we have all the criteria and we see through the early church and the lives of the saints, the way that they were able to act above and beyond nature. That's why usually in homilies, I always come back to the greatest commandment that our Lord

[06:07] gave obviously to love God. Everybody understands that. But the hardest one sometimes is to love our neighbor, to love our neighbor as ourselves, or to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. That is the highest degree of the effects of our baptism. To be able to, you know, it's one thing to live, as St. Augustine said, to be born from the womb. It's another thing to be born of the Holy Spirit. If we're born through the natural order,

[06:45] we act according to our nature. But if we're born through the Spirit, then we act according to the Spirit. One is natural life and the other is supernatural life. But we still have to always grow. That's the thing. It's not automatic. Even though we're baptized, we still have concupiscence. We still tend to sin. But it's the same as a baby. When a baby's born, you don't expect it to go around and reciting Shakespeare and solving like Einstein's

[07:18] equation of E equal MC squared or provide for itself. No, we expect the others to take care of the baby and that the baby will mature and grow. It's the same in the spiritual life. Yes, we have the capacity. We've been, we're now children of God. We now have God's grace and the Holy Trinity dwelling in our soul. But we still are required to make those steps to grow, to grow in virtue

[07:48] and to turn away from sin and use our wills and our intellects that God has given us. But with the capacity to be perfected and the way that we grow is through the sacraments. The sacraments are what impart life to us. The Holy Eucharist gives us life. It's receiving Jesus, the source of life. So we may not be able to feel this tangibly, but we can see the effects of it. Or at least even others should be able to see the effects of it in us.

[08:22] What's the point of being baptized? What's the point of having our souls elevated to a supernatural principle of life, but still continue to live naturally? That's the main question. If people in the world cannot tell just as they did at the early church and said, see how they love one another. If we don't represent anything else to others, then what's the point? Because,

[08:58] you know, at least with the wind, you can feel the effects. You can see the effects of it, even if you can't see the wind directly, as our Lord said. But we as Christians should be living according to the spirit, the supernatural spirit of God within our souls, by which we become more and more children of God, and through which others, not through a microscope

[09:31] and not through a telescope, but through our lives, will be able to see the reality of God.