Today's passage from the Johannine Gospel highlights Jesus' dialogue with Nicodemus.
The latter represented the group of Jews who sensed the value of the novelty of the young Rabbi's teaching - yet did not understand it, because it was distant from tradition.
The theme posed is rebirth from above: "from water and the Spirit" (Jn 3:5). Reminder of Baptism in Christ.
The Sources explain in detail when Francis was brought to the baptismal font:
"His mother had called him John, when he was born again of water and the Holy Spirit, and from a son of wrath he had become a son of Grace" (FF 583).
Francis so loved the Spirit of God, the Source of all transformation, that he appointed him Minister General of the Order: under his aegis he would certainly produce shoots of Grace.
The theme posed in the Gospel is precisely rebirth from Above, from the Holy Spirit.
Clare herself, in the Papal Bull "Clara Claris praeclara" was outlined with a profile of spiritual novelty, of a new Woman reborn from above.
In the document we discern all the traits that distinguished her as a soul invaded by the Holy Spirit.
"O Clare, endowed with so many prerogatives of clarity! You were, indeed, clear before your conversion, clearer in your change of life, luminous in your cloistered life, shining finally with most vivid light after the course of your present existence!
From Clare there sprang forth for the world a clear mirror of example" (FF 3282).
"She truly shone while living in the world, but she shone most vividly in religious life; she shone as a ray in her father's house, but in the cloister she radiated like a sun.
She shone in life, but after death she shines radiantly; she was clear on earth, but in heaven she shines with immense radiance' (FF 3283).
Looking at her story, one understands what it means to be reborn from above!
Indeed, in the Letter to the Faithful written by Francis, we read:
«And as long as they do such things and persevere in them to the end, there shall rest upon them the Spirit of the Lord, and he shall make his habitation and dwelling place. And they will be children of the heavenly Father, whose works they do, and they are spouses, brothers and mothers of our Lord Jesus.
We are spouses, when the faithful soul is united to Jesus Christ through the action of the Holy Spirit.
And we are brothers, when we do the will of his Father, who is in heaven. We are mothers when we carry him in our heart and body through love and a pure and sincere conscience, and generate him through holy activity, which must shine out as an example to others» (FF 200).
Thus, Francis lived what his own 'seedling' embodied: the rebirth from water and the Spirit in an eloquent manner.
«Marvel not, for I said unto thee, Ye must be born from above» (Jn 3:7).
Tuesday, 2nd wk. in Easter (Jn 3:7-15)
