Bright Thursday. The Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark (54-68)
Rank: All-Night Vigil. Bright Week. No fasting or abstention from foods.
Read
Acts 2:38-43; 1 Peter 5:6-14
John 3:1-15; Mark 6:7-13
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
In the weeks after Easter, the Church reads from the Gospel of John because this book tells us so much about the meaning of baptism and the Eucharist. For many centuries, Easter was the time when most people were baptized, often as adults. Just as Old Testament readings were originally used during Lent to introduce baptismal candidates to the faith, readings from John were used after Easter to catechize anyone who had been baptized on Holy Saturday. And these readings continue to speak to us since our baptism is always being renewed, as we aim to make Christ’s life our own.
Today, Jesus tells Nicodemus that anyone who wants to see God’s kingdom must be born from above, through “water and the Spirit.” Not surprisingly, Nicodemus finds this confusing, but the language Jesus uses is not meant so much to be tackled and understood as to open a door into the mystery of salvation, which cannot be fully grasped but can be experienced. When, at the end of the passage, Jesus mentions the Son of Man being lifted up, he indicates how this mystery is fulfilled: it’s in his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension that we are made his disciples, sons of God. It is through baptism that Christians participate in these realities. In baptism, we die with Christ; in baptism, we rise with him to new life; and in baptism, our human nature, which he has made divine by his ascension into heaven, enters into the mystery of our redemption from death to eternal life.
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