Today's Gospel in Mass (from John 3:1-8), is relevant! We can understand how Pseudo-Dionysius [whoever he really is!] wrote closely in conjunction with Christ's Words. We can also grasp how the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius were influential in the writings of St. John of the Cross and a bevy of other Catholic saints and mystics through the centuries.
While we can read the Living Word of God with thoughts as to the Church's sacrament of Baptism, Jesus speaks and teaches in multi-level spiraling of holy truth and meaning. Yet Jesus says we must be born from above; He means it. We cannot fathom the immensity of His Real Presence: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
We might see or grasp the effects of His Real Presence in the temporal manifestations, in His Creatures and Creation, but His Essence and Source are truly beyond our earthly comprehension. Only when we are born from above, and that, too, an elusive reality to our finite minds, can we even begin to touch upon His Divinity.
Even the word "touch" cannot accurately describe the effect or aspect of being born of the Spirit. Likewise, the Divine Names are our earthly and temporal attempts and strivings to describe He Who Is. We should try to describe and attribute to God by what is revealed of Him in Scripture. And even in Scripture, the words cannot contain Him!
He Is. He Is Life, God, Being, Light, Truth. He Is the Nameless One. He Is Cause, Beautiful, Good, Wise, Beloved, God of Gods, Lord of Lords, Holy of Holies, Eternal, Existent, the Transcendent, Cause of the Ages, Mind, Word, Knower, Pre-possessor of all Knowledge, Power, Powerful, King of Kings, Ancient of Days, the Unaging and Unchanging, Salvation, Righteousness, Sanctification, Redemption, Greatest of All and yet the One in the still breeze.
And He Is more. But perhaps the point to dwell upon, is that we must be born from above, be born of the Spirit (and yes, Baptism as Sacrament of Water, Word, and Spirit anoints the quest). Yet to be born of the Spirit, born from above, is an ongoing gathering-into, to be subsumed through, with, and in the Divine Subsistence. It is a reality that we cannot fathom, yet it is there, here, available, accessible; and God desires and wills that we avail ourselves to His bearing us in Him, birthing us, and for us to be borne by and in Him...borne away in the Spirit.
Something like that. Who can describe it? Even when we experience our human, temporal births, we cannot speak then to describe nor even remember in our conscious minds the event. Truly, from this nothing consecrated Catholic hermit's limited spiritual experience from years of yearning for God, it knows that attachment to the temporal is a sure hindrance to being born of the Spirit. John of the Cross so descriptively likens our self-induced, temporal bonds to a bird's inability to fly if attached to a branch even if but by a thread.
"Jesus answered,
'Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless one is born of water and Spirit
he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.
What is born of flesh is flesh
and what is born of spirit is spirit.
Do not be amazed that I told you,
"You must be born from above."
The wind blows where it wills,
and you can hear the sound that it makes,
but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes;
so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.'"
Dearest of All Names and Namelessness, His Real Presence: Please help us to be born from above! Birth us from and in above! Let us be among those born of the Spirit! Bear us and keep us now and forever, through, with, and in Trinitarian Oneness: Father God, Christ Jesus, Holy Spirit.
Please snap from this my soul, within and without, all chains and threads hindering the heavenly birth.
God bless His Real Presence in Us! Let us love one another, as His children! Remain in His Love. Do and be as He wills.
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