To be shaken and to shake up!

WORD 2day: Monday, 2nd week of Easter

April 12, 2021: Acts 4: 23-31; John 3: 1-8

A fundamental requirement to be born again is to be shaken up! When the Spirit of the Lord stirs hearts and souls, a new being is born and that new being is what Jesus proposes today as the being born again; being born of the Spirit. The Spirit gives birth to us - it is in blowing God's Spirit that we were created. And it is the same Spirit that can give us the rebirth, by a new breath that comes from God. We need the new life in Christ, a new birth in the Risen Lord, becoming new creations in the Spirit.

Becoming new creations in the Spirit is not some allegoric or analogical figure of speech, it is a real and concrete demand placed on us - to change, to transform, to convert ourselves constantly towards a mindset that is proper to the One who has chosen and called us. As St. Paul would time and again remind us that we cannot conform to the world, but become new creations in Christ, that is to have the mentality, the mindset, the perspective that  Christ carried within himself. 

This transformation cannot happen unless we are shaken up, the Spirit. Anyone who is not filled with the Spirit cannot recognise the Son of God as his or her saviour! One who finds and accepts the Son of God as the Risen Saviour, cannot but be encompassed by the Spirit, the Spirit which gives us new life - everyday and every moment.  

As individuals, as families, as faith communities we need to shake ourselves up, allow ourselves to be shaken up and thus shake up each other, towards being what we are created to be, called to be and commissoned to be. Allowing the Spirit to influence us in whatever are involved, following the promtings of the Spirit in every action or decision we take, letting ourselves be guided by the spirit in every moment of discernment is the sign of people shaken up by the Spirit. When we begin to transform ourselves so, we shall experience what it means to see the community around us being shaken! To be shaken and to shake up the world is the call that we have from the Risen Lord - are we listening?