I enjoyed today's gospel. However, there is a part that I don't understand. Maybe somebody could help me to know what it means.
"The Spirit breatheth where he will; and thou hearest His voice, but though knowest not whence He cometh, nor whither He goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit."
What does it mean and how is it tied into the rest of the gospel?
If parables are suppose to make truths easier to understand, I'm in bad shape. 
FROM THE 1859 HAYDOCK COMMENTARY:
http://haydock1859.tripod.com/index.htmlVer. 5. Unless a man be born again of water, and the Holy Ghost. Though the word Holy be now wanting in all Greek copies, it is certainly the sense. The ancient Fathers, and particularly St. Augustine in divers places, from these words, prove the necessity of giving baptism to infants: and by Christ's adding water, is excluded a metaphorical baptism. See also Acts viii. 36. and x. 47. and Titus iii. 5. (Witham) --- Except a man be born again. That is, unless you are born again by a spiritual regeneration in God, all the knowledge which you learn from me, will not be spiritual but carnal. But I say to you, that neither you nor any other person, unless you be born again in God, can understand or conceive the glory which is in me. (St. Chrysostom)
Ver. 8. The Spirit breatheth where he will. The Protestant translation has the wind: and so it is expounded by St. Chrysostom and St. Cyril on this verse; as if Christ compared the motions of the Holy Ghost to the wind, of which men can give so little account, whence it comes, or whither it goes. Yet many others, as St. Augustine, St. Ambrose and St. Gregory, understand this expression of the Holy Ghost, of whom it can only be properly said, that he breatheth where he will. (Witham)
Ver. 10. And knoweth not these things. That is, of baptism given by in a visible manner, and you understand not, how will you comprehend greater and heavenly things, if I speak of them? (Witham) --- Many passages, both in the law and the prophets, implied this doctrine of regeneration; for what else can be the meaning of the circuмcision of the heart, commanded by Moses; (Deuteronomy x. 16.) of the renewal of a clean and right spirit, prayed for by David; (Psalm l.) of God's giving his people a new heart and a new spirit. (Ezechiel xxxvi. 26, &c.) But the Pharisees, taken up with their rites and traditions, paid little attention to spiritual things of greater moment.
Ver. 11. We speak what we know. It may perhaps be asked here, why Christ speaks in the plural number? To this we must answer, that it is the only Son of God, who is here speaking, showing us how the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, and the Holy Ghost proceeding from both. (St. Thomas Aquinas)
Ver. 13. No man hath ascended---but he that descended from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven. These words, divers times repeated by our Saviour, in their literal and obvious sense, shew that Christ was in heaven, and had a being before he was born of the Virgin Mary, against the Cerinthians, &c. That he descended from heaven: that when he was made man, and conversed with men on earth, he was at the same time in heaven. Some Socinians give us here their groundless fancy, that Jesus after his baptism took a journey to heaven, and returned again before his death. Nor yet would this make him in heaven, when he spoke this to his disciples. (Witham)
Topic: Born of the Spirit (Read 772 times)