John 20:19–23
19 On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews,\❳ Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
John 20:19–23 ESV – Bible Gateway
For Pentecost, like the Ascension, the Gospel reading, in a sense, is trumped by the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles; which goes into more details. In this case our Gospel reading takes place on the night of the Resurrection when Jesus first meets with the majority of the Apostles in the upper room. For the Ascension, Jesus leaves the Apostles who are in a state of joy and our fully preparing themselves for the promise of the Holy Spirit spending time day and night in prayer.
This reading shows the Apostles in the midst of uncertainty and fear. They know something is going on and they have reports of Jesus’ return, but also knew their own precarious position regarding the authorities.
The Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture for this Gospel points out:
As he did in regard to Mary Magdalene, John provides insight into the spiritual disposition of Jesus’ disciples as they are gathered in Jerusalem. Mary came to Jesus’ tomb “while it was still dark” (20:1). The disciples are similarly gathered in the evening darkness, †signifying the absence of Christ the light and their own hopelessness. [1]
Peter Kreeft notes:
The disciples were cowering in fear behind locked doors because they thought, quite naturally, that those who had succeeded in killing Jesus would now come after them too. But Christ came through their locked doors, and he also comes through ours. For it’s not just keys but fear that locks our doors, especially the fear that God does not wholly love us and understand us and our weaknesses; that we cannot trust him completely. And pride, and the refusal to admit that we are in the wrong. But faith and love cast out fear. Even weak faith and love let him in. Open the door to him one inch, and he will come in a mile. [2]
Jesus appears amidst them and tells them “Peace be with you.” I think it is difficult to really envision this scene and the apostle’s reaction. The doors are locked to prevent intrusion and Jesus appears directly among them. They would be so very aware that the doors are locked. They truly were in need of that peace that Jesus was giving them in this circumstance. Plus what would they make of the fact that right after this Jesus shows them his hands and side, a demonstration of the wounds that still appear in his glorified body.
Returning to the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture:
The presence of the wounds of crucifixion on the risen Jesus’ body is significant. They indicate that the body resurrected to glory is the same one that died on the cross (see Luke 24:39). Resurrection is not the return of a human being to ordinary mortal life but total transformation into a glorified mode of existence. As St. Paul wrote, the natural body is transfigured by the Holy Spirit into a glorified, “spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:44). The wounds on Jesus’ resurrected body reveal that he is forever fixed in the act of love in which he died. The love and sacrifice that he offered on the cross are forever present before the Father as “expiation for our sins, and … for those of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). Jesus’ wounds also signify that the victory of the resurrection comes only through the cross. Similarly, the Lamb in the book of Revelation bears the wound of his slaughter by which he accomplished the work of redemption (Rev 5:6, 9). In this way, St. Thomas Aquinas, drawing on the Venerable Bede, can speak of the wounds on Jesus’ resurrected body as “trophies” of his victory.[3]
Jesus shows them his wounds to show them that he can heal their wounds. That he would be healing and preparing them so that they in turn can heal and prepare others. Jesus makes this explicit when he repeats a blessing of peace on them and then tells them that he is passing on a mission to them given by his father. When Jesus breathes on them and institutes the sacrament of reconciliation, he is equipping them in the good news, the evangelium, for the forgiveness of sins. The very healing we all need the most. The shalom Jesus gives them, they in turn will give and pass onto to others who will find true peace in this sacrament. There is and will always be woundedness in the body of Christ, but there will also always be access to a remedy.
CCC 1462 Forgiveness of sins brings reconciliation with God, but also with the Church. Since ancient times the bishop, visible head of a particular Church, has thus rightfully been considered to be the one who principally has the power and ministry of reconciliation: he is the moderator of the penitential discipline. Priests, his collaborators, exercise it to the extent that they have received the commission either from their bishop (or religious superior) or the Pope, according to the law of the Church
In his book titled “The Life of Christ”, Venerable Fulton J. Sheen wrote:
“Then Our Lord breathed on them as He conferred some power of the Holy Spirit. When love is deep, it is always speechless or wordless; God’s love is so deep that it can be expressed humanly by a sigh or a breath. Now that the Apostles had learned to lisp the alphabet of Redemption, He breathed on them as a sign and an earnest of what was to come. It was but a cloud that would precede the plenteous rain; better still, it was the breath of the Spirit’s influence and a foretelling of the rushing wind of Pentecost. As He had breathed into Adam the breath of natural life, so now He breathed into His Apostles, the foundation of His Church, the breath of spiritual life. As man became the image of God in virtue of the soul that was breathed into him, so now they became the image of Christ as the power of the Spirit was breathed into them. The Greek word used to express His breathing on them is employed nowhere else in the New Testament; but it is the very word which the Greek translators of the Hebrew used to describe God’s breathing a living soul into Adam. Thus there was a new creation as the first fruit of the Redemption.…
“Three times the Holy Spirit is mentioned with some external sign; as a dove at Christ’s baptism betokening His innocence and Divine Sonship; as fiery tongues on the day of Pentecost as a sign of the Spirit’s power to convert the world; and as the breath of the Risen Christ with all of its regenerative power.”[4]
The mission that the Holy Spirit empowers is not for the Apostles and their descendants alone. We are also sent forth into the world to empower the spread of the good news.
St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote:
All of us who have received one and the same Spirit, that is, the Holy Spirit, are in a sense blended together with one another and with God. For if Christ, together with the Father’s and his own Spirit, comes to dwell in each of us, though we are many, still the Spirit is one and undivided. He binds together the spirits of each and every one of us, … and makes all appear as one in him. For just as the power of Christ’s sacred flesh unites those in whom it dwells into one body, I think that in the same way the one and undivided Spirit of God, who dwells in all, leads all into spiritual unity.[5]
Sources
- Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Year C
- The Gospel of John (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture)
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition
- Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
- Francis Martin, William M. Wright IV, The Gospel of John (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture) ↩
- Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Year C ↩
- aquinas54 ↩
- Fulton Sheen, Life of Christ (New York: Image Books/Doubleday, 1990), 420. ↩
- St. Cyril of Alexandria, In Jo. ev., 11, 11: PG 74, 561. ↩
