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May 31^st 2020.  Pentecost Sunday
GOSPEL   John 20, 19-23

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading . . .

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GOSPEL   John 20, 19-23

On the evening of that first day of the week,
when the doors were locked, where the disciples were,
for fear of the Jews,
Jesus came and stood in their midst
and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . It is Pentecost, and we celebrate the fulfilment of the Easter journey with the joy of the consolation of the Holy Spirit! Curiously, this great consolation event happens to a small group of people who are paralysed by fear. The Holy Spirit conquers fear. Fear, in fact, is the great enemy of the beauty of humanity and the flowering of love. How is the overcoming of fear expressed? By the fact that the apostles are able to go out and communicate with others. Everyone is able to understand what is said in their own language. In other words, the Holy Spirit gives the disciples the capacity to speak to the deepest heart of their listeners. It is the Holy Spirit, not structures or institutions, that constitutes the Church. And the forgiveness of sins, the unconditional love of God for us, is the hub of His activity. The Holy Spirit does not turn us into superheroes. He does not sort out all our personal problems and defects. Instead, he makes us witnesses to the love of God and the forgiveness of sins. There exists a “horizontal” version of the forgiveness of sins in which humans can pardon each other and wish each other well. But the cancellation of sin, the reconstruction of broken relationships, can only be achieved by God. The Pharisees were right when they complained to Jesus, “Only God can forgive sins”! We can show each other mutual compassion, but only the Holy Spirit can regenerate what has been destroyed. In fact, the gift of the forgiveness of sins is described in terms of a new act of creation in this week’s Gospel. Jesus breathes on the apostles when he enters the upper room. When God performed the first act of creation, he breathed on Adam, making him in his own image and likeness. When Jesus performs this second act of creation, he does something extra: he gives them the power to pardon of the sins of others. “Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven . . .”  In other words, if they do not bring this pardon to others, then who will do so? This capacity to regenerate life from above is the special call and privilege of the Church: no other body of earth can accomplish this work. May God grant us the grace to be true signs of mercy and pardon! Our acts will show if we are indeed bearers of mercy, or if we are fixated with a legalistic sort of righteousness.

The resurrection of Jesus is our pledge of rebirth and eternal life. But humanity continues to seek eternity, rebirth and completion in its own schemes, ideologies, technological achievements

‘He breathed on them and said: “Receive the Holy Spirit. To those to whose sins you forgive, they will be forgiven"’. In the Gospel of John, the day of resurrection is also the moment of the gift of the Spirit. We celebrate Pentecost at the end of a liturgical period which the Church conceives of as an extension of the "first day after Saturday", the beginning of the New Creation. These fifty days are a timeless time, the sign of eternity, where the anguish of the end, the looming finality of death are overcome, dissolved in a life that no longer has an expiry date - it is simply life and that's it. But what is the nature of eternal life? And how is it guaranteed? Humanity has sought and still seeks its recreation, its safe waters, its own version of eternal life and rebirth. But the more humanity falls in love with its own schemes for a terrestrial paradise, the more it tortures itself for their failures. Sometimes it takes several generations to fall out of love with yet another deception, yet another substitute for completeness. We are still recovering from the wounds of the ideologies of the twentieth century. And we are in full technological delirium, with the illusion of scientific omnipotence.

The risen Jesus breathes on us and gives us life, just as God the Father breathed life into Adam at creation. Our recreation in Jesus involves the forgiveness of sins!

But we Christians celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit as our hope and our fulfilment. John describes the delivery of the Spirit with the act - presently very dangerous - of blowing on someone. The gesture is the same that the Father made in the first act of creation, when he brought forth a man out of the mud. What changed the earth into human life was the breath of God. This breath imparted the divine life and made man more than just a creature. In fact, he is the very image of God. But that was not enough. That was just the beginning, the premise. With Christ, comes something more. The gesture of the Father of Genesis is repeated when Jesus transmits the new life, but it has a very specific characteristic: that of the forgiveness of sins.

What is the fundamental characteristic of the new life of the Spirit? Is it great faith, great discernment, great self-discipline? No, the principal mark is the forgiveness of sins. The new life imparted by Jesus is the life of forgiveness, love and mercy.

If someone has the gift of spiritual discernment or the ability to proclaim the Gospel, then it would be natural for them to think that they possess the Spirit, but this is not the crucial hallmark of the Spirit; something else is more fundamental. You might think you have the life of the Spirit because you have the faith to move mountains, but it doesn't work like that either: according to St. Paul, such faith – curiously - is not enough. If you are generous and know how to exercise self-denial, then you might be inclined to think you are in full possession of the new life of God; but even this, says Saint Paul, is not enough. So what exactly is needed? “To those whose sins you forgive, they will be forgiven”. What flows from the cross of Christ and his resurrection is mercy. I can be ignorant and a bad communicator, weak and uncertain, sometimes even childish and immature, but if I exercise the forgiveness of sins and am merciful, behold, I have the life of God in me! The Holy Spirit radiates mercy. It is obvious: God is mercy! All the rest is only a side effect.