Passing it on

Today’s Gospel (Jn. 20:19-31) features “Doubting Thomas” and many people often focus on him in this passage, but the first part of the passage has very special importance in itself, as it details our Lord’s first appearance to his Disciples.

None of these details are put together here idly. Nor is it an accident that this happens as soon as the Risen Christ first meets those who would be his Apostles.

What our Lord says and does here is thus directly tied to the fundamental dynamic of his death and resurrection: to make "peace through the blood of his cross" and reconcile the world to God.

He appears and greets them, “Peace…” (Shalom)
He shows them his wounds and again says, “Peace… ”
Then he says,
“As my Father hath sent me,
even so send I you.”
Then he gives them the Holy Spirit
and the power both to forgive and to retain sins.

Thus the crucified and risen Savior makes his Disciples Apostles, commissioning them to continue his own mission of reconciliation and forgiveness in the power of the Holy Spirit.

This is no general mission of amorphous forgiveness: it involves the deliberate forgiveness of specific sins (and conversely of not forgiving specific sins).

Whosesoever sins ye remit,
they are remitted unto them;
and whosesoever sins ye retain,
they are retained.

This mission has been most literally and concretely handed down from generation to generation in the ministry of Penance (Council of Trent Session XIV, Canon Concerning the Most Holy Sacrament of Penance, n 3).

Many people are uncomfortable with Penance,
but it is a tremendous gift:
a tangible, concrete reception of forgiveness
that is tied directly
in an unbroken line of ministers through the millennia
all the way back to the Apostles and Christ
and that night in the Upper Room.

Today’s Gospel thus reminds us of the preciousness of that gift, that ministry that remains in our midst to this day.

But even if we ourselves have not been ordained for that specific ministry, today's Gospel and today's celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday - instituted by Pope John Paul II who fittingly died on its vigil - should also remind us that each of us in different ways has a part in Christ's great mission of reconciliation in the world: channels of the Holy Spirit and instruments of God's abundant mercy for all.

Alleluia!