Homily for 2d Sunday of Easter

Homily for the
2d Sunday of Easter

April 7, 2024
John 20: 19-31
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx

Jesus “breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit…’” (John 20: 22).

(By Kueshardt)

The 1st part of this morning’s gospel is St. John’s version of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus’ followers, i.e., upon the Church.  It’s a lot less dramatic than St. Luke’s version in the Acts of the Apostles.  That version, which we read every year on Pentecost, reports a strong wind, tongues of fire, and the apostles’ compulsion immediately to leave the upper room where they’ve been hiding and to begin preaching the resurrection.

St. John’s plainer story more effectively shows the Church’s purpose:  to bring to people Jesus’ salvation thru the forgiveness of sins.  The Church is created by the gift of the Holy Spirit to continue Jesus’ work, to reunite men and women with God thru forgiveness and mercy.  Jesus explicitly grants his followers his own power to forgive the sins of anyone who repents of them, and to hold back forgiveness from the unrepentant.

Since the time of St. John Paul II, the Church has designated the Sunday after Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday.  In the prayer of the day (the collect), we address God as “God of everlasting mercy,” the God who has made us his own people by washing us clean of sin in the waters of Baptism and giving us a spiritual rebirth by the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit was lavished upon us when we were baptized and again at Confirmation.  The Spirit, moreover, descends upon our gifts of bread and wine and transforms them into the Body and Blood of our Savior.  At Mass we pray, “By the same Spirit graciously make holy these gifts we have brought to you for consecration, that they may become the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose command we celebrate these mysteries” (EP III).  Every day, at every Mass, God breathes forth his Spirit to bestow his love and his grace upon us.

In our gospel passage, Christ’s gift of the Spirit was most directly connected with the forgiveness of our sins.  No matter what sins we’ve committed, no matter how grave they might be, Jesus wants to forgive them, wants to lavish his mercy upon us.  After the sacrament of Baptism, he does that thru the sacrament of Reconciliation—thru confession.  What a beautiful sacrament!  We bring our spiritual weakness, our fragility, our failures to our Lord Jesus thru his priestly minister—the minister to whom Jesus has said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.”  It’s the Spirit of Jesus himself who forgives as the priest gives absolution:  “God, the Father of mercies, thru the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and poured out the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of sins; thru the ministry of the Church, may God grant you pardon and peace.  And I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Why wouldn’t we want the gift of that forgiveness, that divine mercy, often?