The breath and the voice of the Shepherd

 A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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There is a choice of texts for today’s gospel, and I choose here John 20: 19-23. Jesus comes to the disciples in the upper room on the Monday after His Resurrection. Peace be with you, He tells them. Having shown them His wounds, He invokes His peace upon them a second time and grants them the power to forgive (and retain) sins. The Holy Spirit will be given to the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost in a scene that is well known to all. This extract from the gospel – the gift of the Holy Spirit on the day after the Resurrection - is a reminder, however, of several things.

First, it is a sign that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. We are here in the very centre of the mystery of the outpouring of God’s life that wells up in the begetting of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit: all persons not only co-equal but co-eternal. We will spend our eternity – please God – contemplating and partaking of this festival of love, this conviviality of joy that is the eternal inner life of our maker and Lord. To know this mystery is eternal life for to know it eternally is to possess it eternally. And here, in this dark room, in the midst of a frightened band of wearily imperfect men, Jesus reveals to them so discreetly this truth at the heart of the faith.

The second thing this scene reminds us of is the mystery evoked by the words preceding absolution in the Sacrament of Confession: He sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins. Grace, the work of the Holy Spirit, heals and elevates. It may elevate, though God may leave us with certain wounds to remind us of our dependence on Him; yet, grace must heal for to be forgiven is to have the cause of our woundedness removed. To forgive is to cleanse. The coming of the Holy Spirit must necessarily involve this removal of sin if His presence is to remain with us. The Holy Spirit may move anyone through particular charisms; Caiphas the High Priest was moved by the Holy Spirit. Yet in those in whom He plans to abide, sin must be driven out.

And the third thing this scene reminds us of is indeed our dependence on Him. Behold these men, who will later be called the pillars of the Church, now cowering for fear in a darkened room, gripped by doubt, resigned to the disaster that had befallen them, hearts barely lifted by the report of His victory over death. How are we not like them, gifted with faith and yet imperfect in so many ways, with our failures in gratitude, forgetful of blessings, our carelessness regarding His privileges? Anyone who knows what dumb, stubborn animals sheep are will know it was no compliment for Jesus to compare His people to sheep…

Yet, here He comes for us once more, and we hear the dogged footsteps of our pursuing Saviour, as Francis Thompson recalls them:

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat—and a Voice beat

More instant than the Feet—

‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’

 

Peace be to us, then, this Pentecost. Our loving Saviour bids that it be so.