Jn 20:19-23 (cont.)
I understand why the process of Lectio Divina calls for multiple readings of the same passage. Today I'm struck by this passage:
Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." (21-23)
It seems to me that these words are related to Jesus' response to Philip request at the Last Supper, when he said, "Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied." (Jn 14:8) Jesus' reply included, "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father." (14:12)
It is comparatively easy for us to see wondrous things for which there is no explanation and recognize in them the glory of God. In St. Luke's gospel, the scribes and Pharisees were amazed when the paralytic - whose determined friends had lowered him to Jesus through the roof - got up with his mat and walked away.
Yet Jesus made it clear in the moment: that sign was only performed so that we might understand that Jesus had the authority to forgive sins. Likewise, every physical healing that Jesus ever did was simply a means to display a greater truth: the mercy and forgiveness of God to us who sin.
Now, there has been great theological debate in recent years - and for all I know, since Jesus' time - concerning the necessity of Christ's fulfilling the ancient law with regard to the sacrifice required for the forgiveness of sins. Would a merciful God really establish the shedding of blood as a requirement for forgivenss? Many conclude that this doesn't sound very loving. But the offering of sacrifices was well established before Abraham was called to offer up Isaac as a holocaust; what if God merely assigned it a new meaning that would allow us to recognize our forgiveness in Christ Jesus?
Fr. Neuhaus expounds on the idea that a prerequisite for for forgiveness was needed not to satisfy God's sense of justice, but our own. God accepted our condemnation of him so that we might not condemn ourselves. So God's establishment of the need for blood sacrifice within the law was intended to allow us to have context in which to recognize and accept Jesus' sacrifice on our behalf. He very well knew what we were going to do to Him.
When Jesus promises we will do greater works than these, let us not forget that the greatest work of all is the forgiveness of sins that we might receive our spiritual freedom in place of our slavery to sin. "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you . . . Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven." The mission of the Church is the "greater work" which Jesus promised, not miracles that will pass from corporal existence when the bodies that have been healed are planted in the ground, but the greater miraculous healing of the soul for all eternity.
By comparison, nothing else matters, and in fact all other things matter only in this context.
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