This coming Sunday is Pentecost Sunday. “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.” (John 20:22-23)

The Catholic Church sees this moment — right after Jesus’ resurrection — as Jesus giving his apostles a special authority to continue a part of the ministry of Jesus: the power to forgive sins. Here’s the key idea:

• Jesus breathed on them — a strong symbol of giving divine life or divine mission (similar to how God breathed life into Adam in Genesis).
• “Receive the Holy Spirit” — connects this mission to the Holy Spirit, showing it’s not just human authority, but God working through them.
• “Forgive” or “retain” sins — the apostles are commissioned to continue Jesus’ work of reconciliation, meaning they must somehow hear confessions to know whether to forgive or retain.

This coming Sunday is Pentecost Sunday. Many scholars see a parallel between v.23 and Matthew 18:18: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”  The parallel becomes clearer when we know that the words “forgive” in John 20:23 are the Greek words aphiēmi and krateō which mean “send away” and “hold” respectively [EDNT 2:314].  But even with the parallels aside, the meaning, extent and exercise of the Matthean and Johannine powers has been a source of division with the post-Reformation Christian community.

The Council of Trent condemned the proposal that this power to forgive sins was offered to each of Christ’s faithful – something one often sees in commentaries from a Reformed perspective. The Catholic Church has always held that the power to forgive sin was to be understood as that ministry to which the ordained minister was called; something it had maintained as the teaching of the church and only formally declared at Trent when it was challenged by the Reformers.  As Fr. Brown notes [1041] this is not a debate that can be settled solely on exegetical grounds – nor does the Catholic Church propose such a solution. The Church looks to Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.

The Church has also looked at Jesus’ own action toward sin as expressed in John.  In 9:39-41 “Jesus says that he came into the world for judgment; to enable some to see and to cause blindness for others. Deliberate blindness means remaining in sin; and, implicitly, willingness to see results in being delivered from sin.” [Brown, 1042]  So as Jesus was sent into the world, so too the apostles and their successors to exercise discriminating judgment between good and evil.  This idea of the apostles as agents of discriminating judgment is reinforced by the idea that the Advocate/paraclete is working through the apostles as an avenue of the outpouring of the Spirit that cleanses people and begets within them new life. All-in-all this passage is a declaratory statement that the core of Jesus’ ministry, forgiveness of sin and the restoration of right relationship, continues within the community generally, but in specific sacramental ministries in the particular sense.

Image credit: Descent of the Holy Spirit | Artist unknown | traditional Greek icon | Wikimedia Commons | PD-US

This coming Sunday is Pentecost Sunday. The Fourth Gospel speaks often of Jesus being sent into the world by the Father: to do his will (6:38–39; 8:29), to speak his words (3:34; 8:28; 12:49; 14:24; 17:8), to perform his works (4:34; 5:36; 9:4) and win salvation for all who believe (3:16–17). In the Upper Room Jesus speaks to them again:  “As the Father has sent me, so I send you”

That the disciples were sent to continue the words and works of Jesus is foreshadowed at various places in the Gospel: Jesus urged them to lift up their eyes and see fields ripe for harvest, and told them he had sent them to reap where others had labored (4:35–38), he said those who believed in him would do the works he had done and greater works than these because he was returning to the Father (14:12); he told them, “I … chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you” (15:16), saying that when the Paraclete comes “he will testify to me. And you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning” (15:26–27), and when he prayed for his disciples he said to the Father, “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world” (17:18). This last text, which parallels 20:21, confirms that the sending of the disciples was ‘into the world’, i.e. with a mission to the world. The other texts reveal the essential content of their mission was to ‘harvest’ men and women for the kingdom by their witness to Jesus by word and deed, alongside the ongoing witness of the Spirit.

This coming Sunday is Pentecost Sunday. The Johannine account of the first post-resurrection appearance to the gathered disciples is linked to the events of the Resurrection by the simple expression “that first day.”  As the startling and disturbing events of the last three days had unfolded the community’s overriding response was fear.  They had gathered, but had locked themselves away out of fear of what persecutions the religious authorities might bring against them. It is into this complex of uncertainty, perhaps doubt and hesitation, that Jesus appears

“Peace be with you” is in some way a conventional greeting (cf. Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:3; 2 Cor 1:3; Gal 1:3) used by St Paul in his letters as a reflection of a standard option for the opening of a Greek letter. But here the greeting has an additional purpose – Jesus is fulfilling a promise from his Farewell Discourse: his gift of peace (John 14:27). The peace is given to a community who will experience the world’s opposition always and its persecution often. The gift of peace is an explicit reminder that their way in the world will be graced with the enduring promise of Christ.

The first reading for Pentecost Sunday is the account from Acts 2 so familiar to every Christian. Luke’s account is a very public event compared to the very private Johannine account.  Why the difference? Some scholars defend the basic historicity of the entire Lucan narrative; others conclude that it is essentially Luke’s theological attempt to explain the coming of the Spirit, not an historical account of actual events. Some, holding to the historicity of the Lucan account in Acts 2 hold that John’s account is symbolic only. The Second Council of Constantinople (AD 533) condemned the view of Theodore of Mopsuestia that Jesus did not really give the Spirit on that Easter evening but acted only figuratively and by way of promise.  Some, like John Chrysostom, held that the giving of the purpose was for one particular gift or another; others have said that Easter’s coming of the Spirit is personal while Pentecost is ecclesial or missionary.  And another set of scholars posit a narrower coming of the Spirit targeting special gifts intended for specific ministry (e.g., the forgiveness) versus a more general coming of the Spirit as a blessing and empowerment for the larger Johannine ministry of discipleship: love and holding to the commandments of Jesus. Some simply conjecture that since John is not overly concerned about date/setting but rather the theological implications, that the Johannine account is the same event – John has simply re-located the events.

This coming Sunday is Pentecost Sunday. The gospel for Pentecost Sunday has two options. The first option is the beginning part of the same gospel used on the 2nd Sunday of Easter. The second option, also from John, is taken from the “Farewell Discourse” of John 14 when Jesus promises the disciples that although he is going away, he will send the “Advocate.”  This commentary focuses on the first option.

¹⁹ 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.” ²⁰ When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹ (Jesus) said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²² And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit. ²³ Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” (John 20:19-23)