The Feast of Pentecost stands for us as a reminder of the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit within our lives and in our Church. Yet, for most of us the presence and power of the Holy Spirit is either taken for granted or just not really understood.

We think of the Holy Spirit on those several times throughout the day (hopefully) when we invoke the Trinity through the Sign of the Cross, but otherwise most of us pay little attention to who the Spirit is and what the Spirit means for us in our daily life.

The Gospel passage for this Pentecost Sunday is an abbreviated repetition of the Gospel passage we heard just over a month ago on the Second Sunday of Easter.

Here we see return to the evening of Easter Sunday when the disciples are locked in the cenacle and Jesus appears in their midst and, breathing on them, empowers them with the Holy Spirit: “whose sins you forgive and forgiven them, whose sins you retain are retained.”

While we, rightly, associate the presence of the Holy Spirit within the Church with the epiclesis and the liturgical action of the Eucharist, and with the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Orders and Anointing of the Sick, Jesus first associates the power of the Holy Spirit with the forgiveness of sins.

Jesus empowered the disciples – through the Holy Spirit – to forgive our sins.

Throughout the ministry of Jesus we saw that as he pronounced forgiveness of sins the religious officials of the Jews grew more and more hostile to Jesus and his works. They believed that the forgiveness of sins belonged to God and to God alone. As we come to understand Jesus as the Incarnation of God, we find it fitting, then, that he would forgive people’s sins.

In the wake of the Reformation of the 16th century, many Christians have taken on a similar theological understanding. As they de-sacramentalized the relationship between Jesus, the individual and the Church, the belief that the power to forgive sins was given to the Church was abandoned. Subsequently, there are many Christians today who do not understand this passage in John’s Gospel in the same way as do we.  As a result, forgiveness of sins as we experience it in the Sacrament of Reconciliation is not possible for them. 

Clearly the power to forgive sins is such an awesome power and responsibility that it is fraught with difficulty and with challenge. Those who contended with Jesus as he forgave sins as with those who contend with the Church in the forgiveness with sins seem to need to limit the mercy of God, the promise of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit at work within the world. There is also a measure of personal selfishness and pride involved. It is easier – that is psychologically “safer” – to claim that we can take our sins privately to God in prayer. This means that we can avoid naming them, reflecting upon them and then actually saying them out loud. What we end up with is the self-delusion that we have confessed our sins. We pretend that we have sinned against God alone when the reality is that most of the sins we commit are those against other people.  Sin is communal and needs to be expressed to the community.

At the same time some of the sins we commit are to be bound to us – forgiveness is not in this promise of Jesus an automatic. There are times when we may not be sufficiently sorry or when the persistence of our sinfulness keeps us bound in our sins. 

It is significant that Jesus first breathed on the disciples before he gave them this power to forgive sins. As God breathed into Adam the breath of life in the moment of his creation, so now Jesus breathes on the disciples signifying a new creation, a new economy of salvation, a new relationship between God and humanity. This newness is predicated upon our taking a personal responsibility for our moral lives and humbly coming to those empowered by the Holy Spirit to extend to us the forgiveness of our sins, restoring us to relationship with God and the Church. It is through the Sacrament of Reconciliation that we most personally and intimately encounter the forgiveness of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Dr. Garry Koch is a seminarian for the Diocese of Trenton.