Pentecost: The Power Within
John 20:19-23
We all dream of a good life, life without problems and obstacles. Soon enough, we realize that our dreamed life comes up against obstacles—fears of foes and failure, the consciousness that we cannot do and go it alone—our limitations. Sometimes we pray to God for help, at other times we do our best to mitigate known obstacles. In desperation, we often politicize and commercialize our lives, thinking that solutions will come by influencing others politically in our favor or use money to pay our way. The apostles also knew these obstacles, they struggled with them as we do today. The good news is, there is the Holy Spirit—Pentecost!
Our gospel presents the disciples as afraid of the Jews, so they locked the door to where they were. These are Jews afraid of other Jews, not of foreigners. Their crime was that they became Christians, they left Judaism; they stopped worshipping God on a Saturday/Sabbath and now do that on Sunday, the First Day of the Week. You know what, that was the day Jesus chose to visit with them—the First Day of the Week! In their fear of the Jews, barricading themselves behind closed doors, Jesus comes to see them without breaking the doors open. What a novelty, Jesus penetrates even locked doors, and those doors remain intact!
It is when our world appears to come down crashing, when we are enveloped in fear and the enemy feels we are hemmed in that Jesus comes in right through the barriers human beings have set up. Human barricades can only stop other human beings not God. Both the invisible fear we feel, and the visible obstacles mounted against God’s children, do not stop God from intervening to visit those thought condemned. In instances like that, God uses a silver bullet for all our worries—“Peace be with you”! The “peace” of God neither breaks down walls like a bulldozer, because he is not a machine, nor does he tear apart human enemies, because he is a lover of all his creatures: he is the Holy Spirit. God’s peace touches the fearful human to grant it courage to face persecution and death, and the same peace offers the grace of repentance to the human enemy ready to receive it.
It was after he had said “Peace be with you” to his disciple does Jesus show them his hands and his side. That is, the peace of Christ includes the holes made by nails in the hands and feet of Jesus, as well as the opening the spear made to his side. Enemies will continue to be up and running, despite the Christian faith and Christian exemplary lives. The hands and side of Jesus prove his love and martyrdom—the witness of his love for humanity and God his Father. The sufferings of Christians around the world is the witness and testimony of the faith we have in Jesus. Jesus proudly exposes his hands and side to his disciples to see, because through those wounds the world was healed, and through the wounds of today’s Christians the world will continue to be healed. The joy of martyrdom is the joy of the Holy Spirit—the peace of God to those who love him.
While the obstacles mounted by the enemies (Jews) persisted, Jesus sends his disciples out to go evangelize the whole world—Jesus’ commissioning of his disciples in our gospel. He arms them with two gifts—“receive the Holy Spirit” and “forgive” the sins of all. The Holy Spirit makes the disciples of Jesus Christ happy and jubilant prey for attack by all kinds of foes, yet they are to joyfully forgive their foes and all evil doers. In order to make their mission very explicit, Jesus says: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” The Father sent his Son into the world to suffer and to die. He gave him the Holy Spirit to start his ministry and sustains him every step of the way. Christians get the same treat that Jesus got from his Father—to become today’s martyrs.
The dream of a good life, with friends and family exclusively, is not Christian. A sorrowful Christian is not a child of God. Pentecost is the celebration of fortitude and joy in the face of obstacles, persecutions and betrayals. Pentecost is the power to forgive one’s enemies joyfully and be proud of the injuries sustained in the ministry of reconciliation and Evangelization. Yes, the Holy Spirit must arouse stupefaction in the enemies of Christians, conversion of sinners and the readiness to depart from this world to the other at God’s behest.
Life is not a dream, it is a reality to be lived out courageously, because we are accompanied by the Holy Spirit. The only dream allowed a Christian is the hope of heaven and the prayer for the conversion of all sinners. Present difficulties are the building blocks for the conversion of the world and the transformation of evil into good. Your life and mine real the Pentecost of today, when we can love both friend and foe, forgive all wrong done to us, and remain faithful in troubled times: “Pentecost is the Power Within” and the love it lavishes on the world.