“As the Father hath sent me, I also send
you.”
In many missals and church calendars
today is referred to as the “Sunday in White.” Those of you that attended
the Easter Vigil will recall that on that night we blessed Baptismal Water
and renewed our Baptismal Promises. In the early Church, most newly
converted Catholics—those who had received the gift of the Faith as
adults—were baptized during the Easter Vigil. As part of the ritual, they
were clothed in a white robe as a symbol of their faith and their baptismal
innocence. They wore the white robe for the following week, until this
Sunday, when, at the end of Holy Mass, they returned the robes to the church
and were admonished to preserve their faith and their innocence no matter
what their outward appearance might be. This, then, was the Sunday of the
laying aside the white robes—the last day in white.
The scripture readings today remind
us that the Sacramental mission of the Church only begins with Baptism. In
Saint John's epistle, we are reminded that God gives testimony on earth by
“the spirit, and the water, and the blood.”
“The water,” of course would be Baptism, the means by which we all enter the
spiritual life of good on earth. “The Blood,” would be the precious blood
of our Savior, shed for our redemption on the Cross—an act renewed by His
priests everywhere and every time Holy Mass is celebrated. It is His true
(body and) blood which we receive in Holy Communion. “The Spirit,” is the
Holy Ghost, Whom we have received in The Sacrament of Confirmation, and Who
plays a role in all the occasions of our reception of God’s grace.
The Gospel continues the Sacramental
narrative with our Lord explicitly giving the Apostles the power to forgive
sins.
I say “explicitly,” because they were already priests, and their power to
forgive sin comes radically from their power to offer the Sacrifice of the
Cross with our Lord. Quite likely Saint Thomas, who was absent at the
moment, possessed the same power without any additional act of our Lord.
(Certainly, the Scriptures don't record him receiving the power during any
later visit by Jesus.) The explicit conferral is reflected in our rite of
priestly ordination, in which, even though the priesthood has already been
conferred, the bishop lays hands on the newly ordained and says to them the
same words that our Lord said to the Apostles: “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.
Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you
shall retain, they are retained.”
The power to forgive sins is so important that Jesus and His Church chose to
confer it explicitly on their Apostles and priests.
This Gospel is also significant in
that it serves as further testimony to the resurrection of our Lord. This
is one of a number of accounts of our Lord making Himself seen by witnesses
after His rising from the dead. It suggests that our Lord's resurrected
body was a glorified body—perhaps an indication of what our own resurrection
portends. “The doors were shut,” but our Lord was not encumbered by walls
or doors and appears in the room. Saint Luke’s Gospel suggests that the
Apostles, at first, thought He was a ghost.
But the doubt of “Thomas, who is called Didymus (the twin), prompts a
demonstration by our risen Lord: “see my scars, touch my wounds; touch them
and probe them with your fingers, and with your hand, and know that they are
real and tangible—know that I am the risen Christ, and not some mere ghost.”
And “Thomas answered, and said to
him: ‘My Lord, and my God.” To which our Lord responded: “Because thou hast
seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen,
and have believed.” Saint John said something similar in his epistle:
“this is the victory which overcometh the world, our faith.” Faith is the
belief in the truth which God has revealed—even if one cannot always touch
it and probe it. There is objective truth in the mind of God, and
our salvation demands the inclusion of that objective truth in our own
minds. The faculties of our souls—our abilities to know and to will—must
accord with the divine knowledge and divine will.
Faith overcomes the world. But
often the world resists mightily! The world and worldly people pretend that
there is no objective truth—that everything is a matter of opinion, that
everything is up for discussion (“dialogue” they call it), and that every
manner of foolish belief and bad behavior is to be tolerated. This is
completely wrong!
In 1931, long before anyone ever
heard of political correctness, then Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen wrote that:
Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil … a
forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting
punishment. Tolerance applies only to persons … never to truth.
Tolerance applies to the erring, intolerance to the error …
Tolerance does not apply to truth
or principles. About these things we must be intolerant, and for
this kind of intolerance … I make a plea. Intolerance of this kind
is the foundation of all stability.
By virtue of our Baptism, and
particularly by our Confirmation, we are called to stand up for God’s
truth. We are sent forth like the Apostles. At least by our good example
we must offer the gift of the Catholic Faith to all those whom we encounter
in this world.
The Sacraments are the driving force
for producing this good example. Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Communion and
Penance make us radically holy—they make us into beacons of God’s truth,
even if we never preach a word. In today’s Gospel, Jesus Christ speaks not
only to the Apostles, but also to each one of us:
“As the Father hath sent me, I also send
you.”
