“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 them; if you retain the sins of any, they are
retained.’” (John 20:22)
It’s what the priest does at the beginning of the baptism sacrament—he breathes on the person presented in order to become a Christian. What do we think of but the very creation of the human being when “the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7). This time it’s not to an individual, but to the apostles; i.e., to the Church. They have the power to forgive sins.
In a libertine society such as ours, it’s not always taken seriously. For many, sins are passé. They have graduated from worrying over transgressing the boundaries of other persons’ lives. Do unto others and cut out, is the modern motto. But for us, and indeed for any functioning society, recognizing, acknowledging and forgiving affronts, debts and injuries done to one another is at the core of relationships. As it was in the time of our blessed Lord Jesus.
Remember near the start of Great Lent the enthusiasm of the crowd who wanted healing and their disappointment when Jesus said to the paralytic: “Son, your sins are forgiven.” (Mark 2:5) That’s not what they came for. Some of the scribes who were to be His adversaries from that time mulled over the question: “Who but God can forgive sins?”
And again, the word from the cross: “Father, forgive them; they know not what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)
We must not take lightly the power to forgive sins, for when we are forgiving, we are doing God’s work. St. Gregory of Nyssa in his commentary on The Lord’s Prayer tells us that the phrase “as we forgive our debtors” puts us in the place of God, if that is not a blasphemy, since forgiveness of debts is a prerogative of God; thus we mere humans assume the role of divinity. More, as it stands in the prayer, we humans are virtually requesting that God will be our agents in affirming what we decide to do in the situation. “Just as we forgive others, Lord, so we too anticipate forgiveness.”
Simon Wiesenthal, founder of the Center for preserving the memory of Jews killed in the Nazi death camps of World War II claimed that only the victims of the Jewish Holocaust have the right to forgive their murderers. Nobody else has that right. We would say that all sins are violations of the peace on earth; therefore, all sins are ultimately sins against God. The scribes were correct. Nobody can forgive sins but God alone. Either Jesus is an upstart or He is God.
For us, forgiveness of sins is the battery that charges our human motors and drives us to the Kingdom of God. Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit breathes on the one brought to the doorsteps of the church, seeking admittance to membership in the community of the saved. And after the journey through this world, albeit long or short, direct or circuitous, that person is brought once again and for the last time in front of the holy altar as a prelude to the ultimate passage to the kingdom beyond. He or she is again prayed for by the church’s agent, the priest who offers his request to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that the sins of the deceased be forgiven, by the mercy and love of a God in Trinity Who so loved the world that the Son of God would come into the world to save sinners, among whom are the one in the coffin and the one offering prayers for that person’s salvation.