JESUS SAID to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you." And 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; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."  [Jn 20:21-23] 
 
Artist:  Victor Luciano Rebuffo
(1903-1983)
Buenos Aires, Argentina

 LIVING LETTER 

JESUS SAID to them...."Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain  the sins of any, they are retained."  [Jn 20:21-23]

HIGH-PRIESTLY MINISTRY

1.  Christians would do well to realize that reconciliation is not merely a random event, but rather a procession of spiritual events which has, as its summit, the celebration of Holy Eucharist.[1] St. Paul asserts the truth of such continuity when he compares the Church at Corinth to a living letter that binds Christ to the universal Church through the living apostolic tradition: 

YOU YOURSELVES are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all men; and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. [2Cor 3:2-3]

To accept the light and easy yoke of the Sacrament of Reconciliation is to situate ones Christianity precisely within this living letter of which St. Paul speaks.  [cf. Mt 11:28-30]  At the heart of the living letter of the Church dwells the comprehensive procession of events we know as the seven sacraments instituted by Christ and received by his evangelist-apostles.

2.  The Church's sacramental life was established by Jesus Christ within the all-embracing procession of the holy Trinity. It was to his apostles, their successors and the visible Church that Jesus entrusted the administration of his high-priestly sacramental ministry under the guardianship of the Holy Spirit:  "And 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; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."  [Jn 20:22-23] 

MANIFEST SACRAMENT

3.  Not merely for that day. Not merely for a term, a year, a lifetime, but until the close of the age.  [cf. Mt 28:18-20]  The authority Jesus receives from the Father he confers on the apostolic leadership of his visible Church throughout human time. The apostolic foundation was not established by Christ as an expedient labor pool which would disappear abjectly and embarrassingly after his ascension or to vanish upon the demise of the apostles.

4.  Never will the apostolic foundation of the living letter yield to the shame of death! Neither will the Seven Celebrated Graces ever be subjected to the ignominy of extinction[2]:

AND JESUS answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.

I WILL give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."  [Mt 16:17-19]

With respect to his ministry of reconciliation until the close of the age  [cf. Mt 28:18-20], Jesus’ charge to his apostles was more than the endorsement of the virtue or practice of forgiveness. Inasmuch as Our Lord founded a visible apostolic Church, he likewise instituted an enduring apostolic, sacramental ministry of healing.

5.  If the Holy Spirit is genuine, then this apostolic ecclesial ministry established by Christ is no less genuine. If the work of the Holy Spirit is likewise authentic, then the Church’s historic emphasis on a manifest Sacrament of Reconciliation is no less authentic: "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?"  [1Cor 15:55]  The Seven Graces of the Spirit rest on the Rock of Peter. Let us be  be steadfast and immovable in these commands of Christ.  [cf. 1Cor 15:58]  



[1]  “…the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; it is also the fount from which all her power flows.”  [“Sacrosanctum Concilium” no. 10 in VATICAN COUNCIL II, ed. Austin Flannery, O.P., Costello Publishing Company: Northport, New York, 1984, p. 6]

[2] Thus the follower of Christ is a word spoken in the heart of our Triune God, a word written on the page of the living letter. He is rescued from the condition of nullitas (Lat. without sense) symbolized as the cipher. (For more on this theme, see Joyce Little, THE CHURCH AND THE CULTURE WAR Chapter 3 "Cipher vs. Sacrament", Ignatius Press: San Francisco 1995 pp. 65-82.)