On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 [Jesus] said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit. 23 Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”
Pentecost draws our attention to the gift of the Holy Spirit and the mission Jesus gives His followers. In Acts 2, the Spirit descends publicly upon the disciples in wind and fire. John’s Gospel presents the same gift from another angle: on the evening of Easter Sunday, the risen Jesus comes to His disciples, gives them peace, breathes the Holy Spirit upon them, and sends them to continue His work. The disciples are gathered behind locked doors. They have heard Mary Magdalene’s announcement that she has seen the Lord, yet they are still afraid. Into that hidden room Jesus comes and stands among them. His first word to them is peace.
“Peace be with you” (v. 19) could sound like an ordinary greeting, but in this scene it carries the weight of Jesus’ earlier promise: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (John 14:27). The peace He gives is the peace of the risen Lord. It is the peace that comes from His victory over sin and death.
Jesus then shows them His hands and His side (v. 20). The risen Lord is the same Jesus who was crucified. His wounds show that the One standing before them is truly the One who suffered and died. Luke gives a similar account when Jesus says to the disciples, “Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself” (Luke 24:39). The wounds remain as signs of His sacrifice. The disciples’ fear turns to joy because they see the Lord, just as Jesus had promised: “I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice” (John 16:22).
Jesus speaks peace a second time and then sends them: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (v. 21). The Father sent the Son into the world to reveal His love, speak His truth, and bring salvation. Now the risen Son sends His disciples to continue His work. This sending also appears at the end of the other Gospels, especially when Jesus commands the apostles to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19) and to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Luke 24:47).
Then Jesus breathes on them and says, “Receive the holy Spirit” (v. 22). This action recalls the beginning of creation, when “the LORD God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7). It also recalls Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones, where breath enters the dead and they live (Ezekiel 37:9-10). In John’s Gospel, the risen Jesus gives the Spirit as the breath of new life. The disciples are being formed into a Spirit-filled community, sent into the world by Christ.
This gift of the Holy Spirit is closely joined to the mission Jesus gives them. He says, “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (v. 23). The risen Lord gives His disciples authority connected with the forgiveness of sins. This continues His own ministry of mercy and reconciliation, for Jesus came to seek and save the lost and to bring sinners back to God (Luke 19:10). Paul later describes this apostolic ministry when he says that God “has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18). Catholics see in these words one of the scriptural foundations for the sacrament of Reconciliation, in which Christ’s forgiveness is ministered through the apostles and their successors.
The risen and glorified Christ continues to come to His people with peace, to give the Holy Spirit, and to call them to carry His mercy into the world for the salvation of souls. When Christians seek forgiveness, speak the truth with charity, pray for the Spirit’s guidance, and return to Christ after sin, they are responding to the same risen Lord who stood among His disciples on the evening of Easter. This mission reaches beyond the locked room to every nation, as Jesus later commands: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).
Lord Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, give us Your peace. Breathe Your Holy Spirit into our hearts, strengthen us in faith, and lead us to receive and share Your mercy with humility and love. Amen.
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Sources and References
- The New American Bible, Revised Edition. Biblical text and notes for John 20:19-23. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
- Hahn, Scott, and Curtis Mitch. The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: New Testament. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010, 199-200.
- José María Casciaro, gen. ed. The Navarre Bible: New Testament, Expanded Edition. Dublin: Four Courts Press; New York: Scepter Publishers, 2008, 443.
- Brown, Raymond E., Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland E. Murphy, eds. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990, 983-984, §234.
- Aguilar Chiu, José Enrique, et al., eds. The Paulist Biblical Commentary. New York: Paulist Press, 2018, 1178-1179.
- John J. Collins, Gina Hens-Piazza, Barbara Reid OP, and Donald Senior CP, eds. The Jerome Biblical Commentary for the Twenty-First Century, Third Fully Revised Edition, with a Foreword by Pope Francis, 1439.
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