This Gospel we just heard is a very important one to me. One of the interesting features of it is that it is one of two times where God breathed into humanity, and since there are only two instances, that makes it important to reflect on. 

So we just heard, Jesus “breathed on [the Apostles] and said to them,“Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”

Breathing on them here is linked with forgiveness of sins, which is interesting considering the other instance when God breathed on humanity is when God breathed life into Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve lived in paradise, they walked with God in the garden, like He meant it to be, they enjoyed life as it will be in heaven. But then they violated the one rule that God had for them, and they were kicked out of paradise, and this paradise on Earth was closed to them.  

Adam and Eve were supposed to live forever, but through their original sin, they introduced suffering and death into this world which was supposed to be paradise, or in other words, Heaven.

So now we jump thousands of years forward and we hear Jesus, God, breathed on humanity again, and He is again breathing new life into them, breathing life into the Church, so that His chosen people can again have life through the forgiveness of their sins, and through this He is opening the gates of Heaven to them.

This Gospel is important to me because, well, I remember the moment it was explained to me.  It was March of 2007, at a Men’s Conference in Cedar Rapids, and the keynote speaker explained the second half of this scripture that I quoted, “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”

He said something I never thought of, he said that this verse shows clearly that Jesus gave the Apostles the option to not forgive someone's sins.  We know we can be forgiven of our sins, but we never think how our sins do not have to be forgiven, they can be retained by the priest.

Because at that time in my life, I knew the Church had this thing called confession, but I was pretty lukewarm in my Catholic Faith, in fact, I had started to believe that all someone had to do was confess their sins straight to God.  

But I had never considered that position in light of this verse: how can our sins be retained if we just confess them straight to God?  In today’s Gospel, Jesus was giving his people priest intercessors so that they could actually hear that their sins were forgiven, and know for sure that they were, and not retained.  This is how we reconcile with God.

And we need this because we do fail, we do fall to temptation like Adam and Eve, we do commit sin that closes the gates of Heaven to us, sin separates ourselves from God.

But Jesus, through His life, death and resurrection, has given us a new way to regain the life that God meant us to have.  By breathing life into these Apostles, He breathed life into the Church, and by extension into the priests who would be responsible for either forgiving or retaining our sins.  

It’s a gift to us to give us new life whenever we need it.

This weekend we have four first communions (on Sunday at 9:30am). I had the privilege of talking to them all before they made their first confessions, to walk through it and explain it to them, they were all really excited for it. Very excited.

When was the last time you were excited for confession? I know I’m not typically, I mean it's often difficult to talk about how we have failed in any circumstance.

As we get older and have more serious sins to confess, it seems to me that our excitement to receive the gift of confession seriously decreases, because we start to think God is like us, often impatient, unwilling to forgive multiple times for the same thing, etc.

But God is not like us, so we must remember that Reconciliation is a gift, a gift of life restored to us, like God breathing life back into us, after we are absolved of our sins we are opened up to the life of grace and eternal life in paradise.

And this is why the Church asks us to go to confession, at least once a year, and receive the Eucharist, at least once a year, because the Eucharist is our infusion of grace in which God walks with us in this life, on our way to the next. 

And really, these should be a minimum! We should seek out the grace often! For confession, I recommend you go once a month. For communion, we should receive at every opportunity!

So today on Divine Mercy Sunday we celebrate the gift of new life through Reconciliation. Jesus wants to pour His love and mercy out on us, like streams of water.  

(This is what these flowers here in front of the altar are meant to represent, God’s love poured out to us in the sacrament of the Eucharist. It is supposed to help draw you in just like the image that Jesus asked Sr. Faustina to paint, I have a small version here and there is a bigger version on the wall back there, the rays symbolize love and mercy which flowed from His pierced heart.)

We just have to be open to receiving His love and His mercy, by going to confession, by making worthy receptions of the Eucharist, we receive His grace and are strengthened on our way to paradise.