Second Sunday of Easter-Divine Mercy Sunday, John 20,19-31

When I was young, an aspiring chaplain, I had a bit of a culture shock. I was in Austria, and a young man there was supposed to take me somewhere by car. It was just a short drive within a village. When we got into the car, before he started it, he put on his seat belt. I wanted to break the silence, so I asked him: “So the police check your belts and give you fines?” “No, why do you ask?” “Well, if you buckle up right away, even though we’re only driving a little.” He answered me: “I don’t wear a belt because of the police, but for my safety.” That was the first time, and then many more times in my life, that I realized the difference between my ” thinking and the thinking of others… We are somehow more taught to obey the rules, not because it’s right, but so we don’t get caught and punished… We lack awareness. And so we want safety and consideration on the roads, but we aren’t disciplined or considerate ourselves. And it’s not just about traffic rules… We would also like to have order around us, like the Swiss have…

But we’re not orderly ourselves… We’d also like to see laws obeyed and prosperity and well-being like in Germany, for example. Still, we’re not as conscious as they are, disciplined, and we often evade taxes and tolerate corruption when it suits us… We would like to have the security of our property like in Finland, where an unlocked bicycle is more likely to rust than be stolen, but we are not very honest ourselves… We would also like strangers on the street to be nice to each other (be friendly), to say hello and smile, but we don’t do that…

Furthermore, we would like to have a promising future, but we are raising young people without values… Not only that, but we’d like to have moral politicians, but the immoral nation has no place for them… In society, awareness of rights must be combined with understanding of responsibilities. Someone must build values… If most people are doing well, he’ll pull the handful of those who can’t… But on the contrary, it doesn’t work…

Even in our religious life, we’re quite inconsistent… We know very well what we want, what we desire… We certainly want to go to heaven when we die… we also want to be blessed, protected and gifted by God… healthy and content… But what is behind it? What is his offer, his journey? What values should we profess and what should we strive for? This is what we should be interested in!

Today’s Gospel is powerful in this respect. After the resurrection, Jesus comes to his disciples, shows them his wounds, and makes a mysterious gesture accompanied by powerful words: “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whoever you forgive sins will be forgiven, and whoever you hold back sins will be held back.” Interestingly, the Holy Spirit of forgiveness is the first gift of the Risen One to His Church. This is what the Lord chose. And it is not just a matter of establishing the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This fact must be seen in the context of the whole Gospel message. The essence of God’s life in us is love. Forgiveness is one of the most significant and demanding forms of love. I don’t think Jesus was ever so insistent and yet so uncompromising in any other demand. He repeated it so often that if we want forgiveness, we must forgive our neighbor from the heart. To live without forgiveness and in forgiveness is a tragedy.

When I was a boy, I wondered why priests talk so much about forgiveness in their sermons… It’s so natural and easy: I make my parents angry every day, or I argue with my friends, and in a moment everything is fine again… Only with age, when a person encounters real human wickedness in his life, will he understand that forgiveness is not a small thing. That it goes beyond us and that we need the Holy Spirit for it, because it is beyond our human strength.

There is so much forgiveness among us. Many people don’t want to forgive, and they still defend and label their bad condition with nice names, such as a sense of justice, the return of what was borrowed, or peace with everyone. And so many people can’t forgive…

But we should not give up in the search for forgiveness, because we have received it from the Risen Holy Spirit. Forgiving big things is like healing; it’s a process, and it can’t be done all at once. And our whole personality should be involved. If I can’t forgive emotionally, and I have negative feelings towards the offender, I still have reason and will… Even if I can command myself not to wish him harm, even if I can pray for the culprit and ask the Lord to change him or convert him, I still really wish him well, and that’s a big step on the path of forgiveness…

Interestingly, Jesus kept the wounds he showed on his glorified body so perfectly. After all, wounds could be understood as something imperfect. But you kept them… The wounds caused by the triumph of evil became a symbol of the victory of good after the resurrection.

Some years ago, I had an interesting conversation with a young archaeologist. It took place in Petra’s parish garden. It was fall. I told him that the side chapel of the church there was not originally part of the church, but was separated by a wall and served as an ossuary. It was filled to the ceiling with old human bones. I explained to him that when this chapel was connected to the church in the 1950s, all the bones were moved into a large pit and covered with earth. That’s when the archaeologist said to me: “And I’ll show you exactly where the pit was.”

He pointed to a spot in the garden near the church, where the grass on a square plot of land, about four meters by four, was a slightly different color than the surrounding terrain. And then he showed me another “anomaly” after excavations for power lines and heating. Although the terrain was perfectly flat, the color of the vegetation showed that it had been dug before. He explained to me that one of the research methods of archaeologists is based on this phenomenon: at a time when the growing season is weaker, i.e., in autumn, they take aerial photographs of the terrain and, by the change in color of the vegetation, they can see where it was sometimes dug. “Because,” he said, “once a scar is made on the face of the earth, it remains an indelible mark forever.

We, because we are sinful and do evil, create scars in our relationships. They are created when evil triumphs. They cannot be removed. But when we experience true forgiveness, when goodness triumphs as the ultimate victor, these wounds become a symbol of victory. Let us allow the risen Jesus to breathe upon us. Let us receive the Holy Spirit and forgive, let us always forgive, let us forgive small things and big things. It is a great value that the victorious Christ offers us, which will bring quality to our lives.