Sunday, May 31, 2020 - Pentecost - Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 20, 19-23 - Come, Holy Spirit! Fill the hearts of your faithful! Ignite in them the fire of your love!

Let us take up a point from this Gospel: Pentecost is a new Genesis or Pentecost is a new beginning. What is the reason for this? Because God is redoing what He accomplished in the book of Genesis. The Gospel says, "And when he had thus spoken, he breathed. The word "breathed" is the key here, which we have already seen in the book of Genesis 2, 7, so Jesus' action indicates that God wants to restore us. He wants to make us a new creation. By what means? By the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who renews us; let us put ourselves under his light and let him guide us. Let us move away from insulting words, bad behaviour and forbidden practices.

But what really happened to the disciples before Pentecost?

The answer is, they got scared, they locked themselves in, the door locked. This is also our life: petrified, we are incapable of any movement. Also, we can have all sorts of fears (fear of exams, fear of surgery, fear of judgment...); anxiety also comes into play: concern for health, the future of the children, etc. And some even think that one's life is blocked by some kind of fatality. The same fears and anxieties have already seized the disciples of Jesus.

So what is the solution?

Then let us be careful not to adopt the wrong solution, i.e. to rely solely on our own human strength or capacities or to rely on nature. The real solution is Christ. He says here: "Peace be upon you." This wish is heard every time we go to Mass. Therefore, our attendance at Mass is a way of coping with fear and anxiety. Let us try and we will find peace in our hearts. Jesus continues: "see my hands and my heart". The hand symbolizes the work of God and the heart declares love. This means: always trust that God is working for us and that he loves us.

Dear Christians, discouragement is a sin, it is a sin to accept defeat without fighting and it is a sin to want to get stuck in evil. If we have succumbed to it, let us hasten to beg for God's mercy through confession, a power that Christ granted to the ministers He has chosen, saying, "Receive the Holy Spirit, the sins you forgive will be forgiven and all that you retain will be bound". And let us ask the Holy Spirit to help us to let ourselves be continually renewed.