Receive ye the Holy Ghost

“Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained. ”

If there is a proof of the existence of the Holy Trinity, it is this: the Spirit of God and the Incarnation of Jesus are such different experiences of the same God that we must believe in more than one Person . If we understand that God is ancient, wise and distant: a Creator who, through love and majesty, has ordained the stars and galaxies and this world and all that is: thus we know the Father. If we behold and appreciate the witness in this world of the Son of God, walking among us, talking and healing and raising the dead: who died and rose again from an earthly grave: thus we know the Son . But what is the evidence for the Holy Spirit? He is at once the most mysterious force in our lives, invisible and gentle as air, yet powerful and capable of redemption, conviction, inspiration, faith, transforming people, transforming nations, creating the church, and speaking through its members every day. Thus we know the Holy Ghost.

Jesus was not the first to speak of this 3 rd Person of the Trinity. Moses mentions Him in the 2 nd verse of the Bible. “ And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Genesis 1:2 David also wrote of Him, as did Zechariah, Isaiah, Jeremiah and others. These may not have understood the distinction between divine Persons, but they understood the effect of the Holy Spirit. A complete Trinity is described, if you can discern it, in one verse of Psalm 33: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” Psalm 33:6 The Lord is the Father, the word is the Son, and the breath is the Spirit. All three Persons created this world.

So it was not the first appearing of the Holy Spirit when Jesus was baptized and the Spirit, in a form like a dove , descended upon Him. When He blew on His apostles after His Resurrection, He said: “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” But the Holy Ghost was already in the world. David, 1000 years before, had cried out to God his confession, saying: “Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.” Psalm 51:11 The Spirit has been with us from the beginning, for He is the Spirit that gives life itself.

How, then, is Jesus conferring something new when He breathes on the astonished apostles and gives them the Spirit? They had already been baptized by Him, and presumably received more than John's baptismal repentance. They were born of the water and the Spirit. Can the Spirit be given more than once? The answer is, yes. How many times? The correct answer is, I don't make rules for the Holy Ghost.

We don't make rules for the Spirit of God, but we observe what He does and make rules for ourselves accordingly. We may not see the Spirit coming or going, but like the wind , we know when He is acting upon us. And we can often tell His intentions. He lives in us, and among us, and He creates in us His own wisdom. When Jesus breathed on them, and again when the Holy Spirit fell with fire on them at Pentecost, it was a fulfillment of the prophecy of Jeremiah:

“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel… After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Jeremiah 31:31-34

They shall know me and I will forgive their iniquity. I will write my law inside of them, instead of a mere external legalism. This is the Covenant that Jesus brought and left with us. And the empowering element of this Covenant is the indwelling Spirit He sent us. What powers does His Spirit have for us?

Some of them are: conviction —whereby the Spirit causes us to feel the horror of our sins and the need to be forgiven by God. And faith —that God does establish a powerful forgiveness through the death and resurrection of His Son. When the Spirit of God lives in us, from the time of our Baptism, we invited Him to speak to us, softly, of right and wrong, of God's will for our lives, of how we are to act and what calling God has on us. In confirmation, this Spirit is called forth to exhibit His grace through us. The Bishop prays for the gifts Isaiah wrote of, concerning the Messianic signs: “the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.” Isaiah 11:2 We now have these too. And the signs of the Spirit Paul writes of— the word of wisdom; the word of knowledge; faith; healing; the working of miracles; prophecy; discerning of spirits; divers kinds of tongues; the interpretation of tongues 1 Cor. 12:8-10 —this is still a partial list. No one can list all the gifts of the Spirit. They are as infinite as any power of God.

But now comes the Spirit as given on the Day of Christ's Resurrection. By this power of the Spirit, Jesus gave the apostles and their successors the authority of God to forgive or retain sins. This authority was in Jesus Christ, as we often heard Him forgiving the sins of people while healing them. It was an offensive thought to the Jews that a man might grant forgiveness of sin. Only God could do that, and He had established a system of sacrifices, ritual cleansings, and punishments. This man offended them by simply granting amnesty on the basis of the people's contrition and faith.

And it offends people still. A man in a black shirt with a white color sits in a box and listens to the people's confessions, makes crosses with his hand and utters the forgiveness of God. Who does HE think HE is, to wield that kind of power? He doesn't think anything of himself, let alone believe himself better than the poor sinner who is repenting next to him. Truly it has been said that the confessor who hears the sins of his people is stoned with his own sins by the mouth of his penitents . Truly he says, at the end of the confession: “And pray for me, also a sinner.” Who does he think he is? He is nothing more nor less than God's priest. And what is a priest if he can't wield the forgiveness of sin that we all yearn for so much? Jesus did so, and they despised Him. On healing the man with palsy, Jesus said: “the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins.” Matthew 9:6 This power was in a man, first Jesus Christ, Who we know also is God. But then this man gave this power to other men.

James speaks of it in his Epistle, referring sick people to the priests: “…if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” James 5:15-16

The Spirit of God was here from the Beginning. He was the One who spoke to mankind through the prophets. He drove Elijah 40 days across the wilderness to the holy mountain. He moved David to sing songs of praise, of disappointment, of wonder, of sorrow, and of God's attributes. The Spirit moved men to pray. He witnessed to them of the coming Messiah. He told of His greatness, and He told of His tortuous death.

The Spirit of God witnesses to us, along with the water of Baptism by which we are cleansed, and the Blood of Jesus, shed on Calvary to empower this new Covenant. 1 St. John 5:4 This new Covenant includes an offer of peace: peace with God and peace within ourselves . It may, at first, be an uneasy peace. We may not trust it. We may be too used to thinking of ourselves as sinful and lost, hopeless, degraded and unable to do better. We give our listless self-appraisal the name “ humility ” and figure that we're no better or worse than anyone else. Or we shutter in fear of anyone discovering our sins, our shameful past, and the voices within us that accuse us night and day. If these voices were silenced, wouldn't the condemnation of our souls still be true, an apt description of our fallen state?

The Truth is this : Jesus Christ came at great cost to Himself, the Son of God took human form, and became a man for us. He suffered through this life on a fallen world willingly because He knew us and loved us and wanted us back with Him. He willingly died, and not just a death, but that long entire night and day of humiliation, torture, wounding, scorn, hounding and glaring; nailed to that cross until He gave up the ghost. He paid that for you . You have no right to say it wasn't enough. That is the truth . He said, “It is finished.” And it is. And now, if the man with the nail holes in His hands says to His apostles , “Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained;” we have only one thing to say.

Thank you. Thank you Jesus , for giving this power to remain in your Church, to be used by your ministers, to be conferred on your people. When the bishop lays hands on my head, they are Your hands, Lord. When he laid hands on my priest's head, You gave that priest this Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit to forgive. Alleluia .

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