God is a God of mercy and multiple chances
May 24, 2026 – Pentecost Sunday
Readings: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104, R. Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; Gospel – John 20: 19-23
Today, we complete the Paschal Mystery, the central mystery of our faith, with the Pentecost event. The mysteries of the Cross, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost make up the one movement of God’s love and grace to save us.
There are three graces from today’s Gospel that I wish to highlight: the grace of peace and joy, the grace to share in the mission of Jesus, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Of peace, joy, and hope
The common greeting of the Risen Lord was “Peace be with you.” We read this in today’s Gospel, and the reaction of his disciples was to rejoice.
Peace and joy are twin graces, two peas in a pod. Let us recall the context of this peace from the Risen Lord. The disciples were despondent, in despair, feeling defeated with the death of Jesus on the Cross. They placed their hopes in him and left behind everything to follow him. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus expressed it powerfully, “… we were hoping he was the one who would redeem Israel.” (Luke 24: 21)
But all this hope seemed to have ended on the Cross.
So, the greeting of peace helped them regain equanimity. It brought back their perspective of the story of salvation, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” (Luke 24: 27) This refers to the grace of peace amid grief, fear, and disappointment. The peace that turns all this to joy.
Sharing in Jesus’ mission
This opens us to receive the next grace in today’s Gospel, sharing in Jesus’ mission. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” It is a clear, unequivocal action of the Risen Lord missioning us, inserting us in the flow of the grace of mission from the Father to the Son and through the Son to us.
This is a powerful reality. All mission is a sharing in Jesus’ mission. As Christians, as disciples of Jesus, there is no mission apart from Jesus’ mission. It’s why the sign of the Cross is a daily—several times in a day, even—reminder of this that we do all things, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
In 1974, Fr. Horacio dela Costa, S.J., wrote a beautiful document for the 32nd General Congregation of the Jesuits entitled “Jesuits Today.” In it, he said—and I apply it to us Christians in general: “What does it mean to be a Christian? It is to know that one is a sinner yet called to be a companion of Jesus… to engage, under the standard of the cross, the crucial struggle of our time: the struggle for faith, and that struggle for justice which it includes.”
This 52-year-old document continues to embody the meaning of Christian identity and mission with the same power and inspiration as Jesus’ mission, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
This goes to the heart of Christian identity and mission that we share in with Jesus as told to us by the Father. “This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” (Matthew 17: 5)
To forgive and to be forgiven
The gift or the grace that puts all this into action is the gift of the Holy Spirit. We live in the time of the Spirit of the Risen Lord, individually and as a church.
As we reflected on last Sunday in the mystery of the Ascension, Jesus entrusted his mission to us, his church, the body of Jesus in the world today. And that is to continue his mission of salvation. “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”
The forgiveness of sins and proclaiming God’s mercy are central to the mission of Jesus and the church. At the same time, there is also God’s justice. He will always reach out to us with compassion and mercy, but conversion and repentance are needed, and it is our choice. And we will be judged according to our actions.
God is a God of mercy and multiple chances. Peace and joy, our mission, and the Spirit… the graces available to us as we go back to ordinary time, are where God’s extra-ordinary graces accompany us always.
