Jesus’ first words to His disciples after His resurrection were a greeting as ancient as it is timeless: “Peace be with you.” By these four simple words, Jesus changed the fear of the disciples into courage, guilt into relief and despair into joy. There was no need for the disciples to explain themselves: why they abandoned the Lord at the cross, why they did not fight to protect Him as they said they would. They saw the emptiness of their bravado and the folly of their ignorance. Now, behind locked doors, the Master whom they forsook comes and heals them in mind and spirit by His unconditional forgiveness.

Right there and then, the Lord breathes on them His Spirit of reconciliation and empowers them to do the same: “For whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.” This is St John’s version of the Pentecost; when the Lord gives the promised Advocate for the work of spreading the Good News.

Commenting on this in his message for the World Day of Peace this year, Pope Leo notes that Jesus’ greeting of peace is the “Word that does not merely desire peace, but truly brings about a lasting transformation in those who receive it, and consequently, in all of reality.”