11 April 2021
Second Sunday of Easter: Sunday of Divine Mercy
After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to the disciples in the upper room. He breathed on them and told them to receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). Instead of Holy Spirit, it could have also been translated Holy Ghost, or even Holy Breath (πνεῦμα ἅγιον, Spiritus Sanctus). The idea is that Jesus breathed his holy breath upon them.
Jesus was not referring so much to the air from his lungs as to the immaterial third person of the Holy Trinity that he was pouring out upon his Church. That is what the true Holy Spirit really is. However, he did physically breathe on them he did exhale about a liter of real air that had been inside of his real lungs, which were (and are) real biological organisms. Jesus had (and has) a true body which is the same body that was crucified and buried. He used that body when he appeared to his disciples after Easter, not a phantasm. That liter of air expelled by our Lord in that one holy breath on that day contained 25 sextillion (25,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) gas molecules that have since then spread and mixed around the globe. Most of those molecules are still with us. In fact, the odds are that every breath that we take contains one gas molecule from the breath exhaled by our Lord at that one moment in the upper room.
As you pray, think of that one tiny molecule completing its journey from Christ’s lungs to yours, and ask for the Holy Spirit to be poured out upon you anew.