Please don't wag your heads and laugh us to scorn, all you Latin Mass and BCP trads, but here in the Missions we use the newfangled 1979 Lectionary.
This means that Sunday's Gospel is from Mark, in which Christ is accused by the Scribes of a diabolical plot, of casting out devils by the power of the Ekronite demon, Baalzebul.
After exposing their absurdity, Jesus blasts his accusers with the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit. Why unforgivable? Because believing that Christ is satanic and rejecting the salvation offered through the Holy Spirit precludes repentance and with it, forgiveness itself.
John Paul II puts it clearly, in his Encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem:
Why is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit unforgivable? How should this blasphemy be understood? Saint Thomas Aquinas replies that it is a question of a sin that is 'unforgivable by its very nature, insofar as it excludes the elements through which the forgiveness of sin takes place' (ST 2b:14:3). According to such an exegesis, 'blasphemy' does not properly consist in offending against the Holy Spirit in words; it consists rather in the refusal to accept the salvation which God offers to man through the Holy Spirit, working through the power of the Cross. If man rejects the 'convincing concerning sin' which comes from the Holy Spirit and which has the power to save, he also rejects the 'coming' of the Counsellor...
If Jesus says that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven either in this life or in the next, it is because this 'non-forgiveness' is linked, as to its cause, to 'non-repentance', in other words to the radical refusal to be converted... Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, then, is the sin committed by the person who claims to have a 'right' to persist in evil—in any sin at all...
[T]he Church constantly implores with the greatest fervor that there will be no increase in the world of the sin that the Gospel calls 'blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.' Rather, she prays that it will decrease in human souls" (Encyclical Letter Dominum et Vivificantem ["The Lord and Giver of Life"] 46-47).
Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, then, is the sin committed by the person who claims to have a 'right' to persist in evil—in any sin at all.
Well that's terrifyingly in the X Ring.
Ubi Petrus,
LSP
Please don't wag your heads and laugh us to scorn, all you Latin Mass and BCP trads, but here in the Missions we use the newfangled 1979 Lectionary
ReplyDeleteWhatever gets the job done, LSP.
I often turn first to the Holy Spirit for guidance. I think of Him as the UPS (or Spiritual Amazon Prime??) of the Holy Trinity. He's so often overlooked and ignored.