Monday in the Third Week of Ordinary Time, January 23, 2022

Mark 3, 22-30

The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said of Jesus, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “By the prince of demons he drives out demons.” Summoning them, he began to speak to them in parables, “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand; that is the end of him. But no one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder his house. Amen, I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an everlasting sin.” For they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”

In Matthew 12, 31-32, the Evangelist quotes the Lord on the doctrine of the sin against the Holy Spirit, but only in St. Mark’s Gospel do we have the story of the scribes who accused him of being possessed.  This event must have made a deep impression on St. Peter, from whom Mark got the story.

“The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said of Jesus, ‘He is possessed by Beelzebul,’ and ‘By the prince of demons he drives out demons.’ ”  Perhaps some of these scribes who came down from Jerusalem had also interrogated John the Baptist.  They make a rather serious charge against Jesus.  The context of this charge is that the Lord has not long before forgiven sins and declared himself Lord of the Sabbath.  He has healed many of physical infirmities and exorcised many.  As a result, opposition from the local authorities began to mount, chiefly due to jealousy.  He challenged and undermined their interpretation of the Law and their insistence that others abide by it.  But these scribes do not seem to interview Jesus at all, as they had spoken directly with John the Baptist.  As Mark lays it out, the scribes were merely spreading lies and baseless charges against Jesus amidst the crowd that had gathered to hear him.  We should not think too lightly of what they were saying: they did not challenge Jesus on his teachings or declare that he did not know what he was talking about; they did not try to discredit him because he came from Nazareth and had not studied with the Pharisees and so could not know the Scriptures.  No, they went right to the extreme and charged him with being possessed.  They do not explain what criteria they are using to make such a determination.  They assume that their status as scribes from Jerusalem, presumably representing the high priests, would convince people that what they said must be so.

In point of fact, they only discredited themselves with their wild accusation.  They do not contest the miracles, which so many people have seen.  They merely held that that they were done by the power of the devil.  But the devil never performs a good act, and Jesus had done countless good acts right out in the open.  Further, the devil would not be calling people to repent.  He would, on the other hand, be telling people to abandon the Law altogether.  Jesus does not do that.  As he insisted, certainly more than once, “Do not think that I am come to destroy the Law, or the Prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.  For amen I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matthew 5, 17-18).

The Lord’s response to their words also underlines that he has come not from Satan but from God, for he does not destroy them or even threaten them.  He tries to reason with them: “And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand; that is the end of him.”  We do not have the response of the scribes, but the Lord seems to silence them here, and it is hard to imagine that the crowd did not rejoice over his wisdom.  But the Lord does have a hard teaching for those who speak blasphemy against the Holy Spirit: “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an everlasting sin.”  The idea that there is an unforgivable sin ought to strike fear into our hearts and cause us to flee from any hint of it.  But what exactly is it?  We should think along the lines of what the crowd would have understood by blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.  The doctrine of the Holy Spirit was at that time unformed.  Towards the end of his life on earth, during the Last Supper, Jesus will reveal that the Holy Spirit is a divine Person in union with the Father and the Son, and that he proceeds from the Father and the Son.  But at this time the Holy Spirit meant something more like the approval of the Father, the power sent upon someone by the Father.  To speak against the Holy Spirit, then, was to speak maliciously against God’s design, God’s will.  Jesus says in Matthew 12, “Whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but he that shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him neither in this world, nor in the world to come” (Matthew 12, 31).  That is, Jesus will forgive those who accuse him of, say, crucifying him, but those who accuse him of being possessed, “having an unclean spirit” will not be forgiven because it is clear that he is doing God’s will, which he does in union with the Holy Spirit.  If he in fact did sin, and this was plain, he could be accused of it because in that case he would not be acting in union with the Holy Spirit.  But his good deeds, his miraculous deeds, are proof that the Holy Spirit is with him.

Today we understand the sin against the Holy Spirit as final impenitence, despair of God’s mercy, and presumption.  These are very common at the present time.  A famous folk / rock singer who just passed away is said to have uttered, moments before he died, that “heaven is overrated.”  This is final impenitence.  As we pray for the conversion of the world, let us pray for ourselves that we never imbibe so much of this world’s spirit, which is not the Holy Spirit, that we will ever speak or think like that.