From: Luke 12:8-12
Various Teachings of Jesus (Continuation)
(Jesus said to His disciples,) [8] “And I tell you, every one who acknowledges
Me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God;
[9] but he who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God.
[10] And every one who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven;
but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. [11] And
when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities,
do not be anxious how or what you are to answer or what you are to say; [12]
for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”
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Commentary:
8-9. This follows logically from Christ’s previous teaching: worse than physical
evils, worse even than death, are evils of the soul, that is, sin. Those who out
of fear of temporal suffering deny our Lord and are unfaithful to the demands of
the faith will fall into a greater evil still: they will be denied by Christ Himself on
the Day of Judgment; whereas those who are penalized in this life because of
their faithfulness to Christ will receive the eternal reward of being recognized
by Him and will come to share His glory.
10. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit consists in maliciously attributing to the
devil actions which have God as their origin. A person who does that prevents
God’s pardon from reaching him: that is why he cannot obtain forgiveness (cf.
Matthew 12:31; Mark 3:28-30). Jesus understands and excuses the weakness
of a person who makes a moral mistake, but He is not similarly indulgent to
someone who shuts his eyes and his heart to the wonderful things the Spirit
does; that was the way these Pharisees acted who accused Jesus of casting
out demons in the name of Beelzebul; it is the way unbelieving people act who
refuse to see in Christ’s work a sign of the goodness of God, who reject the
invitation God offers them and who thereby put themselves outside the reach
of salvation (cf. Hebrews 6:4-6; 10:26-31). See the note on Mark 3:28-30.
[The note on Mark 3:28-30 states:
28-30. Jesus has just worked a miracle but the scribes refuse to recognize it
“for they had said ‘He has an unclean spirit’” (verse 30). They do not want to ad-
mit that God is the author of the miracle. In this attitude lies the special gravity
of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit — attributing to the prince of evil, to Satan,
the good works performed by God Himself. Anyone acting in this way will be-
come like the sick person who has so lost confidence in the doctor that he re-
jects him as if an enemy and regards as poison the medicine that can save his
life. That is why our Lord says that he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit
will not forgiven: not because God cannot forgive all sins, but because that per-
son, in his blindness towards God, rejects Jesus Christ, His teaching and His
miracles, and despises the graces of the Holy Spirit as if they were designed to
trap him (cf. “St. Pius V Catechism”, II, 5, 19; St. Thomas Aquinas, “Summa
Theologiae”, II-II, q. 14, a. 3).]
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.
Quotes from St. Theresa of Avila
"To reach something good it is very useful to have gone astray, and thus acquire experience."
"We shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavoring to know God; for, beholding His greatness, we realize our own littleness; His purity shows us our foulness; and by meditating upon His humility we find how very far we are from being humble."
"There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers."
"Christ has no body now, but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth, but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which Christ looks compassion into the world.
Yours are the feet with which Christ walks to do good.
Yours are the hands with which Christ blesses the world."
Let nothing trouble you,
let nothing frighten you.
All things are passing;
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
He who possesses God lacks nothing:
God alone suffices.