“Therefore I say to you: Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but the blasphemy of the Spirit shall not be forgiven. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come. Either make the tree good and its fruit good: or make the tree evil, and its fruit evil. For by the fruit the tree is known.”
Parents often must threaten punishment for their children, that they may come to a proper way of acting, and Jesus, as a loving caretaker of the Pharisees, does so here, that they may come to know that God’s ways are oriented to love rather than “strain[ing] out a gnat” (Matthew 23:24). What then follows is one of the most difficult questions in all Sacred Scripture, which is what constitutes a sin that cannot be forgiven, to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit? It begins with an understanding of the Most Holy Trinity, in which the Father begets the Son, and the love of the Father and the Son for each other spirates the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is, then, the expression of love between the two, the manifestation of a love so incredible that it becomes a third person. The second point to be considered is that the forgiveness of God is infinite, able to wipe away any sin: “And when he had begun to take the account, one was brought to him, that owed him ten thousand talents… And the lord of that servant, being moved with pity, let him go and forgave him the debt” (Matthew 18:24-27) if one runs to the sacrament of reconciliation: “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them” (John 20:23), with the wounds of sin healed by a life of love: “for love covereth a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). Every penitent heart will be received with love by God, with nothing being too egregious for Him to cast into the furnace of His love: “For our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). When one turns from sin to the love of God, they receive the Holy Spirit, the bond of love, “the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: ‘Abba (Father).’ For the Spirit himself giveth testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons of God” (Romans 8:15-16). Consider here, Theophila, the infinity of God’s merciful love, that not even blasphemy, a truly malicious word against God and His Son, cannot be overcome by His unfathomable love, for Jesus said: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34), for if all knew how incredibly loved they are, they would never blaspheme. This is why Hosea prophecies: “I desired… knowledge of God more than holocausts” (Osee 6:6). Ah, this knowledge is to know that even blasphemy becomes a word spoken against a spouse, a child saying something out of frustration about their parents in comparison with God’s merciful love. He longs to alleviate the burden of the guilt of such things from the conscience of those that stand against Him: “I will clean purge away thy dross, and I will take away all thy tin” (Isaias 1:25), by letting them know how much He loves them: “Be converted to me, and you shall be saved, all ye ends of the earth” (Isaias 45:22). To blaspheme the Holy Spirit, then, is to, without contrition, live with no expression of the love of God in word or in deed, to live a truly loveless life. This transcends a mere love of neighbor, of “being a nice person,” for the Holy Spirit is the bond of unity that keeps the Catholic Church and her ways intact: “Take heed to yourselves, and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops, to rule the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28), and has the proper office of being the fire that erases sin: “I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me: and I will forgive all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned against me, and despised me” (Jeremias 33:8). Therefore, to “love one another” (John 13:34) means to love according to the Church’s ways, with perfect love being sought in her interpretations of the more rigorous commandments and following the impulses of love that one gleans from prayer. There is also a note that there is sin to be forgiven “in the world to come,” which is a look at Purgatory, which is a place of purification to purify in you all that is not love. Therefore, Theophila, to make every action in this life one of love is to remove any worry for this remission of sin in the world to come. This is what it means to make the tree good, and the fruit good; Jesus did not want merely to do away with the Pharisees’ sin against him, but to amend their hearts that they may love and be loved. To receive the love of the Church’s sacraments and truth: “They that adore him, must adore him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24), as well as her methods of prayer is to make your tree good, and loving your neighbor according to her moral precepts will become natural, as you will have the grace to be able to do so: “I have laboured more abundantly than all they: yet not I, but the grace of God with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). This is of the utmost importance, Theophila, because without the reception of the avenues of grace, you cannot hope to love well, you must be transformed in love before you can truly love: “My beloved put his hand through the key hole” of your heart “and my bowels were moved at his touch” (Canticle 5:4), which indicates the depth of one’s transformation. When you have the comfort in love with God that is as that of a spouse or a child, sin will be as unnatural as something grave and despicable against a family member, and acts of love will be a natural reflex.