NOTES for Mar 3:22-30

It is very difficult to understand what blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is, but it becomes a little clearer when one begins to think about God and His forgiveness. Jesus says that ALL sins will be forgiven people; how, then, can there be a sin that will not be forgiven? If even we, callous and harsh as we are, find it difficult to imagine ourselves in paradise while our friends are in hell, because we feel sorry for them, then the merciful God will all the more surely have mercy and forgive. But God does nothing by force. He cannot forgive someone who does not ask for forgiveness, someone who does not consider himself guilty.

If after death we stand before the face of God and see Him, it is difficult to imagine that we will not ask for forgiveness. We know nothing about what will happen there. We know that what matters is how we live and how we love here and now. But we commune with God—or at least try to, or even merely want to commune with Him; we want to pray, we thirst for the encounter. Prayer is given to us by the Holy Spirit. And if we deny the very possibility of an encounter, if we say that God exists but does not love us, that He does not care about us, that He is far away and that communion and encounter with Him are impossible, then we blaspheme the Holy Spirit and refuse forgiveness, for forgiveness is impossible without the Encounter.