NOTES for Mat 12:31

The feeding of five thousand people with five loaves is a very vivid event. Of course, it anticipates the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper; it anticipates and is a type of every Eucharist celebrated by the Church. Today one detail seems important. In order for the miracle to take place, those poor five loaves and two fish were needed, most likely dried fish. The disciples had clearly already found out who had how much bread with him, and they had counted everything. Surely there was nothing else; these crumbs were the only thing found in that whole crowd, but in Christ's hands there comes from them food not merely sufficient but abundant. Yet those loaves did belong to someone. Someone unnamed, when the disciples asked, "Who has food?" answered, "Here, I have bread; take it." One would hardly think that these prudent listeners themselves had no need of bread.

Christians of the first centuries called what we bring to God in the sacrament of the Eucharist the "firstfruits" of creation. The firstfruits are a kind of pledge and sign that we bring to God everything created by Him. With them begins the miracle of multiplication, which makes something more out of created matter. By contrast, without the offering of these firstfruits, the abyss that separates God's world and this world remains impassable. We bring the firstfruits of the world and, in the words of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, receive from Christ's hands the firstfruits of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Each of us has something that can be brought to God, like those five loaves, or can be kept for ourselves. This is what the Lord is speaking about: "...whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it" (Matt. 16:25).

Jesus' words about blasphemy against the Spirit seem mysterious. But they probably seem so to us because our perception of the Gospel text is often overlaid with theological models—in particular, Trinitarian models, especially when the text mentions the Holy Spirit. Yet in Gospel times no Trinitarian theology existed, of course, and God's Spirit was viewed more from a practical spiritual standpoint—as an element of concrete spiritual and mystical experience, and above all prophetic experience. In the context of prophetic experience, the Spirit is experienced as the entirely real breath of God entering the human heart and renewing a person from within. There could be no mistake here: either God breathed in the heart or He did not. Since that was the nature of the matter, there could be no question of confusion or misunderstanding.

When theological theories and concepts are involved, mistakes are possible, of course. One can even fail to recognize the Messiah in the Messiah. In principle that too can happen, and not necessarily through a person's ill will; the reasons may vary greatly. But when God's breath and its action obvious to everyone are involved, there can be no mistake. Only someone who does not want to see can fail to see this action.

If the refusal to see also becomes aggressive, so that a person begins to revile God and His works, such a position naturally becomes a spiritual dead end for him. This is not because God is easily offended, but because rejecting God's breath automatically means rejecting the Kingdom that this breath permeates from its center to its farthest reaches. And rejecting the Kingdom clearly leads to rejecting life and salvation—a rejection about which nothing can be done, because it is made freely, without any compulsion.

Has the Kingdom of God reached us? In the Gospel the Lord connects the coming of the Kingdom, on the one hand, with victory over the forces of evil, over Satan, and on the other hand, with the action of the Holy Spirit in people's lives. For it is by the Spirit that He casts out demons and heals diseases, and in denying this fact the Lord points to the danger of unforgivable blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. So the Kingdom of God not only awaits us beyond the grave, but is also realized here on earth, wherever people give the Holy Spirit the opportunity to act through them. The actions of the Spirit can be very diverse (1 Cor chs. 12-13), but the chief one is love. Therefore, to reach the Kingdom, little is required of us: first, complete trust in and openness to God, allowing His Spirit to act in our life; and second, attentiveness to His actions, allowing us not to quench His life in us, but on the contrary, to respond to it with thanksgiving.

The casting out of demons that led to the healing of a blind and mute man served, in the eyes of the people, as grounds for a conjecture, still preliminary, about Jesus' messiahship. But this alone would hardly have been enough, for Jesus Himself rejects the Pharisees' accusations by referring to the fact that their sons also cast out demons. And here we stand before a reality in relation to which we have to decide, and it is impossible to evade the choice.

When we encounter phenomena of the spiritual world, we have to decide whether this or that mysterious phenomenon is from God, or whether it is an imitation of miracles coming from the forces of darkness, or even simply ordinary charlatanry. Even today, various miracles or imitations of them, performed by numerous gurus and healers, bring them many admirers convinced that their wonders are given from above.

Here the Lord gives us a criterion: fruits. His miracles are manifestations of love; He never plays for effect simply to strike the imagination and nothing more. But the words about the doom of a divided kingdom are also very relevant for us, living in a divided world. For Christ, refuting the biased accusations of the Pharisees, does not deny that the forces of darkness can be at war among themselves, weakening one another. If there is hostility between factions of dark forces, then they are doomed. But mutual strife does not prevent them from causing evil to everything around them. And it is no accident that wherever evil rules, discord and universal hostility grow.

And it is evidently no accident that here, perhaps, the harshest words in the whole Gospel sound: about the unforgivability of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, about the only unforgiveness in the New Testament. For the Holy Spirit is God, who gives forgiveness. Therefore the one who blasphemes Him rejects the very possibility of forgiveness.