09 Jun 2018

This Week Letter – June 10, 2018

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Dear Parishioners and Friends.
Some pages of the Bible or the ideas formulated in it seem difficult to understand. This certainly is true also when Jesus speaks of sins against the Holy Spirit which are, in effect, “eternal sin.” How is one to understand the words of the Master of Nazareth, The Mighty one who defeated the “ruler of this world”?
Beginning at His baptism in the Jordan River, Jesus worked through the power of the Holy Spirit. If the scribes, considered monopolists in the knowledge of the Scripture and the teaching God’s truth, maintain that the Son of God has an unclean spirit within Himself and that He works by the power of Beelzebub, ruler of evil spirits, then they themselves offend the Spirit of God. Blasphemy, therefore, consists in attributing demonic activity to God, who “spent his life doing good,” that is, he showed goodness and mercy to all. This is a conscious rejection of God’s grace and the gift of salvation. Where then does the confirmation of Jesus’ statement appear that such a sin cannot be forgiven? It has to do with the attitude of man who not only closes himself off from God, but maliciously identifies him with Satan.
Referring to the teaching of the catechism of the Church, we can determine six sins against the Holy Spirit:
1. Despairing of God’s grace – the man who commits this sin deliberately falls into despair, telling himself that there is no longer any help for him, that God cannot love so great a sinner as he is. It is the same doubt in God’s mercy, directly connected with the acceptance of penance.
2. Presumption of God’s mercy – often this attitude is taken by people in their youth who say: “Why should I go to confession now? I’ll just wait until I am old – then there will be time for repentance, for now I’ll enjoy myself.” The church warns that we do not know the day nor the hour when we will leave this world.
3. Denying recognized Christian truth –this is a constant and conscious denial of the official teaching of the Church. It may also have a discriminative nature.
4. Envy of the grace God gives to others  – for each grace received from  God, man ought to give thanks, even if sometimes God puts us to the test giving our friends more diverse gifts, for example: sincere conversion.
5. Obstinacy in sin – this is constant opposition to pious inspirations (for example to do good) or the admonitions of concerned persons (parents, friends, priests), against our persistence in sin.
6. Final impenitence – this can be manifested through the awareness that the one who, while being in a state of mortal sin yet still continues sinning, does not see the difference between one and many sins committed. God wants to convert even the greatest sinners. And although Divine Mercy is infinite, it is not be reduced to absurdity. It may happen that a man asks God for reconciliation, while at the same time he does not want to be reconciled. Either he does not depend on reconciliation at all, or he does not believe in the actuality of his own reconciliation. One must not make light of God’s mercy, ignore it, or close oneself off from it. God bless!

 

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