Navarre Bible Commentarty:Monday, 3rd Week in Ordinary Time

Woe Unto You, Scribes and Pharisees by James Tissot

Mark 3:22-30

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)

22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Be-el′zebul, and by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.” 23 And he called them to him, and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. 27 But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man; then indeed he may plunder his house.

28 “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— 30 for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”

Cited in the Catechism:  In promulgating the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Blessed John Paul II explained that the Catechism "is a statement of the Church's faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church's Magisterium."  He went on to "declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion" (Fidei Depositum). Passages from this Gospel reading are cited in the Catechism, paragraphs 539, 548, 574 and 1864.

Commentary

Allegations of the scribes. Sin against the Holy Spirit

3:22–23. Even Jesus’ miracles were misunderstood by these scribes, who accuse him of being a tool of the prince of devils, Beelzebul. This name may be connected with Beelzebub (which spelling is given in some codexes), the name of a god of the Philistine city of Eqron (Accaron), which means “god of the flies”. But it is more likely that the prince of devils is called Beelzebul, which means “god of excrement”: “excrement” is the word the Jews used to describe pagan sacrifices. Whether Beelzebub or Beelzebul, in the last analysis it refers to him to whom these sacrifices were offered, the devil (1 Cor 10:20). He is the same mysterious but real person whom Jesus calls Satan, which means “the enemy”, whose dominion over the world Christ has come to wrest from him (1 Cor 15:24–28; Col 1:13f) in an unceasing struggle (Mt 4:1–10; Jn 16:11). These names show us that the devil really exists: he is a real person who has at his beck and call others of his kind (Mk 5:9).

3:24–27. Our Lord invites the Pharisees, who are blind and obstinate, to think along these lines: if someone expels the devil this means that he is stronger than the devil: once more we are exhorted to recognize in Jesus the God of strength, the God who uses his power to free man from enslavement to the devil. Satan’s dominion has come to an end: the prince of this world is about to be cast out. Jesus’ victory over the power of darkness, which is completed by his death and resurrection, shows that the light has already entered the world, as our Lord himself told us: “Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” (Jn 12:31–32).

3:28–30. Jesus has just worked a miracle but the scribes refuse to recognize it “for they had said ‘He has an unclean spirit’ ” (v. 30). They do not want to admit 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 become like the sick person who has so lost confidence in the doctor that he rejects 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 be forgiven: not because God cannot forgive all sins, but because that person, 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, 2, 5, 19; St Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 2–2, 14, 3). Cf. the note on Mt 12:31–32.

Note from Mt 12:31-32

12:31–32. God wants all men to be saved (1 Tim 2:4) and he calls everyone to repentance (2 Pet 3:9). The Redemption won by Christ is superabundant: it atones for all sins and extends to every man and woman (Rom 5:12–21). Christ gave his Church the power to forgive sins by means of the sacraments of Baptism and Penance. This power is unlimited, that is to say, the Church can pardon all sins of all the baptized as often as they confess their sins with the right disposition. This teaching is a dogma of faith (cf. Council of Trent, De Paenitentia, can. 1).

The sin Jesus speaks about here is termed “sin against the Holy Spirit”, because external expressions of God’s goodness are specially attributed to the third person of the Blessed Trinity. Sin against the Holy Spirit is said to be unforgivable not so much because of its gravity or malice but because of the subjective disposition of the sinner in this case: his attitude shuts the door on repentance. Sin against the Holy Spirit consists in maliciously attributing to the devil the miracles and signs wrought by Christ. Thus, the very nature of this sin blocks the person’s route to Christ, who is the only one who can take away the sin of the world (Jn 1:29), and the sinner puts himself outside the range of God’s forgiveness. In this sense the sins against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven.

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.

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