"'Let anyone blaspheme against the Holy Spirit and he will never have forgiveness: he is guilty of an eternal sin.' This was because they were saying, 'An unclean spirit is in him.'" (Mark 3:29-30)
In Sunday’s Gospel, we might ask ourselves what is the connection between saying Jesus is possessed and blaspheming the Holy Spirit, and why that sin is unforgivable.
If we say that Jesus is possessed by an unclean spirit we are directly blaspheming the Holy Spirit since he is the Spirit who really possesses Jesus. Paradoxically, the more we are possessed by the Holy Spirit the more we become our true selves, whereas every concession to the devil makes us less free and more enslaved. Jesus’s human body and soul were fully possessed by the Holy Spirit and so he had the greatest human freedom conceivable.
