Jesus tells us that there is a certain sin that will not be forgiven. Because Jesus is God, we can be sure he is not misleading us. But what is the sin against the Holy Spirit, and how can we avoid it? Father Hugh Barbour explains.
Are you scared of committing the sin against the Holy Spirit? We’ll help you out with Father Hugh next..
Cy Kellett:
What if there was something that you could do that could not be forgiven, that would guarantee your damnation? I’d want to know exactly what that was, and probably you would want to know exactly what that was as well so that you could avoid it carefully, assiduously, with great attention to detail. You wouldn’t want to get anywhere near that.
When Jesus says that there is a sin that will not be forgiven either in this life or the next, as he says in Matthew’s gospel, that, especially for those of us who believe Jesus is God and has the knowledge to tell you these things, the ears perk up. “The what? What? What could happen to me?”
All through down through the centuries, this has produced enormous anxiety, and upset, and confusion, and worry. So who do we turn to when we have anxiety, confusion, upset, and worry? We turn to Father Hugh Barbour. Here’s Father Hugh on the sin against the Holy Spirit.
A lot of people are upset by this, and they have been for like 2,000 years. Even Saint Augustine said this is a difficult passage.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Not if you’re Saint Thomas.
Cy Kellett:
Well, nothing’s difficult for Saint Thomas.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right, exactly.
Cy Kellett:
For Thomas, who has facility with everything, it’s not a problem. That’s why I ask you, a Thomist, about this. But I want to read to you from Saint Mark’s gospel, the first of the four gospels.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Go right ahead. It’s an approved text. There’s no doubt about it.
Cy Kellett:
It is an approved text.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Divinely inspired, infallible, and all of that.
Cy Kellett:
But it comes so early in Mark’s gospel because you get this sense of Jesus has lit the world on fire. I mean, he’s healing. He’s casting out demons.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right, exactly.
Cy Kellett:
Boom.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Mark is my favorite gospel, by the way, because my middle name is Mark.
Cy Kellett:
I didn’t know that.
Father Hugh Barbour:
That my parents gave me. He has the most concise gospel, but the most radical gospel.
Cy Kellett:
It is quite, yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Almost no teaching. Just wonder working, prophesying, and-
Cy Kellett:
But you get a very direct sense of this, the early days of Christ’s ministries, so you have people trying to figure out what is the cause of this.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right, so if Jesus is Padre Pio.
Cy Kellett:
Well, even-
Father Hugh Barbour:
More.
Cy Kellett:
More like Padre Pio by a million. Yeah, right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right. I know, but I’m just saying that’s the kind of devotion it inspires.
Cy Kellett:
“When his relatives heard of this, they set …” This is from Mark’s gospel, the third chapter, verse 21 I’m starting with. “When his relatives heard of this, they set out to seize him. For they said, ‘He’s out of his mind.’ The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said, ‘He is possessed by Beelzebub, and by the Prince of demons he drives out demons.'”
“Summoning them, he began to speak to them in parables. ‘How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen against himself and is divided, he cannot stand. That is the end of him. But no one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder his house.'”
“‘Amen. I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but he is guilty of an everlasting sin.’ For they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.'”
Christ is responding to the scribes who have insulted him by saying he’s possessed, but this is the part that bothers people. Jesus is God, and if he says, there’s a sin that can’t be forgiven, I would really like to avoid that sin. I think that’s where people get stuck on this is I’ve got to know what it is.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Well, exactly, and that’s why we need an explanation.
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Of course, the thing that is not in Mark’s gospel which is in Saint Matthew’s account of the same words, which our Lord could have said on a number of occasions-
Cy Kellett:
Oh, of course, yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Because he was accused of being possessed by demons by the scribes probably a number of times, is probably the line they used. He also said, “It’s a sin that will not be forgiven him in this world or in the next.”
Cy Kellett:
“Or in the next.” Right, yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Okay, that’s an important thing as well. Well, as usual, Saint Thomas comes to the rescue.
Cy Kellett:
Thank God for Saint Thomas.
Father Hugh Barbour:
We remember that in sacred theology, we know that all of God’s works are works of all three persons of the Blessed Trinity.
Cy Kellett:
Right, okay.
Father Hugh Barbour:
That is all the works of God that are “outside” of God so to speak, with quotation marks around outside, are works of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But we attribute works of God and also works of human beings to the divine persons singly because of their particular characteristics in their personhood.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Father Hugh Barbour:
So Saint Thomas says our Lord explicitly makes an attribution. He doesn’t say, “This is sin which is against God which cannot be forgiven.” He says a sin against the Holy Spirit.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Well, that’s not because it’s not against the Son and the Father. You can’t sin against Holy Spirit without sitting against the Father or the Son. That is your sins are against God, period, and God is concretely the Blessed Trinity. When he specifies the person, it means that there’s something about the manifestation of God outside of himself, which is attributed to one person rather than the other in order to help us to understand what are the worst sins. Okay, so-
Cy Kellett:
This is very helpful.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right, right.
Cy Kellett:
This is wonderful.
Father Hugh Barbour:
It’s an attributation to the Spirit. He doesn’t say against the Father, against the Son, but against the Holy Spirit. Now, the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is as follows. To the father are attributed works of power. That’s the Father’s power. He’s the creator of the universe.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Therefore, the sins which we commit against the Father are, be relieved by this, think of the parable of the prodigal son, sins of weakness.
Cy Kellett:
Ah yeah, okay. Right. Because that’s how you sin against power.
Father Hugh Barbour:
All right. The son goes, “I remember my father’s house, and I’ll rise and go to my father.” They are the sins which you would never say, “Well, those can’t be forgiven ever,” because they’re sins of weakness.”
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
They’re not, no, because sins of weakness are obviously the most forgivable. Even though we shouldn’t use weakness to excuse ourselves, but we should use weakness as a reason for begging for pardon and mercy [inaudible 00:06:13] God.
Cy Kellett:
If I’m not going to use weakness to excuse myself, what am I going to use for?
Father Hugh Barbour:
Well, that’s what I just said. I said don’t use it to excuse yourself, but use it as a reason for begging for pardon and mercy.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
It’s kind of the same.
Cy Kellett:
Gotcha.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Okay, so I’m just saying. Just saying. Then to the Son are ascribed those works which are works of wisdom and truth.
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Okay?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
So consequently, such sins as are against the truth of the matter, against the truth of our nature for example, sins against what we know to be good for human nature as such. Those are all the ones which we kind of associate with sins against Jesus, sins harming our neighbors, sins that are against the good of the weak and the defenseless, sins, all those kinds of things.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
That’s the second one. But to the Holy Spirit is ascribed the work of God which is goodness or the good. Now, we all know because the Spirit is the one by whom God creates the whole world, which he declares good, so the works of the Spirit are works of the effusion of divine goodness. We can see very easily that as far as sin goes, the archetypal sin is opposing goodness just because it’s good.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, that’s just maliciousness.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Yeah, malicious, right. Now, all sins have, you’ve got the word, exactly, malicia, maliciousness, ill will, just bitter hatred of something that’s good just because it’s good, okay.
Cy Kellett:
Right, right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
That’s something which is very different from a sin of weakness, or a sin of passion, or even a sin of social pride or mistreatment of someone else. They’re different. They’re sins, but they’re not sins in the way that just being upset, or angry, or bitter, or unkind, or whatever you are because you just don’t like the sight of something that’s good, or you have an aversion to it.
Consequently, those sins against the Holy Spirit are sins directly against the goodness of God. Of course, those are the hardest to receive pardon for, because they show the disposition of the sinner to be almost impervious to pardon.
Cy Kellett:
Right, right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
That’s why when Saint Thomas talks about that when our Lord prays, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and then he says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” Saint Thomas says that, well, yeah, he’s praying for those people who didn’t know what they were doing, but there were some who knew what they were doing, he says. The ones who knew the prophecies, who could have easily recognized who he was, and were just determined to oppose him. That is that much malice, that much evil.
That comes out very well in the gospels where he answers meekly and truly, and they’re tearing their garments and making big issue of everything. Poor sinners, they’re not to blame entirely, but there are some people that do know what they’re doing. Christ prays for those who don’t know what they’re doing, but what happens to those who actually do know what they’re doing? That’s a difficult thing.
Now, the classic sins against the Holy Spirit are despair. We have to understand what despair is. It’s not just the poor person who’s like depressed and miserable. That’s not despair necessarily.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, that’s not despair.
Father Hugh Barbour:
It doesn’t have to be. Despair, presumption of God’s mercy in order to sin, okay. Just impenitence, just refusal to seek pardon, obstinacy in sin you could say, and then resisting the known truth like just because it’s true. I’m sorry. The truest good, I don’t want it. And envy, and this is the big one, envy of your brother’s goodness or happiness or delight. Those are those things that are … kind of there’s something satanic about them.
Now, those sins, if they are … Saint Thomas says very clearly, if they are not repented of, if they’re not … if there’s no sorrow for them, there’s no way they can be pardoned. Now, why is that? Because you could say, as we Catholics with catechism, mortal sins are mortal sins, yes, but they’re not all the same. They’re just not. Some mortal sins are worse than other mortal sins.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Some already indicate a possible disposition on the part of the person to receive pardon. Even the sin does. Like when the Lord says, “Well, who condemns you? Now go and sin no more,” to that woman, her sins were such, and the woman at the well, that they indicated that she was looking for something that she didn’t find, and she offended God in seeking it, and offended him gravely, but there was a very good disposition to receive pardon, which they received readily and easily.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Right, right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
So that’s a different thing. But these sins, they show that you’re not disposed to be pardoned, that you have either just a rejection of it or an aversion to it for whatever reason, but with a firmity of will, that is that your will is not embracing the good that’s offered to you. Like we know, everybody knows that God forgives anyone who asks for pardon, sincerely asks for it. That he will give hope in eternal life to all those who turn to him. We’ve been taught these things. We know them true.
If someone refuses to even make an effort to exercise hope or to trust in God, right, if you don’t trust in him and he’s your last good and you’re a big sinner, well then you’re in pretty bad shape. That’s despair. On the other hand, if you so offend his justice that you think that you can just get by with sinning, you can do whatever you want because, I mean, that’s no big deal, just total presumption.
We’re not talking about someone who’s tempted to sin. Listen to this. You who are listening, listen to this. We’re not talking to the person who at the moment of giving into sin thinks, “Oh, well I can confess this later.” That’s not necessarily presumption. That’s a thought that passes your head because it’s true.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. You’re not an idiot.
Father Hugh Barbour:
No. You’re sinning because you’re weak, or because of a bad habit, or whatever it might be. Which sinning of your own free choice, it’s a sin, but it’s not necessarily just precisely a sin of presumption against the justice of God, like right to your face. Like, “I dare you. I’m going to do this, and then you’re going to forgive me anyway, because that’s the way you’ve set it up.” We’re not going to do that. Excuse me, sorry, but I was doing a raucous cheer. You can edit that if you want to.
Cy Kellett:
No, it’s fine.
Father Hugh Barbour:
That’s not the attitude. It’s a direct confrontation of the good and a rejection of it. Despairing people, presumptuous people, impenitent people who just have an aversion to changing. They just they’re … You can find this psychologically in certain people where they’re utterly miserable and a few little tiny tweaks would change their whole life, but they’re so used to the way they are, they just won’t seek it. Now, that’s on the level of imagination, memory, and human psychology, but just translate that to our will’s ability to receive a good thing that will make us truly happy and the fact that we’re so used to not accepting that thing, that we just push it away. Okay.
Now, but the worst one by far … There’s resisting the known truth, that’s really obvious. That’s a really big sin nowadays. You see it in the media. You see it in thinkers and people, they refuse to even examine the tradition of our culture and Christian thought, anything that might question they’re murdering of millions of people.
Cy Kellett:
Sure, yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
All right. So this is the resistance of known truth, which is really dreadful. But envy of another’s good, sadness that someone else has some good thing, this is really and truly a sign of malice. I mean, real sadness at it. That’s what the devil has. The devil sought to make us fall precisely because he envied the fact that we would reach heaven and he would not by his own choice. The envy of the devil is where sin enters in the world, and that’s probably, in my mind, that’s one of the worst things. But what happens? Saint Thomas says really clearly. You have a question before we go?
Cy Kellett:
Well, kind of, but this might be what you’re getting to, and that is, you can imagine a situation where a person is malicious and so takes a kind of malicious pleasure in refusing the ministry of the Holy Spirit to that person. So the person is closed off to the thing, the very one thing that will save them. It’s that maliciousness that is unforgivable because it is a refusal of forgiveness, but God could get around that.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Yeah. Well, this is where we’re moving.
Cy Kellett:
That’s what I thought you might be going to, yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
But first, I’ll give you the icon of that is in the traditional Latin forms of Freemasonry with Catholics, they had to make sure that there were Masonic brethren at the person’s deathbed so that no one would dare admit a priest.
Cy Kellett:
Really?
Father Hugh Barbour:
Now that’s envy of … That’s like an example of envy of another’s spiritual good.
Cy Kellett:
I want this person to go to hell.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Well, they may not have believed that, but let’s just say they probably maybe did, or whatever they believe, but the fact that they were willing to contradict someone’s will on their deathbed precisely because they didn’t want them to receive some good thing, even subjectively for them, that’s an example of how … It’s that kind of thing that we’re talking about.
We’re not talking about that you’re a little bit saddened by the fact that somebody has better qualities than you do. That’s something that the alarm bells should go off, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and just say, “well, why don’t I develop my good qualities and not be angry or sad at somebody else’s?”
This is a very common problem, much more common than we realize, and it’s actually behind a lot of the sins of speech that people have. It’s a latent, snaky sin of envy where you say things very nicely. You say, “Well, I don’t know. I mean, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” You haven’t done anything wrong.
Cy Kellett:
No, right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
You’re just …
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
There you go to-
Cy Kellett:
Like a little serpent.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right, exactly, and you’re after them. That kind of sin is those-
Cy Kellett:
Wow, yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
But Saint Thomas explains it very well. He says if one stays impenitent in these sins that are of malice against the good … That’s why they’re called against the Holy Spirit. They’re really against all three persons, of course. But if one stays impenitent in that and is fixed, death of course … well, even before death. If one stays impenitent in it, there is no forgiveness. You can’t be forgiven for that.
But he says not that that means that it might not be forgiven, but that they can be forgiven only by the grace of God, by the free gift of God. What he means there, and it’s one of the times when Saint Thomas uses the expression sola gratia.
Cy Kellett:
Ah, good. Very good. Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
So beloved of our Protestant friends. Because it’s a sin that shows such a contrary disposition to the will of God that there’s nothing in you that will dispose you to receive pardon.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
That is the state of the despairing, the presumptuous, the impenitent, the resistant to the truth, the envious, right? That’s what they’re after. Consequently, for them to be pardoned, God would have to work a miracle of grace in their heart, or even after death but that is not normally the case.
Saint Thomas says sins are forgiven after death easily, but not mortal ones. That’s like the standard teaching. Venial sins are forgiven, tons of them. As soon as you die, your venial sins are taken care of if you’re in a state of grace, but the mortal sins are not because you haven’t repented of them. Therefore, all unrepented mortal sins in which someone dies, they have to have this adjunct of impenitence, which is one of the sensing of the Holy Spirit. Granted a thing might be grave in itself, but it only leads you to hell if it’s combined with impenitence.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, so this is the danger. This is the great spiritual danger.
Father Hugh Barbour:
This is the danger of grave sin is the lack of penitence, okay?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
But in any case, he says it’s not that they might not be remitted, but that would be only by the grace of God. Saint Thomas, right there he gives an interpretation which shows that, yes, you can commit these sins and you might receive pardon for them, but once you’re committing these kinds of sins which are directly against goodness, that are totally malicious, you can see that it’s only by the sheer gift of God and by no disposition of yours that you will ever receive pardon. It’s sheer mercy.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. But we know from experience that God does in fact create that miracle in our hearts.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right. Saint Paul gives a perfect example. He comes towards Damascus-
Cy Kellett:
Oh, right, right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Breathing murderous threats, all right.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Right, right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
He definitely-
Cy Kellett:
He’s calling the good evil. He’s-
Father Hugh Barbour:
He was not sinning against God’s power, because he wasn’t a weak guy. He was a very observant Jew, very tough. All right. Then he wasn’t sinning, against the truth, because he clung to the truth of the Torah and the scriptures very closely. All right. But he hated what God had revealed and what the Christians were accomplishing, and he went after them in a way which was really bitter and hateful. He was persecuting them.
That’s why Jesus just converts him miraculously. He says, “Why are you persecuting me?” Me, me, me, me, me.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, me.
Father Hugh Barbour:
He’s unlikely to appear to us that way because usually our sins, even our grave ones, are not so horribly inexplicable as why someone like Saint Paul would have conceived such a hatred for this little group of Jews that believed that he was the Messiah. There have been tons of people that believed in different messiahs before them. Why was he so stirred up? What was the bitterness and hatred in his heart? Well, God took care of it by a sheer gift of grace. That’s why Saint Paul is the apostle who teaches about divine grace most effectively, because he-
Cy Kellett:
Because he experienced it, yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Experienced it like nobody else. Look at Saint Peter. Saint Peter’s stuff is magnificent, because he received the Lord’s pardon continually, but you could tell he sinned because he was kind of a sanguine, passionate, weak person. Not because he was bitter and malicious.
Cy Kellett:
No. As a matter of fact, he turned to the Lord very easily. He did not-
Father Hugh Barbour:
Very easily. As soon as the Lord looked over at him-
Cy Kellett:
He was there.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And he’d just denied him, he went out weeping. They’re very different dispositions. Of course, God’s grace works with all of them and we should never presume to commit sin because it’s not the sin against the Holy Spirit. That would not be the thing to do. But just to recognize that it’s not so there’s some kind of magic or superstitious thing that if I do X, God’s never going to forgive me.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, no. That’s I think what people fear.
Father Hugh Barbour:
That’s what they think, but it’s just not true.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
All right. If you commit any grave sin, it’s possible if you’re not repentant that you will be under judgment, but God will forgive any sin whatsoever. That’s why Saint Thomas says it’s not that they might not be remitted, but in that case only by the sheer grace of God, sola gratia dei. That’s what he says. Okay, so we can hand one to our Reformed friends and Lutheran friends for that.
But it’s very important to keep that in mind, because we need to maintain the hopeful and balanced interpretation of scriptures which it’s offered to us in the tradition.
Cy Kellett:
He is teaching us, it’s very dangerous to harden your heart against God.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Absolutely. It is a sin against-
Cy Kellett:
Because then you are …it’s like you’ve let go of the rope. God might throw you the rope again.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
But you’ve let go of it. You’re falling at that point.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right, and sins that are precisely against things that are good. If you find yourself disgusted by the good qualities of someone you don’t like, watch out. This has to do with our parents and with those who love us where, because we’re angry at them on some point or another, we don’t even like the good things about them. this is very bad.
Cy Kellett:
These scribes who accused Jesus, I mean, Jesus, his assertion of the sin against the Holy Spirit comes in response to an insult against himself.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
But it was an insult that implicated the Holy Spirit, as if to say there’s not something good motivating you. There’s something evil motivating you.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right. He was doing good things.
Cy Kellett:
Where what they should have seen was this is good. Like this man is good, these things that he is doing. They refused to see that.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right, because they already were-
Cy Kellett:
They were disposed against him.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Perverse will. Right, exactly. I mean, if someone was healed by his hands, take the perspective of the person that he healed. It has to be good.
Cy Kellett:
But they refused.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right. They attributed-
Cy Kellett:
Because of their bitterness towards him.
Father Hugh Barbour:
As the scriptures say, “Woe to you who call good evil and evil good.” They were calling good evil. This is really bad.
Cy Kellett:
You know what I-
Father Hugh Barbour:
But our Lord gives us hope. We can always be forgiven. That’s not what that passage means. We just have to cry out for the grace of repentance. But a person who is malicious is not going to cry out for the grace of repentance. People that have certain habitual sins that they have to confess all the time, they’re always … they’re practically asking for pardon as soon as they do it or even before, whatever it is they’re doing. The sins of weakness, ill tempered, or unchaste, or intemperate people, they know they are.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, sure.
Father Hugh Barbour:
They know that and they ask, and that they may be weak. It’s like Jackie Gleason, “Call me irresponsible. Call me …” But that-
Cy Kellett:
I didn’t know we were going to get Jackie Gleason.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right, but that kind of thing where you know the poor guy is not really … Like he loves everybody and he’s not really trying to be that horrible, but-
Cy Kellett:
It’s still sin.
Father Hugh Barbour:
It’s still sin.
Cy Kellett:
But it’s a different kind all together.
Father Hugh Barbour:
If he ever tells himself that it’s not sin, then he’s going to be in trouble.
Cy Kellett:
Then he’s in trouble.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right, exactly.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, I’m so happy that Thomas Aquinas lived, because I-
Father Hugh Barbour:
Absolutely. What would we do without him?
Cy Kellett:
Well, I don’t know what I would ever talk to you about, because every time I’ve ever spoken to you, Thomas comes into the conversation, and I enjoy our conversations so much.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Well, thank you. I take that as a compliment.
Cy Kellett:
I wouldn’t want you to be just struck dumb because Thomas-
Father Hugh Barbour:
No, but he always resolves the thorniest questions in the most delightful ways.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, doesn’t he? Well, I mean, think of the genius of this is a sin against one person of the Blessed Trinity. Let me reason out why does Jesus single out the Spirit here. Who else would think of that except Thomas?
Father Hugh Barbour:
Well, I mean, because Jesus actually attributed the sin to the Holy Spirit, against the Holy Spirit. Even though we all know it’s against all three persons, the Holy Spirit gives you the rationale why it’s particularly bad. That’s a way of teaching.
Cy Kellett:
I want you to know what I was saying was I enjoy our conversations, and because of Thomas, we have more to talk about. That’s what I was trying to say.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Exactly. I understand perfectly.
Cy Kellett:
All right. Thank you, Father.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Yeah. Saint Thomas even better.
Cy Kellett:
If your heart is maliciously hardened against the good just because it’s good, you are in a tough place. If you’re in that place where, for you, that which is good is evil and you want to attack it and bring it down and make a mess of it, you’re in a tough place. In that case, it’s God’s mercy, God’s mercy, God’s mercy. You’ve just got to turn for God, to God for mercy. But it is good to know you really can’t accidentally commit the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. You can’t do it. As always, Thomas Aquinas via our interpreter, Father Hugh Barbour, very, very helpful on this point.
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