HOMILY WEEK 03 01 – Year I
Holy Spirit – Agent of Forgiveness
(Heb 9:15-28; Ps 98; Mk 3:22-30)
********************************************
There is a saying, “The stronger the sun; the sharper our shadow,” that fits the readings today, readings that contrast the sun of faith and belief, with the dark shadows of unbelief.
The author of Hebrews is very clear on the sunshine in our lives that can only be Jesus, who is the mediator of a new covenant, a new, life-giving and powerful intimate relationship with God. It is a relationship of forgiveness of all our sins, and an experience of the very life of the Trinity available to those who truly believe in Jesus, who come to him for that forgiveness, and who eagerly await his coming again.
All the covenants God made with the Israelites of old, were found wanting and inadequate. Based so much on law, ritual, and commandments to be kept conditionally but which were most often broken, they failed to transform and change the human heart. Rather, they led to a legalism and externalism that actually deadened the human spirit rather than liberate.
The new covenant was a breath of fresh air, that leads the psalmist to sing out a new song of liberation and freedom, for the Lord is victorious.
The gospel of Mark puts a focus on the end result of those old covenants – the shadow of unbelief of the scribes and Pharisees. Their reliance on the observance of even minute regulations and law over the call to love, their love of the law over the law of love, and their resistance to the love of God present before their eyes in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, compelled them to make the ridiculous claim that Jesus was in cahoots with the devil himself, a claim Jesus easily refuted.
Holy Spirit mural, St. Patrick’s Basilica, Freemantle, AU
What is worse is that, as Jesus points out, refusal to believe in him and his Spirit, who is the agent of forgiveness, leads one down the blind alley of being unable to receive the forgiveness offered by the very same Spirit. That becomes the unforgiveable sin of the scriptures. When one refuses to believe in the agent of forgiveness, one closes one’s self off from being able to receiving that forgiveness, and so one is stuck in the doldrum of unbelief, dark, shadowy and unforgiven.
How fortunate we are to have been given the gift of faith in Jesus as the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior and Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, who freely gives a share in the eternal life he shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit to those who believe in him and await his return.
The Eucharist is an act of faith in Jesus as living Word and sacrament. Even as we celebrate, we are sharing in his forgiveness and healing, free to enjoy a quality of life he alone can give, a life lived in the light of love and far from the shadows of the false pride and self-reliance of the scribes and Pharisees.
