Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP

Have I blasphemed against the Holy Spirit? (Mark 3:28-30)

Published on January 26, 2026January 10, 2026 by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP1 Comment

Before we reflect on this passage… Let’s pause for just a moment. Not to get something right, but to arrive.

Wherever you are right now—tired, distracted, open, resistant—just notice.
This is where God is meeting you…. You don’t have to fix or improve it.

Scripture doesn’t speak to an ideal version of us. It speaks to us right where we are….

So as you read the Scripture passage, see if you can let the words land not in your mind first, but in your heart… in the place where you actually live.

“Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”
Mark 3:28-30

“I’m afraid I’ve committed blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and I’m going to hell.” With trembling heart, very good Catholics have confided this fear quietly to me. For whatever reason—and there could be many—their minds have zeroed in on this phrase of the Gospel and it has taken over the spiritual horizon of their hearts.

Maybe… Maybe I’ve done it, and I don’t know… I’m afraid there is no place for me in heaven…

The image accompanying this Gospel reflection is an image of Jesus’ most sacred, most gentle, most loving Heart. We cannot look upon the wounded heart of Jesus without encountering a love that is so completely human and entirely divine.

The fear, though, of accidentally saying something that irredeemably erases the chance of eternal salvation frightens away any confidence of this love.

So, what do these words of Jesus really mean?
What is one way you can know for sure you have not committed blasphemy against the Spirit?
How do you live with the knowledge that you are loved and are a beloved child of God who will never let you go?

I’d suggest that the answer is simple and profound: truth.

First, we must define what is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. The Catechism states:

“Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss (CCC 1864).

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is to refuse God’s mercy. It is a refusal to repent of sin. God does not bring anyone into his kingdom against his/her will.

This would indicate that Jesus was not talking about stray comments that might have been made by accident. He is not talking about speech at all. Blasphemy against the Spirit is a deliberate choice to reject God and to refuse to repent of this.

As St. John Paul II explained in his 1986 encyclical letter Dominum et Vivificantem: “‘Blasphemy’ does not properly consist in offending against the Holy Spirit in words; it consists rather in the refusal to accept the salvation which God offers to man through the Holy Spirit, working through the power of the cross” (no. 46).

It is impossible to do this by accident and without knowing it. In fact, if you are concerned about it, that itself is a sure sign that you haven’t rejected God!

People can feel they haven’t been forgiven by God and their minds can grab on to this statement of Jesus for any number of reasons: emotional, psychological, poor catechetical or spiritual formation being a few of these. These can be causes for not feeling God’s love, but we already know that much of the time our feelings don’t tell us the truth. It could be that speaking with someone who can help us navigate some of these personal realities on a human level can open us to a greater experience of God’s love for us.

We can be absolutely certain that Jesus has forgiven us by the Blood of his cross. In Christ we find the infinite and eternal God who has loved us so much that he offers us a share in his Triune life. He has “loved us to death,” truly, in every sense of that word! Could a love like that be unwilling to forgive us when we are repentant?

We can grow in confidence in this love by encountering Jesus in the sacraments, in prayer and meditation, by nourishing our mind and heart on really good spiritual books, and through helpful and clarifying conversation with others.

Image credit: Photo by RDNE Stock project

I invite you into this space that is very vulnerable. A place in our hearts that is longing for belonging and love, but maybe has learned, somewhere along the way, that belonging and safety had to be secured by getting everything right. Or perhaps was wounded when it encountered a wall instead of an open door of hospitality and acceptance. So it watches, worries, and clings to certainty.

Many of us carry inside a frightened, vigilant part that is always scanning for danger—Have I done something wrong? Have I gone too far? Am I still safe? For some, that part fixates on Jesus’ words about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and turns them into a looming threat rather than a revelation of mercy.

If you notice this place within you, do not fight it or try to change it. Treat it as you would a frightened child. Compassion. Presence. Mercy.

We can say, I see you how afraid you are. That you’re desperately trying to keep things perfect so that I will be safe.

Now just sit quietly. Tell God: “I need you now. Right here. I don’t understand. I want to trust you with my heart, but I’m afraid of what I’ve done or who I’ve been.” Tell God what you feel: longing, uncertainty, shame, threatened, vulnerable….

Begin to make room for a deeper truth to be heard: you are already being sought, already being held, already being forgiven.

“I Will Go Unto the Altar of God”

Published on January 19, 2026January 10, 2026 by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSPLeave a comment

One of the most spiritually life-giving verses of the Bible for me comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans: “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!'” (8:15)

Slavery. Fear. Adoption. Abba!

Slavery—powerlessness, punishment, constriction, working for another, having nothing of one’s own—not even one’s own body…

Fear—to “fall back into fear” is to face the acknowledgement that there is no future, there is no hope, there is no belonging, only loss and despair…

Adoption—the “Spirit of adoption”: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (8:14). “So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Galatians 4:7).

Abba! Father!—The cry of the soul that has touched the utter loving reality of God’s being toward her, for her…. The exclamation at being saved and hidden now with Christ in God…. The song that issues from a heart that desires—at all times and in all things—to bend low in trusting worship.

Dietrich von Hildebrand turns our eyes to the Liturgy where we learn this loving reverence through immersion: “The Liturgy is penetrated more than anything else by the spirit of true reverence. It is deeply permeated by the fear of God, by the cum timore et tremore (with fear and trembling), and at the same time by the consciousness that we are sons of God, in which we cry out ‘Abba, Father!’ It is full of the spirit of servire Domino in laetitia, of serving God in joy.”

In the Liturgy of the Hours, the Church prays a psalm at the beginning of each day which vividly “presents before our mind our own nothingness before God’s majesty, our absolute dependence on Him, [as well as] the fact that we belong to Him.”

The Lord is God, the mighty God,
the great king over all the gods.
He holds in his hands the depths of the earth
and the highest mountains as well
He made the sea; it belongs to him,
the dry land, too, for it was formed by his hands.

Come, then, let us bow down and worship,
bending the knee before the Lord, our maker,
For he is our God and we are his people,
the flock he shepherds. (Psalm 95)

The Mass is also pervaded with this reverence.

The Mass is pervaded with this consciousness of “his absolute dominion, and the acknowledgment that we receive all from Him.”

“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to people of good will.
We praise you, we bless you,
we adore you,we glorify you,
we give you thanks for your great glory.”

“It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation,
always and everywhere to give you thanks,
Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God,
through Christ our Lord” (Preface I of Sundays of Ordinary Time).

“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest.”

“When these words are sung, how especially are we enveloped in the deepest reverence before God and drawn in to the true situation of the creature in relation to God.”

Its spirit is that of the “Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum, qui laetificat juventutem meam” (I will go in unto the altar of God, unto God, who giveth joy to my youth). This attitude is one which finds its expression in the “Quoniam in aeternum misericordia ejus” (For His mercy endureth forever), the “Gustate et videte quam suavis est Dominus” (Taste and see how sweet is the Lord), the “Misericordias Domini cantabo in aeternum” (I shall sing through all eternity the mercies of the Lord). Let us recall the upward glance which marks the beginning of each day, the “Deus in adjutorium meum intende, Domine ad adjuvandum me festina” (O God, come to my assistance, O Lord make haste to help me).

How much more our hearts would be nourished in the Mass if we were to step through the door of repeated words into the larger theme of reverence which pervades every prayer and posture and gesture of the Liturgy. If we were to become reverence, in a trusting worship of our Father.

Quotations from Dietrich von Hildebrand, Liturgy and Personality, Chapter Five.

Featured image: by Lupe Belmonte

The Breath of Christ in the World

Published on January 10, 2026 by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSPLeave a comment

One word has been devastating my spirit of late: “monster.” Too frequently this word is heard in civil discourse and political rhetoric as an identifier of human persons. Even when read off screen or paper, it has a quality that grates against the soul and seems unworthy of human speech.

In the Prayer Over the Offerings in today’s Mass, the Church prays: “…grant that, through this offering, we may do fitting homage to your divine majesty and, by partaking of the sacred mystery, we may be faithfully united in mind and spirit.”

A person who lives in the spirit of the Liturgy is spiritually molded into a Christ-actor in the world. Such a person immerses themself in the values the Liturgy expresses and enters with their entire being into the prayer of Jesus whose act of adoration and worship we are invited to share in.

Today’s Prayer Over the Offerings, then, is a school of humble acknowledgement of our creaturehood and dependence on the “divine majesty” to whom we owe “fitting homage.” When our relationship with God is rightly ordered, we value our fellow human beings rightly, realizing that we are in some fundamental way united with them—no better and no worse, but equally loved and sustained in life; honored to be fellow creatures who come from the hands and loving creative work of one Father, as a fellow member of the body of Christ, or potentially a fellow member in that body because of the Incarnation.

The Liturgy forms the personality, as Dietrich von Hildebrand reminds us, so that we “hear” words in their relation to value. “It is the spirit of the God-man that speaks to us in the Liturgy.” In his book Liturgy and Personality, he explores how “…the spirit embodied in the Liturgy, the spiritual molding of the man who lives in that spirit,” shapes a person’s personality. “The radical theocentrism of the liturgy,” Bishop Robert Barron states in his Foreword, “teases us sinners out of our native egocentrism and thereby prepares us to see even created values [think here, created persons who should be valued for themselves by their very existence] with fresh eyes.”

It is a reminder that the Liturgy is a school.

Through Christ himself and through us who enter that school, it is he who breathes new life into the world.

As we are formed in the Liturgy into other Christ’s, we do indeed begin to shine with light, his Light. Through our language and attitudes and worship and right standing with God and others, we can offer a world exhausted by power and aggression, the hope that the humble Christ is here, risen, alive, now, and victorious.

Every human person secretly longs to breathe his Name.

Quotations from Deitrich von Hildebran, Liturgy and Personality, Introduction.

INVITE: New Year Mini-Morning of Reflection

Published on January 4, 2026January 3, 2026 by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSPLeave a comment

There is something about the first month of the year. We’re tired. We’re transitioning into a new year. We’re facing everything that this might mean for us and our families. We’re told to make perfect resolutions for an outstanding new beginning.

What is true is this: we are in a liminal space between what has been and what will be. We might feel vulnerable, uncertain, excited but unsure.

To welcome the new, we need to say good-bye to the past with peace.
To welcome the new, we need to let go of the pressure to conform, to be perfect, to succeed.
To find our way in 2026 we can relax into a rhythm of entrustment and surrender and trust.

The new year can be cherished and welcomed, when we know we’re safe in the love God has for us. That he sees us. That he knows what we tell no one else. That he cares for us as no one else ever could.

So if that’s you, join us online Saturday morning January 17 at 9:30 to 11:00. Prayer, reflection, entrusting, surrendering, interceding, and sharing with others your desires for 2026.

Click here for free registration and link.

There Is More to Christmas (John 1:1-18)

Published on December 31, 2025August 4, 2024 by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP1 Comment

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
John 1:1-18

Jesus the Christ, the Light of the world, the true Light of the world that pushes back the powers of darkness, lives and reigns! Christmas is a once-a-year revival of the fires of love and belief that burn in our hearts that there is more than what we see.

There is more than what is on the surface.

There is more than what tears at the fabric of human decency and moral integrity.

There is God.

And God is here.

There is more to Christmas than the cultural debate about what to call these sacred days which are celebrated by many in sacred but, by many more, in secular ritual.

There is more to Christmas than the holiday sparkle and warmth and nostalgia of the music and worship and memories that form our Christian identity.

There is more to Christmas than celebrating the “birthday” of Jesus Christ.

To discover the “more,” we need to dive deep, to sink below the surface of controversy and outrage, and open up to the mystery of God-with-us-here-and-now.

The essence of Christ’s coming to earth was to remain on this earth, to be here-and-now with each person, until the end of the world. Christ Jesus is here in his Body and Bride the Church. He is here in his eucharistic presence—the very present representation of the Incarnation—in churches and chapels great and small that stand in most cities in every country, flooding the world with the grace flowing from the Holy Mass offered almost continuously across the globe.

Christ Jesus is here in you and me, who remain before the world as its conscience, reminding people here-and-now that there is a God who loves them and calls them to holiness and to live in justice and to show mercy.

Jesus is “the true light, which enlightens everyone. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.”

We should not be surprised then, if we are not recognized by the world as one of their own. Outrageous responses when culture and media blatantly counter our way of life with displays of morality that counter the Beatitudes proclaimed by Jesus, miss the mark. For we also are Christ here-and-now. We are also called to be the light that pushes back the powers of darkness and the presence of despair. We are given the role of offering our lives as Jesus on the cross. We are lifted up as a lantern to point the way, to proclaim the truth, to provide sustenance from our Eucharistic living for others who long to know their life can find meaning.

Praying with this Passage of Scripture

Lectio Divina is a way of listening to God as he speaks in his Word. It is a practice of communicating with God through Scripture and attending to God’s presence and what he wishes to tell us. In this slow and prayerful reading of the Word of God, we allow ourselves to be transformed by the Spirit who forms us into the image of Christ. There are four movements in Lectio Divina: Read (lectio), Meditate (meditation), Pray (oratio), Contemplate (contemplation).

Begin by finding a still space to pray. Breathe deeply and become quieter within. Abandon any agenda, worries or thoughts you bring to this prayer and entrust these things to the merciful care of God. Ask for the grace to be receptive to what God will speak to you through this Scripture reading. Grant me, Jesus Divine Master, to be able to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God and your unfathomable riches. Grant that your word penetrate my soul; guide my steps, and brighten my way till the day dawns and darkness dissipates, you who live and reign forever and ever Amen.

Read (lectio)
Begin by slowly and meditatively reading your Scripture passage out loud. Listen for a particular word or phrase that speaks to you at this moment and sit with it for a time.

Pray (oratio)
Read the text a third time. Listen for what God is saying to you. Speak heart to heart with God. Notice the feelings that this conversation with God raises up within you. Share with God what you notice about your response to this conversation. You may wish to return to repeating the phrase quietly and gently, allowing it to permeate you more and more deeply.

Contemplate (contemplatio)
Read the text a final time. Now be still and rest in God’s embrace. Ask God to give you a gift to take with you from this prayer. You might ask God if he is inviting you to do some action, for instance, make some change in your thoughts, attitudes or reactions, in the way you speak or how you treat others. Thank God for this gift and invitation as you conclude your prayer.

Image: Myriams-Fotos; pixabay.com

A Christmas Invitation…

Published on December 25, 2025 by Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSPLeave a comment

This Christmas, you might want to sit for a time alone, without plans and schedules and to do lists.

I invite you to let God meet you right there. That’s all. Not a big production. Just sit like Mary Joseph and ponder what is inexplicable or overwhelming in your own life right now. You have wrestled with it, trying to determine the “right” thing to do. Now just sit quietly. Tell God: “I need you now. Right here. I don’t understand. I can’t decide what to do. I want to do what’s best, but I don’t know what that is.” Tell God what you feel: angry, betrayed, sad, frightened, determined, controlling…

Then wait in spaces that are simple and unrushed, seeking the deeper love that is the foundation of everything real. Quietly say, “Yes. Just show me what you want here. And I will say yes.”