23rd Sunday
in Ordinary Time – Year A
Matthew 18: 15-20
- First reading Ezekiel 33:7-9
If you do not speak to the wicked man, I will hold you responsible for his death - Second reading Romans 13:8-10
Your only debt should be the debt of mutual love - Gospel Matthew 18:15-20
Jesus said to his disciples: ‘If your brother does something wrong, go and have it out with him alone, between your two selves. If he listens to you, you have won back your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you: the evidence of two or three witnesses is required to sustain any charge. But if he refuses to listen to these, report it to the community; and if he refuses to listen to the community, treat him like a pagan or a tax collector.
‘I tell you solemnly, whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven.
‘I tell you solemnly once again, if two of you on earth agree to ask anything at all, it will be granted to you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three meet in my name, I shall be there with them.’
A pedagogy of rehabilitation
Pope Francis
This Sunday’s Gospel passage (cf. Mt 18:15-20) is taken from Jesus’ fourth discourse in Matthew’s account, known as the discourse on the ‘community’ or the ‘ecclesial’ discourse. Today’s passage speaks about fraternal correction, and invites us to reflect on the twofold dimension of Christian existence: community, which demands safeguarding communion — that is, the unity of the Church — and personal, which obliges attention and respect for every individual conscience.
To correct a brother who has made a mistake, Jesus suggests a pedagogy of rehabilitation. And Jesus’ pedagogy is always a pedagogy of rehabilitation. He always tries to rehabilitate, to save. And this pedagogy of rehabilitation is articulated in three passages. In the first place he says: “tell him his fault, between you and him alone” (v. 15), that is, do not air his sin in public. It is about going to your brother with discretion, not to judge him but to help him realize what he has done. How many times have we had this experience: someone comes and tells us: ‘But listen, you were mistaken about this. You should change a little in this regard’. Perhaps in the beginning we get angry, but then we say ‘thank you’, because it is a gesture of brotherhood, of communion, of help, of rehabilitation.
And it is not easy to put this teaching of Jesus into practice, for various reasons. There is the fear that the brother or sister may react badly; at times you may lack sufficient confidence with him or with her. And other reasons. But every time we have done this, we have felt it was precisely the way of the Lord.
However, it may happen that, despite my good intentions, the first intervention may fail. In this case it is good not to give up and say: ’Make do, I wash my hands of it’. No, this is not Christian. Do not give up, but seek the support of some other brother or sister. Jesus says: “if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses” (v. 16). This is a precept of Mosaic law (cf. Deut 19:15). Although it may seem a disadvantage to the accused, in reality it served to protect him against false accusers. But Jesus goes further: the two witnesses are called not to accuse and judge, but to help. ‘But let us agree, you and I, let us go talk to this man or woman, who is mistaken, who is making a bad impression. Let us go as brothers and speak to him or her’. This is the attitude of rehabilitation that Jesus wants from us. In fact Jesus explains that even this approach — the second approach, with witnesses — may fail, unlike Mosaic law, for which the testimony of two or three witnesses was enough to convict.
Indeed, even the love of two or more brothers or sisters may be insufficient, because that man or woman is stubborn. In this case — Jesus adds — “tell it to the church” (v. 17), that is, the community. In some situations the entire community becomes involved. There are things that can have an impact on other brothers and sisters: it takes a greater love to rehabilitate the brother. But at times even this may not be enough. And Jesus says: “and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (ibid.). This expression, seemingly so scornful, in reality invites us to put the brother in God’s hands: only the Father will be able to show a greater love than that of all brothers and sisters put together.
This teaching of Jesus helps us a great deal, because — let us consider an example — when we see a mistake, a fault, a slip, in that brother or sister, usually the first thing we do is to go and recount it to others, to gossip. And gossip closes the heart to the community, closes off the unity of the Church. The great gossiper is the devil, who always goes about saying bad things about others, because he is the liar who seeks to separate the Church to distance brothers and sisters and not create community. Please, brothers and sisters, let us make an effort not to gossip. Gossip is a plague more awful than Covid! Let us make an effort: no gossip. It is the love of Jesus, who had embraced the tax collectors and Gentiles, scandalizing the conformists of the time. However it is not a sentence without an appeal, but a recognition that at times our human attempts may fail, and that only being before God can bring the brother to face his own conscience and responsibility for his actions. If this matter does not work, then silence and prayer for the brother or sister who has made a mistake, but never gossip.
May the Virgin Mary help us to make fraternal correction a healthy practice, so that in our communities ever new fraternal relationships, founded on mutual forgiveness and above all on the invincible power of God’s mercy, may be instilled.
Angelus 6/9/2020
GOSPEL REFLECTION
In order not to misinterpret the meaning of this passage, it is necessary to place it in its context. The whole chapter from which it is taken (Mt 18) is about the rapport between the members of the Christian community: who should be considered the first, great and small, how to avoid scandals, what attitudes to take towards one who turns away from the faith, how to develop love and promote harmony among the disciples, how often must one grant forgiveness.
Today we are invited to reflect on Jesus’ recommendations on how to recover one who failed or got lost. To understand them one has to read them in the light of the sentence that introduces it. Unfortunately, it is not reported in today’s Gospel: “Your Father in heaven doesn’t want even one of these little ones to perish” (v. 14). All that is recommended must respond to this one goal, to bring back to life those who have made or are making choices of death.
It is up to the shepherd, of course, to search for the sheep that are lost, wounded and in risk of falling into a very deep and dark ravine. However, every Christian is a shepherd of his brother. No one can say like Cain: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen 4:9).
The law of love requires a commitment to bring the brother or sister on the right path; but how to proceed insuch a delicate issue?
There is a mistake that must be avoided: gossiping, spreading the news of the error. This is defamation. Itserves only to marginalize one who did wrong and to humiliate him. It makes him increasingly stubborn in evil and to needlessly make him suffer. It is equivalent to losing forever the opportunity to recover him.
There is someone who thinks that having spoken the truth, he can put his mind at rest. But the truth is not the absolute value. Love is the reference point. The truth can object to love, can destroy the coexistence and good relations, rather than promote them. Defamation can destroy a person: “The lash of the tongue shatters bones” (Sir 28:17)—kills a brother or sister, ruins a family, breaks a relationship. How can one deny that there is wisdom in the popular saying: “Better a well said lie than an inappropriate truth?”
The truth that does not produce love, but causes anxiety, creates dissension, hatred, and resentment is a lie. One cannot tell everything that is true or everything one knows. One must not, above all, tell the truth to those who want to use it for evil. The truth that kills is evil; it comes from the evil one, “who has been a murderer from the beginning. He is a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44).
Let’s see what Jesus suggests to “tell the truth” to a brother who is in danger of being lost. The path to follow is split up into three stages.
First: one has to talk personally to the brother, man to man, face to face. Everything must be resolved in secret, to prevent someone from finding out what happened.
This first attempt is the most delicate, first of all because it is demanding and decidedly unwelcome. All prefer to confide in others rather than confront the person concerned. Then it is not easy to find the right words. One can wrongly broach the subject, an exaggerated adjective may be uttered inadvertently. Sometimes an out of place emphasis puts an end to all. If the brother is injured, he finally closes. One may have acted with the best of intentions, besides losing a friend, one also feels responsible for the failure to convert.
In this situation, today’s Second Reading offers a thought that may be helpful: to put ourselves in the same situation and try to imagine what we would want others to do for us.
If this first attempt does not produce the desired result, the second step to take is to ask for help from one or two sensible and wise brothers of the community. Never forget the goal: the recovery of the brother. One should never give the impression of cornering him or putting him in front of someone who looks for ways to convict. He must perceive that he is dealing with friends who want his good and willing to testify in front of the brothers of his good disposition.
The last stage is the recourse to the community. This can happen only when the sin committed risks to disturb the brothers and sisters, especially those who are weak in the faith. If so and the culprit does not want to amend, then he must be considered “as a heathen and as a publican.”
Taken literally, this recommendation squeals out of Jesus’ lips, who has just warned the disciples: “See that you do not despise any of these little ones” (v. 10). How is it possible that “the friend of publicans and sinners”(Mt 11:19) pronounce a very hard judgment?
If it is not understood in the right way, the phrase is strange even in the Gospel of Matthew where one oftenfinds that the Church is not composed only of saints, but also of sinners. It is a field where wheat and weeds grow. It is a net that takes all types of fish. It is a feast where good and bad are welcomed. How does one explain that the unrepentant sinners should be driven out by the community?
We do not put a phrase of Jesus at odds with the rest of the Gospel. A fact is certain: the community does not have the right to expel one of its members who behaves badly, just for the fact that it feels him like a burden, as an inconvenient item. The sinner is always a son or daughter, and no mother is ashamed of her child. However, one cannot deny that the Church has the right and even the duty to speak words of denunciation or condemnation. Jesus has given her the power to bind and to lose and has promised to ratify her decisions from heaven (v. 18).
The phrase “binding and loosing” is a well-known. It was used by the rabbis to indicate their authority to declare lawful or forbidden a certain moral behavior and to impose or revoke the exclusion from the community.
The responsibility entrusted to the Church is great. She is called to declare authentically what thoughts, feelings, choices are in accordance with the Gospel and which one moves away from Christ. She does not cast out, condemn nor punish anyone but only helps one to become aware of the condition in which everyone stands in taking certain decisions.
In the fulfillment of this delicate mission, the Church will never forget another stern saying of the Lord: “How can you say to your neighbor, friend, let me take the speck out of your eye when you can’t remove the log in your own? You hypocrite! First, remove the log from your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to remove the speck from your neighbor’s eye” (Lk 6:41-42). However, it is her duty to unequivocally declare, after being confronted with the Gospel, the one she places outside the communion with Christ and with the community.
The way to perform this service can and must change depending on the sensitivity and pedagogical concepts which—as we know—are subject to evolution through the centuries. There was a time in which they proceeded in a rather strict way: “who committed serious moral failing was removed from the community” (1 Cor 5:1-5). It was feared that ignoring or passing over in silence outrageous public behavior, and sometimes even ostentatious, would likely confuse the weaker members. So, too, if someone falsified the Gospel, he was publicly reprehended: “If anyone promotes sects in the church, warn him once and then a second time … if he still continues … expel him” (Tit 3:10). The community cannot certainly tolerate that someone, in the name of Christ preach insane doctrines.
Today these forms of excommunication are no longer practiced. The pastoral choices are different, but the goal remains the same: to enlighten the brother or sister, to help him or her realize one’s condition and get him or her to mend. “If someone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take note and do not have anything to do with him, so that he may be ashamed. However, do not treat him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother” (2 Thes 3:14-15). To achieve this result, one should be clear that the measures taken against him are dictated only by love, not by the desire to “separate him” from a community that considers herself perfect. If one can make him aware of the fact that he is no longer in full communion with the brothers and sisters in the faith, one can arouse in him a healthy nostalgia for the Father’s house and the desire and the need to return can emerge in him.
The concluding verses (vv. 19-20) are the last their midst and with him in prayer they turn to the Father. The only one who has entered in a harmony of thoughts and feelings with God and with the brothers and sisters can feel safe to interpret the mind of the Lord when “he binds” and when “he looses.”
READ: We are mandated to love our neighbors. Jesus talks of the need to be committed to the spiritual well-being of our brothers and sisters.
REFLECT: We are responsible for each other. We are accountable for the good and evil that everyone does.
PRAY: To be responsible for others is to take care and develop them. Let us ask for the grace to be more caring and compassionate. Let us pray for some persons who need conversion of heart.
ACT: Show real care for someone today rather than simply saying that we do. Identify a person who needs gentle correction, and do it respectfully and lovingly.
Fernando Armellini
Italian missionary and biblical scholar
https://sundaycommentaries.wordpress.com
Missionary Community of pastoral concern for those far off
Romeo Ballan mccj
How to teach? Why should someone who has committed a fault be admonished? In what way to correct someone who is in error? It is difficult to correct another person, and to do it well. It is easier – and happens more often – to talk to others about someone’s defects and failures; or to just humiliate them or offend them with a reproach… Why not let them stew in their own juice, without the bother of rebuking them? But what is the missionary attitude to take in such circumstances? It is very likely that the Gospel text of today on fraternal correction reflects concrete situations that occurred in the early Christian community for whom Matthew wrote this Gospel. The passage is part of what is called the ecclesiastical discourse (Mt 18), in which the Evangelist brings together several teachings of Jesus regarding relationships within the ecclesial community, based on the following steps: greatness consists in making oneself small (v. 1-5), scandal of little ones is grave matter (v. 6-11), seeking those who have wandered off (v. 12-14), fraternal correction (v.15-18), prayer in common (v. 19-20) and, finally, the forgiveness of offences and reconciliation (v. 23-25).
The objective of correction (Gospel) is to bring back and save the brother/sister who has committed a fault, or has gone astray. To make the admonition achieve its desired purpose, Jesus advises a step by step approach: first of all, at a personal level, one-on-one (v. 15); then with the assistance of one or two persons (v. 16); lastly, recourse to the whole assembly (v. 17). Even in the event that the brother/sister listens to no one, and is treated “like a pagan or a tax collector” (v. 17) it does not entail, nor does it authorise abandonment, but rather special attention towards such persons, as Jesus himself showed: he was “the friend of publicans and sinners” (Mt 11:19; cf Lk 15:1-2). The key to understanding this stubborn preference of Jesus is shown in the Parable of the Good Shepherd, who “leaves the 99 on the hillside and goes in search of the stray” (Mt 18:12). Jesus concludes the parable with a powerful statement: “It is never the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost” (Mt 18:14). This is the declaration that comes immediately before the text on fraternal correction. God desires more to forgive, and in greater haste, than a human person to be forgiven! It is indeed true that God believes that people are recoverable: this is the foundation of the hope of missionary pastoral concern for those far off; maybe with limitations and errors, but always with mercy, since this is the true face of God, which manifests itself in Christ.
God rejects the attitude of Cain who has no concern for his brother (cf Gn 4:9); indeed, He makes us (1st. Reading) watch over others (v. 7) and holds responsible whoever does not speak out “to warn the wicked man to renounce his ways” (v. 8). This is not interference in the lives of others, but a fraternal presence, inspired by love and a sincere seeking of the good of a brother/sister. Because mutual love (2nd Reading) is the only debt we should owe to others; indeed, “love is the answer to every one of the commandments” (v. 10). St. Paul lived for love of Christ and, therefore, was worried about all the churches (2 Cor 11:28), he wanted to announce to all the Gospel of Jesus and was not afraid to send strong and healthy warnings to its communities. But always with love!
Love for one another, aimed at recovering those who err, is the base on which fraternal connection is set, even with all the risks this might involve, especially when it is a matter of admonishing powerful people. The martyrdom of St. John the Baptist was the extreme consequence of a proper and courageous rebuke of an adulterer and corrupt king. Over the past few decades, especially in Latin America, there have been numerous cases of pastors and lay Catholics who have paid with their lives for their fidelity to the Gospel of Jesus, by defending the rights of the weak and denouncing the injustices of the powerful. It is obvious that today’s message does not refer just to small incidents in families or religious communities, but sheds a light on the behaviour of the Catholic (pastor or simple lay person) regarding those who are responsible for the greatest evils in society: perverse laws, social and moral degradation, grave injustices, corruption, mafia systems, public scandals, etc. In the face of these, silence and refusing to be involved would be marks of weakness, fear, cowardice and complicity.
The delicate task of mutual admonition and correction is too often omitted, as also Card. Carlo M. Martini remarks. This difficult service of fraternal correction, carried out in truth and love, becomes easier and more efficacious if it has the support of the community which lives in communion and prayer, thus enjoying the presence of the Lord, because they are gathered together in His Name (Mt 18:20). How great is the spontaneous and explosive missionary power of a reconciled and prayerful community which lives a life of fraternity.
A CHURCH GATHERED TOGETHER IN JESUS’ NAME
When one lives far from religion or has been deceived by the behavior of Christians, it’s easy for the Church to be presented only as a grand organization. A kind of «multinational» busy about defending and drawing forward its own interests. These people generally know the Church only from the outside. They talk about the Vatican, criticize the interventions of the hierarchy, get mad before certain acts of the Pope. The Church for them is an out-of-touch institution from which they live far away.
This isn’t the experience of those who feel that they are members of a believing community. For these, the concrete face of the Church is almost always their own parish. That group of personal friends who gather together each Sunday to celebrate the Eucharist. That place of encounter where they celebrate the faith and pray together near to God. That community where they baptize their children or say goodbye to their loved ones until the final encounter in another life.
For one who lives in the Church seeking in her the community of Jesus, the Church is almost always a source of joy and a motive of suffering. On the one hand, the Church is a stimulus and joy; we can experience within her the memory of Jesus, listen to his message, track his spirit, nourish our faith on the living God. On the other hand, the Church causes suffering, because we observe within her inconsistencies and routine; frequently the distance of what is preached and what is lived out is way too big; there’s a lack of gospel vitality; in many instances Jesus’ style is getting lost.
This is the Church’s greatest tragedy. Jesus is no longer loved or venerated as he was in the first communities. His originality isn’t known or understood. All too many won’t get to suspect in the least the saving experience that those first ones lived when they encountered him. We have made a Church where more than a few Christians imagine that by accepting some doctrines and fulfilling some religious practices, they are following Christ as did the first disciples.
And yet the essential nucleus of the Church consists in this: living the adhesion to Christ in community, making present the experience of those who encountered in him the nearness, the love and the forgiveness of God. That’s why maybe the most fundamental ecclesiastical text are these words of Jesus that we read in the Gospel: «Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in their midst».
The first task of the Church is to learn to «gather together in Jesus’ name». Nourish his memory, live from his presence, make real their faith in God, open up today new paths to his Spirit. When this is lacking, everything runs the risk of ending up distorted by our mediocrity.
José Antonio Pagola
http://www.gruposdejesus.com
