Twenty-third Sunday: Challenge in Community

Sep 05, 2014

23rd Sunday of Ordinary
Time (Year A)
Readings: Ezekial 33, 7-9;
Romans 13:8-10;
Gospel: Matthew 18, 15-20

As if particularly sensitive to the demands of Christian community life, the readings from the Lectionary’s Cycle A this month provide contrasting sets of virtues and vices that foster and destroy relationships. Willingness to communicate and forgive enhances a common life of faith. Jealousy and envy, as we will see in subsequent weeks, rip communities apart.

Community life, whether in a family, intentional groupings, religious congregations, or the Church itself, is the great testing ground of faith. St. Teresa of Avila thought that relationships in community were often a greater indication of one’s relationship to God than the heights of mystical prayer.

An activist like Dorothy Day was wise enough to see that injustice and exploitation were as present in small service communities as in political empires.

And Jean Vanier, as committed to marginal people as anyone might be, has often observed that it takes greater charity and humility to get along with a co-laborer than with a handicapped stranger.

Paul reminds his Roman audience that love, tested in immediate relationship with our neighbor, is the fulfillment of all laws. Even dramatic sins of adultery, murder, and stealing are variations of the more domestic betrayals of deception, manipulation, and egotism.

In each case it is a lack of love, a harming of the neighbor, that occurs. This is why our one duty, our sole “debt,” is to love one another. Today’s Gospel provides a practical scenario on community relations: “

If your brother should commit some wrong against you, go and point out his fault, but keep it between the two of you. ... If he does not listen, summon another, so that every case may stand on the word of two or three witnesses.”

Only after these careful encounters is the conflict to be referred to the entire Church. Then, if recalcitrance persists, there is separation.

Sounds simple enough.

The problem is, it depends upon behaviors that do not come easily. We don’t often enjoy directly confronting another person, especially someone with whom we are having difficulties.

Some families will go years before addressing a problem. Grudges or resentments within a community more often die with those who hold them rather than come to resolution in quiet conversation. Misdeeds of friends or relatives are usually discussed with anyone but the accused.

Encountering the truth with another person daunts us because it makes us face another being who cannot be reduced to our own desires or projections. We may try to make others a function of our egos, but it fails. Rather than enter the struggle, we ignore it.

If, however, we seriously love another person as an “other,” and not a mere instrument of our wills, we experience the ,kind of self-transcendence that is required in our relationship to God.

Is it any wonder, then, that what we bind and loose on earth is somehow bound and loosed eternally? Our human relationships mirror our relationship with God. Whenever we encounter each other — not only in prayer — Jesus is in our midst. --By Fr John Kavanaugh, SJ

Thoughts of the Early Church

If your brother or sister listens to you, you will have won that person back.
The Apostle says: “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”

You will be doing everything for the glory of God if, when you leave this place, you make yourselves responsible for saving a brother or sister, not just by accusing and rebuking him or her, but also by advising and encouraging, and by pointing out the harm done by worldly amusements, and the profit and help that come from our instruction.

You will also be preparing for yourself a double reward, since as well as greatly furthering your own salvation, you will be endeavoring to heal a fellow member of Christ’s body. It is the Church’s pride, it is the Savior’s command, not to be concerned only about our own welfare, but about our neighbor’s also.

Think to what high honor you raise yourself when you regard someone else’s salvation as a matter of extreme importance. As far as is humanly possible, you imitate God himself, for listen to what he says through the prophet: “Whoever leads another from wrong to right will be as my own mouth.”

In other words, “Whoever tries to save those that are negligent, and to snatch them from the jaws of the devil, is imitating me as far as a human being can.” What other work could equal this? Of all good deeds this is the greatest; of all virtue this is the summit.

And this is perfectly reasonable. Christ shed his own blood for our salvation; and Paul, speaking of those who give scandal and wound the consciences of people seeing them, cried out: “Because of your knowledge a weak brother or sister is destroyed—someone for whom Christ died!”

So if your Lord shed his blood for that person, surely it is right for each of us to offer at least some words of encouragement and to extend a helping hand to those who through laxity have fallen into the snares of the devil.

But I am quite certain that you will do this out of the tender love you bear your own members, and that you will make every effort to bring your neighbors back to our common Mother, because I know that through the grace of God you are able to admonish others with wisdom. -- By John Chrysostom (c.347-407)