Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 18,15-20
Jesus said to his disciples: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.
If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’
If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.
Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Again, (amen,) I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
I am with you
1) If your brother sins: Obviously, we all sin and our attitude should be to help, not to criticize or condemn one another. You and I have that sin that we struggle with… sin that weighs us down or makes us bitter… but the key is to work hard to overcome it. You can fight against it, and confront that sin, and hopefully there will be times when you’ll be able to say “Yes! I didn’t fall this time”, but other times you’ll be sad to say you fell into the same sin again. Again, the key is to fight it. The problem is when someone sins and doesn’t care, as if they were completely indifferent to it; that’s where our attitude of helping our brothers or sisters comes in… to point out what they are not aware of (intentionally or not). But, we should not be like a football referee looking to see whether others fall or not. We can’t ask a soccer VAR (Video Assistant Referee) to see the re-play and censure it – that’s what we can’t ever do, but we must recognize that there are nosey Christians who love to meddle in the lives of others and point out their faults.
2) The community. How important it is to follow the correction steps! Talk privately with the person, face -to -face at first, pointing out the mistake with affection and closeness. The idea is to admonish a person privately to protect him from sin or to induce him to give up sin in order to build a beautiful life. This type of correction is not to destroy or trample over him. It’s essential that it should be a face-to-face talk because there are times when there’s too much gossip. Other people might find out about a person’s mistake while the last one to know about it is the person in question. That’s not fraternal correction, that’s gossip. Learn to look into the eyes of the person who is slipping up in life and isn’t aware of it. Help him because he may not see it on his own. And if he doesn’t listen to you, find someone else you know who also wishes the other person well and wants to support him. Together try to help him and try to make it clear to that person that you’re there to help, and not to rebuke him. Later, if you see that he ignores what you say and couldn’t care less what the people that are fond of him say, that’s when we should consider that he has no interest in living life the way we all want to live. If he shuts out the help of those who love him, even after having tried to help him in many different ways, then do not swim against the current because it might pull you down. In fraternal correction we must recognize that there are steps, but also limits. The limit is set by the other person, because when you have spoken to him in a thousand different ways and he shuts you out, it no longer means that he does not want to recognize his mistake, but rather, that he is well aware of it and does not want to change or amend the situation. In this case, we should pray for him and not be so arrogant as to seek a change at all costs; we have to accept that God has given freedom to each one of us so we should know how to step aside after we’ve tried to help and taken all steps in fraternal correction.
3) Communion. Jesus ends up talking about the power of communion among Christians: praying for each other as well as praying together. Our strength is in this: being together. So every Sunday we meet and we make our petitions and thanksgiving as a community. How strong Christians become when we unite for the same purpose and pray! How strong we become when in every Mass we sing and pray in the name of Jesus! That’s the potential that we must build on : we must come together to pray and sing for those around us. A praying community is the strength and light for the Church itself.
God bless you and be with you in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Remember Heaven is our goal!
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