23rd Sunday Year A, 2023

 

(Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20)

 

Dear fellow Catholics and Christians I must make clear for you today that our Gospel reading was written by St. Matthew for his Jewish-Christian community of the first century.  The general guidance given there is for all Christians; but the detailed and specific procedures quoted by St. Matthew were given by Jesus to Jews who, as a nation, had been prepared by God for some two thousand years in order to be able to understand and practically appreciate that teaching.  Such formal details were not intended by Jesus -- indeed are hardly possible and most certainly not obligatory -- for Catholics and devout Christians in our modern, sinful and adulterous, societies.

Let us first of all have a look at what I have just called the ‘general guidance’ for all Christians and basic to Christian morality:

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.

Such was Jesus’ consistent attitude in such matters: don’t let things fester, have it out in the open; if possible, put it right without delay, with all honesty and humility.  

Such an attitude and such a solution was possible for meticulous former Pharisees or Sadducees – Matthew’s suggested Church congregation – who’s emotions were closely geared with their legal minds; and Scripture gives us the supreme example of Saint Paul literally following Jesus’ teaching by openly rebuking Saint Peter for dissimulation (Galatians 2:11-15)!

Nevertheless, for today, when people’s emotions are much more free-ranging and for immediate self-expression, it is not likely to be a generally accepted or acceptable procedure.

Jesus, however, had a much more comprehensive teaching than that specified by St. Matthew for his Church congregation; it is a teaching that Jesus committed to Saint Peter for the future Church of which he, Peter, would be the chosen head; a teaching which totally eliminates grudges nourished or retaliation planned for harm thought to have been done:

If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your  Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew 6:14-15;  cf. 18:22-35)

That truly radical, unique, and even still today, most astounding, demand of Jesus as regards fraternal charity among His disciples, made in those words for St. Peter’s personal  guidance, develops teaching first mentioned in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: revenge is not allowed, and if cherished is unforgiveable, for all believers in Jesus.

Think on that, dear People of God, for all gangs feed on revenge; even world-wide religions allow their supporters to practice, and pride themselves on, vengeful justification of their faith; and ‘little men’ and ‘poisoned women’ of our modern world, like to think of getting-their-own-back for offences real or imagined.

Today’s words of Saint Paul -- our Blessed Lord’s gift-to-the-nations --  are most relevant here:

            Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another.

For Christian society, such love is  both the foundation and the fulfilment of the Christian way of life, as  St. Paul teaches the nations:

For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function; so we, who are many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another. 

Love is the fulfilment of the law.  (Romans 12:4-5; 13:10)

I cannot now go on to talk with you about the nature and beauty of that  Christian love, but nevertheless we have already, dear People of God, revealed a panoramic view of the wonder of our Catholic (for precision’s sake!) faith: the power and strength, the beauty and holiness, the life-bestowing goodness and soul-cleansing truth, of God’s fatherly love for us in Jesus!

Before closing, however, let me just take-up for you that expression ‘fatherly-love’, because our first reading from the prophet Ezekiel told us of God insisting on a moral duty for Ezekiel himself that concerns all Christian parents.

As Christian parents whose marriage is dedicated to God, any children they may have are regarded as gifts from God to be loved, nurtured, and brought up for His glory and their ultimate salvation and blessing.  For that purpose Catholic and Christian parents have authority over their children which is God-given and which no government can negate; an authority before men which also begets a responsibility before God, because He has appointed them as watchman for the house of God which is their Catholic and Christian family home.  May their exercise of that personal God-given authority and power-for-good be for them a most loving work, joyful privilege, and life-long cause of heart-felt gratitude.