23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
September 10, 2023
Introduction
As most of you know, my dear mother Margaret passed away nearly a week ago after a long life lasting some one-hundred and three years. I was privileged to keep vigil with Mom in her last days, praying at her bedside. As I sat with her, especially in the night hours, memories flooded my mind and heart. I remember her talking over the fence with a neighbor, telling her that she was really getting along in years – she had just turned 40. (That neighbor, who was 34 at the time, came to Mom’s wake a few days ago). Most of all I remembered all the ways Mom expressed her love for Dad and for her sons, day in and day out, year in and year out.
Strangely enough, one of the ways she expressed her love for us was in her role as the family disciplinarian. After all, Dad was off at work and Mom was a full-time homemaker. So when I got into trouble, Mom was the court of first instance, whereas my Father functioned more like a court of appeals. Mom always got my attention when she said, “We’ll talk to your Dad about this when he gets home.” Of course, I didn’t always appreciate it when Mom corrected me, especially if she grounded me or made me do my homework over. Later on, I did begin to see that she corrected me because she loved me; because I belonged to her and was part of the family she and Dad had created; and because she wanted me to grow up to be a good person who would be free enough to do the right thing for the right reason. She wanted me to have a sense of responsibility for our family and also for others.
A Sense of Belonging and Responsibility
As it happens, today’s Scripture readings speak about the same thing. They speak about our belonging to the family of the Church, about our responsibility, one for another, in the life of the Church, and about the desire we should have to help one another along the path of salvation. With that in mind, let’s take a second look at our readings, beginning with our reading from the Prophet Ezekiel.
Ezekiel was appointed by God to watch over the people God had made his own. God chose the Hebrew people as his own possession, a people whom he loved, cherished, and guided, a people to whom and through whom he revealed himself in history. Belonging to that people brought with it responsibility. After all, the people of Israel had entered into a covenant with the Lord and the Lord had revealed to them the designs of his heart in his law, the commandments St. Paul reiterates in our second reading from Romans. So, Ezekiel was responsible, not just to regulate the life of the community, but to ensure that sinful members of the community didn’t pull others away from God. And God made it clear that he would hold Ezekiel responsible if he failed to warn evildoers in the community or try to put them on the right path. The goal here was not only peace and good order, but rather to form a people who were to be “a light to the nations”. Belonging to the Hebrew nation therefore brought with it responsibility, and Ezekiel’s disciplining of that community was a form of loving service.
Both in Gospel and in our reading from St. Paul, we encounter a new reality. From the spiritual seed of the people of Israel, God raised up a new people, a family drawn from every land, every nation, every people. Large and diverse as the family of the Church may be, it is still a family. Baptized into Christ, we have become the adopted children of our heavenly Father. This means that we are the People of God, God’s family. It also means that we belong to one another, that we are responsible for one another, and that in our daily lives, we have a common responsibility to manifest to the world the Face of Christ, the beauty and integrity of that Face on which God’s glory shone.
St. Paul in our reading from Romans gets to the nub of the matter when he writes, “Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Here, Paul is not talking about simply enforcing a code of conduct but rather building up the community by freely living lives of truth, goodness, and love. When we love authentically, when we love according to what is true and good, we not only build up ourselves as individuals but we build up the Church community, the Body of Christ, of which we are a part. Conversely, when we sin, we not only imperil our own salvation, we also risk dragging others down and besmirching the Church – which is holy in her essence but is comprised of saints and sinners. All of us, I hope and pray, are on the way to holiness, but the way to get there is to journey together in Christ, not separately.
Fraternal Correction
This brings us to the Gospel on the daily life of the Christian community. Here Jesus offers practical advice on dealing with those in the community who err. First is to speak to that person with humility and love, not to settle a personal score and not to shame or humiliate, but rather to help that person to find the way again. Often, a loving word of advice and counsel turns someone’s life around, but not always. Jesus then recommends that the testimony of one or two witnesses be sought, not only to settle the matter fairly, and not to judge the state of that person’s soul, but rather to strive for that oneness of mind and heart Jesus willed for his followers. Finally, when a member is stubbornly recalcitrant, refusing to listen and change, the Lord recommends the Church honestly recognize that such a member has separated himself from the communion of the Church. Failure by some church leaders out of a misguided sense of compassion has wounded the Church and hampered her mission. So it is that repentance and conversion are to be met with the Lord’s forgiveness, whereas unrepentant and hardened hearts remain bound in their sins.
Conversely, when the Church unites in prayer, it is powerful. “Where two or three are gathered in my name,” Jesus says, “there I am in their midst.” When we are one in Christ, our appeal to the Father is heard in the power of the Spirit. When we pray in union with the heart of Christ, then we will ask only for what strengthens us as disciples and as a community of disciples, namely, the Church. We pray not as a club of self-interested people, but rather as that family, that people, whom God has gathered together, calling us out of darkness into his own splendid light.
Just as my Mom taught me the value of correction, so too does Mother Church teach us the value and importance of correction – the correction to which each of us, myself included, must submit ourselves, but also the fraternal correction which should be practiced in the Church’s life. This is how in the practical order we love one another in Christ, how we express the fact that we belong to one another, and how we lovingly help one another along the path of redemption. And may our Redeemer bless us and keep us always in his love.