Loving by correcting and correcting by loving

Wednesday in the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Cycle I

Dt 34,1-12; Mt 18, 15-20

Last week we heard the news of Pope Francis asking a religious order to stop offering euthanasia to patients in their psychiatric hospitals. One of the comments that I read said, "Where is the mercy that the Pope preaches when he corrects the religious brothers in this way?" Clearly, we sometimes confuse being merciful with not correcting others. Yesterday our Cardinal Sean O'Malley fittingly issued a warning about the unhappy events that have happened among us over the weekend.

Today's Gospel is precisely about this: correcting one another, something that some Christian authors have called correctio fraterna, brotherly and sisterly correction, a practice which can be of great value for our personal growth and the growth of the community.

We might be startled by the strong language Jesus uses. We too might ask, where is the mercy that he preaches? What about forgiveness?

First, we have to keep in mind that this particular Gospel passage comes in the 18th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew - it is far from being the first thing that Jesus mentions. It is preceded by lengthy discourses about loving one another, about forgiving, such as the Sermon on the Mount and the parable of the weeds and the wheat. Even today's three verses are sandwiched between the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the unforgiving servant. All too often however, in our relationships with each other, we tend to put the brotherly and sisterly correction as the first thing. First I try and fix you, then once you are fixed I can start loving you. Here Jesus is telling us that the order must be reversed: first I love you, then I show you your mistakes.

To show others their mistakes is in fact and act of charity in itself. We are not speaking here of wrongs that I have suffered. There is no doubt that these must be forgiven, as we pray in the Lord's Prayer: "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." If this is the only motivation for me to correct others, then I am loving myself more than my brother or sister. Rather, Jesus is referring to those shortcomings that first and foremost harm the person himself and his or her neighbour. This is true brotherly and sisterly love, especially if I know that I might not be loved for having spoken up.

Jesus here makes a step forward from the Mosaic Law in Deuteronomy, for there we read that if someone commits a sin, you must warn him in front of the community, while here Jesus says that the first step is to show him where he is wrong in private. It is only then that he invokes the witness the community, which is important as well, for the Church, that is you and I, have an important role in being witnesses of goodness and of justice, whatever the cost.

Finally, Jesus also uses the words, "treat him as a Gentile or a tax collector." We must not understand these words negatively, for we all know very well how Jesus treated with such patience and love the Gentiles and the tax collectors. Matthew himself was a tax collector, whom Jesus, on having mercy on him, so called him.

The Lord, present among us as we strive to love one another continues to support our efforts to help bring his Kingdom here on earth.