Mass Readings:

  • Ezekiel 33:7-9
  • Romans 13:8-10
  • Matthew 18:15-20

There is a sentence which, in modern life, often passes for a virtue: “It is none of my business.” It can indeed be a wise principle. We have all encountered the person who cannot resist commenting on another's marriage, children, finances, faith or failings. There is a kind of interference which masquerades as concern but is really little more than curiosity dressed in respectable clothing. Yet the Christian cannot always retreat behind the comfortable excuse that another person's life is none of his concern. Sometimes love requires us to speak. Sometimes silence is not discretion but cowardice. The readings this Sunday place before us the difficult question of fraternal correction: when should we intervene in another person's life, and when should we have the humility to remain silent?

The Watchman Who Must Speak (Ezekiel 33:7-9)

The first reading takes us into the turbulent world of the prophet Ezekiel. Jerusalem has fallen; its inhabitants have been carried into exile in Babylon; and the people are struggling to understand why God has permitted such catastrophe to overtake the city and the nation. Ezekiel explains that God has not abandoned His covenant. Rather, it is the people of Israel who have repeatedly abandoned their Lord. The prophet therefore receives an unusual responsibility. He is appointed as a watchman over Israel. The image is important. A watchman does not create the danger. He does not punish those who are endangered. He does not even possess the power to force them to change their course. His task is simpler and, in some ways, more difficult: he must see the danger and warn those who are in danger. If he refuses to warn them, he becomes responsible for his silence. If he warns them and they refuse to listen, their responsibility remains their own. There is a significant distinction here. God does not tell Ezekiel, “Go and condemn the sinner.” He tells him to warn him and to try to bring him back from his waywardness.

That distinction should accompany every Christian attempt at correction. The purpose of correction is not to establish that I am right and the other person is wrong. It is to give the other person an opportunity to return to the right road. And that immediately places a limit upon our enthusiasm for correcting everybody around us. Ezekiel is not simply a man who happens to notice other people's sins. He has been appointed as a watchman. His responsibility comes from a particular vocation. Not every sin we notice is therefore an invitation to intervene. Not every moral fault we discover in another person constitutes a personal duty to correct him. Christian charity requires not only courage but also discernment.

Love Is the Measure (Romans 13:8-10)

This is where St Paul provides the indispensable principle. Having spent much of the Letter to the Romans explaining the mystery of God's saving work, Paul turns towards the practical consequences of Christian faith: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” It is difficult to imagine a more important sentence for understanding today's Gospel. The Christian law is fulfilled in love. Consequently, even the difficult duty of correcting another person must be governed by love. The Greek word behind Paul's teaching is agapē: not merely affection, sentiment or personal liking, but the deliberate willing of another's true good. Christian love is capable of saying something difficult precisely because it seeks something greater than the immediate comfort of the relationship. Yet this also means that correction without charity is a contradiction. One can tell another person the truth while secretly enjoying the humiliation which the truth causes. One can expose another's sin while being far more interested in demonstrating one's own righteousness than in helping the sinner repent. One can even invoke the Gospel as a respectable justification for an act of revenge. But that is not Christian correction. It is moral vanity.

The Gospel's Art of Correction (Matthew 18:15-20)

Matthew gives us perhaps one of the most delicate pieces of practical wisdom in the New Testament: “If your brother does something wrong, go and have it out with him alone, between your two selves.” Only afterwards, if necessary, are one or two others brought into the matter. Only after further failure is the matter brought before the Church. This progression is striking. At every stage, Jesus is attempting to preserve the dignity of the person who has sinned while giving him an opportunity to repent. The first movement is private. How different this is from our contemporary appetite for exposure. We live in an age in which the discovery of another person's fault can become an invitation to public denunciation. A private failing can quickly become material for a conversation, a post, a public accusation or a campaign of moral outrage. Christ's method is slower and less gratifying: “go to him alone”. The reason is simple: the purpose is not to expose him but to recover him. The surrounding chapter makes this even clearer. Jesus has already spoken of the danger of causing others to sin; He has spoken of the shepherd who rejoices after finding the one lost sheep; and immediately after today's passage He will speak about the extraordinary obligation to forgive. The entire discourse is therefore concerned with how to respond to sin. The principle might be expressed simply: resist sin, but do not cease to love the sinner. Indeed, when Matthew later speaks of the sinner becoming “like the pagan or the tax collector”, this is not a licence for personal vengeance. Even the most serious disciplinary action is ultimately ordered towards the good of the Church and the conversion of the sinner. Exclusion is an ultimate measure, not the Christian's first instinct.

So when does the duty to correct another actually arise? Catholic moral theology has generally approached the question with considerable prudence. There must first be a genuine need on the part of the other person; there must also be a reasonable moral possibility that our intervention will actually help. That second condition is often neglected. Not every person is in a position to correct every other person. Someone struggling seriously with the same fault may have little credibility in correcting another. Someone whose temperament makes him incapable of distinguishing grave wrongdoing from minor imperfection may need to cultivate humility before assuming responsibility for the moral lives of others. There is also a danger of scrupulosity. A person can become so preoccupied with the sins of others that he imagines himself responsible for correcting everyone he encounters. But no Christian has been appointed universal inspector of human souls. Nor should one correct merely to silence one's own conscience: “At least I told him.” That can become another form of self-centredness. The real question is not whether I have discharged an obligation, but whether my intervention is likely to serve the good of the person concerned. And finally sometimes the most charitable response is not to speak but to wait, to pray, to seek advice from someone wiser. The Christian must therefore possess not merely courage but prudence, humility and tact.

The Quiet Beginning of Grace

On the coming Tuesday the Church will celebrate the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. At first sight, the feast might seem unrelated to today's demanding teaching about correction and responsibility, but in fact, it offers a beautiful key to understanding it. Mary's birth was a small and hidden event. No earthly ruler needed to know that a child had been born. No political power was altered that day. Yet within that apparently insignificant beginning God was preparing the Mother of His Son and, in Christ, the Mother of the Church. God's greatest works often begin quietly.

There is something profoundly Marian, therefore, about the first instruction Jesus gives concerning a sinner: “Go and have it out with him alone.” The Christian does not begin by making a spectacle. He begins quietly. He approaches the other person not as a prosecutor but as a brother. He does not seek the satisfaction of being proved right. He seeks the miracle of another person's conversion. Mary herself embodies this disposition. At Cana she notices the absence of wine before anyone asks her to intervene. Yet even there she does not take control of the situation. She simply brings the need to Christ: “They have no wine.” And then she tells the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” That is an excellent image of Christian responsibility. To notice another's need, to care about it, to bring it before Christ, and then to allow Christ to act. The Church therefore does not call us either to meddle in everyone's life or to retreat into indifference. She calls us to something much harder: to become people capable of loving another person enough to speak when speech is necessary, and humble enough to remain silent when silence is wiser. The watchman must warn. But he is not the judge. The Christian must sometimes correct. But he must never forget that he too lives by mercy. And perhaps that is the deepest lesson of today's readings. The purpose of Christian correction is not to win against the sinner. It is to win the sinner back. For where there is genuine charity, there is still hope of reconciliation. And where even two or three gather in the name of Christ, there He promises to be among them.

Fr. Dominik Domagala acquired a Master's in History of Liturgy and obtained a Licentiate in Sacred Scripture at St Patrick’s College in Maynooth. His main interests concern the OT and Books of Maccabees. He is the author of “The Social Sermon” blog on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Check out more at the website: thesocialsermon.com