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| "If your brother sins [against you], go and tell him his fault between you and him alone." (Matthew 18:15) |
Homily
Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 6, 2020
Saint Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
Ezekiel 33:7-9
Psalm 95:1-2, 6-9
Romans 13:8-10
Matthew 18:15-20
Some of us are old enough to remember a time when television would stop broadcasting at about one or two in the morning. The day would conclude with a brief 5-minute reflection on life offered by a local member of the clergy followed by the national anthem and then a test pattern or color bar would be displayed until the early morning awaiting the start of the new day. This was also a time before we had cycles of 24-hour news. There would be an evening newscast around the dinner hour, a second newscast at ten o’clock at night, and that would be about it.
Now, the news
is something we no longer stop to watch and listen to, it is something that is
constant; in fact, with our cellular telephones and cameras and recorders, news
has become something we make and about which we editorialize. It seems that too
many people have a video blog, not to mention a Facebook account; we have moved
from people who “have something to say” to become people who “have to say something.” What passes for communication today is the
direct delivery of partial information with inadequately formed opinion to a
set of individuals we do not really know or care about. This rings especially
true as we approach the presidential election.
In our first reading, Ezekiel does
not have to say something, but he does have something to say to his people about
whom he cares and loves. The Israelites have just returned from
exile to the Promised Land. Ezekiel the
prophet, faithful to God’s call, is trying to rebuild the shattered nation and
renew the spirit and hope of his people. He describes himself as a watchman.
Such figures were familiar to his audience; watchmen were stationed in the
hills to warn the people of approaching danger. Ezekiel’s work is to warn his
people not to forget who God is, what He has done, and what He continues to do,
so they do not fall into wickedness and sin.
Ezekiel’s
work was a bit difficult since people who have spent years away from home as
exiles tend to forget their traditions and develop new ones. They often adopt
the religious beliefs and practices of their conquerors. They become like
everybody else. The Israelites did this — they forgot the God of their
ancestors with His saving deeds and great generosity. But before we are too
quick to blame, we ought to recognize that we too often forget God. Perhaps many
of us have forgotten to teach about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ
and what Christ continues to teach throughout the previous 2,000 years of the
ministry of the Church. And in our refusal not to forget, we begin to act like
everyone else in our society and world. We forget the things we are called to
do as people of faith and what Christ has taught us through Sacred Scripture
and tradition in the fullness of the truth. We forget that we have been taught
something to say and so we fail, and we are reduced to having to say something.
In
the today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us something we must do to be part of the
community of faith. We must be attentive to our fellow pilgrims, caring about
them, helping each other to recognize and seek forgiveness of our sins. This is
a responsibility that takes kindness, patience, and imagination. It means that
we really must care about people in other aspects of their lives than simply their
political opinions or the area of their life about which we have judged them to
be in error. Advice is best offered quietly and respectfully among family and
friends as members of one Body, the Church.
We have
obligations to hear the truth, to know the truth, to tell the truth, to love
the truth, to do the truth, and to win others for the truth. We are called not
only to win arguments but to win souls. It is not only insufficient but wrong
to drop the truth on people like a cinder block on their heads. We are stewards
of the truth, not owners of the truth. The truth is not an idea, the truth ultimately
is the person of Jesus Christ. Stewardship of the truth is not part of a cancel
culture. It is not part of a culture war. It is not a rush to social media.
We give not
only reasons for the truth, but we have a responsibility to reveal the
attractiveness of the truth, to make the truth winsome, to win people over to
the truth (when we say that something is “winsome” we mean that something is beautiful
in moral quality). We reveal the truth to be winsome through persuasion. Persuasio is Latin for “through attractiveness or allure” — the
attractiveness or allure of the truth that is revealed through our love and
respect for our neighbor anchored in love for God Himself. This underscores the
critical importance of civil conversation and the art of rhetoric in political
discourse today. If “persuasion” of the winsomeness of the truth is lacking
today, we must renew our responsibility through prayer and action as Ezekiel
did, by first paying attention not only to the truth but also to our fellow
human beings in need of healing.
Think of the
important issues that are part of our civil and political life as a nation. How
do we manifest the winsomeness of the truth that human life is sacred and
should be protected from conception until natural death? How do we manifest the
winsomeness of the truth that the integrity of marriage involves exclusively
the commitment between one man and woman to permanence, fidelity, and openness
to the conception, birth, and education of children for the common good of our
society? How do we manifest the winsomeness of the truth that our gender is a
matter of our embodied sexuality and not a matter of the fluidity of political ideology?
How do we manifest the winsomeness of the truth that justice requires the right
order of the rule of law as protected through the public service of a well-formed
police force? How do we manifest the winsomeness of the truth that our laws and
their just enforcement require the consciousness that each human being of every
race and ethnicity are equal in their creation in the image and likeness of
God? How do we manifest the winsomeness of the truth that charity begins at
home but does not end there? How do we manifest the winsomeness of the truth
that we have both a social and individual obligation to the poor and sick within
our society? How do we manifest the winsomeness of the truth that gainful
employment is essential for human flourishing? How do we manifest the
winsomeness of the truth that a just immigration policy upholds secure borders
and respect for family life? It is detrimental to us spiritually if all we do
is display the ugliness of sin and the lies of falsity. We are called to
manifest fully the winsomeness of the truth in exercising fraternal correction.
Maybe
we prefer to ignore difficulties and disagreements with others because we know
that we are not perfect, we feel it is not our business, or we just do not care.
Yet, this is not what Christ asks of us in today’s Gospel. We prayed today in the Psalm response, “if
today you hear His voice harden, not your hearts.” Before we can say this to
others, we must pray this for others but only after praying it for ourselves.
If we truly are a community of faith and charity, we have no choice but to help each other understand and change destructive and sinful behavior — our own and others. The care of the Church to serve as a watchman is not just a call given to the Apostles and their successors, the bishops; it is also entrusted to every Catholic. As a call given to us it involves the delicate art of fraternal correction. Jesus counsels an incremental approach to fraternal correction because you do not fraternally correct strangers or non-believers, the tax collectors, or Gentiles of today. Fraternal correction always involves the knowledge of friendship and not simply the familiarity of celebrity. The way that we are friends with and treat one another clearly reveals how we love God in response to His love for us. That way, when we are asked to persuade others of the truth, we will have something to say and not just have to say something.”
