As a deacon I’ve conducted my share of marriage preparation sessions over the years.As you might expect, most are enjoyable. After all I’m helping two people as they prepare to take what will likely be the most important step of their lives. They’re in love, with stars in their eyes, and they’re very happy because they haven’t a clue about what marriage will demand of them in the years to come.
I tell them many surprising things. For example, when I ask, “What’s your greatest responsibility as a husband or wife?” I get some strange answers. And when I tell them it’s to aid in the eternal salvation of their spouse, I get some even stranger looks.
Every so often, though, during one of these sessions, something unpleasant would arise. I’ll never forget one young bride, a local girl with a large extended family in our little town. When I suggested her wedding would no doubt be attended by a large contingent of her relatives, she said: “Oh, no, deacon, my mother hasn’t spoken to any of her family since her marriage 25 years ago. She won’t let me invite any of them.” When I asked why, she said, “Oh, I really don’t know, something personal, I guess. It was a long time ago.”
How extraordinarily sad! None of the many aunts and uncles and cousins, not even the bride’s grandmother, would share in the celebration of this young woman’s marriage…and all because of some foolish reasons that have long been forgotten. For a quarter-century a family was torn apart because no one forgave, because no one asked for forgiveness, because a family never came together to pray for unity, because no one tried to correct the sinner. And yet they all attend Mass on Sunday and pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”Don’t they realize what they’re saying? Don’t they know they’re telling God not to forgive them of their own sinfulness? Later, when I brought up the subject to the bride’s mother, she just turned and walked away. Talk about a “hardened heart.” What bitterness. Just consider how that lack of forgiveness poisoned an entire family, and how it will likely drew in another family, that of the groom.
If a wedding won’t bring them together, what will? Perhaps a funeral. Sometimes it takes death to wake people up. Sometimes it takes the tears of grief to wash away the sins of the past.
Of course, such things aren’t restricted to the human family; they also affect our spiritual family. The “God of peace” gathers the Christian community together, and because it is Christ who “is Himself our peace,” the life of the Church, like the life of any family, must be marked by a continual quest for peace and unity.
When the risen Jesus appeared to the Apostles, He said, “Peace be with you.” And St. Paul, in his Letter to the Philippians, promised that “the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Now they weren’t talking about some utopian ideal, some fuzzy peace way out in the future. No, they meant peace and unity fully realized in the here and now. After all, the Church is already the Body of Christ.
And so in today’s passage from Matthew we see Jesus addressing His Church, telling us that peace and unity should be its natural state. When this peace is disturbed, Jesus tells us, the one intolerable attitude is indifference; we must seek reconciliation. This applies to the universal Church, the local church of our diocese, and to the parish church, the church that comes together as a community of worshipers, listening to and living out God’s Word and fed by the miraculous gift of the Eucharist. It also applies to the domestic church, the family.You see, the Church is essentially and fundamentally holy at the very center of her being. She’s utterly immaculate in her deepest identity as the Bride of Christ whom, as Paul reminds us, the Son washed clean with the blood of His Cross. “Christ loved the Church,” Paul wrote, “and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her… and present the Church to Himself…holy and without blemish.”
Of course, while on this earthly pilgrimage, the Church exists as a community of sinners – and that’s us. It’s within us where the struggle is waged, the struggle between the impulse of the Holy Spirit and that of the evil one. And sometimes we hide from the truth and cave to the evil one. But when the truth is set aside, peace and unity leave with it.
Today far too many people reject the very notion of truth, preferring to view the world in relativistic terms. As Pope Benedict reminds us, “We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires.” The result is a moral vacuum, a chaotic mindset and lifestyle in which anything goes, a make-believe world where nothing is evil and nothing is good, a world where sin is rejected.Ah, but the world can’t just wish sin away, can it? Because it’s there, as big as ever…rationalized, disguised, sometimes even glorified, but it’s still sin. Yes, Jesus knew all about sin. He readily called a sin a sin, never hiding the truth. Indeed, He speaks often of sins and sinners, just as He does in today’s passage from Matthew.
Here He reminds us that we sin against God, and also against one another, against our brother. His use of the word “brother” is significant because in the Church we’re called to see one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, as children of the one heavenly Father and one Mother, the Church.
But correction can be tricky, can’t it? Our own motives can get in the way. Some people correct others simply because they’re busybodies. Some enjoy putting others down, thinking this will make them look better by comparison. Others focus only on their own hurt and are really looking for payback. Yes, judging another isn’t easy, which is why Jesus instructs us first to speak to the other person privately, without an audience. The true disciple, you see, always intervenes out of love – out of a love for God, and out of love for the sinner himself. As St. Paul tell us, “…restore him in a spirit of gentleness.”
And if the sinner refuses to listen…? “If he does not want to listen to the Church, let him be to you like a Gentile or a tax collector.” This might sound harsh to our 21st-century ears, but the Jews of Jesus’ day readily understood what Jesus meant. And Paul echoed this when he wrote, “If anyone refuses to obey what we say in this letter, note that man, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. Do not look on him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.”
Just like Ezekiel in our first reading, who was given the responsibility to remind people of their sinfulness, we too are called to be prophets. We are all called to bring God’s Word to His people. We are called to reconcile with love, to remind the sinner that he, too, is a child of God, a God that loves him and wants him united with the Church.
Are you a prophet in your own family? Do you have a wayward child? Are you thinking, “But he never listens, so why bother?” The answer is simple. Because God commands it. Never give up, brothers and sisters. After all, God doesn’t. As a parent, there is no better, no more deserving object of your prayers.
And remember, too, we are all sinners in need of reconciliation, and before we judge others too harshly, let’s look first at ourselves, and be willing to accept the correction of others. See in the love of those who care about the state of our souls a sign to us of God’s love; a plea to turn away from sinfulness and to lives of holiness. As Paul reminds us in today’s second reading, we owe a debt of love to our brothers and sisters, and real love always seeks to lead others to salvation.
May God's peace be with you always.
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