The Holy Spirit’s Help To Love One Another and Fulfill the Law, Twenty-Third Sunday (A), September 10, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Mass of the Holy Spirit for the Inauguration of the Academic Year
September 10, 2023
Ezek 33:7-9, Ps 95, Rom 13:8-10, Mt 18:15-20

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

• At the beginning of an academic year, it’s routine to celebrate a Mass of the Holy Spirit in which we ask God the Father together with, and in the name of Jesus, God the Son, to send us God the Holy Spirit, to guide us throughout the entire year. How much we need the Holy Spirit’s gifts of wisdom, knowledge, understanding and prudence in our academic work, so that we do not merely become smarter but enlightened by the light of God. How much we need the gift of courage in so many aspects of campus life. In an age in which so many marginalize God and there are so many offenses against those made in his image and likeness in speech, social media and behavior, how much we need the gifts of reverence and fear of the Lord. Since we are not normally able to celebrate Pentecost together because it generally falls after the end of the academic year, we start the academic year by asking the Holy Spirit to come down upon us like he did upon Mary and the first Christians in the Upper Room. We ask him to help teach us how to pray, since we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. We ask him to help us to understand Sacred Scripture better, since he inspired each of its Sacred Authors and also helps us to interpret it aright through the Church. We ask him to help us to recognize the particular gifts, charisms and manifestations of the Spirit he’s given each of us are for the common good and move us to use them as he intends. We ask him to help us to learn how to live according to the Spirit, which is a summary of the entire Christian moral life, rather than according to the flesh. And we ask him to give us a tongue of fire so that, like the first Christians, we may proclaim the Gospel on campus with ardent love for God and others. As we begin this new year, we ask for all of these gifts as well as for the help we need to live by them.
• In Trinitarian theology, the Holy Spirit is normally understood as the personal love between the Father and the Son. The Father and the Son have sent him to us so that he might bring us in to the internal life of our Trinitarian God. He seeks to fill us with the fire of his love so that we might love God in return and begin to love others as God has loved us. That’s what the essence of today’s readings is all about. The love that the Holy Spirit seeks to ignite.
• Paul tells us in today’s second reading: “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Basing himself on Jesus’ words that the law and the prophets all flow from the two-fold commandment to love God with all of our mind, heart, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mt 22:40), St. Paul describes how the second tablet of the Decalogue — honoring our father and mother, sacrificing for rather than killing others, loving rather than using others for sexual pleasure, giving rather than stealing, telling the truth rather than lying, and rejoicing at others’ blessings rather than coveting what they have — can all be summed up in the phrase, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love is our duty. We owe it others. We owe it precisely God commanded us to love one another as Jesus himself has loved us. We owe it because Jesus told us that whatever we do to the least of our brothers and sisters, we do to him. And so today is a day in which we focus on how the Holy Spirit wants to perfect us in Christ-like love.
• We see that path to love in today’s Gospel in the call to communion. Love unites and hence Jesus wants our communion to be the flourishing of divine and human love. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name,” he says, “there am I in the midst of them.” If we are living in love, we will be living in communion. Jesus would say during the Last Supper, “By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (Jn 13:35) and would pray that we would be one as the Persons of the Blessed Trinity are one, so that the world would know that God the Father sent the Son and loves us just as much as he loves the Son. And so Jesus wants us to gather in his name, to pray together his name, even making the extraordinary promise that if two of us gather in his name — meaning together with his Person — to pray for something, it will be granted by God the Father. He also wants us to live together in his name, to eat together in his name, to recreate together in his name, and to do everything, whether in word or deed, in loving communion with Jesus and each other.
• In the first part of today’s Gospel, however, Jesus makes clear that he’s calling us to something far more challenging that getting together at a campfire and singing kumbaya. He gives us one of the most challenging aspects of fraternal love, one many are tempted not to fulfill: namely, his teaching on fraternal correction. Jesus directs us: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault.” He instructs us to do so first one-on-one, out of respect for the person. But if that doesn’t work, he tells us not to give up, but out of love to return with a couple of others who have observed the same fault, in the hope that the collective concern might help the person get over his or her denial or stubbornness to change. If that doesn’t work, Jesus tells us to persevere and go to the leaders of the Church, to pray for the person and to intervene with greater authority. And if that, too, is unsuccessful, Jesus tells us to treat the person as we would a tax collector or sinner, which doesn’t mean to write the person off — after all, Jesus was a “friend of tax collectors and sinners,” who drew near to them and ate with them — but to recognize that the person is not in communion and to pray for that person with the same passion with which we pray for the conversion of sinners inside and outside the Church. Fraternal correction is part of the duty of love we owe our brothers and sisters. We can’t fulfill the law of love without it.
• It’s helpful to remember that in Matthew’s Gospel, this passage is immediately preceded by Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep, that just as a shepherd will leave the ninety-nine and go in search of the stray and rejoice more over its recovery than the docility of the other ninety-nine, so God the Father’s will is that not one sheep be lost. We’re supposed to love our erring spiritual siblings the way God the Father loves lost sheep and fraternal correction is part of that love. It’s also useful to remember that right after this passage, St. Matthew tells us that St. Peter went to Jesus to ask how many times we must forgive a brother who sins against us, and Jesus replies, “not seven times, but seventy sevens,” and whether that means giving a 78th chance or a 491st chance, the point is clear: fraternal correction isn’t about winning an argument but reconciling with a brother or sister, so that, as Jesus suggests in the Gospel, we may gather again, as two or more in his name, to pray and to live in true communion, with him in our midst.
• Jesus’ words on the duty of fraternal correction have always been challenging, but they are particularly demanding today. We live in a culture, especially among the young, that thinks the greatest value is to be “nice.” Many believe that we really should never correct anyone else, because that would make us seem “judgmental,” “offensive” or “harsh.” They assert it’s important to be “civil,” to agree to disagree, to live and let live, to mind our own business, and to be tolerant of everything except the traditional Christian values that woke elements in our culture consider intolerable. But this mentality comes from a lack of lack of love, a failure of fortitude, and a shortage of seriousness about the harm sin really does. If we really care for a person, we will have the guts, love and maturity to intervene, because we know that sin wounds the individual, wounds others, and wounds the love of God. Some people try to justify a failure to live this teaching on fraternal correction by pretending that “love of neighbor” means precisely not admonishing but rather “accepting” the person and rubber stamping whatever choices the person makes. When we look at Jesus’ example in the Gospel, however, we see that, even though he was “kind and merciful” (Ex 34:6; Ps 103:8; Ps 145:8) and “meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29), he was certainly not “nice” and “tolerant” as the world uses these terms today. In last Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus called Peter “Satan” and reproved him for thinking not as God does but as human beings do. He fraternally corrected James and John when they were ambitiously seeking the choicest seats in his Messianic administration, telling them that in order to be great, they needed to become the servants, rather than the overseers, of the rest, all the way to the point of drinking his chalice of suffering. He regularly fraternally corrected the apostles, like when they were jealous of others’ casting out demons in his name. He fiercely fraternally corrected the moneychangers in the temple, whose tables he overturned and whom he whipped out of the temple for turning his Father’s house into a den of thieves. And more than anyone else, he often gave fraternal corrections to the Scribes and the Pharisees, whom he called “hypocrites,” “blind guides,” “fools,” “whitewashed sepulchers,” and a “brood of vipers.” None of these actions was “civil” or “nice.” Jesus, however, had come to save the money changers, the Scribes and the Pharisees, and Peter and the apostles; and to do that, he had to first let them know that and how they were veering from the Gospel, veering from Him, veering from love. In the same way, we have to have the courage to risk being considered uncivil or no longer nice if a brother or sister needs our help.
• When St. Paul lists the fruits of the Spirit in his letter to the Galatians, he uses two words right after each other that most us of consider synonyms. He says that when we’re living according to the Holy Spirit we are both “kind” and “good,” which are translations of the Greek words chrestotes and agathosune. Chrestotes means a goodness that is always seeking to help positively, but agathosune is a goodness that includes rebuke and discipline. Jesus showed chrestotes or kindness when he cared for the sinful woman who washed his feet with her tears in Simon the Pharisee’s house; he showed agathosune when he cleansed the Temple. The Holy Spirit seeks to bring about in us the same, interconnected Christ-like chrestotes andagathosune, the same kindness and courageous, loving goodness. During this Mass of the Holy Spirit, we ask for that gift!
• The failure to link agathosune to chrestotes helps us to understand a second reason why Jesus’ teaching on fraternal correction is often not followed: because some who misunderstand what fraternal correction really means have given it a bad name. They look at this teaching as a divine mandate for putting others down. Their comments and attitude are marinated in vinegar rather than in honey, motivated not so much by the spirit of God but by the spirit of jealousy, envy, and even sometimes spite. We’ve all suffered from people who are chronic complainers, incessant naggers, who really can’t say anything nice about others, who try to use the faith as a weapon to tear others apart. There are some Catholic media sites today that ooze this type of battery acid, with one negative commentary after another, almost incapable of saying anything good about anyone except those who share not just their opinions but their negativity. Jesus words in the Sermon on the Mount are an important fraternal correction here: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye” (Mt 7:3-5). Too often in life, the clearest sign that a person is a mess inside is when he or she starts criticizing everyone else; a common, unconscious psychological diversion is to try to forget about our own problems is by focusing on everyone else’s issues so that we might feel relatively better by pretending everyone else is worse. But Jesus says to all of us who have fallen into this trap that first we must take the logs out of our own eyes so that we can see clearly to help others take the specks out of theirs. Notice that Jesus does not say, “If you’ve got your own issues, don’t give fraternal correction to others, don’t help them remove whatever is blinding them.” He wants us, however, to be doing so exclusively out of love, which is why we have to notice our own failings and be working on them first. It’s when we start to see ourselves clearly that we can give effective fraternal correction, not as a hypocrite who doesn’t practice what he preaches, but as a humble fellow sinner trying to help a brother or a sister do better, uniting with him in the name of the Lord to battle sin together. It’s one sick person telling another sick person where the doctor is and how to take his medicine.
• This duty of love Jesus gives us as his disciples is a most serious obligation. What if we don’t do it? What if we don’t correct our brother or sister when we see him or her erring? What if we just wait … and wait … and wait to see if someone else intervenes? God answers those questions clearly in his words to the prophet Ezekiel in today’s first reading: “If I tell the wicked man that he shall surely die, and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked man from his way, he shall die for his guilt, but I will hold you responsible for his death. But if you warn the wicked man, trying to turn him from his way, and he refuses to turn from his way, he shall die for his guilt, but you shall save yourself.” In other words, giving fraternal correction to a brother or sister who needs it is not an optional thing we may or may not do depending upon whether we feel up to it; rather it is duty of love and a mission God gives us — and our salvation and others’ salvation depend on it. God calls Ezekiel a “watchman” for the house of Israel, someone who was tasked with keeping an eye out to protect the sheep from thieves or from wolves. We’re all called to be such watchmen. Today a better term would be a “lifeguard.” We’re called to be lifeguards for the human race. When we see others swimming in shark infested waters with those who are drawing them into evil, when we see others drowning in their own bad habits, God wants us to spring to action. To do so is to try to save lives, to be a hero, even if, at first, the person might not want to be helped. Priests and religious in a particular way are meant to be such sentinels. Despite our weaknesses, the Holy Spirit can give us what we need as we seek to carry out this duty for the love of God and others. We are our brothers’ keepers and if we see one of them astray, if we see one of them forming a bad habit, we’re called to act. Sometimes it may be good to consult someone else, like a trusted counselor, friend or spiritual director, before approaching the person discreetly, but fraternal correction is a sign of a strong Christian community. We all need each other’s help to become the saints God calls us to be. Our real friends are not those who flatter us, or who continue to “enable” us to do things we shouldn’t do, but those who tell us, in love, where and when we’re heading down the wrong track. We should see Jesus in them, patiently forming us into the person he calls us to be — and be grateful.
• I remain thankful decades later for fraternal corrections I’ve received. They weren’t snatching me from the broad highway that leads to perdition onto the narrow way leading to life, but rather about some basic human habits. When I was in seminary, for example, I used to get together with five or six other friends each night at the end of the day to wind down. I enjoyed it a lot. We had lots of laughs. One afternoon, however, one of my friends came to my room and proceeded to tell me to the point: “Rog, listen. We all love you, but when we get together, do you realize that you do half the talking? You have to let other guys speak and not give commentary on everything everyone else is saying.” It was great advice. I hadn’t even realized that that’s what I had been doing. On another occasion after ordination, in a get together with priests, one of my friends was describing what his new book was about. He said something about CS Lewis from his book that I recognized he had taken out of context. So I called attention to it, I thought nicely, just for the sake of “accuracy.” A couple of days later, another priest who was there came to me and said, “Rog, you were right in your point about CS Lewis, but you were wrong to correct Phil in the middle of a get together. At a time in which we were all praising him for the accomplishment of his first book, your comment embarrassed him and you should apologize.” He was right and I did. I remember other corrections from my spiritual director when he told me I needed a new pair of shoes, because my shoes were so worn that they were a distraction, or that I needed to get a physical since it had been close to a decade since I had seen a doctor and I needed to take better care of my health. He was right on both scores. We all need friends like that who care about us enough, in little things and big, to help us. And we all need to become those types of friends, those types of Christ-like disciples.
• Christ’s teaching on fraternal correction has a clear Eucharistic key. Jesus’ incarnation, hidden life, public ministry, passion, death and resurrection, establishment of the sacraments and institution of the Eucharist in particular, were all meant to bring about koinonia, true communion, with God and with each other. If we come to bring our gift, the sacrifice of ourselves, to the altar, but recognize that there’s a lack of communion with our brother, he wants us to prioritize the reestablishment of that communion before we come to offer our gift (Mt 5:23-24). Fraternal correction is an application of this principle and prepares us for the communion Jesus seeks to build by our becoming one with him through the reception of his Body and Blood. The same Holy Spirit who comes down upon the altar to change bread and wine into Jesus comes to change men and women into “one body, one Spirit, in Christ.” But in the Mass, the Holy Spirit also strengthens us from within with the agathosune of Christ, so that, together with him, we may more courageously and faithfully fulfill the duty of love we owe our neighbor. As we gather in the Lord’s name and midst, conscious of his promise that whenever two or more of us agree on earth about anything for which we are to pray, it will be granted by the Father, let us ask God the Father in Jesus’ name to send forth anew the Holy Spirit and fill us with all we need to become sentinels, lifeguards, brothers, true Christians and missionaries of charity, capable of living in a communion of loving fraternal correction, so that one day all of us may be reunited in that eternal kingdom where in Christ’s light we will see light, where the law of love will be fulfilled, and where our communion with God and each other will know no end.

Reading 2
rom 13:8-10

Brothers and sisters:
Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another;
for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery;
you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not covet, ”
and whatever other commandment there may be,
are summed up in this saying, namely,
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Love does no evil to the neighbor;
hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.

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