23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – September 10, 2017
I
–If you do not dissuade the wicked from his way, I will hold you responsible
for his death.
R
–If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
II
– Love is the fulfillment of the Law.
A
– God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ and entrusting to us the
message of reconciliation.
G –If
your brother or sister listens to you, you have won them over.
+ Our readings today have to do with the very real influence
that we are meant to have on one another’s lives. “No
man is an island!” This is not just some “cute” saying: a thoughtful slogan
from the side of a coffee cup – this is an essential and vital life principle
that cannot be sidestepped, ignored or turned into a nursery rhyme.
We were programmed by our
Creator, who is also our God and Father, to live in tandem with other people.
We are meant to depend on one another as fellow pilgrims on an adventurous trek
through the highways and byways of human life.
The utter dependence that we
have before we are even born on our mother, having come into existence by the
wonderful cooperation of our mother, our father and God, is just the beginning:
once we are launched into a solo captaining of our own unique lives, the
dependence is transferred not only from our mothers, and father and God, but
also to the community of brothers and sisters of the human family who happen to
be on the planet the same time we are. We are meant to have influence on one
another!
So, the first reading from the
Prophet Ezekiel confirms this idea, if not introduces it in a formal sort of
way scripturally: if we see a brother or sister, a mother or a father, a
friend, acquaintance or indeed a perfect stranger: driving his life willy-nilly
toward the cliff having a bottomless pit when the road ends, then if we do not
try to flag him down by example and words, signs and encouragements: then we
are responsible for his soul, we are accountable, “we are our brother’s
keeper”!
This only makes sense.
The second reading from Paul’s
letter to the Romans puts it adjacently by saying that “what we owe others is
love” – and this does not mean Hollywood sentimental clap-trap: it means
decisions to go out of our way to see that the basic needs of human existence
are watched out for and supplied, wherever necessary, or just to give a
neighbor or stranger a helping hand, a willing ear, a shoulder to cry on when
we can.
In the gospel passage Jesus
gives a plan on what to do when we are wronged by a brother or sister, mother,
father, boss, teammate or friend: we must, since we are responsible to at least
let him/her know of their out-of-line words or deeds, we must first then
confront the person, in person, face-to-face (if at all possible), it this does
not cause a change of attitude or behavior, then we must take someone with us
and do a second confronting,
if this does not work, then we
must take it to a public forum, either a “church forum” if it is a moral issue,
or even a civil one. If this process does not work, then we can say: “I have
done my part!” “I did all that I can do!” And then we can pray that perhaps
someone else can get through, or that “light will dawn later on” by our
initiating the process at a previous time.
With what is going on in our
nation at this time, with errant brothers and sisters, congressmen, women, and
even presidents – it is our duty to sound the alarm, contact those who have
even greater influence than we to see that justice and right and truth and
compassion rule –
and we can pray – that
everything will indeed work out the way God has planned it all along: he does
bring great good out of great chaos and the hurricanes and earthquakes both
physical and spiritual that plague and attack us.
Thank you, Lord, for coming to
earth to warn us to be good, to be just, to be loving, to look out for the
needs of others rather than our own.
You did go over the cliff for
us, on the Cross, to save us all from certain doom and death!
Thank you, thank you, thank
you! Our Lord, our God, our Brother and our KING!
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