Untitled Homily (2)

23rd Sunday A

Welcome back after a long Summer break. We left off on the 13th Sunday of Year A, at the end of the Mission Discourse. You You might remember from an earlier catechesis that Matthew organizes his gospel around five discourses. First, his new law, the Sermon on the Mount, Then the mission discourse, which we already covered. Over the summer, we heard Jesus' parables on the Word of God from chapter 13. Now, and this Sunday we are in the middle of the Ecclesial Discourse. And finally, there will be the eschatological discourse of Matthew 24. We will cover all these chapters in a couple of years, when the cycle returns to year A, and we will have time to record these videos. For now, let me just sum up what happened in between.

Immediately after the mission discourse, Matthew depicts how opposition mounts against Jesus. First, very surprisingly, John the Baptist sends his disciples to ask whether Jesus is the one who is to come, meaning the Messiah, or whether they should look for another. Jesus' answer implicitly confirms that he is the Messiah whom Isaiah had announced. Having praised John the Baptist and affirmed that he is Elijah, about whom the prophets say that he must come before the coming of the Messiah. In other words, having clearly stated that all the messianic signs have been fulfilled, he then begins to upraid the cities where most of his miracle works had been done because they did not repent.

It is clear Israel has rejected its messiah, and the Lord thanks the Father for having hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to the infants, namely those who believe in Jesus. In saying, "Come to me, all you labor and have heavy burden, but lay and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," Jesus is saying that he himself is everything that the Old Testament has promised. He is our Sabbath. He is our promised land. Matthew then adds an entire chapter, chapter 12, in which the opposition between the Jewish leader and Jesus comes to a climax. They call him Beelzebul, the prince of demons. Jesus, however, Exhorts them to open their eyes and understand the signs he is working. If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Matthew 12:28

Jesus does not mince His words. He calls the Pharisees a brood of vipers, which is an allusion to the serpent in the garden and his offspring, and an evil and adulterous generation, Who will be given no other sign than the sign of Jonah. There is no doubt the severance between the Jewish leaders and Jesus and his disciples is complete.

The Son of God then goes on to delineate his true family. His mother and brother are those who do the will of his Father in heaven. They are to him brother and sister and mother. This acceptance of the Word of God, which is Jesus himself, is then exemplified in the parables of chapter 13.

The next section reaches from 1353 to 1612, which Monsignor Matera calls the great divorce. To the degree that the Pharisees reject Jesus, he is accepted by the little people and the Gentiles, Notably a Canaanite woman, the embodiment of Israel's enemies in the Old Testament. He even feeds 4,000 people, symbolic of the gentile people. And closes this section with a warning against the leaven of the Pharisees In 16:13, start a section that we find in all three synoptic Gospels. Jesus now starts his journey to Jerusalem, where death and resurrection await him. He starts this journey from the furthest point away from Jerusalem, where Peter confesses him as Messiah, and Jesus announces that He will found his Church on Peter, the rock. That is the gospel we heard two weeks ago. Last week we heard Jesus rebuking Peter for wanting to prevent him from suffering and inviting all of us to pick up our cross and follow him. The lectionary skips the transfiguration and the second prediction of Jesus' suffering and now takes us into the Lord's fourth discourse, which is the ecclesial discourse. We are invited to live what Jesus lived himself: to love our brothers and sisters so much that we actually care for their eternal salvation and for that reason muster up the courage to fraternal correction.

GOSPEL ACCLAMATION

2 Corinthians 5:19

19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

GOSPEL

Matthew 18:15–20

15 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

Augustine, SERMON 82.7: If someone has done you injury and you have suffered, what should be done? You have heard the answer already in today’s Scripture: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone.”3

If you fail to do so, you are worse than he is. He has done someone harm, and by doing harm he has stricken himself with a grievous wound. Will you then completely disregard your brother’s wound? Will you simply watch him stumble and fall down? Will you disregard his predicament? If so, you are worse in your silence than he in his abuse.

Therefore, when any one sins against us, let us take great care, but not merely for ourselves. For it is a glorious thing to forget injuries. Just set aside your own injury, but do not neglect your brother’s wound. Therefore “go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone,” intent upon his amendment but sparing his sense of shame. For it might happen that through defensiveness he will begin to justify his sin, and so you will have inadvertently nudged him still closer toward the very behavior you desire to amend. Therefore “tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother,” because he might have been lost, had you not spoken with him. WHEN SIN IS AGAINST GOD. JEROME: If our brother has sinned against us and damaged us in anything, we have the power of dismissing it, in fact the obligation to do so, since we are commanded to forgive our debtors their debts. But if anyone sins against God, it is not in our control. Divine Scripture says, “If a man has sinned against a man, the priest will pray for him; but if he sins against God, who will speak for him?”5 But we, on the contrary, are lenient over a sin against God but act out our hatred when we ourselves are insulted. Yet we should immediately reprove our brother, if he has once lost his shame and innocence, so that he does not remain in sin. And if he listens, we profit his soul, and through the salvation of another we too acquire salvation. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

AUGUSTINE: TELLING THE CHURCH. But “if he does not listen,” that is, if he chooses to justify his sin as if it were a just action, “take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”7 Don’t consider him now in the number of your brothers. But not even so is his salvation to be neglected. For even the heathen, that is, the Gentiles and pagans, we do not consider in the number of our brothers, yet we constantly pray for their salvation. SERMON 82.7.

1 Corinthians 5:5 “you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”

1 Timothy 1:20 “among them Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.”

Background in Judaism:

A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Volume 2 Reproving a Brother (18:15–20)

The key text is

A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Volume 2 Reproving a Brother (18:15–20)

“Question a friend, perhaps he did not do it; but if he did anything, so that he may do it no more. Question a neighbor, perhaps he did not say it; but if he said it, so that he may not say it again. Question a friend, for often it is slander; so do not believe everything you hear. A person may make a slip without intending it. Who has never sinned with his tongue? Question your neighbor before you threaten him; and let the law of the Most High take its course. All wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and in all wisdom there is the fulfilment of the law. But the knowledge of wickedness is not wisdom, nor is there prudence where sinners take counsel. There is a cleverness which is abominable, but there is a fool who merely lacks wisdom. Better is the God-fearing man who lacks intelligence, than the highly prudent man who transgresses the law. There is a cleverness which is scrupulous but unjust, and there are people who distort kindness to gain a verdict. There is a rascal bowed down in mourning, but inwardly he is full of deceit. He hides his face and pretends not to hear; but where no one notices, he will forestall you. And if by lack of strength he is prevented from sinning, he will do evil when he finds an opportunity. A man is known by his appearance, and a sensible man is known by his face, when you meet him. A man’s attire and open-mouthed laughter, and a man’s manner of walking, show what he is. There is a reproof which is not timely; and there is a man who keeps silent but is wise. How much better it is to reprove than to stay angry! And the one who confesses his fault will be kept from loss.”

A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Volume 2 Reproving a Brother (18:15–20)

, where reproving another is considered an antidote for anger (cf.

A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Volume 2 Reproving a Brother (18:15–20)

Again we find the need for reproof connected with the command to love. Particularly striking as background for the gospels is T

18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

WHATEVER YOU BIND ON EARTH. AUGUSTINE: This then is what we have heard the Lord advising, and with such great particularity that he himself adds, “Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” So the very moment you begin to hold your brother as an outsider to the covenant community, “you bind him on earth.” But see to it that you bind him justly. For unjust bonds will by justice soon be burst apart …. When you have admonished him and have been “reconciled to your brother,” you have thereby “loosed him on earth.” And when “you shall have loosed him on earth, he shall be loosed in heaven” also. So this is a weighty matter. You do this not for yourself but for him. For the harm he has done is not primarily to you but to himself. SERMON 82.7.2

CCC 1444 In imparting to his apostles his own power to forgive sins the Lord also gives them the authority to reconcile sinners with the Church. This ecclesial dimension of their task is expressed most notably in Christ’s solemn words to Simon Peter: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”45 “The office of binding and loosing which was given to Peter was also assigned to the college of the apostles united to its head.”46 (981)

1445 The words bind and loose mean: whomever you exclude from your communion, will be excluded from communion with God; whomever you receive anew into your communion, God will welcome back into his. Reconciliation with the Church is inseparable from reconciliation with God. (553)

45 Mt 16:19; cf. Mt 18:18; 28:16–20.

FIRST READING

Ezekiel 33:7–9

7 “So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. 8 If I say to the wicked, O wicked man, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. 9 But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way; he shall die in his iniquity, but you will have saved your life.

RESPONSE

Psalm 95:8

8 Harden not your hearts, as at Meribah,

as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,

SECOND READING

Romans 13:8–10

8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.