Wednesday of the 19th Week, uneven numbered year
“If your brother does something wrong, go and have it out with him alone, between your two selves.”
God’s love in our life is made concrete when we desire to welcome humanity, offering salvation to it. It is our individual and collective responsibility vis-à-vis Jesus to respond to his invitation to eternal life. To love Jesus is to love one another, and to enter into communion together to Divine Life .God loves us because we are open to his Eternal Life .This is how he allows the little and weak ones , limited and sinful, to be in communion with the eternity of Love. We respond to God’s love with all our being. Jesus said that where there are two or three of his disciples gathered in his name, he is there amongst them. It is the Presence of Jesus that permits us to situate ourselves in His Light with each other. ’If your brother has sinned against you, go and speak with him alone.If he listens to you, you have gained your brother’. This ’by yourself’ expresses the Presence and a trust in God. It is necessary for every charitable, fraternal encounter, for it is this Presence that permits the work of God to come about.
“If he listens to you, you have won back your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, whatever the misdemeanor, the evidence of two or three witnesses is required to sustain the charge.But if he refuses to listen to these, report it to the community; and if he refuses to listen to the community, treat him like a gentile or a tax collector.”
And so if we are to love, as God does, this can be seen in our will to put into place what is good, what makes for happiness, having a vital interest in the other person. To love as God loves, means to act in the interest of another person, for their salvation. It is to turn together towards the true Love that comes from God’s heart and to grow in this Love. There is always a great risk to pervert love in our solidarity and in a journey towards salvation outside of God.The Word invites us
to watch over the well-being of our brother, warning us to seek together God’s will together. Thus the presence of charity will be amplified by the other who is a friend! The human part with its limits and heaviness may prevent the work of reconciliation to be brought about, and so we call out to another so as to be opened up. The other, especially if he is chosen or a friend of the person in difficulty, will help the process of the encounter. ’Amen, I tell you, all that you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and all that you unbind on earth will be unbound in heaven’. At all cost, we need to try to unbind the knots in our lives as long as we are on the path of life in order to avoid a lasting closing up of ourselves.
“In truth, I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
In the Gospel Jesus tells us that e don’t have to intervene if there isn’t a real fault leading to a lessening of communion with God. What we need to do is always enter into a dialogue with this person in order to know their intentions, how he lived the events, before accusing him. Jesus asks us to live this fraternal correction within the Church, several of us, so that through multiple points of view, in a dialogue, there is a real encounter of prayer. We are walking towards Love, the work in Church is a place of charity in the Person of Jesus Christ! The Church and Jesus Christ are so linked that the weight of love of the Passion and Resurrection put into place in the paschal mystery becomes even more evident.