Vigils Reading – 23rd Sun ORD

IF YOUR BROTHER SINS AGAINST YOU

From a commentary by St Jerome

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If our brother sins against us and injures us for any reason, we have the power, or rather the obligation, to forgive. For we are commanded to forgive debts for our debtors. But if anyone sins against God, it no longer depends on our choice. For the Holy Scripture says: “If a man sins against a man, the priest will pray for him; but if he sins against God, who will pray for him?” In contrast with this, we are mild about an injury to God, but annoyed to the point of hatred about insults to ourselves! Now our brother ought to be corrected privately. Otherwise, he may all at once lose his shame and modesty and continue in sin. And if he in fact listens, we have gained his soul, and by the salvation of another we have achieved salvation for ourselves as well.

On the other hand, if he is unwilling to listen, a brother should be summoned. And if he does not listen to that one, even a third brother should be summoned. This is done either out of zeal for correcting him or for the purpose of meeting together with witnesses. Next, if he is unwilling to listen to them, then the matter must be told to many. In this way they formally renounce the one who could not be saved by shame, in the hope that he might be saved by their reproaches. Now when it is said: “Let him be to you as a pagan and a tax collector,” it is shown that the one who has the name of believer but who does the works of unbelievers is more accursed than those who are openly Gentiles. For they are called “tax collectors” as a figure of speech referring to those who pursue worldly gain and collect taxes by means of business, fraud, theft, crimes, and perjury…

Now the secret response or unspoken thought of this brother who despises [the Church] could be: Well, if you despise me, I also will despise you. If you condemn me, you too will be condemned by my sentence of judgment. Because of this possibility, Jesus gave authority to the apostles to ensure that those who are condemned by such measures may know that the human verdict is corroborated by a divine verdict, and whatever is bound on earth is equally bound in heaven…

Therefore, a reward is even promised that we might hasten toward peace more solicitously, since he says that he will be in the midst of the two or three. This accords with that [famous] example of the tyrant who made prisoners of two men who were friends. One of them left his friend as a hostage in his place and went back to see his mother. By keeping the one man in prison while releasing the other, the tyrant wanted to test them. When the friend returned on the appointed day, the tyrant so admired the fidelity of both men that he begged them to enroll himself as the third partner in their friendship. We can also interpret this spiritually, that where the spirit, soul, and body agree and do not have a war of diverse wills between them, as the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, concerning any matter that they ask, they will procure it from the Father