Treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector

7 SEPTEMBER (Mt 18,15-20)

The Church of Jesus Christ cannot be tarnished by the sins of her children. Everyone is obliged to keep the body of Christ our Lord holy. Everything is from the holiness of the body. The Holy Spirit is poured out on the world from the holiness of this body. If it is soiled, muddied, clouded in its divine beauty, it becomes opaque, no longer transparent and no longer attractive. The Church must attract to herself and attracts through her spiritual beauty. A dirty soul does not attract to the Lord. Without attraction, all the apostolate works are void and vain. They have no true holiness.

What to do so that the Church is always attractive in all of her children? Jesus points out some basic rules that must always accompany her. One of these rules is commonly called: fraternal correction. The brother sins against his brother. The offended brother goes to the offender and invites him to retreat from his guilt. He asks him to restore peace. Peace must always be lived among the brothers. Never must in the body of Christ reign wars, divisions, splits, antipathy, resentment, hatred, rancour, separation and things like that. The body of Christ is one and its unity must always shine more than anything else. Two joined hearts are a show to the world.

If the offender hears and returns into peace, the matter must be considered closed. The past is forgiven and is cleared. There is no more memory of it. On the contrary, if he does not listen, the offended must take two witnesses and make the offender an official warning, according to the law. The two witnesses must certify that the offense is real and also the repentance must be real, the return to the truth, true. The peace of the body also requires the humility to recognize the personal sin, the personal guilt and the personal mistake. If after this warning according to the law, the offender repents and returns to the truth of justice, the problem must die instantly. The made and sealed peace removes every other controversy. Sin is condoned. The offender is acquitted.

However, if the offender persists in not recognizing his guilt, perseveres in his pride of not wanting to ask for forgiveness for the sin committed, then it is right that the community is interested of the matter in its decision-making authority. It is the supreme appeal of the offended against the offender. Even this extreme and last resort is covered of only one meaning: helping the sinner in his path of true conversion. What he has done is an evil thing. The evil must be removed from the heart, if it wants to removed from the community of the disciples of Lord Jesus. Those who have authority guarantee in an impartial way, according only to the truth of the Gospel. The sinner repents and peace is restored.

“If your brother sins (against you), go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. Amen, 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. Again, (amen,) I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

The Christian community lives in peace and peace is only in the return of the sinner into the truth and charity of Jesus Christ. It is the confession of the personal sins. It is in the reconciliation of all its members. It is in the resumption of the interrupted evangelical journey. It is also in welcoming the fraternal admonition so that you stop sinning and follow a path of light alone. Searches really peace who knows how to humble himself before God and men. This is precisely our spiritual greatness: recognizing the personal sins, asking forgiveness both to God and to men. Not only to God but also to men. A Christian is necessarily humble, never might he be superb. Otherwise it would be a contradiction, a nonsense and a serious anomaly.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints make us small, humble and simple.