Wednesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

St. Jane Frances de Chantel

 Lectionary: 415

"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.

The Lord urges every Christian who has suffered some offense from another Christian to seek reconciliation first and in a peaceable manner. I can't say I have found that easy advice to follow. The hurt made me wary. Or perhaps more accurately, the hurt aroused a long story of past hurts and called them all fresh to mind. They may be fewer compared to another's story, or more. But that doesn't matter because its my story that governs and controls my mind. 

With those memories restored to a proximate place just below the surface of my thoughts as I consider my latest, treasured hurt-- close enough that I can call up each one and sing, "Nobody knows the trouble I seen...." -- I become all the more reluctant to "go and tell him his fault." I seem to prefer my woeful saga of hurts to peaceable relations with a fellow Christian, who may also be a fellow Franciscan friar. In any case, the dirge energizes my cowardice and drives me into deeper resentment and isolation; or into trashing my fellow Christian's reputation. 

But it's so unnecessary! Just "go and tell him his fault between you and him alone." Is that really so difficult? 

We have all heard the Lord pray "that all may be one." And we have all sinned against His prayer. The glitter of resentment is so much more appealing; it has all the romance of righteousness, and seems to carry an aura of holiness. But it's wrong in every way; and the longer we linger on that craven course, the longer will be the road back to harmony. 

In today's first reading, Ezekiel describes the consequences of cowardice: 

Then the glory of the LORD left the threshold of the temple

and rested upon the cherubim.

These lifted their wings, and I saw them rise from the earth,

the wheels rising along with them.

They stood at the entrance of the eastern gate of the Lord’s house,

and the glory of the God of Israel was up above them.

Then the cherubim lifted their wings, and the wheels went along with them,

while up above them was the glory of the God of Israel.

The Lord of Glory has departed from His temple, leaving those who worship to think they're praising God although the Spirit has departed. And without the Spirit we cannot worship.