Homily: 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 6, 2026
My dear brothers and sisters, the gospel reading of today confronts us with one of the important life situations; our relationship with our erring brother or sister. From tone of Jesus in this gospel, we get it that there is even the need for us to have a fundamental predisposition that offence, misunderstanding, friction with our spouse, neighbor, children, parents, siblings are part and parcel of life. Human beings are not angels thrown down from heaven. An important question for us all is how do we handle these often-unavoidable conflicts that do arise from our interpersonal relationships? Do we set everywhere ablaze because we were offended? Do we throw away the child with the dirty water because we are hurt? It is often the case that our actions when we are hurt matter the most. Our actions can win back our brother or sister or spouse in love and win them for Christ. Our actions can also win them for the Evil One and make them hardened in their wrongdoing.
Jesus as far back as his own time on earth outlined a guideline on how to win our brother or sister which is valid till today. We have quite a number of points to learn from today’s gospel: First the importance of talking an issue over face to face. One of the worst things which people tend to do about a wrong done to them is that they unhappily keep silent to it, store it in their heart, brood about it, some take the option of silent treatment. This can be fatal. It can poison the whole mind and life, until we can think of nothing else but our sense of personal injury and the day that it will burst, the outcome will be very destructive. One author recommends that any such ill feeling in the heart should be brought out into the open, faced and stated and often the very stating of it will show how unimportant, trivial and even false the whole thing in our heart is.
Jesus further recommends that we put the matter right personally. People feel respected, honored, regarded, appreciated, when we privately and prudently tell them that some behaviors of theirs are not wonderful. Today, we are in a world of gadgets, where social media has turned into a court of law. Even before confronting an offender with his wrongdoing, we have posted it in the social space and many people before they get to know the true account of what transpired would dissect and bisect the whole matter, most times with misinformation and give social media judgment and verdict. Such arraigning of people in the modern social media court does not reform the offender, instead it humiliates them. It hardens them and makes them form resistance and seek revenge. Jesus further recommends going a step further of taking some wise person or persons with us if personal meeting fails to yield fruit. Wise persons can help mediate in issues and help us see what may not be visible to us when we only exist and think in our selfish mind.
Jesus went ahead to tell us that even if opinions of wise people are not helpful, a further step is to be taken, settlement in the community of Christian fellowship. We must know brothers and sisters that in an atmosphere of Christian prayer, Christian love and Christian fellowship, differences in personal relationships are easily righted. Most times Christless arguments, rigorous legalism merely produces further trouble but before God mountains melt like wax (Ps 97:5). Even if the problem persists afterwards, Jesus ended by saying that we regard the person as a tax collector or Gentile. We remember Jesus Himself loved the tax collectors and sinners and prayed for them. In essence, Jesus concluded by saying that even if a problem becomes very difficult, we are not to give the Evil One a chance, we called to continue to love a difficult person and pray for him/her as Jesus did. God can always do wonders more than we can ever imagine.
