Father Nolan's Homily - September 7, 2008

“Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another.”

                Romans 13:8-10 

The prophet Ezekial who wrote the 1^st reading places great emphasis on personal responsibility in the faith of the ancient Israelites.  Each individual he tells us bears responsibility for his or her spiritual life.  Each is responsible to repair the damage he has caused to the community by anything they have said or did.

St. Paul in the second reading from his letter to the Romans reminds us that all our responsibilities to others is summed up in one rule.  “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  

In the gospel of today we are surprised because we tend to expect the wrongdoers to come to us filled with apologies and seeking forgiveness.  But Jesus urges us to offer forgiveness to the wrongdoers.  

Families are God’s way of teaching us that we were not destined to live alone, to live just for ourselves or to live in total independence.  Families are where we learn to fight and learn to make up after fighting.  Family is where we are nurtured, healed, taught and encouraged.  Family is where we do not earn our place by accomplishments but just by being who we are.  Family is where we do not loose our place by failure.    

We are members of Immaculate Conception parish and must say, “We are like a family here, we care about each other.”  We must work together for all of our members – for our older members, for our hurting members, for our estranged members, for our young members – to do everything we can to bring our young closer to God and to all of us, to make them a vital part of our family.  They are our future as Wordsworth said “The child is father of the man”  They are the future of the Church.  They are the future of our parish.   

In our Gospel of today’s Mass, Jesus talks of those times when families fight and make up.  But notice He begins by calling the parties in the conflict brothers.  He does not call them antagonists, plaintiffs or adversaries.  Even when we have conflict we are still family, we are still brothers and sisters in the big family of God, according to Jesus.   

What lessons do we learn from this gospel for our common life?  1)  First, Jesus knew that conflict would arise within the Church like the Church of Corinth, so we should not be surprised by it.  In the prairie song, “Home, Home on the Range” the prairie is described in the nostalgic phrase, “where never is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day!”  A nice image, but far from reality.  Sometimes churches try to pretend that they are in the mythical Midwest, too, but we are not.  Churches are like families – we get into fights, sometimes there are undercurrents and bickering sometimes.   

Healthy families and churches learn to speak their minds directly, openly and in a spirit of reconciliation.  Healthy families and communities do not bury their conflict, they bring them to the open and work together to heal them. 

2) Secondly, Jesus places the responsibility of reconciliation on the person who feels hurt.  Think about that – it surprises us.  When someone hurts us whether it is a bruise to our ego, our feelings or our bank account we expect, no we demand, that they make the first move towards reconciliation. 

But there is a fatal flaw in that pattern, often the person offended is the only one who knows about the offense!  So while you and I are pacing the floor nursing our wounded pride, the person who offended us may be sleeping soundly, not because they are callous but simply because they are unaware of our pain.  How many times have you and I hurt another person’s feeling and only discovered their pain much later?  Jesus knew that the short cut to reconciliation was to place the initiative on the injured soul.  So why not start with the person who knows the most about the pain? 

3) Thirdly, Jesus does not seem

concerned about who is at fault as on the importance of an honest reconciliation.  St. Matthew’s gospel lines up a careful process with the emphasis on guarding the privacy and dignity of all the involved parties.  Whether between marriage partners or business partners or within the parish family it is the relationship that matters most. 

According to Jesus it is not enough to be right – not if being right matters more than being reconciled.   

The question this gospel raises is when we are hurt are we willing to put aside our claims to justice long enough to fight instead for reconciliation? 

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.