Hi everyone, and welcome to Weekly Homilies with Father Mark Suslenko, Pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. We are part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford. I'm Carol Vassar, parish director of communications, and this is Episode 31 of Season 6 for the Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary time: Sept. 10, 2023. Our Gospel reading is from Matthew, Chapter 18, verses 15-20.
Jesus said to his disciples: "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, here am I in the midst of them.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
“Healing in Love” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut
Very often when we hear Jesus speak of the law of love. How we process hearing those words sometimes gets translated as love replaces all of the other commandments. And we begin to think that as long as I don't do anything overtly wrong to one of my neighbors, I'm good with the Gospel and good with God because love sums up all the rest.
That kind of thinking can lead us into great error because in teaching the law of love and emphasizing love of neighbor, love of God, and love of self, Jesus is not replacing anything but fulfilling it and giving it purpose. And so we hearken back to those words again, which are really directed at setting all of the relationships in our lives straight and making sure they remain harmonious: our relationship with God, our relationship with one another, our relationship to ourselves, our relationship to creation, and our relationship to the law itself.
Thinking back on those original Ten Commandments, in light of Jesus' law of love, gives them new meaning and purpose. They are no longer laws simply to be obeyed because God has asked us to, but they are vehicles and means to love. If we take each of those Ten Commandments and see them in light of Jesus' teaching, then they each become opportunities for us to love more and to love more fully. Also, they become opportunities to live more harmoniously with one another.
And so, the call to love certainly does not replace them. Actually, it gives them more meaning and purpose and greater significance. With Jesus's law of love, we're not reduced in our responsibilities, but we gain more responsibility because to love as Jesus commands requires great responsibility. It means taking responsibility for who we are in light of God and living those Ten Commandments with greater fervor and purpose, being careful not to break any of them in any way.
One of the things we struggle with most are our relationships with one another. Inevitably, in the course of life's journey, we will find ourselves either doing one or two things, if not both. Either hurting someone very deeply or being hurt by someone very deeply. Usually, someone we love. It goes into the mix of relationships that this is inevitably to happen because as graced and as blessed as we are, we are also very wounded and imperfect. And our weaknesses can get in the way of our opportunities to love, and we can find ourselves doing more harm than good.
Confronting our relationships and trying to heal division does not come easy to us because we don't deal with confrontation well and often struggle with sharing our true and real feelings with one another.
Humility is something that is difficult to grasp, and being vulnerable even more so. It's hard to put ourselves out there and be at risk at the mercy of someone else with humility and courage, and vulnerability. We're not taught to problem-solve well. And we're not taught to receive the feelings of someone else, even if those feelings require us to look more deeply at our own.
But yet Jesus says, resolving our conflicts with one another really is the epitome of love. The failure to resolve conflicts is really a failure in love because we're giving into fear, and where there is fear, there is an absence of love. If I am afraid to look at and examine the weaker aspects of myself and how they affect those around me, then I'm certainly crippled by that personal fear and unavailable to then love.
And so, as we look at the scope of relationships in our lives, the call of the Gospel really stretches us above and beyond our comfort zones and pushes us often where we don't really want to go. It causes us to think differently about ourselves and take a different path to resolution. You see, for many, because confrontation is something that is feared, it's easier to simply close the door on a relationship that has hurt us, or it's easy to close the door on a relationship where I may have hurt someone as well. We close the door and walk away because we're afraid to put ourselves out there, to trust our feelings, and to embark on that path of vulnerability. We're afraid to look within and do the kind of soul-searching that requires us to perhaps correct and change behaviors, to admit faults and failings, and to change the course of our lives. We're sometimes afraid to really trust our feelings, and so for we're reluctant to then share them with others because we're afraid of what the ramifications may be.
In looking at the scope of all of our relationships, the goal is to do our best to try to resolve the conflicts in our lives, to do the best to look at our own weaknesses, our own shortcomings, our own sinfulness, and the impact that they have on those around me. And also to be open, to be willing to accept and to change when I have been the one who has hurt others.
There really are only two times when severing a relationship may be the course of love to follow. The first is when either the one who has hurt us or I myself, who have done the hurting, refuse to look inwardly, change the course of events, take responsibility, and admit our fault. When those things do not occur, then quite often, the only course is to then, in love, step away. The other time when severing a relationship may be the best course of love to follow is when that relationship has become toxic or abusive, causing more harm and risk than any freedom, love, and good. And then, out of love for self, the course of action may be to set that relationship aside. Apart from those two times, we are called to do all we can to heal the divisions that exist between us, to resolve conflicts to the best we can to grow with each other in faith and in love so that each one of us can be at our best in serving the kingdom of God and in doing God's will. So you see, love certainly requires much more, not less.
Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Learn more about our parish community at www.isidoreandmaria.org. And follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our music comes free of charge from Blue Dot Sessions in Fall River, Massachusetts. I’m Carol Vassar. Thanks for joining us.