August 13, 2025 - Wednesday of the 19th odd week
Homily
When we see someone acting in a way that we don't think is right, and especially when we think that someone has personally offended us or been unfair to us, we are easily tempted to set ourselves up as God's avengers. We are then still living in the Old Testament, just like the prophet Elijah who slaughtered the 450 prophets of Baal before his encounter with God on Mount Horeb, or like Paul who led Christians to their death before his encounter with the Lord on the road to Damascus. Jesus' message is quite different.
Jesus gives us very clear steps to follow in the exercise of fraternal correction, which remains a requirement of Christian life. If a brother has wronged us, the first thing to do is to go to him and talk to him about it, rather than making it known to everyone. If we make his fault public, then we are the ones who sin against him. If our brother listens to us, we have freed him from the burden of his fault, and that is the end of the matter. If he does not want to listen to us, we are not yet authorized to make it public. Instead, we should ask another brother to be a witness between us. If that does not work, then—and only then—should we involve the Church, that is, the community. And if he refuses to listen, it is he who separates himself from the fellowship of the brothers.
Let us pay special attention in the text we have just read to what Jesus says about the power to bind and loose. This is not the sacramental power to forgive sins, entrusted to the Apostles, since Jesus is addressing all his disciples here. He simply means that when we forgive our brother, when we trust him and believe that he is better than what he has shown in this or that act, or at least believe that he is capable of better things, we loose him; that is, we give him the capacity to be different and to grow. When, on the contrary, we refuse to forgive him, when we believe that our brother cannot change and we identify him with the negative memory we have of him, then we prevent him from growing, we keep him bound to his past. This is a terrible power that we have, and Jesus warns us about it.
The mention at the end of this Gospel of the prayer made by two or three is not out of context. Indeed, it was the conviction of the Desert Fathers that when someone has sinned, he had distanced himself from God and can only receive the gift of conversion from God. But since he has distanced himself from God, he needs his brothers, who have remained friends of God, to pray with him to obtain this grace.
Let us therefore pray together, one for the other, asking above all for the grace to be able to forgive and to free ourselves from all the ties that can prevent us from going joyfully to God.
Armand Veilleux