Dear brothers and sisters, happy Sunday!
The word of God proclaimed in this Sunday’s liturgy offers us some fundamental criteria for thought and action. In the Letter to the Romans, we read that every commandment is “summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Rom 13:9). Saint Paul insists on this point with a very powerful image, one that also appears in the Lord’s Prayer. He writes: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another” (v. 8).
Jesus taught us to ask for and to practice the forgiveness of debts. Yet there is one debt we owe to one another that does not enslave us: the debt of mutual love. All the attention, care and goodness we have received make us freer and more capable of responsibility.
In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus suggests at least two ways for every Christian community to practice mutual love. The first is to become capable of fraternal correction. This is a delicate art, too often forgotten, that calls for frankness and a gradual approach. Speaking honestly with one another — first face to face, then, if necessary, with two or three others, and finally, when required, with the whole community — means facing reality and transforming problems and conflicts into opportunities for growth. Complaining and speaking ill of others are easier, but they accomplish nothing and leave many situations paralyzed. The Gospel, instead, teaches us the freedom that comes through charity.
There is also a second way of loving one another as brothers and sisters, which, for Jesus, transforms even our prayer: coming to an agreement. Not only when there is a conflict, but also when asking God for some gift. The Lord says: “If two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven” (Mt 18:19).
This promise suggests that we can have shared desires, shared sorrows and shared hopes, and that through prayer we can grow in unity. Without faith, each person might feel alone and become suspicious of others, seeing them as strangers and enemies. By grace, however, we are brothers and sisters who can live in harmony: meeting one another, forgiving one another and listening to one another in the Lord.
Let us ask Mary, who, after the angel’s announcement, went in haste to her cousin Elizabeth to share the joy and the hardship of pregnancy, to teach us, too, the joyful debt of fraternal love.
Source: vatican.va
