23rd Week in Ord. Time, Sunday – 6th September 2020 — Gospel: Mt 18,15-20
Listening to understand
Jesus presents a process of bringing an errant member of the community back into a holy relationship. It involves personal and communal actions. In this procedure for an individual’s discipline in the church, the primary solution is clear and open communication that requires much listening. Perhaps that is why the process outlined involves listening or hearing at every step. Four times in the first three verses, Jesus makes reference to listening or refusing to listen. Though listening is hard, the repetition suggests that the call to listen closely to the truth of the other or to hear one another is a vital component of a community grounded in the ways of Jesus. Bonheoffer says, “The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship is listening to them. Just as the love of God begins with listening to His word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is listening to them. It is God’s love for us that He not only gives us His word, but also lends us His ear.”
While listening to the other, your objective is not to ‘set him straight’ or to ‘get things off your chest’ by telling him how wrong he is. Your aim is to get him to listen so as to win him back to the Lord. If the person knows that you genuinely care for him, he will be more likely to listen and respond positively. When one refuses to speak honestly to one another, listening is very hard. If the person refuses to listen to the community then the person is excluded from the community. The community gathered together only verifies or ratifies the exclusion. The exclusion does not mean that the person is abandoned to his own fate. The person may be separated from the community, but will never be separated from God. In the case in which the conversation in the community does not produce any result, and the person does not want to be integrated in the life of the community, there still remains the last possibility to remain together with the Father to obtain reconciliation. In this situation, Jesus guarantees that the Father will listen (Mt 18,20).
