Reconcile Yourselves! Homily for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar,
and there recall that your brother
has anything against you,
leave your gift there at the altar,
go first and be reconciled with your brother,
and then come and offer your gift.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, these words from today’s Gospel selection, offer us an opportunity to appreciate the importance of the sacrament of reconciliation, or confession. More appropriately, it teaches us of the relationship between this sacrament, and the great sacrifice of the Mass that we are participating in.

I recollect that as a child there were, and in some churches even today, there are priests sitting for confession whilst mass is on-going. Thus, if you should recollect a sin that you have not confessed, one is afforded the possibility at that moment to be reconciled, and then participate in the sacrifice that is being offered. Confession is that important! Our Lord is quite clear, do not complete your sacrifice, if you are not reconciled, with your brother. You cannot be reconciled with God, this is the purpose of the sacrifice, if you are not first reconciled with your brother.

Yet how many of us, dear brothers and sisters, dare to approach the altar, and partake of communion, without having first made a good confession? Too many of us commit an even greater mortal sin, by having consumed the Eucharist without having prepared our souls for this encounter.

The command to reconcile is, in fact, deeper than it appears at first. St. Jerome, the great Biblical scholar points out, that Our Lord, did not say, “If you have anything against your brother” but “If your brother has anything against you.” In other words, the sacrament of reconciliation is required when we have done something to offend, or hurt, our brother. He then goes on to comment, “As long as we are unable to make peace with our brother, I do not know whether we may offer our gifts to God.”

So great is the wisdom of Our Holy Mother Church, my dear brothers and sisters, that She recognizes that sometimes it is impossible to make peace with a person who has been hurt. Or that confessing our sin to the person we have sinned against may make the possibility for reconciliation impossible. It is for this reason that she offers the person of the priest, acting in persona Christi, i.e. acting as Christ, to confess our sins, to own our sins – to use more contemporary language – and then receive forgiveness.

St. Augustine, offers an analogy from the domestication of animals to understand how and why God intervenes himself, through a human being, for the sake of taming our wild, and unruly souls.  Animals, do not tame themselves, he begins,

So too a man does not tame himself. In order to tame a horse, an ox, a camel, an elephant, a lion and a snake, a human being is required. Therefore God should be required in order for a human being to be tamed.

It is only after the wildness of our hearts has been tamed, that we can then proceed to the altar to offer our gifts and consume the gift that Our Lord offers us in return, the gift of His Body and Blood. A gift which slowly, but surely, begins to transform our body so that we may eventually enter bodily enter heaven.

The verses following this command to reconcile before we sacrifice also have much to offer those who are serious about the spiritual life.

Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court.
Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge,
and the judge will hand you over to the guard,
and you will be thrown into prison.
Amen, I say to you,
you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.

Reading these verses metaphorically, we must ask the question, who is our opponent? Surely not our brother. In fact, our opponent is the devil, who wishes to place a barrier between ourselves and our home in paradise. As the book of Revelation (12: 10) teaches us, Satan is:

the accuser of our brothers…
    who accuses them day and night before our God

My dear brothers and sisters, in this life we are all headed in one direction, that of the heavenly court of Christ. It is the desire of the Devil that on the day of judgement, when Our Lord will come as judge, he carry off as many as he can with himself to hell. In this context, we can read multiple meanings into the figure of “the guard.” On the one hand, the guards are the angels of the Lord, who will accompany Him on the day of judgement (Mt 25: 31) and who will gather up the evildoers of this earth and cast them into the fiery hell where they will spend all eternity (Mt 13: 41-42). That the angels of Our Lord will fulfill the role of the guard by preventing any escape is clear enough. What we should also realise, however, is that the devil jealously guards his own, doing all he can to keep them with him and away from reconciliation with their brothers, and through this with Our Lord. Note, therefore, what happens at the sacrament of reconciliation: we reject - we settle with - the Devil who traps us, and we hand ourselves over to Christ.

We do not know the moment of our deaths, my dear brothers and sisters, and we can repent for our mortal sins only while here on earth. Which is why Our Lord asks us to settle with the opponent quickly! A moment after death and it will be too late! Turn to Christ, therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, and reconcile yourselves with your brothers and with Our Lord quickly, before you attend the sacrifice of the Mass – and if a priest is available even whilst at Mass !! – so that you may not invite a greater sin by receiving communion unworthily.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa on 15 February 2026.)

(Image reference: The Last Judgment detail, Viktor Vasnetsov, 1904, Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve.)