Reconcile the World! Twenty third Sunday in Ordinary Time

This Sunday the lectionary turns our eyes towards two of the seven spiritual works of mercy; third of which is: admonish the sinner.

In the first reading, from the Prophet Ezekiel we hear clearly:

[if] you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked from his way,
the wicked shall die for his guilt,
but I will hold you responsible for his death.

In other words, we are bound to the sin of our neighbour, especially if we can see that they are committing sin and have stood by doing nothing – as is, all too often, the case.

In the second reading St. Paul underlines that to counsel a friend, or a neighbour, that they are doing wrong is, in fact, an act of love.

Love does no evil to the neighbor;
hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.

To permit someone to remain in error, to continue in sin, is to do evil to this brother of ours. Listen to the words of St. Augustine who echoes St. Paul on this matter:

If you fail to do so, you are worse than he is. He has done someone harm, and by doing harm he has stricken himself with a grievous wound. Will you then completely disregard your brother‘s wound? Will you simply watch him stumble and fall down? Will you disregard his predicament? If so, you are worse in your silence than he in his abuse.

The scriptures and the teaching of the Church are quite clear; we may not stay silent in the face of a sin.

This formulation of love should give us pause to think. Too often today, love is understood as an absolute commitment to support those we purportedly love in their ways, even if their actions lead to evil. If a man leaves his wife, we feel obliged by friendship to support him. If a spouse is adulterous, we excuse it on the grounds that they needed the affirmation. If a person adopts a disordered identity, and there are so many of them available today, we are told that we must support them in this choice.

But none of this is love. This is merely the toleration of evil in the contemporary culture which promotes the idolatry of the self. Love is not love if it does not force our beloved to confront the truth.

And so, how do we take on this task? Our Lord offers us a series of steps in which the sinner may be admonished.

In the first place:

If your brother sins against you,
go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. 

Alone! In other words, we are not to humiliate our brother in public, or in private for that matter. We are to go and tell him about the fault, and get him to recognize his fault. And to enable us to not shame or be superior when we do this, Our Lord asks us to remember that we are sinners too! This is what He means when He says:

First remove the plank from your eye. (Mt 7:5)

It does not mean that we are to not care what people do and simply mind our own business.

To admonish our brother about his sin is to educate him about the nuances of the act. Perhaps he does not realise that it is a sin. For example, how many of us here recognize the fact that when we break the laws of the state – even the traffic regulations so casually broken by all of us – we are sinning grievously?

The calling of others that Our Lord subsequently recommends, is once again, not an attempt to shame the sinner, but to persuade him through numbers. Perhaps where one can be dismissed as too scrupulous, or crazy, the presence of two others will help the sinner recognize that the correction is not born from a personal opinion alone?

If the sinner still refuses to repent, Our Lord advises us to tell the Church. in other words, ask for a priest to counsel the sinner. If even this fails, then it becomes obvious that this person is no longer in communion with the Church. And this is a serious matter for the sinner risks losing his soul.

But Our Lord does not end there. He recommends:

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. 

What do we pray about in circumstances where our brother refuses pious counsel? That our errant brother be consigned to the flames of hell? No! We pray that they be saved, that Divine Providence step in to counsel them and bring them back to communion and salvation.

My dear brothers and sisters, I was recently present at the funeral of a person who battled Holy Mother Church all his life and absolutely refused to accept the final sacraments. The sacraments were finally administered, through the intervention of his brother, when he was unconscious and drifting into death. I was moved by the faith of this man’s brother who after the sacraments were administered, realized that his dying brother did not have a scapular. So, he returned home, brought a scapular, and tied it around his brother’s wrist. In so doing, he was binding Our Lady to Her promise to St. Simon Stock: “Whosoever dies clothed with this scapular shall not suffer eternal fire.”

My dear brothers and sisters, I have no doubt that despite the stubbornness of this man, the faith and fervent prayers of his brother and all his family will ensure that this man’s final destiny is not hell!

The final spiritual act of mercy is to pray for the living and the dead, and this is precisely what the Gospel acclamation teaches us today:

God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ
and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Go therefore, dearly beloved in Christ, and pray, so that you may reconcile sinners with God, both those in the flesh, and those who languish in the fires of purgatory.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the parish church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Pangim on 6 September 2026.)

(Image reference: Angel with lily and a putto handing the scapular, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1744, Scuola Grande dei Carmini, Venice.)