Some Helpful Commentary on Today’s Gospel Reading

            St. Augustine, in one of his many sermons, offers to believers some advice based on the Gospel passage read this Sunday.  He approaches the words of Christ, like many of the early Church Fathers do, from an angle that would perhaps not occur to us at first.  Here are his words.

            “If someone has done you injury and you have suffered, what should be done?  You have heard the answer already in today’s Scriptures:  ‘If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone’.  [Thus the avoidance of gossip.]

            “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.

            “Therefore, when any one sins against us, let us take great care, but not merely for ourselves.  For it is a glorious thing to forget injuries.  Just set aside you own injury, but do not neglect your brother’s wound.  Therefore ‘go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone,’ intent upon his amendment but sparing his sense of shame.  For it might happen that through defensiveness he will begin to justify his sin, and so you will have inadvertently nudged him still closer toward the very behavior you desire to amend.  Therefore ‘tell him his fault between you and him alone.  If he listens to you, you have gained your brother,’ because he might have been lost, had you not spoken with him.”

            Here, half-hidden in this commentary, is a general Christian principle that surprises many people when they first come across it, and it is this:  that the one who commits a sin against his neighbor is to be more pitied than the victim of that injustice; for it is far worse to commit an injustice than to suffer one.  This is not to say that the perpetrator of a crime or injury is to be seen and treated as a victim (though he is a sad victim of his own folly), but that he is to be recognized as one in real spiritual danger and that he should not simply be left there.  Rather, the injured one is to “go and tell him his fault.”  The goal is not merely to accomplish what society must do in dealing with crime – that is, keeping the community in peace and justice – but to seek the offender’s repentance and change of behavior. 

            The Church is the community of believers that, while recognizing the role of the state in the punishment of crime, is to be guided in her own life and society by yet a higher principle than justice:  that is, by love.  This is exactly the way God deals with all of us.  Speaking through our conscience, He tells us our faults, not to humiliate us, but to convert us.  He does so because He loves us.   And Love does not leave the one loved in a place of danger, in a state of estrangement.  In a real sense, then, love – specifically divine love – is the deepest form of justice:  it does not merely dish out the appropriate punishment for the wrong done, but gets to the root of the problem, the human heart and its waywardness.  Love seeks the repentance – and so the very happiness – of the one who has offended God and neighbor.  That’s why St. Paul says in today’s second reading that “love is the fulfillment of the law,” because “love does no evil to the neighbor.”  But it is evil to allow one’s offending neighbor to remain in the guilt of a sin.  Love speaks the truth, pronounces evil and injustice for what they are, and seeks to bring the erring one back to what is right.  Love, and you will be just.

            It should be emphasized, though, that love is not the means of avoiding just punishment for wrong behavior.  If that were the case, we would all be well-nigh hopeless; for without the fear of just punishment – and every offense has its punishment – we would have little to deter us from wrongdoing… until we learn to love, and love perfectly after the manner of God, whose Love is in those who know Him and seek to obey and love Him.  This is what St. John meant when he wrote in his first epistle, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.  For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.  We love, because [God] first loved us” (4:18, 19). 

            This perfection of love is not an unattainable standard too high to reach for poor mortals as we.  First of all, it is already given to us; in our baptism God plants within us the great gifts of His grace – faith, hope and love.  These are to be fed by our own adherence to them, so that we grow in faith, hope and love.  And secondly, love is not alien to us.  We are made in the image of God who is love:  made to love and be loved.  God’s grace frees us to love, both Him (above and beyond all else) and our neighbor as ourselves.  Thus is God’s holy law fulfilled, not simply by “keeping the rules” but by learning to fulfill the law in its entirety through love.  “Love is the fulfillment of the law.”