Judgement? Or Fraternal Correction

Friday of the 22nd Week in Course

Today’s Gospel is so straightforward and goes to the heart of Christ’s teaching that we can be forgiven for ignoring all the other Scriptures we have heard. It’s kind of a slap at the Pharisees, who try to keep all the six-hundred plus rules of Torah involving cleanliness and, in this case, fasting, but ignore the primary command to love God and our neighbors. While Jesus is present, it is inappropriate to fast. That’s why we don’t fast on Sundays, even in the season of Lent. Sunday is the Lord’s Day, our weekly commemoration of Christ’s Resurrection from the dead, His triumph. So when we fast, it’s because we are living the rest of our lives in anticipation of the great Lord’s Day, when Jesus returns in glory.

Now consider the short reading from Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth. The Corinthians had been splitting themselves into factions, dividing the congregation according to their favorite teacher or preacher–Paul, Apollos, Peter, and maybe others. Just before this passage, he has fussed at them about that, and reminded them that all Christians are Christ’s and therefore belong to the One God. So all are “stewards of the mysteries [sacraments] of God.” Some of the Christians at Corinth had been judging some teaching or leadership trait of Paul, and that, too, tended to dismantle their unity. Paul tells them it’s not a big deal that he is being judged by them. He doesn’t even pass judgement on himself because the Lord will judge his behavior, at the general resurrection and return of Christ as judge of the whole world.

Now we see statements like this from Paul and are reminded that Jesus Himself told us (Mt 7:1) “Judge not, lest you be judged.” Those words were followed by the humorous rebuke about offering to take a splinter out of your brother’s eye while ignoring the two-by-four in your own eye. Now you know what happens whenever in print or in speech you make a comment about a widespread misbehavior in the culture, whether political corruption or adultery or contraception or abortion or tax fraud. The next words somebody will say are, “Jesus taught you not to judge.” That one line of Christ’s has become a cultural weapon used by the irreligious to put Christians in their place.

Yet when Jesus was giving His rules about how the Church should operate, He taught that the Father is not willing that even one of the “little ones,” those immature in faith, should perish. We know that a Christian committing a grave sin in public, where others can see, someone giving terrible example, is most likely to lead others into the same sin. That’s why Catholic politicians who want to make others pay for murdering children before birth are, or should be, excommunicated. But all sin injures the person committing the sin. So in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, we see what needs to be done. The one offended is commanded to go to the offender and confront him. If he listens, he is likely to change behavior and is therefore “won over” to right action. If not, two or three fellow Christians are recruited to try again as a group to win over the offender. If that is not effective, then the Church should get involved and exclude the offender from communion. But all must be done in charity, not vengeance. God does not want anyone to be lost.

Judgement, then, is something to leave in the hands of the Just Judge, Jesus Christ. He will judge each of us at the moment of our death, and all humans at the General Resurrection. That will be the joyful moment when good and evil are finally and definitively separated. We must not pretend to be divine and pass judgement in our time, assuming that offenders will die in their sin. But in the meantime, we cannot ignore sin or pretend that it doesn’t hurt everyone, including the sinner. We are called by Christ to practice, in charity, the difficult but essential task of fraternal correction.