Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

First Reading: Ezekiel 33:7-9

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9

Second Reading: Romans 13:8-10

Gospel: Matthew 18:15-20

Daily readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090626.cfm

Jesus gives his disciples a very specific instruction today, and it is one of the most practically difficult things he ever says. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. Not to a friend first. Not in a group chat. Not by quietly pulling away. Directly, privately, just the two of you. If he listens, you have won over your brother. That is the goal — not to be right, not to punish, not to feel justified. To win back the relationship.

Most of us do not do it this way. We vent to someone who is not the person. We rehearse the conversation in our heads but never have it. We let the distance grow until the relationship has quietly ended, and we tell ourselves it was not worth saving. Ezekiel gets a harder version of the same call: God appoints him as a watchman, and says if you see something and do not speak, I hold you responsible. To love someone sometimes means saying the hard thing, directly, with care. The watchman who stays silent is not being kind — he is abandoning his post.

Paul wraps it up simply: owe nothing to anyone except to love one another. Love does no evil to the neighbor. The fraternal correction Jesus describes is love in action — the kind that cares too much to let things fester, too much to give up on the person. And then he ends with something that quietly shifts the whole weight of the passage: where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. The hard conversation, entered in his name, is not something we do alone.

A few questions to sit with today:

1. Is there someone in my life — a family member, a friend, a coworker — with whom I have a real grievance that I have been carrying to everyone except them? What is keeping me from the direct conversation?

2. If I am honest, am I more interested in being right about what happened, or in winning back the relationship? Those are not always the same goal.

3. Ezekiel is told: if you warn them and they do not listen, that is on them. Have I avoided a hard conversation because I am afraid it will not go well? Can I trust God with the outcome and still make the approach?

4. The Psalm says: if today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Is my heart hardened toward someone right now — someone I have already written off rather than approached?

One small thing for tomorrow:

Think of one relationship where something has gone unsaid. Tomorrow, do not have the whole conversation — just decide whether you are willing to have it. Ask Jesus to be in the middle of it if you do. That is enough for one day.

Lord Jesus, you said: where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. I want to believe that includes the conversations I have been avoiding. Give me the courage to go directly to the person rather than around them. Help me to want the relationship more than I want to be right. And when I am the one who has caused the hurt, help me to be the kind of person who can hear a hard word without shutting down. You are the one who makes reconciliation possible. I cannot do it without you. Amen.

If you would like to share: is there a conversation you have been putting off that today’s Gospel is bringing to mind?