The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
I can remember sitting in a particularly terrible meeting and hearing my friend’s phone buzzing next to me. The texts were flashing across his screen, “Yeah. We’re not doing that.” “This guy is out of his mind.” I did not need to read the texts to know what they said because I was, of course, the one sending them. While the invention of the text message has been world-changing for convenient communication, it has, at times, been incredibly damaging for our souls. When Jesus was preaching to his disciples two thousand years ago, his disciples did not have the ability to have a side conversation without opening their mouths.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus directs us on fraternal correction, and I think I can speak for many of us when I say that we tend to skip step one: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.” Even in isolation, we have the ability to communicate with more people than ever before. Psychological implications aside, this can be incredibly dangerous for our spiritual lives. But Jesus is not surprised, and our sins do not shock him. The Jesus that spoke these words is not startled by technology and humanity’s ability to conform our sinful ways to it. When Jesus suffered for our sins, he foresaw that text to one coworker about another during that department Zoom meeting.
Jesus knows that we can be tempted to tear down what we are called to love, that it takes less work to vent than to heal. Although his words in the Gospel may even be more difficult than they were for the disciples without iPhones, they have not become any less true. Let us focus on step one. Let us, with God’s grace, reconcile with those who have sinned against us.