Tag: fraternal correction

Gathered in God’s Name

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn spirituality4 Comments

Wednesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time
August 16, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/081623.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our readings confirm the power of call and community.

In this final reading from Deuteronomy, God shows Moses the Promised Land. The description is sweepingly triumphant in tone:

Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo,
the headland of Pisgah which faces Jericho,
and the LORD showed him all the land—
Gilead, and as far as Dan, all Naphtali,
the land of Ephraim and Manasseh,
all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea,
the Negeb, the circuit of the Jordan
with the lowlands at Jericho, city of palms,
and as far as Zoar.

Deuteronomy 34:1-3

There in front of Moses is the entire vision of what his life’s call was all about. Moses’s journey is now complete and his death is memorialized by the Deuteronomist in the uttermost terms:

Since then no prophet has arisen in Israel like Moses,
whom the LORD knew face to face.
He had no equal in all the signs and wonders
the LORD sent him to perform in the land of Egypt
against Pharaoh and all his servants and against all his land,
and for the might and the terrifying power
that Moses exhibited in the sight of all Israel.

Deuteronomy 34: 10-12

Joshua now assumes a leadership role among the people who have been formed by God, under Moses’s mentorship, into the community of Israel. Joshua, with the people, will continue to shape Israel into a true “People of God”.

Our Gospel reading today describes how the power of community also shapes Christian life.

In Matthew 18, Jesus teaches his disciples a lesson in a particular element of community: fraternal correction. Fraternal correction is a concept often misinterpreted by its would-be practitioners. Here is a good description of what fraternal correction is and is not:

Fraternal correction is an ancient, Christian understanding of what it means to help each other grow in holiness. It is not a reaction to injury suffered, it is not vengeance, it is not revenge, it is not a reaction because I am hurting. But instead, it happens when I am moved by love for my brother or sister. It happens when I am moved to assist my brother or sister in growth or holiness.

Fr. Matthew Spenser, OSJ, Provincial of the Oblates of St. Joseph

Sisters of Mercy Community – Buffalo Founding Event, 1991

A community gathered in God’s Name depends on its members to exercise leadership, followership, sororal and fraternal correction, and unlimited goodwill for one another. Moses did it. Joshua did too. And Jesus certainly modeled and taught us how to live with and for one another in community.

Today’s readings might inspire us to consider the level of our own commitment to the communities which sustain our life: family, Church, religious community, as well as the civic, global, and universal contexts in which we live. We are leaders in some of these communities. We are followers in others. In all of them, we are members – a graced status that calls us to active and responsive love.

Prayer: Prayer for Community
This prayer comes from the same site as our readings – The USCCB: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops 

Embracing Father,
You grace each of us with equal measure in your love.
Let us learn to love our neighbors more deeply,
so that we can create
peaceful and just communities.
Inspire us to use our creative energies
to build the structures we need
to overcome the obstacles
of intolerance and indifference.
May Jesus provide us the example needed
and send the Spirit to warm our hearts for the journey.
Amen

Music: even Sesame Street can offer a little community “theology” 🙂

Psalm 95:Hear the Voice

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Faith, Forgiveness, friendship, Love, ordinary time, Poetry, Psalms1 Comment

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sunday, September 6, 2020

Today’s readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 95, a favorite of liturgists, and one we have met several times before. What different light might it offer us today as we pray?

The psalm today serves as a bridge between powerful readings about neighborly love and fraternal correction. These readings tell us to listen for God’s heartbeat in our world and to enter its rhythm. 

They also tell us to love our neighbor enough that, if she or he is out of synch with God’s rhythm, we help align them by our counsel and example.

Have you ever tried to do that? It’s really tough!

First of all, we have to be so vigilant about the purity of our own intentions. We can’t instruct our friends in righteousness out of our own confusion. So often, our desire for others to “improve” grows out of our opinionated self-interest. You might remember what Jesus said about extracting the plank from our own eye before removing the splinter from our neighbor’s!

Next we really have to love our sister or brother and sincerely want their good. We have to forgive them any hurt they have caused us. We have to be bigger than most of us, speaking for myself, are inclined to be.

As the psalm tells us, we can’t have hard hearts. As we approach our sister or brother, our hearts must be softened by listening, patience, understanding, humility and hope. We have to be sure the “voice” we’re sharing comes from God not self.

Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the desert,
Where your fathers tempted me;
they tested me though they had seen my works.

And the flip of all this, of course, is that when we are the one out of rhythm, we receive loving correction in the same spirit of openness.

Lots of Grace is needed on both sides of this dance! May we learn and receive it!

Poetry: The Gift by Li-Young Lee

To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he’d removed
the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.

I can’t remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And I recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy’s palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame.
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where I bend over my wife’s right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father
took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
when he’s given something to keep.
I kissed my father.

Music: Let Me Hear Your Voice – Francesca LaRose