Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Rebukes sting. They cut, pierce, and leave one raw and reeling. Our dignity and identity have been attacked. Our vision of truth and goodness has been assaulted. Our reality has been shattered. Yet, instead of feeling rebuked, the comment corrects our misperceptions. Instead of living in a façade, God as Father rebukes us. Godly rebukes are much different. His rebukes done out of care and concern correct our indiscretions, redirecting our lives for sanctity. Worldly rebukes redirect our lives according to opinions, social correctness, or worse, evil expectations.
Heavenly rebukes and those divinely inspired correct our confusions, foil our fallacies, and rectify our wrongs. Instead of living in a fantasy, denying the reality of the consequences, the Godly rebuke sets us straight, opens doors to true opportunities, and removes the rationalizations and justifications that evade, excuse, and erase the wrongs, the wounds, and the worries. Heavenly rebukes, as St. Paul reminds us, “God has not called us for uncleanness, but in holiness” (1 Th 4:7).
Fraternal correction feels harsh; yet as scripture tells us, God rebukes those He loves. No better example of fraternal correction exists than Judith, the seer of Israel, warning the people, praying for restoration. She writes, “The Lord scourges those who draw near to him, in order to admonish them” (Judith 8:27; see also Heb 12:6; Jer 46:28).
Admonishment astounds us. We cannot fathom why our God would admonish, rebuke, and even scourge us. Yet, God’s ways are not ours and his ways intensify our ways. Lacking motivation, the rebuke we experience sharpens and refines, not out of malice, but out of love. God expects much, much more than we think and to improve ourselves according to God’s ways: “Nothing unclean shall enter it, nor any one who practices abomination or falsehood” (Rev 21:27), He rebukes us of any fallacy or atrocity.
Intense yes, because our ways drastically differ from his ways. Our desires naturally become indifferent, complacent, even destructive. Focused on self, we self-aggrandize without ever testing or proving ourselves. We accept the ideals, morals, and values of another, not God’s. We seek expediency and easiness rather than the excellence arrived from experience. Sacrifice and discipline are cast aside so comfort and consolation come. Yet anything of value comes at a price. Excellence costs and those who embrace the sacrifice and discipline—the rebukes and corrections—find fulfillment.
If never truly tested, we do not realize our true potential. Potentially, we are greater than the angels, more powerful than the demons, more capable than what we ever thought we could be. Yet, mediocrity and inferiority plague our minds. Thinking we are deficient, we act defective. Thinking we are a mistake or worse, a disgrace, we reject correction. Forgetting the proverb, “A fool despises his father’s instruction, but he who heeds admonition is prudent” (Pro 15:5).
Oppressed by foolish attitudes, our lives disintegrate. We live superficially and become subservient, thinking we are insignificant and inferior. Disgraced, sin, a dark power, taps into our power to love. Love innately longs for divinity. It desires greatness, even grandeur. It wants achievement, admiration, and most importantly friendship. We want union, a communion which transfigures and transcends us into something more than we ever thought we could be. We want sanctity, a participation in the divine.
Divinized, we become elevated, enlightened, and empowered beyond our abilities. Love has no limits, but true love seeks correction. It does not reject the rebukes of the one who loves us but listens, learns, and matures.
Because of its raw power, love needs admonishment. True love reigns in the unruly passions and urges. It chisels cutting away the imperfections, polishing the perfections, and producing a pure, undefiled heart. Pure and undefiled, our hearts become noble, filled with gratitude and grace. Our identity is transformed. We no longer live in a façade but live the reality of our dignity.
Seeking fulfillment apart from God, we take joy in vanity rather than truth. We make power our goal without knowing where our power comes from. We take control only to become out of control. As Lucifer tempted Adam and Eve to become self-determined: to define for themselves right and wrong, so do we become self-centered. This is the power of sin. Sin innately longs for divinity, but sin, turning inward upon ourselves, divorces us from our true dignity. God alone divinizes our dignity.
True Divinity now intervenes in the façade that we live. God, acting as Father, disciplines our desires, rebuking us not out of malice but out of love. He admonishes us not out of caprice, but out of care. He wants more from us realizing our potential to become more like Him. Thus, when He sees us sinning, He corrects us. When he sees us floundering, He saves us. When He sees us despairing, He enters our darkness enlightening our path. Yet, we caught up, addicted and bewildered, fear the light. We fear correction. We shun the discipline. We reject the rebuke thinking we know better than God. Foolishly we follow our path and not his, even though our path led us into the darkness.
Despite our foolishness, correction comes. God sends his messengers. They speak the truth. They expose the lies we live. They pierce and the poison pours out. Ezekiel, the prophet and priest, came with a sword, cutting out the hearts hardened by sin, hoping to produce a new heart, a heart not of stone, but a heart filled with truth, justice, and love. As God sent Ezekiel to warn the Israelites of the hardness of their hearts, so God sends us prophets and preachers revealing the hardness of our hearts.
God’s wrath, as so many call it, is God’s compassion. He allows us to suffer the consequences of our sins. He allows us to experience, even enjoy, the depravity and immorality of our hardened hearts. Believing sin advances and progresses our dignity, the reality speaks otherwise. The consequences of our choices expose the corruption within our heart revealing the loss of our dignity and our divinity.
God’s messengers penetrate the façade, exposing the deceptions that deceive our minds. We, as Isaiah explains, distort what is evil calling it good.
Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right! (Is 5:22–23).
Today, society reverses right and wrong. What is murder, we call life. What is perverted, we call personal expression. What is mutilation, we call physiotherapy. What is dehumanization, we call social advancement. We twist reality to satisfy our passions. We pervert reality, becoming hard at heart. Afraid to expose the other, we stay silent. Afraid to be rejected because we rebuked the wickedness of our brother or sister, we, as Ezekiel warns, are guilty of their sin too.
Jesus, expanding upon Ezekiel’s warning, empowers his apostles to correct each other. They are to hold each other accountable and responsible. They ought not let sin fester but foil it immediately. First, privately address the fault no matter how small or grave. Then warn them with witnesses if they reject the rebuke. If they still live in their sin, then to take it to the Church and make it public.
Today, even within Christianity, rebuking our brother or sister challenges the most devout. Exposing the sins of another, exposing the fallacious thinking and rationalizations, frightens not just Christians, but even those of the hierarchy. Yet, fidelity to the faith, each of us must face this fear less we fail to be faithful.
Rebuking another never condemns, but carefully and charitably calls them back to communion, fidelity to the Church’s teaching founded upon the Scriptures. Authentic Christianity holds dear holiness, for nothing unholy enters heaven. When Christians see an unholy act, what appears to be offensive to the faith, we are obligated to hold the other accountable and responsible.
As recent history has shown, many, especially in the hierarchy, have failed grievously this command. The cost and the loss is the soul of Christianity. As in Ezekiel’s day so too in our day, the Holy Spirit left (Ez 10:4:-22). Instead of pure hearts, the hearts of many Christians became hardened. We see the consequences. Evil abounds. But as St. Paul reminds us, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rom 5:20).
Today more than ever, fraternal correction is needed. Firmly, gently, and freely, we the faithful rebuke the wrongs of another, not out of anger, hatred, or bitterness, but love. We want to free our brother or sister from their fallacy, offering healing, reconciliation, then restoration.
As the Psalmist says, “Harden not your hearts” (Ps 95:8). The rebukes God desires cut and pierce stripping away the layers that insulate our deceptions. Cutting and chastening are meant to soften and lessen the hardness of our hearts so we may listen and learn. So we with Ezekiel receive a new heart:
A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh (Eze 36:26).
True God’s ways are not our ways but Godly rebukes heal our broken, hardened hearts.