23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: Ez 33:7-9
Second Reading: Rom 13:8-10
Gospel Reading: Mt 18:15-20
This Sunday’s Readings speak of our duty to correct others.
It must be done in a spirit of love, motivated not by malice, but by a desire to increase “the holiness and love of the person corrected,” says Our Sunday Visitor’s Catholic Encyclopedia. It requires “prudence and discretion,” or it will engender “animosity, resentment, and hostility” and thus “defeat its primary purpose.”
The most common venue for correction is the family. “Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “He who loves his son chastises him often,” it quotes.
However, some parents reverse this, seeing chastisement as a sign of love. They issue orders continually, some of them impossible to obey, others mutually incompatible, and many motivated by their own frustration, bad temper, or selfishness.
“The scars left from the child’s defeat in the fight against irrational authority are at the bottom of every neurosis,” says psychologist Erich Fromm. “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger,” St. Paul warns.
“Parents must regard their children as children of God and respect them as human persons,” says the Catechism, not patronizing, humiliating, or criticizing them behind their backs or over their heads, but creating a home “where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule.”
All family members “should be generous and tireless in forgiving one another for offences, quarrels, injustices, and neglect,” the Catechism says. “Mutual affection suggests this. The charity of Christ demands it.” In fact, parents who can “acknowledge their own failings to their children” are “better able to guide and correct them.”
People often complain that today’s teenagers do not respect authority. However, a teacher I know says that the only change he saw in 36 years was a decrease in their toleration of hypocrisy. At one time, he says, students had to be punctual, but teachers could be late. Now, if a teacher is late, students demand explanations and apologies.
The rebellion of teenagers, he said, is against “irrational” authority. “Our orders are sometimes unjust or unreasonable. When they are, we should admit it: ‘I’m sorry; I spoke out of irritation,’ or ‘I didn’t know.’ We should not demand obedience just ‘because I said so.’”
Punishment must be imposed by those in authority “to correct vices and maintain justice,” the Catechism says, not to vent anger or take revenge. Its effect should be to “redress the disorder caused by the offence,” preserve order and safety, and “contribute to the correction of the offender.”
Parents express their respect and affection for their children by the care and attention with which they bring them up, the Catechism says. This applies especially to their education in the faith, which should not be neglected any more than education in personal hygiene.
Parents have “the responsibility and privilege of evangelizing their children,” the Catechism says. From their earliest years, they should “initiate” them “into the mysteries of the faith” and “associate” them “with the life of the Church.”
Parents should bring their children to church from the day they are born, not making Mass unbearable by insisting that they sit silent for an hour, but making it interesting by explaining it, answering their questions, giving them Mass books with pictures, and teaching them hymns.
The same holds for prayer at home. “Parents have the mission of teaching their children to pray,” the Catechism says. They should teach them to understand the language of prayer, or prayer will become a burden to them.
(Of course, this means that parents themselves must understand and love prayer and the Mass.)
We tend to think of home, says C.S. Lewis, as a place to relax and “be ourselves.” However, “it will never be lawful simply to ‘be ourselves’ until ‘ourselves’ have become sons of God.” The “high, hard, lovely, and adventurous art of really creating the Christian family” will always take effort.
