There are many reasons why we are reluctant and often petrified to even think of giving fraternal correction today. Maybe we are facing the guilt and shame from our own sinful lives. Maybe we have become inebriated with the Kool-Aid of “Who am I to judge?” Maybe we are afraid that our erring brethren would not heed our words. Maybe we are just afraid of offending others and losing their love and affection.
The bottom-line reason for our refusal or reluctance to offer fraternal correction is our excessive self-love i.e. we love ourselves more than we love God. We ought to love God above all things and persons and seek His own glory above and beyond all things. It is only when we have appropriately moderated our self-love that we can offer and even receive fraternal correction because such correction is first and foremost all about loving God appropriately. It is not primarily about our holiness or the holiness of others or their acceptance of our correction.
God spoke to the Prophet Ezekiel words for His people in exile. They had lost their land and sense of nationalism and were now focusing more on their individual personal relationships with God. The prophet is told, “You, son of man, I have appointed my watchman for the house of Israel; when you hear me say anything, you shall warn them for me.” Ezekiel must warn and correct the people from their evil ways for God’s own sake and not because he is holy himself or because they would appreciate and respond to his message to them. If the prophet has excessive self-love, loving himself above God and craving the affection of his rebellious compatriots, there is no way that he could ever offer them fraternal correction.
For us to appropriately give and receive fraternal correction we must be ready to check and mortify our love of self. Mt 18:15-20 shows us some deadly effects of that self-love that tends to exaggerate our own worth before our eyes and makes us blind to seeing God as the source and end of any goodness we may possess.
First of all, unbridled self-love harms the individual person by making the person obstinate, incapable of admitting wrong done, and accepting full responsibility for it. The person is unable to hear and to respond to God’s call and the promptings of divine grace. Jesus said, “If he refuses to listen to them, tell the Church,” because such a person cannot listen to others or to the Church through whom God speaks to him or her. Because of their illusory personal sanctity, such persons cannot realize their need for the mercy of God or repentance from their sin.
Secondly, self-love wounds the Christian community at every level, be it in the family, Church, society or world. Self-love does not allow one to reconcile differences with others or to forgive others. It makes resentful and intolerant persons and deeply divided communities. That is why Jesus said that such persons should be cast outside the community to preserve the community’s unity, “If he refuses to listen even to the Church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.” This is how much Jesus warned us of the effects of unchecked self-love in the Christian community.
Lastly, self-love makes the Church and her members spiritually weak. The unity of the Church is the source of her powerful prayer, “If two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted them by my heavenly Father.” How can the members of the Church agree on anything when they are all so enamored of themselves and their own excellence? Even God’s gifts are abused and employed in self-promotion instead of selfless service to others. Nothing makes the Church and her members spiritually impotent as self-love.
When self-love is left unchecked, no fraternal correction is possible. When no fraternal correction is given and received out of love for God, there is no authentic Christian community. Because “a house divided against itself cannot stand,”(Mk 3:25) no spiritual power is present in a community where authentic fraternal correction is lacking.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, it is clear that there is little or no fraternal correction in the Church today because self-love reigns in our hearts. Are we not loving our own reputation, comfort, pleasure, career, affection from others, etc. more than we are loving God and His glory? How else can one explain the lingering clergy sexual and financial scandals engulfing the Church today? Clergy who repeatedly sexually abused young boys and seminarians are promoted in the Church’s hierarchy, other bishops cover for their abominable crimes, and then the scandal is blamed on clericalism while ignoring the prevalence of homosexuality in these abominable crimes. How convenient to blame everything on the attitude of clericalism and then ignore the individual human perpetrators who deserve severe corrective and even punitive actions.
Then we also have the faithful who have such an exaggerated view of themselves that everything and everybody else should change but themselves. In the crassest form of self-love possible, they think of themselves so special that they need a new theology and morality to suit their deviant lifestyles. They also need their own “special” genders because the binary set of male and female are not good enough for them. In their eyes, there is no need for them to change or mature but they must be revered and accepted by all. For them, it is other people, the Church and her teachings, and sometimes, even God and His revealed will that should change instead. Such self-love surely makes the Church a scandalous and spiritually impotent community.
Every single one of us have a great duty to check and battle with our self-love every single day of our lives. We can begin to do this today by begging God continuously for this love and letting it enter into our hearts to reign therein. This divine love is a light that brings to us God’s own truth about ourselves as loved by God even in our sinfulness and weakness. Self-love begins to wither when we experience and treasure God’s unconditional love for us. We put self-love to death when we see that all the good in us is from God and that we need God at every single moment of our lives to maintain that good in us. This truth will surely make us strive to grow and mature spiritually.
We must also let the words of Christ to enter into our hearts and challenge us. It is difficult for us to have an excessive love for ourselves when we have come to face and humbly accept our own personal struggles in living God’s words. We have to let Christ challenge us first so that we can die to self and then give and receive fraternal correction from others. We will surely be patient with others once we have experienced God’s patient but challenging love
Mama Mary instructed the servants at the wedding feast, “Do whatever He tells you,” because she has acted on the words of God first. Hers was a motherly correction that rightly put Christ at the very center and allowed Him to reveal His power. By accepting the personal challenge of Christ first, we too can avoid the hypocritical correction of others that stems from our unbridled self-love. We can then offer true fraternal correction that allows God’s power to be come manifest in our lives and communities.
The Church guides people and she is also guided by the Holy Spirit through others. The power of this spirit is needed in the Church for conversion and sanctification of souls, for the thriving of all the vocations in the Church, for the evangelizing mission of the Church, etc. Jesus, the Head of the Church, also assures us, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” He is with us always!
If the Church is not the spiritual powerhouse that she was meant to be through the presence of the Holy Spirit, Jesus and Mama Mary, it is probably so because we have not unleashed this power that is within us. To unleash this spiritual power, we must become a living community wherein fraternal correction is given and received by all because we love God above self and all other things and persons. But to have such fraternal correction in our communities, we must all begin to die to self-love today and always.
Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!
