XXV — FRATERNAL CONCORD

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Presence of God. — O Lord, teach me to live in perfect concord with my neighbor, so that my prayers and offerings may be pleasing to You.

Meditation

1 — This Sunday could be called the Sunday of concord, a virtue so necessary for always maintaining fraternal relations with one’s neighbor. “Beloved,” St. Peter exhorts us in the Epistle, “be all of one mind, compassionate, lovers of the brethren, merciful, modest, humble.” The Apostle speaks to us in a very practical and realistic way. He knows that, given our fragility and limitation, it is impossible to preserve concord if we do not know how to pity others’ defects, if we do not know how to be merciful with those who cause us displeasure, if we do not know how to bear humbly some wrong. Whoever, in order to live in perfect agreement with others, claims not to receive any annoyance, any displeasure, never to be contradicted and disturbed, has very little experience of life’s reality and forgets that we are not pure spirits but spirits limited by matter. He forgets that, as St. Augustine says, “we are mortal, fragile, infirm men who carry earthen vessels [that is, the body], causing one another anguish,” just as earthenware containers traveling in one cart strike one another and mutually disturb each other. Our limitation makes us have mentalities, tastes, desires, interests different from one another, and so we do not always manage to understand one another and at times, even without meaning to and without the shadow of bad intention, one acts in a way opposed to another. The remedy for these inevitable inconveniences is that suggested by St. Augustine: if the limitation of our matter causes us reciprocal anguish, “dilatentur spatia charitatis,” let the spaces of charity be widened; that is, let us widen the heart in greater charity to know how to pity and understand each other, and, on the other hand, let us exercise greater humility to conquer the resentments of self-love. And even if someone acts against us with ill will, we must know how to forgive him, according to the Apostle’s word: “do not return evil for evil, nor insult for insult, but on the contrary bless... And even if you should suffer something for justice, blessed are you!... In your hearts bless Christ the Lord” (Ep.).

2 — The Gospel takes up and deepens the same subject. “If your justice does not exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” It is a clear allusion to the new law, the law of love, which far surpasses the mere law of justice. We must not be content - as the Pharisees were content - with not harming our neighbor; we must practice toward him a delicate fraternal charity. It is not enough “not to kill” in order to escape “judgment,” because “whoever is angry with his brother deserves to be judged.” Here is another aspect of the new law proposed to us by Jesus: it is not enough to be just outwardly, one must first be just inwardly, that is, in the heart. It is not enough to avoid outward offense against one’s neighbor; one must avoid, or rather repress, even inward feeling. The Pharisees, with their material interpretation of the law, had totally forgotten the spirit, forgotten that, as St. Peter says in the Epistle, the Lord’s eyes always watch us and see not only the exterior but also the interior, so that anger and resentment smoldering in the heart do not escape Him. Besides, in outward conduct toward our neighbor too Jesus asks us for great refinement, wanting us to avoid not only acts but also offensive words. And charity, fraternal concord, is so dear to Him that He does not hesitate to tell us: “If therefore, when you bring your offering to the altar, you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there... and go first to be reconciled.” How He loves us, the Lord! “He,” St. John Chrysostom finely observes, “does not attend to his own honor when it is a question of requiring fraternal love: let my worship be interrupted, He says, but let your charity be established.” How, then, can our prayers and offerings be pleasing to God when between us and our neighbor there is something that hinders perfect concord?

Colloquy

“O Jesus, meditating on your divine words, I see how weak is the love I bear my sisters. How well I now understand that true charity consists in bearing all our neighbor’s defects, in not being astonished at his weaknesses, in being edified by his least acts of virtue! But above all, You make me understand that charity must not remain shut up at the bottom of our heart because, as You said, no one lights a lamp to put it under a bushel, but to place it on a lampstand, so that it may serve to illumine all those who are in the house. This lamp, O Lord, seems to me to represent charity, which must illumine and gladden not only those dearest to me, but all those who are in the house.

“Remembering that ‘charity covers a multitude of sins,’ I draw from that fertile mine You opened to us in the holy Gospel. I penetrate into the depths of your adorable words and exclaim with David: ‘since You have enlarged my heart, I have run in the way of your commandments.’ Charity alone can enlarge my heart. O my Jesus, from the moment this sweet flame consumes it, I run delightfully in the way of your new commandment and want to run in it until the blessed day when, joining the virginal procession, I shall follow You through infinite spaces, singing your new Canticle, which must be the canticle of love” (cf. T.B.G. St. 9).

“Lord Jesus Christ, if I had no other motive to love my neighbor, and not only one who loves me but also one who is against me, I would resolve to do so solely in view of the commandment You gave us to love one another as You Yourself have loved us. As You, Beauty, Goodness, and infinite Perfection, love me, a man full of misery, and do not reject me for my defects, so I, for love of You, accept all my brothers” (cf. Ven. John of Jesus Mary, O.C.D.).