09/06/2026
"Fraternal Correction & Excommunication" -- Homily for the Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Ez 33:7-9/Ps 95/Rm 13:8-10/Mt 18:15-20
In today’s second reading, St. Paul examines one of God’s great commandments: to love our neighbor as ourselves. That means we have a duty towards our neighbor, and one of these duties is to play an active role in the salvation of others, to help their souls get to Heaven. In today’s Gospel, Jesus offers up one way we are to do this: through an approach that is called Fraternal (Brotherly) Correction: when a person sins against you, Jesus says you are to go talk to that person about their fault! I.e., you have to make another person’s sins known to them. Now “wait a minute”, you might say. “Isn’t that a form of judging others?” Not necessarily. It may sound like it, but you have to consider: if Jesus is telling us to do this, then there must be something deeper going on here.
And there is: the purpose of fraternal correction is reconciliation. We are to do this not out of judgment or rebuke, but out of love—for “love does no evil to the neighbor”, St. Paul tells us. Even so, what exactly makes fraternal correction an act of love? We heard in the responsorial psalm: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” As these words imply, the more one’s life is consumed by sin, the harder one’s heart becomes. And if a person’s heart is so hardened that it won’t even listen to God, then it needs a person to give it a wake-up call. You see, fraternal correction is supposed to be a medicine to wake that person up from their sin and bring them back to right relationship with us and with God. This is the love of the Christian: to love someone enough to give them the truth, to correct them if they have gone astray. Just consider, if someone doesn’t know they’re in sin, how will they change unless we tell them?
In addressing this hardness of heart, Jesus gives us three ways to practice fraternal correction towards fellow Christians, each one building on the other based on the level of that hardness. The first step, and the best way to correct someone, is to do it one-on-one. To respect the person enough to keep it between the two of you, in order to gently help them (i.e. don’t blast them on social media!). Say if someone has a drinking problem or an addiction, it’s best to approach them directly and say, “Hey man, you’re a good guy. But I know what you’re struggling with, and I want to help.” Hopefully, through that honest conversation, that person will listen and have a change of heart.
But if they don’t listen—and they stay stubborn in their grave sin—then it’s time for step 2. As Jesus says, this is when you need to bring in other people for support. Think of it as an intervention, when a family or a group of friends approach a loved one to give them the honest truth in order to help them if they have a serious problem. Now what if that doesn’t work? Time for step 3: Jesus says to tell the church. If someone’s sin is serious enough, the Church has to get involved and make a formal juridical correction. Why? Because Jesus gave the Apostles the authority to “bind and loose”, to make decisions in regards to sin as a way of pastorally helping souls—and this authority of the Church is one that all Catholics must be obedient towards.
Now, if even that fails—if the sinner does not even listen to the Church—what then? Jesus says that this person is to be treated as a Gentile/Tax collector. What does that mean? Well, the Gentiles and Tax collectors were outsiders to the Jewish faith. Thus, Jesus is saying that if a sinner, who is in grave public sin, refuses to even listen to the Church and change their ways, they are to be treated as outsiders. What Jesus is doing here is giving the basis for an official practice of the Church that, especially today, is often viewed as something too harsh or draconian: the practice of Excommunication.
Since this practice is a majorly misunderstood one, I’d like to spend a second to clarify what excommunication is. The Catechism explains in 1463, “Certain particularly grave sins incur excommunication, the most severe ecclesiastical penalty, which impedes the reception of the sacraments and the exercise of certain ecclesiastical acts, and for which absolution consequently cannot be granted, according to canon law, except by the Pope, the bishop of the place or priests authorized by them.” In other words, if a Catholic were to commit a grave, public offense, such as heresy, schism, apostasy, among many others, then they would be excommunicated. They would no longer be able to receive the sacraments and would be cut off from communion in the Church until they repent and have the penalty lifted by a proper Church authority.
This sounds harsh, I know it does. Why would Jesus give the Church such authority? Well, it’s the same reason as the other steps of fraternal correction: excommunication is actually not meant to be solely a punishment. It’s meant to be an act of mercy, a medicine to help wake that hardened heart up. Anyone who is excommunicated has done a grave offense, and so by being excommunicated, the Church is trying to show that person how far they have gone, that through their own fault, they have cut themselves off from the life of the Church! Unless they repent, things are not going to change. Thus, an excommunication is actually for the good of that person, to help them reconcile back with Christ.
In all these different cases we have looked at, my friends, one thing remains certain: Jesus is calling us to help each other in our sin. In the battle against our own sin, we can’t do it alone. Not only do we need God’s help, but we even need the help of others. I know that fraternal correction sounds scary—we make ourselves vulnerable by talking to another about their faults, and vice versa. But when someone is in grave sin that’s harming themselves and others, tell them out of love we must. For as we heard in our first reading from Ezekiel, “If…you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked from his way, the wicked will die for his guilt, but I will hold you responsible for his death.” If we fail to speak up about someone else’s sin to help them, then we ourselves are committing a sin; a “sin of omission”, failing to help someone when we were supposed to. But if we speak up with truth and charity, not only will we save our own souls, but more importantly, we might do the extraordinary and help our neighbor get to Heaven.
Amen.
