GO AND HAVE IT OUT

PRAYER MOMENT                      

Wednesday 13 August 2014

GO AND HAVE IT OUT

Pause. Be still in God’s presence.

Reading: “If your brother or sister does something wrong, go and have it out with them alone, between your two selves.” (Matt 18:15-20)

Reflection. How often we hear the words, ‘I just kept quiet.’ We have great difficulty in speaking about a problem to the person concerned. We fear for our relationship with that person or for our job. Yet we know that unresolved issues boil beneath the surface and burst into the open. Take South Sudan, for example. But we do not have to go to such enormous tragic events. Unresolved conflicts fester in our families, communities and our nation. In today’s gospel reading Jesus almost implores us to take the courage to settle our differences before they get out of hand. Ezekiel, in the first reading (Ch. 9) describes the horror of unresolved issues but even in the lifetime of many of us such things happened. “Children were torn away from their parents’ hands by the force of the hurricane and whirled into the fire.” This is not referring to some natural disaster but to a bombing raid by the British on Hamburg in 1943.

      

Prayer. Lord Jesus, give us the courage to settle our differences with other people “before the sun sets.” Amen

David Harold-Barry SJ