‘If he listens to you, you have won back your brother’.
At the dawn of creation, Cain protested that he was not his brother, Abel’s keeper. His words have been quoted throughout history to justify turning a blind eye, not getting involved even when a brother or sister is taking the wrong path. Jesus says that we are our brother’s, or sister’s keeper. Love corrects.
If love doesn’t correct, then it is not love, but the correction must never be done harshly. It should never cause resentment. Naming and shaming never brings healing. When someone does something wrong, we would do well to remember the many things they did right.
When Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope St. John XXIII, was Patriarch of Venice, he once went to visit a wayward priest whose life was causing scandal. Having entered the priest’s house the Cardinal greeted him warmly and then knelt down and asked the priest if he would hear his confession. From that moment the priest began to turn his life around. Correction done with love bears fruit.
Motto of Pope John Paul I:
‘Always seek to say easy things and to say difficult things in an easy way’.