Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jesus's instructions today are precise and uncomfortable: if someone wrongs you, go to them directly, privately, just the two of you, before anyone else is looped in. It's worth noticing how far this is from the default mode most conflict actually takes in your twenties and thirties - the group chat processing, the subtweet, the slow fade where you simply stop investing in a friendship rather than naming what went wrong.

Those indirect methods feel safer because they avoid the risk of an actual conversation. But they usually just relocate the conflict rather than resolving it - it moves from between the two people involved to a wider circle who now hold opinions about a situation they weren't part of, while the person who could actually address it never gets the chance to.

God's charge to Ezekiel names the cost of the alternative directly: I have made you a watchman. Staying silent when something needs saying has real weight in this text - God holds the watchman accountable for exactly that silence. That's a serious claim about what's actually at stake when you choose the easier, indirect route instead of the harder, direct one.

Paul supplies the reason this is worth the discomfort: love does no evil to the neighbor, and love is the fulfillment of the law. Winning the argument was never the point of the direct conversation Jesus describes - staying in relationship with someone through something that's gone wrong is.

Identify one relationship where you've chosen the indirect route - distance, avoidance, venting to others - instead of a direct conversation. Take the first real step toward that conversation today, even if it's just scheduling the time to have it.

Lord, I default to the indirect route more than I'd like to admit - easier to manage from a distance than to say the hard thing to someone's face. Give me the courage Ezekiel was given: to see clearly, and to speak plainly, and to trust you with what happens after. Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us. Amen.