Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

"Love does no evil to the neighbor, hence love is the fulfillment of the law." - Romans 13:10

Sister, Jesus gives a hard instruction today: if someone has wronged you, go to them directly, privately, just the two of you. Not around them. Not to everyone else first. To them.

That's a genuinely difficult thing to do, and it's worth being honest about why. Going around a hurt - avoiding the person, managing the relationship from a careful distance, letting it cool rather than confronting it - can feel like peace, or even like kindness. It rarely is. It's usually just delay, and the delay lets the hurt calcify into something harder to name the longer it sits.

God gives Ezekiel a related charge: be a watchman. See what's happening and say so. Staying silent in the face of something wrong has a cost of its own. Paul ties it directly to love: love does no evil to the neighbor, and looking away is its own kind of harm. Paul makes the connection explicit: love does no evil to the neighbor. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do for someone is tell them, plainly and privately, what's true.

This is different from confrontation for its own sake. It's not about being right. It's about staying close enough to someone to tell them the truth, because you're not planning on going anywhere.

Name one relationship where you've let distance do the work instead of a direct conversation. Go to that person today - or if that's not possible today, name the first step you'll take toward it this week.

Lord, I have let silence pass for peace more times than I'd like to admit. Give me the courage to go directly to the people I love, and the gentleness to say the hard thing without breaking what I'm trying to heal. Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us. Amen.