23rd Sunday in OT 2017 - Intervention

A few years ago, a television show premiered on A&E called “Intervention”. The show follows one or two participants who are abusing or severely addicted to drugs or alcohol. Their relatives and friends are interviewed who detail the effects the drug or alcohol addiction has had on the family—the sadness, the grief, the lies that often accompany addiction, the concern for the harm the addict is doing to themselves. A trained intervention specialist then prepares the family for staging an intervention, in which the family and friends gently confront the addict about their addiction. At the intervention, the addict is given a choice: enter a rehabilitation program or risk losing contact and financial assistance from their relatives. From what I’ve read, the show has had tremendous success in getting help for addicts and their families.

This method of loving confrontation is biblical. As we heard today, If your brother falls into sin, try to help them, confront them, if they don’t listen to you, bring another with you. A family effort is often needed in helping someone who has fallen into addiction, sin, or unhealthy behavior. Sometimes our Lord waits until two or three are gathered in his name, to make his power known.

The passage we heard today, in fact, immediately follows the parable of the lost sheep, in which Jesus tells us about the love of the heavenly Father, how the Father sends the Son to seek out the lost sheep, he’ll even leave behind 99 other sheep for a time, in order to search out and find the one lost sheep that have gone astray.

And one of the ways God seeks out the lost sheep, is through us: through family members who lovingly and gently confront those who struggle with addiction to drugs, gambling, pornography, internet shopping, video games, parents who act as watchmen over their children, as we heard in the prophet Ezekiel today. If a family member stops going to Church, ignores Church teaching, blasphemes in public, we have a duty to gently correct them.

The point of correcting people when they fall into sin isn’t to prove that we are holier than they are, the point is concern for their souls, and helping them to be the people God made us to be.
I’ve had some personal experience with this: In seminary, I volunteered at a drug and alcohol treatment facility for teenagers, and I would participate in group family counseling sessions, in which parents and relatives would gather, in a very gentle setting, they would share with their teenager how the addiction has brought harm to the addict and the family life.

Most priests are not trained intervention specialists or drug counselors, but for families facing these issues, the Church can help connect your family with those with this expertise.
God loves the sinner, God love the addict. In fact, many people I’ve known who have struggled with addiction have great intellectual gifts, have tremendously large hearts. Sometimes they turn to addiction because they feel emotions like grief so deeply they turn to other substances to numb their pain. Though they act in unlovable ways, the addict is a child of God, loved by God.

Intervention, fraternal correction, seeks to help people who sometimes become incapable of helping themselves, who have fallen into a cycle of hurting themselves and their families, who have started making self-destructive choices. Part of being pro-life, is to help people when they are making anti-life decisions, choices that are destructive to the spiritual life, emotional life, physical life, or family life.

In the Reading from Romans today, St. Paul teaches that all the 10 commandments, don’t commit adultery, don’t break the sabbath day, don’t commit murder, don’t steal or covet, can all be summed-up by the command: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.”

Fraternal correction, confronting the sinner, the addict, is done out of love. Parents correcting their children when they act selfishly, spouses gently correcting spouses when they act selfishly, correction, also called, rebuke, is done out of love. Today’s Gospel is clear that we are to to help each other to become the people God made us to be.

In becoming the people God made us to be, it is also important to look to holy examples.  We of course first, and foremost, look to the example of the Lord. We read and reflect upon the Scripture stories of the Lord, we keep the great image of the Lord’s sacrifice before our eyes, the crucifix, so that we can know his love, and follow his example of patience, mercy, self-sacrificial love.

Second to Our Blessed Lord, we look to the example of humility and forbearance of His Blessed Mother. Her boundless charity and her lowliness are virtues to emulated by every Christian.
Thirdly we look to the example of the Saints. The Saints are our great teachers, Ordinary People, fishermen, farmers, widows, humble priests and religious, artists, ordinary people, who God calls to extraordinary holiness.

Beginning this Tuesday night, I will be showing over in the Harvest Room a video series called “Catholicism: The Pivotal Players”. This series explores the lives of some Ordinary People who answered the call to use their gifts and talents for the building up of the kingdom of God—people like Francis of Assisi, G.K Chesterton, Catherine of Siena, Thomas Aquinas, and Michaelangelo. I encourage you to attend this free adult-education opportunity.

If Jesus Christ has the power to break the bonds of death, he can lead those enslaved to addiction an sin to freedom.

May each of us be humble enough to be open to the correction we need to grow in holiness, that we may help others become the people God made them to be, that we may live in the freedom of their children of God and receive an everlasting inheritance for the Glory of God and salvation of souls.