“Forgetting offenses is a sign of sincere repentance. If you keep the memory of them, you may believe you have repented, but you are like someone running in his sleep. Let no one consider it a minor defect, this darkness that often clouds the eyes even of spiritual people.”–St. John Climacus

The Gospel’s Procedural Model of Christian Reconciliation and Conflict Resolution

My Dearest Friends in Christ

You are welcome to another encounter with the life-changing Word of God. Today, Jesus gives us a practical model for Christian reconciliation and conflict resolution. Let us embrace these steps so that we may promote extraordinary love, peace, and harmony within the human family of God and in society at large.

One of the reasons I admire and cherish the Word of God, the Bible, is that it is not merely a compendium or library of theoretical ideas. It is also a practical and comprehensive guide to human life, relationships, and well-being. This is particularly evident in today’s Gospel reading.

Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Is There a Difference?

Do you know that there is a subtle difference between forgiveness and reconciliation? Do you know that we can forgive people without necessarily reconciling with them?

Reconciliation takes forgiveness a step further. It involves restoring a broken relationship and making a genuine effort to live peacefully with the person who has offended us. As human beings, we often find it difficult to reconcile with people who have offended us, even after going to confession. We may claim to have forgiven someone while still harboring animosity, resentment, or suspicion in our hearts, and these feelings often manifest themselves in the way we treat that person.

Someone once said, “I can’t help him again, not after he squandered the money I gave to him in the past.” Comments such as this can reveal an unwillingness to forgive and reconcile. I know it may be difficult to treat an offender as before, especially when trust has been damaged, but with God’s grace, forgiveness and reconciliation are possible.

Today’s readings, especially the Gospel, give us practical steps toward achieving genuine and sincere reconciliation with anyone who offends us.

Our Christian Responsibility to Warn Others About Evil

In the First Reading, God appoints Ezekiel as a watchman over His people. Like each one of us, Ezekiel was entrusted with the responsibility of warning and dissuading people from doing evil. This responsibility has far-reaching implications. Failure to carry out this divine responsibility places a serious burden upon us when we could have helped a brother or sister turn away from wrongdoing.

This is a call to condemn evil and help bring the erring back to God. It is a Christian obligation and an act of fraternal charity. There comes a time when silence is no longer golden. Keeping silent when someone is perishing in sin is not golden; it can become a serious sin of omission.

The Biblical Model for Christian Reconciliation

God’s command to Ezekiel to serve as a watchman connects with the first step in the Gospel, where Christ gives us a practical model of Christian reconciliation. The process involves reaching out to one another to restore a broken relationship with one another and with God.

First Step: Speak Directly and Address the Problem

The first and most crucial step in this model of Christian reconciliation is openness to communication. We must be willing to express our hurt and address the problem directly with the person who has offended us.

Keeping our feelings bottled up in fear often breeds greater resentment and can lead to destructive behaviors such as gossip, calumny, and blackmail. In life, I have come to realize that we are often hurt by people who never intended to hurt us and may not even realize that they have caused us pain.

Whether the offense was intentional or unintentional, the first step should be to go directly to that person and respectfully express our dissatisfaction with his or her behavior.

Care must be taken not to abuse or insult people who may have willingly or unwillingly hurt us. There have been situations in which people who reacted abusively toward those who offended them ended up creating greater hatred, resentment, or even physical violence.

Complaints should therefore be made prudently and charitably, with the intention of helping the offender recognize the harm caused and creating an opportunity for forgiveness. When we approach one another in love, we increase the possibility of restoring friendship with our brother or sister.

It is not enough to ask God to forgive our offenses; we must also be humble enough to sincerely ask others to forgive us when we hurt them.

Second Step: Seek the Help of One or Two Trusted People

When the offending party refuses to listen, the circle of people becomes wider. The Word of God instructs us, as a second step, to take one or two others with us (cf. Deuteronomy 19:15).

This does not mean bringing people in to testify against our brother or sister or to prove who is right and who is wrong. Rather, they should help facilitate reconciliation.

Caution must be exercised when choosing these additional people because not everyone possesses the wisdom or skills necessary to handle disputes. Some people, instead of promoting peace and resolving conflicts amicably, can cause even greater harm (cf. Proverbs 12:18).

Always remember that the goal of involving additional people is reconciliation, peace, and restoration, not judgment or condemnation.

It would therefore be helpful to choose one or two people whom you believe the offender respects and is likely to listen to. In the case of a marital dispute, for example, this could include marriage sponsors, a marriage counsellor, or other mature and trusted persons.

If the offender still refuses to heed the appeal for reconciliation, the matter should be taken to the Church.

Third Step: Bring the Matter to the Christian Community

Taking the matter to the Church should be understood in the context of the Christian community, not as an invitation to gossip or publicly embarrass the person involved.

It does not mean announcing the conflict to the entire congregation. Rather, it may involve a few responsible members of the Church or appropriate Church structures, such as pastoral leadership, a marriage tribunal where appropriate, or a justice, peace, and conflict-resolution ministry.

The movement in this Gospel passage is important: there is a gradual movement from the individual to the communal.

The Christian community plays an integral role in promoting peace and harmony, especially when helping members reconcile and settle serious differences.

Prayer and the Word of God should be important instruments in resolving misunderstandings because it is the Holy Spirit who moves people to recognize their offenses, repent, forgive, and seek reconciliation.

Christian leaders, including pastors, have a responsibility to help settle disputes among members and promote peace within the community.

Taking our misunderstanding to the Church should therefore normally be a later step, not the first step. One problem today is that people sometimes ignore the first step and immediately jump to the second or final step.

If calling 911 and inviting the police is your first point of call whenever you have a disagreement with someone, you may need to examine whether you have first exhausted the Christian path of dialogue, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

However, situations involving immediate danger, violence, abuse, or threats to someone’s life and safety require appropriate intervention and should never be ignored.

Final Step: When Someone Refuses Reconciliation

The final step is Jesus’ instruction to treat a brother or sister who refuses to listen to the community as a Gentile or tax collector.

This should not be interpreted as giving up completely on the person, declaring war against them, or treating them with hatred. Rather, it recognizes that the relationship remains seriously broken and that the person has refused the community’s efforts toward reconciliation.

Even then, Christians are called to continue forgiving. Jesus teaches us to forgive not merely seven times but “seventy-seven times” (cf. Matthew 18:22), emphasizing the limitless nature of Christian forgiveness.

Reconciliation does not mean pretending that nothing happened or ignoring serious wrongdoing. Rather, it means refusing to allow resentment, hatred, and revenge to control our hearts. We continue to hope for restoration while entrusting the person and the situation to God.

When we sincerely work toward reconciliation, we participate in restoring relationships that have been damaged and, ultimately, in restoring communion with God.

Christian Reconciliation Requires Love

Let us not forget that in the Second Reading, St. Paul reminds us that we owe love to everyone, including those who hurt us or refuse our attempts at reconciliation. When we love, we fulfill the law.

Christian reconciliation is therefore not simply about resolving disagreements. It is about living out the commandment of love and allowing the Gospel to transform the way we respond to conflict.

God is always present when we gather for a holy purpose. When we unite our hearts and prayers in the pursuit of peace, reconciliation, justice, and the good of all, we place our conflicts before the God who can transform wounded relationships.

Conclusion: Choose Reconciliation, Peace, and Love

My dear friends, Jesus gives us a practical and orderly approach to Christian conflict resolution and reconciliation: begin with personal dialogue, involve one or two trusted people when necessary, seek the help of the Christian community when further intervention is needed, and continue to forgive even when reconciliation is difficult.

Let us therefore resist gossip, resentment, revenge, and unnecessary escalation. Let us learn to communicate with humility, correct one another with charity, seek help wisely, and allow the Word of God to guide us in resolving conflicts.

May God grant us the gift of His peace and give us the grace to become instruments of reconciliation among all His children. Amen.

I keep you and your family always in my prayers. ©Clem C. Aladi (2026)