23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2026
Long ago, in the cold silence of the morning after the world’s first murder in the scriptures, a single voice pierced the air. God asked Cain, "Where is Abel your brother?" And Cain; his hands still stained with the crimson dust of his own brother, his heart hardened by jealousy, uttered the supreme slogan of human betrayal: "I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?"
That pathetic, bitter cry did not die in the field outside Eden. It echoes today in the halls of modern society, where we have elevated indifferent isolation to a virtue. We live in a world where a man or a Lady can watch his neighbour slide into moral decay, ruin his family, or destroy his or her soul, and simply turn his head, whispering the modern incarnation of Cain’s lie: "Mind your own business." Today, we call it tolerance, but in truth, it is the profoundest form of hatred, the hatred of total indifference.
Against this tragedy of cold detachment, St Paul thunders in his Letter to the Romans: "Owe no one anything, except to love each other." Today, the world treats love as a business transaction: It says ‘I will love you provided you love me, i will be kind to you, on the condition that you will be kind to me’. That is not Love; that is trade, it is an exchange of egos Divine love, however, is not a bargain, it is a mortgage paid in full at Calvary, leaving us with a permanent obligation to pass that grace along to every soul we meet.
Divine love is the complete anti-toxin to the poison of Cain. Cain asked, "Am I my brother’s keeper?" Divine Love answers, "You are your brother’s salvation."
Saint Paul reminds us that love is the fulfilling of the law because love does no wrong to a neighbour. Why does St Paul say we must remain perpetually in debt to love? this is because love is the only debt that grows greater the more you pay it.
WHAT LOVE IS NOT
To love a neighbour does not mean to applaud a neigbour’s destruction; it means to desire his eternal good. This is why Our Lord Jesus Christ gives us the divine blueprint in the Gospel to heal the spirit of Cain:
1. The Privacy of Charity: "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone." Cain dragged his brother into the field to slaughter him; Christ sends us to our brother in private to restore him. True love hides the shame of the offender to win back his soul.
2. The Community of Mercy: If he will not listen, bring one or two others. This is not a lynch mob; it is the gentle encirclement of truth, assuring him that his soul is worth fighting for.
3. The Body of the Redeemer: If he refuses the Church, we do not hate him. We treat him as a tax collector, the very ones Jesus ate with, wept over, and sought to convert.
To correct without love is the tyranny of the Pharisee; to ignore sin without truth is the cowardice of Cain. But to love enough to seek, to correct, and to reconcile, that is the very heartbeat of God.
You will never bankrupt yourself by loving. Remember, when you stand before the Master at the end of days, He will not ask to see your bank balance, your social standing or the list of those who honored you. He will look at your hands to see if they are empty of self interes and he will look at your heart to see if you are still paying the glorious , unending debt of his love to a broken world
May the Lord Bless His words in our hearts. Amen