Some days the Word sets us before a door we cannot open for ourselves, and at the same time hands us the key to a door we’ve been afraid to try. Moses stands on Nebo with eyes undimmed, seeing what he will not enter (Deuteronomy 34:1-12). Jesus sets before us the path we have avoided—honest, patient reconciliation (Matthew 18:15-20). Between these two thresholds, the Psalm places a refrain in our mouths: “Blessed be God who filled my soul with fire!” (Psalm 66:1-3, 16-17). Today’s grace is the fire to accept holy endings and the charity to begin difficult conversations.
Standing with Moses at Nebo: Holy Endings and the Promise That Remains (Deuteronomy 34:1-12)
There is tenderness in the detail that Moses dies with “eyes… undimmed and his vigor unabated” (Dt 34:7). It is not weakness that keeps him from crossing; it is mystery. We are allowed to see, to long, to labor—and sometimes to hand the future to those who come after. Augustine loved to show how God’s pedagogy moves us from promise to fulfillment across time: the Law (Moses) leads us to Christ, and Joshua (whose Hebrew name, Yeshua, is the same as “Jesus”) brings the people into rest. What belongs to the present age is fidelity; what belongs to the age to come is full possession. Grace keeps us faithful in the first so that we might be received into the second.
Many of us live right here on Nebo: a parent wonders if a child will return to the faith; a founder steps down just before the harvest; a caregiver releases a loved one into hospice; an activist passes the torch, unsure whether the arc of justice will bend in time. Augustine would call our hearts to caritas—love that seeks the other’s true good—as the measure of our work, not the perfection of our outcomes. The promise is God’s; the procession through history belongs to God’s time, not our timetable. Yet the text also gives us a luminous sign of continuation: Moses lays hands on Joshua, and the Spirit’s wisdom fills the next servant (Dt 34:9). When our vocation reaches its boundary, blessing becomes our last and most powerful act.
The Craft of Reconciliation: From Private Courage to Ecclesial Care (Matthew 18:15-20)
Jesus gives a sequence for mending breaches: begin privately, add humble witnesses if needed, and finally involve the Church (Mt 18:15-17). This is not bureaucracy; it is love calibrated to truth. St. John Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed pastor of hearts, insisted that correction without love is cruelty, and love without truth is sentimentality. He reads Matthew’s counsel as a balm against public shaming: go first “between you and him alone” so that dignity can be safeguarded and conversion can be born free of humiliation. In an age of call-outs and comment threads, the Lord’s path requires a different courage: knock on a real door, not just a digital one.
What of the hard line, “treat him as a Gentile or a tax collector” (Mt 18:17)? Read in the context of Jesus’ own life, this cannot mean contempt. How did Jesus treat Gentiles and tax collectors? He ate with them; he sought them; he called them to conversion. The Church must sometimes draw boundaries—Chrysostom is clear this protects the whole body—but the aim is always restoration. “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,” Jesus says, entrusting real authority to the Church (Mt 18:18). Binding and loosing are ordered to healing: loosening burdens with forgiveness, binding up wounds with truth.
St. Teresa of Ávila would ask us to rehearse this Gospel first in the “interior castle.” Correction that doesn’t pass through the chambers of humility rarely heals. Before speaking, she would have us pray with determined determination, asking the Lord to show where our ego is entangled, to detach us from the need to win, and to kindle love for the person we hope to reach. For Teresa, contemplation is never an escape; it births action that is gentle, truthful, and free.
Where Two or Three Begin Again: Fire, Prayer, and Presence (Psalm 66; Matthew 18:19-20; 2 Corinthians 5:19)
“Blessed be God who filled my soul with fire!” (Ps 66). Praise is not denial of pain; it is oxygen for courage. The Gospel promises that when two or three gather in Jesus’ name, he is there (Mt 18:20). Chrysostom loved to dwell on this astonishing nearness: Christ is not a distant arbiter but the living middle term of our reconciliation. And St. Paul adds today’s alleluia: God is reconciling the world to himself in Christ and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:19). The smallest circle—a couple at a kitchen table, coworkers on a lunch break, friends in a dorm room—can become a sanctuary where forgiveness is asked and offered, where truth is spoken without fear, because Christ stands in the midst.
Teresa would remind us that even when we cannot gather outwardly, we can enter the oratory of the heart. Let praise kindle the interior fire that burns off resentment’s fog. The one who has praised well can speak plainly without poison.
An Optional Memorial of Reconciliation: Pontian and Hippolytus
Today the Church also remembers, as an optional memorial, Pope St. Pontian and St. Hippolytus, priest and theologian. Their story is a parable of Matthew 18 in history. Hippolytus clashed bitterly with Pontian and allowed himself to be set up as an antipope. Both were later condemned to the Sardinian mines, where suffering simplified what rivalry had complicated. They were reconciled and died as martyrs, honored together. Their shared feast is a luminous footnote to our readings: the Church’s authority must serve unity; the Lord can turn even our worst standoffs into a communion sealed by grace.
Practices for a Week on the Threshold
- The Nebo Examen (Dt 34): Name one promise you can see but cannot enter right now. Grieve it before God. Bless the person or community who may carry it forward. Ask for undimmed eyes and unabated vigor to serve faithfully today.
- The Matthew 18 Pathway: If there is a fracture, schedule a private conversation. Prepare in prayer; ask for humility and clarity (Mt 18:15). If needed, invite a wise, discreet witness (Mt 18:16). If the wound is ecclesial, seek pastoral accompaniment (Mt 18:17-18).
- The “Two or Three” Rule (Mt 18:19-20): Choose two companions for intentional intercession this week. Name one impossible thing and agree to ask the Father together.
- Praise as Kindling (Ps 66): Begin each day with one concrete sentence of praise. Let gratitude supply courage for reconciliation.
- Caritas Test (Augustine): Before speaking, ask, “Is my motive the other’s true good?” If not, return to prayer. Love is the form of every Christian act.
Hope at the Edge of the Promise
Moses’ hidden grave reminds us that even the great ones’ stories are finally entrusted to God (Dt 34:6). What is not finished in our hands is not lost. And the Lord who stands in the midst of our small circles is the same Lord who leads the whole people home. Between personal thresholds and communal fractures, the Church Fathers point a single way forward: humility that prays (Teresa), love that tells the truth (Chrysostom), and hope that rests in grace rather than outcomes (Augustine).
May the God who fills the soul with fire teach us how to end well and how to begin again—how to bless successors with joy, to correct with charity, and to gather in his name until the promise becomes possession. Blessed be God. (Ps 66:20)