Our Venerable Fathers Isaac, Dalmatus, and Faustus.
Dormition Fast.
2 Corinthians 2:4-15; Matthew 23:13-22.
Read 2 Corinthians 2:4-15
In the sayings of the desert fathers, the following story is recounted:
A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to him, ‘Come, for everyone is waiting for you.’ So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said to him, ‘What is this, Father?’ The old man said to them, ‘My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.’ When they heard that they said no more to the brother but forgave him.
The point Abba Moses makes is that we should not be eager to judge the sins of another. The brothers came prepared to render a verdict; they left having forgiven, not because the fault was small, but because they had been made to see their own.
Paul’s concern in Corinth is the same, approached from the other side. The censure has done its work: “For such a one this punishment by the majority is enough; so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow” (2 Cor 2:6-7). The discipline of the Church is therapeutic; the Church is a hospital for sinners. St. John Chrysostom sees this precisely: Paul asks the Corinthians not only to lift the censure but also to restore the man to his former status, for to punish a man without healing him means nothing (Homilies on the Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthians, 4.4).
The healing runs in both directions. The penitent must be restored, and the community must have the humility to receive him back as a brother in Christ — which is its own kind of repentance.
Paul names what is at stake if this does not happen. Forgiveness is extended “to keep Satan from gaining the advantage over us; for we are not ignorant of his designs” (2:11). St. Ambrose identifies the design exactly: “Satan can destroy not only by leading into sin but also by the immoderate sorrow that can follow on repentance for it….Paul did not want this brother, being filled with sorrow and being rigorously excluded from the love of the church, to despair of himself” (Commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul).
This is worth applying to ourselves. Sorrow that refuses to end after repentance is not humility but a refusal of the peace God has already given. When we have sinned and repented, we are to have peace, and let that be the end of it.
Paul then gives thanks “to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God” (2:14-15). A community that forgives and restores its wounded members is the fragrance he means. Where sinners are healed rather than merely sentenced, the knowledge of Christ becomes something the world can perceive.