Tom on the two "heavy coins"

Tom writes:

The homilist at Mass last Sunday -- when, as you recall, the Gospel reading was Matthew 18:15-21 -- made an interesting side suggestion while preaching on fraternal correction. He said it may be that the two hardest things for Christians to practice are fraternal correction and forgiveness.

Put another way, perhaps, the natural or humanistic concept of love most falls short of the fullness of Divine love in terms of correction and forgiveness. And if Christians, who are at least occasionally told they should correct and forgive in love, aren't great at it, what can we expect of those whose culture doesn't regard both fraternal correction and forgiveness to be virtues?

Our new priest, who I count as a very wise man for being a youngster in his late twenties, said much the same thing. It's hard to work up the courage to correct people because they may resent it, then they won't like you anymore. But maybe it will aid us in our task to realize that what you've lost in your unpopular state is that "humanistic love" which, as Tom rightly suggests, is a cheap knockoff of the Top Shelf stuff: Divine Love.