Today's Gospel gives us a beautiful but challenging teaching from Jesus about how we are to live with one another as members of the Christian community. Jesus speaks about correcting someone who has sinned against us, about reconciliation, about the authority of the Church, and finally about the power of prayer and the presence of Christ among His people.

At first, this Gospel may seem to be mainly about confronting someone who has done something wrong. But if we listen carefully, we discover that Jesus is teaching us something much deeper: how to love one another enough to seek reconciliation rather than division.