Open Bible:
March 2006 

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To bind and to loose
 

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To bind and to loose

"Truly, I say to you: whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you will make loose on earth will be made loose in heaven" (Mathew 18, 18)
 
After telling the parable of the lost sheep, Jesus concluded, " Similarly your Father in heaven wants that none of these little ones should perish" (Mathew 18, 14). The person who is wandering and is ready to commit a sin is a concern to Jesus.
 
lier He taught us how to put our brother back onto the right path although respecting his liberty and if he refuses forgiveness and continues his wrongdoing Jesus wanted to show us how to stay in peace. It is at that moment that Jesus proclaimed according to Mathew, 18, 18, "that what we bind or make loose on earth will be bound or made loose in heaven". 

To bind or make loose has to be taken in a positive way. To bind evidently does not mean to attach with ropes but to unify, to establish stimulating and living relationships.
 
Similarly make loose means to remove obstacles that can paralyze a person and not to undo valuable relationships with others. Of course there is the temptation of overusing our own authority, including for the authority of the Church, in restraining or putting heavy burdens on the shoulders of the others. 

ligoter


An extraordinary responsibility is given to us. Nothing human is without consequence: our behaviour and actions have more importance than we think. And even more, Jesus said, our behaviour towards the others has not only a consequence for the others but has a relationship with the nature of God Himself. It is the reason why the quality of our relationships between each other are important and also the loosening of all the constraints that can distort our relationships with others.

The close relation between human and heaven matters, between what we bind or make loose on earth and their consequences in heaven were already expressed in Mathew Chapter 16. Jesus walking and probably in search of his own identity, asked to his disciples: "And you, who do you say that I am?" Peter then said: "You are the anointed by God, the Christ, the Son of the living God".
 
transcendance Jesus added that only a gift of God could allow recognizing this fact. The divine filiation revealed in Jesus, gives to our actions, to our way of doing a transcendental quality. Happy you are, said Jesus to Peter (Happy we are!) because "it is not your human being status that revealed this, it is my Father who is in heaven (Mathew 16, 17) 

In his teaching Jesus was not concerned by founding a new Church, when he said in Mathew 16, 18,
 
"on this rock I will built my church", shall we see it as a specific responsibility given to Peter or the engagement of faith that is addressed to all of us? 

nous sommes appelès

 
It is on the rock of such a faith that a community can be built, a faith like the one shown by Peter, a faith to which we are all called upon.
What is said, in the same terms, to Peter in Mathew Chapter 16, and to every body in Chapter 18, means that the relationships we make and the obstacles that we remove have a dimension of eternity. The greatness and the profound dignity of a person in reality come from our belonging to God and from Christ Jesus who reveals them to us.