Having spoken about personal growth and forgiveness through the sacrament of reconciliation, Eugene now refers to the responsibility of each member of the youth congregation for the growth of the other. He writes about the need for fraternal correction taking Matthew 18:15 as his starting point: “If your brother does something wrong, go and have it out with him alone, between your two selves.”
But in spite of our good intentions, which we may happen to forget, and as a result of the darkness and the blindness that sin causes in us, we sometimes find it difficult to recognize our mistakes. The members, in their mutual interest for each other’s perfection will have the great charity to warn their colleagues of the shortcomings they become aware of.
Règlements et Statuts de la Congrégation de la Jeunesse, 1813, p. 23
Richard Rohr writes about these weaknesses that can be helped by fraternal correction, referring to them as “our false self”:
What really has to die is our false self created by our own mind, ego, and culture. It is a pretense, a bogus identity, a passing fad, a psychological construct that gets in the way of who we are and always were—in God. (On Transformation: Collected Talks, Volume I, CD)