No one is alone. Today, we are more interconnected than ever before. What does this mean for our efforts to spread Christlike love in the world?

September 6, 2026: Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Ezekiel 33:7–9
Psalm 95:1–2, 6–9
Romans 13:8–10
Matthew 18:15–20

No One is Alone

A reflection by Richard Young

There’s something edgy about the late Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim. His shows were clever and often humorous, but they dealt with uncomfortable truths. You may be laughing one minute, and before you know it, you’re hit with a dark reality you would rather not look at, a reflection of a shadow side of yourself or of society at large that you had forgotten was there. In one of my favorite Sondheim shows, Into the Woods, the author used fairy tales to tell us about community and moral decision-making and friendship and negotiating with giants and witches and all the hard stuff of life. Sondheim mixes the stories up, so that Cinderella and Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood and Jack (of Jack and the Bean Stalk) and princes and peasants are all in the show together and interacting with one another in the woods (a metaphor for life). Like them, we have to exist in our own “woods” with its joys and dangers.

The show contains a song that is sung to Little Red Riding Hood, who is grieving her mother’s death. It teaches a powerful lesson. Here are some of the lyrics:

Mother cannot guide you.

Now you’re on your own.

Only me beside you.

Still you’re not alone

Truly. No one is alone.          

Sometimes people leave you

Halfway through the wood.

Others may deceive you.

You decide what’s good.

You decide alone.

But no one is alone.

You move just a finger.

Say the slightest word.

Something’s bound to linger.

No one acts alone.

Careful.

No one is alone.

Someone is on your side.

Someone else is not.

While we’re seeing our side.

Maybe we forgot: they are not alone.

No one is alone.

I recall an interview Sondheim did in which he was asked about those lyrics. He said he was concerned that people might take a comforting message from them – one that was not intended. Some might think that the song is assuring us that we need not feel like we have to face life’s challenges alone – that a warm, loving community would always be there to help us. Instead, the artist was giving us a warning: “no one is alone” means that our words and deeds don’t just affect ourselves; they have consequences. If you make a mistake, you’re not the only one who pays. “Careful,” he wrote. “You are not alone. NO ONE is alone.”

In another part of the song, the lyrics read,

People make mistakes.

Fathers.

Mothers.

People make mistakes.

Holding to their own.

Thinking they’re alone.

Honor their mistakes.

So why did our scriptures make me think of Sondheim, this musical, and this song? Ezekiel, Paul, and Matthew made me reflect on a universal human principle: interconnectedness. We feel it more and more as the planet seems smaller and smaller. Like it or not, AI, social networking, and other technologies make amazing things possible. Surveillance cameras are all around us, and are used in wise and unwise ways. We are more connected to the rest of humanity than ever before – instantaneously. I am my sibling’s keeper. Cain, in the Cain and Abel story, could not escape that reality, and I have even less of an excuse to ignore it today. I am responsible for my choices and how they can affect others. I am not alone. No one is. That’s interconnectedness.

The Ezekiel passage tells us how the prophet is responsible to Israel, to connect with the people, to warn them and correct them when they fall into sinful ways and when they behave as if their actions had no consequences, as if they were alone. The gospel passage is about “correcting” someone who is sinning. Both readings are balanced by the admonition in the Letter to the Romans that we are to “owe no debt to anyone, except the debt that binds us to love one another” (8). It tells us that “love is the fulfillment of the Law” (10). Being able to connect instantly with other children of God is no good at all without love – especially if your intention is to warn or to correct. At such moments, love is absolutely essential.

But where is the love at the end of Matthew’s teaching, where it says that if wrongdoers don’t repent, “treat them as you would a gentile or a tax collector” (17)? Scholars don’t believe this is an actual lesson from Jesus. Instead, this passage is really Matthew’s own multi-step process for intervening with a sinner. Love is missing from this advice, because it is not at all consistent with what Jesus says and does elsewhere in the gospels. We are told that Jesus ate and drank with outcasts and often praised their virtue.

So here we are in the woods. I am surrounded (as Ezekiel and Matthew were) by people who strangely forget that they are not alone – people who need warnings and corrections. But the truth is, so do I, and it’s not fun to think about it. The Spirit sometimes humbles me by reminding me of certain pastoral mis-steps I have made over the years as a priest, moments when I could have been much kinder, less judgmental. “People make mistakes,” Sondheim wrote. “Honor their mistakes.” The Spirit that is in each of us can do the same humbling, the same correcting for one another – but not without love. Without that, we treat one another like “gentiles or tax collectors.”

Like so many other gay men, I have existed in a social and religious environment that tried to “correct” me. Trans and non-binary persons, especially in these troubling times, are putting up with far worse. Many have been subjected to something like Matthew’s process: one witness at first, then two or three, then the whole “church,” if necessary – then shunning. I think the scam called conversion “therapy” must have developed from this. It never worked for numerous reasons, perhaps the most obvious of which is an unwillingness of correctors to be corrected – a most un-loving attitude. After all, we are all in the woods together, all interconnected and with mistakes to be honored and learned from. No one is alone.

I think of others I would like to correct. We have numerous federal government employees whose mental and emotional health are questionable and, I think, should be considered unqualified to serve. They are “hurt people” who “hurt people,” and the hurting continues, because “no one is alone.” Certain officials spread lies about public health and create unrealistic doubts about vaccines, leading to outbreaks of diseases that once were under control. Some are convicted criminals whose corrupt ties to greedy billionaires cause economic hardship for us and our fellow citizens and damage our fragile planet. Many promote the ill treatment of immigrants and the defunding of essential social services. And some are endangering our military by backing a war that they seem to find hard to justify. Yes, I want to correct them, but is that possible?

I know that “[loving] your neighbor as yourself,” which is “the fulfillment of the law,” has to include a fierce compassion for the most mentally broken among us, even those who seem to have no conscience. “Correcting” such a person must first require a humble realization that not one of us is walking around in the woods with perfect mental health. I, too, am a hurt person, capable of forgetting that I’m not alone and thereby hurting others. Once I get real about that, I could try Matthew’s multi-step approach to correction. But when it fails (and it will) I can only respond by treating the offender as Jesus would treat a gentile or a tax collector. That’s my “debt,” as Paul put it in our Romans reading.

In next Sunday’s gospel, there will be a powerful message about forgiveness “from the heart” (Mt 18:35). Sometimes I think that’s going too far. I can’t forgive those who (in my judgment) are destroying my country – my planet! I can’t forgive them, but the divine Spirit and I, working together, can. I can at least try to cooperate with that Spirit within me and move in a new and spiritually healthier direction.

Love and forgiveness are often not about sweet, wonderful feelings. Love, “the fulfillment of the law,” does not require us to like a perceived wrong-doer. Love is essentially the decision to behave in a radically different way in spite of our feelings. Love, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13, is “patient and kind,” not “arrogant or rude,“ not “irritable or resentful.” “There is no limit,” he said, “to love’s forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure.” Love seeks to understand how those who need correction, including me, got off track in the first place. Love is sometimes damned hard work. It requires remembering a basic truth: no one is alone.

Rev. Richard P. Young is a retired Catholic priest and mental health counselor.  He regularly presides and preaches at liturgies for Dignity/Dayton’s Living Beatitudes Community and has worked with several Dignity Chapters since the late 70s.  He once served for a term on the national board of DignityUSA and has attended all the national conventions/conferences since 1981.  He is married to former DignityUSA national secretary, Bob Butts.  Richard was honored with a President’s Award at the 2022 Dignity National Conference in San Diego and was the homilist for the liturgy at the 2025 conference in Dublin, Ohio.