Homily – Sunday OT 30 C

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Sir 35:15-17, 20-22
Ps 34   R_/.  The poor one called and the Lord heard.
2 Tim 4:6-8, 16-18
Lk 18:9-14

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Last week, Jesus began speaking about prayer with the parable of the pleading widow.  Jesus was trying to tell us how we need to depend completely on Him as our source of help and support, and how it’s okay for our prayer to be insistent.

Today, Jesus follows up on that to show us what is the proper attitude we must have in prayer.  You see, by itself, the parable of the pleading widow, could lead us to go beyond being bold into a form of arrogant demanding from God: a ‘give to me because I ask’, or a ‘I depend on you, so you’d better’ attitude.  But in today’s parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, Jesus clearly teaches us that we must be humble in our prayer.

Icon of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, by Tatiana Grant (http://spiritualpaintings.com/files/other.6.html)

Let’s look at the parable.  The Pharisee presents himself before in what appears to be prayer.  But rather than praying to God, rather even than pleading with Him like the widow, the Pharisee stands before God boasting of his own successes: I thank you that I am not like other people… I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income… (v. 11-12).  He knows he is following the Law of Moses, and doing even more.  The Law required fasting once a week, but he’s doing it twice; the Law required tithing on certain things only, but he tithes on everything.  Now, in itself this isn’t a problem; it’s actually a good thing that he’s going beyond the Law, because in the end, the Law is only a minimum.  The problem lies in his attitude.

You see, the Pharisee doesn’t believe he needs God.  He’s doing it all by Himself!  And he’s doing it because he think’s he’s better, and not because he loves God.  This sense that we earn righteousness, that we earn our own salvation, that’s called Pelagianism, and it’s a heresy!  But the worst part of this parable is that the Pharisee thinks that God’s gift to him is the fact that he’s better than everyone else!  That’s why Jesus says that the Pharisee is not justified in God’s eyes!  He’s not praying; he’s boasting, and he’s boasting to God.  That’s got to be a sure ticket to condemnation!

The tax collector, on the other hand, like the widow, knows that he’s needy.  He knows that he’s sinful, and that he needs God’s grace.  Because he understands well that he can’t save himself!  That’s why he humbles himself before God.  And this humility allows him to see God’s greatness, that’s why he stood afar off and wouldn’t look to heaven; his humility allowed him to receive the gift of the Spirit known as ‘awe’, or ‘fear of the Lord’ (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1831).  This doesn’t mean he was scared of the Lord, but rather that he recognised and respected God’s majesty; he recognised that he could only approach God because it was God’s mercy that allowed him to do so.  He didn’t presume he had the right to stand before God like the Pharisee.

Without this sort of humility, we remain closed to God’s grace and mercy, precisely because we don’t think we need it.  But Jesus is clear that we do need it; that we need to recognise our sinfulness, our unworthiness of God in order to be open to grace.  If we want Jesus to heal, forgive and save us, we must turn to Him and acknowledge that we need saving.  Because this saving, this salvation, this is the gift that God has in store for us; everything else flows from that one gift.  That’s why Jesus humbled Himself to be born of woman, why He humbled Himself to die on the Cross.  May we recognise our poverty, and turn to God like the tax collector, not presuming God’s love and mercy, but humbly asking for it, trusting that the Lord does not spurn the humble and contrite heart (cf. Ps 51:17).  Amen.