The 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 23, 2022

Luke 18, 9–14

Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else. “Two people went up to the Temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity — greedy, dishonest, adulterous — or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.’ But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’ I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

“Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.”  St. Luke rarely makes editorial comments in his Gospel, but he does so here.  The moral of the parable may have inclined him to make this statement, but the parable could have been said “to be about” the self-righteous than “to” them, but even if the Lord did not mean to indict the crowd of this sin, he does direct it to all of us lest we contract it, or if he have, that we repent of it.  Luke adds, “and despised everyone else”, for a self-righteous person bolsters his own sense of himself as righteous by considering the lack of virtue in others.  This amounts to a need, and so the self-righteous will even imagine imperfections in the people around them.  This seems to arise from a sense of inferiority mixed with pride.  Circumstances prevent a person from attaining the exterior greatness a person feels within and which others will admire, and out of wounded pride he compensates for this with a firm belief in an inner greatness.  This conviction comes out of an inherent but not necessarily vocalized belief in self as God.

“Two people went up to the Temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector.”  The Lord describes a strange situation.  A tax collector would hardly be thought of as going to the Temple to pray.  This proud, ruthless, unprincipled character would not feel at home in a Temple.  The learned Pharisee, of course, would.  “The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself.”  That is, the Pharisee assumed a pose.  He “spoke” this prayer: until the Middle Ages, when the silence was necessary for prayer in crowded monasteries, praying was done aloud.  We can imagine this Pharisee, conscious of his presumed superiority over this tax collector, would have made this a loud prayer so that the tax collector (and others) could hear it.  But he is not praying; he is speaking to a human audience: first to himself and then to anyone within earshot.  “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity — greedy, dishonest, adulterous — or even like this tax collector.”  That is, he prays, “O Self, I am glad that I am not, etc.”  We see here the sort of judgment the Lord commands us not to do: assuming that this tax collector is greedy, his honest, and adulterous.  “I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.”  This amount of fasting is not found in the Law, and the tithing he mentions is required.  It is not a matter of piety.  The Pharisee does not make himself more righteous by the extra fasting nor by paying the tithe.  He shows himself to know little of what the Law does teach.  

“But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed.”  The tax collector imitates Moses in his seeing God in the vision of the burning bush: “Do not come near . . . for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3, 5).  He also imitates the Israelites in the wilderness when Moses went to the meeting tent to converse with God: “And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the door of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, every man at his tent door” (Exodus 33, 10).  Conversely, the Pharisee seems to have drawn quite near the Temple to perform his act.  The tax collector evidently has taken to heart the Prophet’s counsel: “And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6, 8).  “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”  This brief prayer follows the Lord’s injunction as to how to pray.  It is short and right from the heart.  It is for no other ears than God’s.

“I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former.”  One man came to the Temple thinking himself righteous, and the other came as a sinner.  The first man left the Temple, feeling righteous, but his sin of pride continued to grow unhampered.  The second man left the Temple “justified”, that is, his life made right with God.  To look at the two men might not reveal much, but in the eyes of God, one man was now very different from what he had been.  “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”  The one who exalts himself does so by his own efforts, and so will fall.  The one who is exalted, on the other hand, is exalted by God.  He has lowered himself in his own eyes and sees himself as he really is, by God’s grace, and so will not exalt himself.  God will lift  him up into heaven.