Friday in the Fourth Week of Lent, April 4, 2025

John 7, 1-2; 10; 25-30

Jesus moved about within Galilee; he did not wish to travel in Judea, because the Jews were trying to kill him. But the Jewish feast of Tabernacles was near.  But when his brothers had gone up to the feast, he himself also went up, not openly but as it were in secret.  Some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem said, “Is he not the one they are trying to kill? And look, he is speaking openly and they say nothing to him. Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ? But we know where he is from. When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.” So Jesus cried out in the temple area as he was teaching and said, “You know me and also know where I am from. Yet I did not come on my own, but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true. I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.” So they tried to arrest him, but no one laid a hand upon him, because his hour had not yet come.

St. John quotes some of the ordinary citizens of Jerusalem: “He is speaking openly and they say nothing to him. Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ? But we know where he is from. When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.”  This stands in sharp contrast to what St. Matthew tells us.  In Matthew 2, 4-5, King Herod asks the chief priests and scribes where “Christ should be born”.  They tell him that he is to be born in Bethlehem, and they quote the Prophet Micah in support.  Why do the people in Jerusalem say that no one will know where the Messiah was to come from?  Perhaps this is merely popular opinion, that no one will know, a sort of urban legend.  Or maybe the people John is quoting belong to a sect that holds this as doctrine.  We might also wonder where they thought Jesus was from.  Since he was known as “Jesus of Nazareth” to many, they could have assumed he was born there.  Did anyone outside of his family know that he had been born in Bethlehem, at this point?  But no one calls him, “Jesus of Bethlehem”.

Jesus uses the occasion to insist that the people do not actually know where he is from: he is from the Father, and they do not know him.  If they did, they would know the Son as well.  “I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”  The Son, begotten of the Father from all eternity, knows the Father intimately.  He “comes down” from heaven in order to teach us who the Father is, not as a teacher speaking of what he has learned from other teachers, but as one who is the embrace of this Father, even as he speaks to the folks in Jerusalem.  But they do not want to hear him and they try to arrest him.  Jesus does not make his claims in a void but in the context of the countless miracles he has performed, especially the miracles he has performed in the temple area, where he is speaking in the Gospel reading today.  If Jesus was committing the blasphemy that he was accused of, making himself equal to God, then God would not enable him to perform these miracles.  They are signs, witnesses, that God the Father validates the claims of his Son.

To know the Father, we must know Jesus, and we can find him in our tabernacles now, even if we cannot see at present on our altars.

Thursday in the Fourth Week of Lent, April 3, 2025

John 5, 31-47

Jesus said to the Jews:  “If I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is not true. But there is another who testifies on my behalf, and I know that the testimony he gives on my behalf is true. You sent emissaries to John, and he testified to the truth. I do not accept human testimony, but I say this so that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp, and for a while you were content to rejoice in his light. But I have testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father gave me to accomplish, these works that I perform testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me. Moreover, the Father who sent me has testified on my behalf. But you have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word remaining in you, because you do not believe in the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf. But you do not want to come to me to have life.  I do not accept human praise; moreover, I know that you do not have the love of God in you. I came in the name of my Father, but you do not accept me; yet if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe, when you accept praise from one another and do not seek the praise that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father: the one who will accuse you is Moses, in whom you have placed your hope. For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me, because he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

“I say this so that you may be saved.”  

During the Lord’s second visit to Jerusalem during the Passover he healed a man, on the Sabbath, who had suffered from being lame for thirty-eight years.  Jesus seems to have singled him out to cure because the man had lain in wait of healing longer than the others around him at the Pool near the Sheep Gate, famed for its curative powers.  The man, in his helplessness, appeared as the most pathetic of his neighbors.  Jesus came, unasked, and healed him.  The man repaid the Lord’s gracious gift of health to him by informing on him to the Jewish leaders who had made obvious to him their enmity towards Jesus.

The confrontation with the Jews that followed the cure, part of which is recounted in today’s Gospel Reading, shows the episode’s true meaning.  First, he shows that he has two witnesses establishing his right to cure on the Sabbath.  First, John the Baptist, the bright and shining lamp for whom even they, the Jewish leaders, had a certain amount of respect: “You were content to rejoice in his light.”  Second, and far more importantly, the Father, who validated the claims of Jesus through his miracles, for no one could perform miracles unless the Father granted him the power to do so: “These works that I perform testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me.”  The fact that the Jewish leaders reject these miracles, which point to Jesus as having been sent by the Father, proves that they reject the Father himself: “But you have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word remaining in you.”  The Lord even adds a third witness, Moses, who wrote about him in Deuteronomy 18, 15.

Unasked, the Son of God came down from heaven and addressed fallen humanity, asking if it wished to get well.  Humanity admitted that it could not help itself.  The Son commanded humanity to rise from its misery and shame, and to walk.  It did so and went off without offering thanks.  Later, humanity, complacent in its new-found health, showed its ingratitude, aiding those who persecuted the Son.  Even so, the Son does not take back his gift of health nor does he turn vengeful on those who persecuted him.  Instead, he showed the intensity of his love for them through engaging with him and trying to convince them of the salvation he held out to them.  It is as though the Son was arguing with the lame man to get up so that he could walk, and the lame man resolutely asserting that he would rather lie in his filth than to receive anything from Jesus.

Many well-meaning folks discard the belief in an eternal hell as an artifact of primitive times which humanity has outgrown, or that a most merciful God and the existence of hell are incompatible.  But those who follow Christ should beware the pride and the false sentiment in these notions, as we can see for ourselves that not everyone will want to receive the Lord’s mercy, and that God will not force it upon anyone who rejects it.  There is a hell and, to go by the Lord’s own words, “many there are who enter in” (Matthew 7: 13).  

Wednesday in the Fourth Week of Lent, .April 2, 2025

John 5, 17-30

Jesus answered the Jews:  “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.” For this reason they tried all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath but he also called God his own Father, making himself equal to God.  Jesus answered and said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for what he does, the Son will do also. For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself does, and he will show him greater works than these, so that you may be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also does the Son give life to whomever he wishes. Nor does the Father judge anyone, but he has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life. Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to the Son the possession of life in himself. And he gave him power to exercise judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation.

“My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.”  Literally: My Father is working until now and I am working.  This can also be worded: My Father is working and I am working until now.  The “so” in the Lectionary translation acts as a causative: My Father is at work until now, therefore I am at work.  But this is not in the Greek text.  The point the Lord is making is that he and his Father are engaged together in the same work.  The Jews see that Jesus is claiming equality with the Father first by calling him “my” Father; and then by the revelation that he and the Father are working together.  The verb tense here is significant, for the verb “to work” is in the parent tense which indicates continuity: I am working, that is, the Lord’s working with his Father is not a one-time or occasional event but is on-going and continual.  “Until now” should be understood as “even to the present time”, implying that the Father and the Son have been working before time began, are working now, and will continue to work into the future.  What is this continual work?  Genesis 2, 2 reveals that after the work of creation, God “rested”.  In a real sense, the “work” of creation does not end with the act of creation, for that which is brought into being must be sustained or it will cease to exist.  The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit perform this work of sustaining creation in existence.  But this work can also be understood more specifically as pertaining to the salvation of the world, and Jesus may be speaking of this to the Jews in today’s Gospel Reading.  It is the Lord answering the Jews with, “I am working, even at this very moment, to redeem your souls from sin.”

“The Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for what he does, the Son will do also.”  Jesus reiterates the equality of the work and also that the Father and Son do the work in unison.  But this work is not drudgery or mindless: “For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself does, and he will show him greater works than these.”  The work of sustaining creation and of salvation is work done for the good of others, and it is work done out of love the Father and Son have for each other.  The “greater works” is the work of salvation through Divine Providence, which is the work of the Father.  The Father does not reveal his plan to his Son, for the Son knows it from all eternity, but that the Father and the Son engage in it throughout human history, with the Sacrifice of the Son marking a turning point.  The work then is that of giving life and raising from the dead, which can be understood literally as occurring at the end of the world and as pouring out grace for the conversion of sinners and giving them forgiveness; and that of rendering judgment on the Last Day, leading to the salvation of the just and their liberation from the wicked, who are cast into hell.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life.”  Having established that he is equal to the Father in his divinity, Jesus reveals what it means for the human race that he has come down to it from heaven.  Almighty God’s will to save us from our sins is not restricted merely to those who heard his Son when he came and to those who hear his words through the teaching of the Church, but includes all those who lived before his coming.  “The hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice.”  That is, all who have died and whose souls lived on in a limbo until Christ comes to them following his Passion and Death: “He preached to those spirits that were in prison” (1 Peter 3, 19).  

In understanding what Jesus is teaching here he gain a greater appreciation for just who it was who died for our sins, who will come to judge us, and with whom we hope to spend eternity.

Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Lent, April 1, 2025

John 5, 1-16

There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes. In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.” Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.  Now that day was a sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who was cured, “It is the sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” He answered them, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’“ They asked him, “Who is the man who told you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” The man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away, since there was a crowd there. After this Jesus found him in the temple area and said to him, “Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you.” The man went and told the Jews that Jesus was the one who had made him well. Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus because he did this on a sabbath.

St. Augustine tells us that the cure in today’s Gospel Reading occurred on the Feast of Passover, this being the second Passover during the Lord’s public ministry.  On the first of the three Passovers he cleansed the Temple of the money changers and those selling animals (cf. John 2, 13-15), and on the third he gave up his life for the sins of the world.  A progression arises from this order: first, the cleansing of sin; second, the doing of good works, third, the Death and Resurrection.  This is the pattern of the life of those who strive to become saints, serving as Jesus has served.

The Sheep Gate was located in the northern wall of the ancient city of Jerusalem.  The Pool of Bethesda lay just outside the city wall, near the Sheep Gate.  The Pool was used primarily to wash sheep which would be sacrificed in the Temple.  Text found in the Old Latin translation of the Gospel and retained by St. Jerome in the Vulgate (and so found in the Douay-Rheims English translation) relates that an angel would stir up the water of the Pool from time to time and that the first person to bathe in the waters at that time would be healed from whatever malady afflicted him.  For this reason, crowds of sufferers camped around the Pool, for that reason.  This is what is behind the lame man’s answer to Jesus: “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me.” 

“Do you want to be well?”  Literally, Are you desiring to become whole?  That is, Have you been desiring to become well, not, Do you now wish to become whole?  Jesus is asking about the man’s perseverance in his wish to become healthy.  The lame man does not know who Jesus is and tells how he can never get to the Pool in time.  A tone of frustration or annoyance may have inflected his voice, or perhaps hope in the possibility that this man might help him.  

The scene must have been a dreadful one: several dozen or perhaps a few hundred adults and children lying on mats or on their rags or perhaps naked.  The air would have been foul and the moans of the suffering would have filled it.  Out of all the crowd, the Lord Jesus picked this one man to talk to and heal.  Or, John only records the cure of the one man who answered the Lord’s question and expressed his longing to be healed by obeying the Lord’s command.  Perhaps Jesus picked him because he had suffered the longest of anyone there, so that his cure would be all the more remarkable.

“Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”  We should note the Lord’s concision.  It is a regular feature of his cures: “Little girl, I say to you, arise.”  And, “Lazarus, come forth.”  Many other times he says nothing at all but only lays his hands on the one who seeks a cure.  This contrasts sharply with the attempted cures and exorcisms by Jewish rabbis, who performed elaborate prayers and rituals without success.  The Lord’s concision demonstrates his omnipotence, his supreme power.  Jesus says all that is necessary and nothing more: Rise.  Take up your mat.  Walk.  And the man does just this.  Though he would have felt a sensation of healing as did the woman cured of her blood issue (cf. Mark 5, 29), it took an act of faith for one who had not been able to move his legs for thirty-eight years to rise, let alone walk.  But “immediately”, John reports, “the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.”  He did not stagger, he did not limp, he did not need to be led by the hand.  He walked as well as any healthy human, without any need of therapy or recovery.

The man walks away from Jesus, perhaps in a bit of a daze.  The Pharisees (whom John merely calls “the Jews”) are enraged that the man seems to be breaking the Sabbath by carrying his mat.  At any rate, he is breaking their idea of the laws regarding the Sabbath.  We can understand the mat as our former selves before we began to live according to our Faith: Jesus wants us no longer to lie in our former condition but always to keep in mind the sinfulness from which he has rescued us, and so we should take very personally the warning, “Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you.”

Monday in the Fourth Week of Lent, March 11, 2024

John 4, 43-54

At that time Jesus left [Samaria] for Galilee. For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his native place. When he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all he had done in Jerusalem at the feast; for they themselves had gone to the feast.  Then he returned to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, who was near death. Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” The royal official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.” The man believed what Jesus said to him and left. While the man was on his way back, his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live. He asked them when he began to recover. They told him, “The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon.” The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live,” and he and his whole household came to believe. Now this was the second sign Jesus did when he came to Galilee from Judea.

St. John’s account of this healing sounds very similar to an account of healing given in Matthew 8, 5-13.  Both involve an official, a young boy, Capernaum, and a cure from a distance.  Differences are found in that the official here is called “royal”, and in Matthew he is a centurion.  The young boy is said here to be the man’s son, but on Matthew his servant.  The encounter, as John tells it, occurs between Jesus and the official in Cana, while Matthew makes it plain that it took place in Capernaum.  In John, Jesus does not go with the man, but according to Matthew he announces that he will go with him.  

Now, the differences may be reconciled.  A Roman centurion could be described as “royal” inasmuch as he worked for the Empire as a leader of the occupying forces.  The Greek word which Matthew uses for the child means both a young boy and a servant boy.  If we understand it to mean the former, then there is no difficulty in seeing it to mean the man’s son, and certainly a man would travel from Capernaum to Cana to save his son’s life.  Matthew does record that Jesus returned to Capernaum, as John does.  But John records that Jesus was coming back from Jerusalem and Matthew that Jesus was returning from the Sermon on the Mount in Galilee.  However, Matthew is not especially concerned with chronology until his description of the Passion and Death of our Lord.  Rather, he is most interested in grouping the words and deeds of Jesus according to themes.  John, on the other hand, is very much taken up by the need for strict accuracy.  His chronology shows every sign of a strong one.  Therefore, we can see the Lord returning to Capernaum from Jerusalem, and then going out to Cana where the royal official, the centurion, goes to meet him.  John does not mention that Jesus said he would go to the man’s house because he is primarily interested in the miracle itself.  Matthew, though, wants to highlight the faith that even the Gentile centurion possessed in Jesus, surpassing that of the Jews at that time.

St. John calls this action of the Lord’s a “sign”, alongside other signs such as that which he performed at the Wedding at Cana.  If the sign at the wedding in that town indicated that the time of grace had arrived, this second sign shows that the grace is offered not only to the Jews but to the Gentiles too.  For us, we see the Lord pouring himself out in service to all those who call upon him, from his Mother to the leader of a hated enemy of his people.  We should avail ourselves of the grace he offers us now while there is still time.

The Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 30, 2025

Luke 15, 1-3; 11-32

Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So to them Jesus addressed this parable. “A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’ So the father divided the property between them. After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation. When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need. So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine. And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any. Coming to his senses he thought, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger. I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.”’ So he got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly, bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ Then the celebration began. Now the older son had been out in the field and, on his way back, as he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The servant said to him, ‘Your brother has returned and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him. He said to his father in reply, ‘Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’ He said to him, ‘My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’ ”

This Parable is customarily called that of The Prodigal Son, “prodigal” meaning “spendthrift”.  Because most of the attention in the Parable falls on him, he seems to be the main character and the story is all about him.  Recently, sermons have begun to focus on the character of the father, who loves his errant son unconditionally.  This leaves the older son, the third character in the Parable, as an unnecessary detail.  That is, if the sin and repentance of the younger son is the subject of the story, or if the father’s love is, the older son comes as a diversion from the main point.  In fact, the way the Lord tells the Parable, the situation of the younger son and the position of the father hinge on what the older son decides.  Will he forgive his brother for the shame he has brought upon his family, not to mention the sizable financial loss it has incurred through him?  His lack of forgiveness would deeply wound his father and at the same time foreshadow the penury and homelessness of the younger son when the father dies.  And no one could blame the older son for his refusal to forgive.

The Lord ends his Parable without a real conclusion.  No hint of the older son’s decision is to be found in the Parable itself.  Not even examining its context helps, for the first three verses of the Gospel Reading pertaining to a completely different Parable in which Jesus addresses the complaint of the Pharisees, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  Jesus leaves us to consider the question for ourselves.  Do we side with justice by allowing the younger son to deservedly suffer the consequences of his terrible choices, or do we side with a spendthrift mercy that the younger son is in no way owed?  And it is a “spendthrift” mercy to reconcile with the younger son, going far beyond the ordinary bounds of mercy, which might include the provision that the son be allowed to stay as a servant.

Perhaps even the Apostles felt uncertain as to the right decision for the older son’s to make until the Sacrifice of the Lord Jesus on the Cross and coming face to face themselves with indescribable mercy.

Saturday in the Third Week of Lent, March 29, 2025

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 everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The Lord Jesus speaks here of two distinct ways of looking at oneself and at God.  The Lord identifies the first man in the parable as a Pharisee.  He need not have done this.  He could have left the man unidentified as to his religious party and attained the same basic result in his parable.  He chooses to identify him as a Pharisee, though, in order to show the weakness of their theology and its essential uselessness in aiding a person to become truly righteous.  The Pharisee in the parable does everything the Pharisees taught was necessary for righteousness: the proper fasting and tithing, and the avoidance of the ritual impurity which they believed sinners such as tax collectors contracted by their sins.  He also observes that he is not “greedy”, “dishonest”, and “adulterous”.  What he highlights, however, are merely outward actions in which he is not engaged.  To look at the Greek text, the man thanks God that he is not an extortioner, which is translated here as “greedy”.  He also is pleased that he is not an “unjust” or “unrighteous” man, translated here as “dishonest”.  And he rejoices that he is not an adulterer, translated here as “adulterous”.  He may very well be greedy, dishonest, and adulterous, but he has kept these vices to himself.  As far as appearances go, he is in a righteous state: he is a good Pharisee.

But that is all he is, a good Pharisee.  In his concern for outward righteousness, he has neglected the inward righteousness essential for salvation.  He has, in effect, chosen the easy way.  He has stayed away from unbecoming conduct without the conversion of heart all of us must have in order to serve God.  Furthermore, the pride to which he feels entitled insulates his innermost self from making a correct appraisal of himself.  Even when he does sin outwardly, his pride will prevent him from noticing, or will provide him a ready excuse for his deed, while looking for a way to blame others.

The tax collector, on the other hand, goes into the Temple (which indicates that he is in Jerusalem for one of the holy days) and he simply prays from his heart for mercy.  He recognizes himself as a sinner, makes no excuses or speeches, and is abject enough to allow us to think that he will make amends as best he can and avoid sin in the future.  Jesus says that this man “went home justified”, or, “having been made righteous”.  That is, by God.  While the Pharisee did no more than confirm for himself his feeling of being righteous — free from uncleanness — the tax collector was actually made so by God.  The Pharisee did not pray to God to be made righteous, but the tax collector did, though not daring to put it in so many words, and God answered his prayer.  In this way, too, the Lord showed how true righteousness differed from how the Pharisees understood it: it is a matter of freedom from sin, inward and outward, and not merely the avoidance of breaking the Law in outward actions.

“Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”  The one who humbles himself before God will be lifted up by God and the one who lifts himself up will be cast down, for the Lord will not hold him up, and he will not think he needs God’s help.