Gospel reading: Luke 18:9-14
Jesus spoke the following parable to some people who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else.”Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, ‘I thank you, God, that I am notgrasping, unjust, adulterous like the rest of mankind, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get. ‘The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’ This man, I tell you, went home again at rights with God; the other did not. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the man who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Homily
We all know this Gospel passage very well, and because we know it so well, we may have lost the capacity to be moved by it. The Gospel however is alive and sharper that a two edged sword, It is being lived before our eyes.
I remember two incidents which have made this Gospel live for me. One was the visit of Nelson Mandela to Trinidad. During the dinner at the centre of excellence, after all previous speakers had extolled his greatness, the man himself seemed really embarrassed by the praise. His contribution was very short, not the erudite speech that all were expecting. He simply said that all that was accomplished could never have been accomplished without others. In fact those simple words told us more about the man than everything which had gone before. [He who humbles himself will be exalted]
The other incident is one that the community in which I lived during my studies experienced. We had an old missionary to Africa living with us. Unfortunately he was very ill and got weaker each day. I visited him at the hospital and he said to me that all that he had accomplished in Nigeria, in the grand scheme of things, was really insignificant. All he had to rely upon was the mercy of God. I came away chastened thinking that when he finally left us, he would be at rights with God.
So often in life we exalt ourselves, or hope that people will exalt us. We love to be recognized, to be feted. We love to be first in the eyes of others, and because of that we often compete with others and belittle them in so many ways, ways often so subtle that we are not even aware of what we are doing.
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This Gospel passage calls us to know ourselves as we truly are before God. This is not a question of belittling ourselves. The publican did not grovel; he stood, and acknowledged who he was before God.
The problem is that when we do not recognize and acknowledge our weakness, we tend to look down on others. We become extremely self-righteous. When that happens we are not at rights with God. It happens to us as individuals, as church, as nation.
One of the things that has always struck me is that the great saints, saw themselves as great sinners, and were always calling on the mercy of God. Our present pope whom I think is a saintly man, when asked who was Pope Francis, simply replied, “A sinner”. He has also called the church to recognize her sinfulness, and to walk humbly before God. Blessed John Paul II also apologized to the world for the past and present sins of the church.
To live like that, recognizing our sinfulness and depending only on the mercy of God, is in fact to live evangelically.
Today then, the Gospel calls us to recognize and thank God for the examples of truly evangelical life that we have around us. People like Nelson Mandela, like that old missionary from our community; they keep us on the right track. Let us also pray for the great grace of being able to recognize ourselves as we truly are before God, so that we may not look down on others, and so that we depend truly only on God’s mercy.
Prayer
All powerful and ever-loving God, your son Jesus gave up his divinity and took on the role of a servant in order to proclaim and build the Kingdom by his words and the example of his life. Help us his disciples to imitate him so that walking in truth and humility we may build the civilization of love. We ask this through Mary, our mother and Jesus your son. Amen
