30th Sunday in Ordinary Time / C
24 October 2010
Luke 18, 9-14 (p. 845)
After the parable of the widow and the judge, Jesus teaches us again this Sunday with a parable, that of the Pharisee and the publican. And last Sunday as St. Luke gives us the purpose of this teaching us designating to whom he addressed in particular: "For some men who are convinced of being righteous and despise all others." The Lord wants us here to guard against any temptation that may relate to the pious and religious, so all of us insofar as we desire to live our Christian faith so as fervently: that of spiritual pride. In the savory staging of the parable, all details are important, allowing us to better know the nature of this temptation. Reread all this staging with a rating of the Pharisee and the other a publican. For two characters that we are present in contrast, the context is the same. Both go up because the temple to pray. The Pharisee's prayer is interior, what we today call mental prayer. It is also a prayer of thanksgiving, thanksgiving, so a prayer that begins very well: "My God, I thank you ... . How important it is in our spiritual life not to limit ourselves to prayer application but also to give an ever more important to prayer of thanks, praise and worship silent! But here is the prayer of this man who had begun so well will drift and end very badly ... Where it goes wrong is in the ground of his thanksgiving, "because I'm not like other men ... or even as this publican. " This Pharisee is the perfect example of spiritual pride, for two reasons. First of all, by his sense of spiritual superiority over others, feeling that inevitably comes to mercilessly judge others who are all bad ... We know perhaps people who had to prove themselves that they are in the right way and right feel the need to belittle others and condemn. In this prayer, which no longer has that appearance, the Pharisee was not trying to get in touch with God. In fact he looks himself, to contemplate, is considered so good that it borders on idolatry. Does God really love it? Is it not rather his own moral and spiritual perfection? The second cause of his spiritual pride is in the display he made of his fidelity to detail of the Law of Moses. He did not need God to be justified and sanctified. He justified himself through his works. Not only is it more that he loves God but himself, but it also has removed God's prerogative to judge hearts. Only God knows us really, much better than ourselves we can not know. Because only God reads hearts and penetrates the depths of our most secret intentions. It is because he has perfect knowledge of our hearts and motives of our actions and our words that God is the sole judge, who can never be wrong. This is also why Jesus forbids us to judge our neighbor and to condemn him. The second reading shows how St. Paul, the converted Pharisee, overcame the temptation of one who justifies himself in the presence of God. In this passage of his letter to Timothy, the apostle affirms its devotion to God, he persevered in the right way. He held fast to the end and until it After he proclaims the Gospel to pagans. But there is a big difference with the Pharisee in our parable. Paul does not fall into the sin of pride, he knows, and he says that his strength, so his loyalty to his mission from God: "The Lord stood with me, it filled me with strength" . Paul does not draw his justice from himself or his good deeds, for he knows that without the grace of God he is still a prisoner of ignorance and sin. The prayer of the publican, in our parable, is a prayer of supplication: "O God, be merciful to me a sinner! "Our two characters thus embody two opposing attitudes: pride and humility. Nothing moves us away more orgueuil God that is spiritual sin of Satan, and nothing more unites us to God as humility. The humility, one of the largest Christian virtues, is not humiliation or masochism of those who will see him as the weaknesses, faults and wrong in repeating all day long I am no, I am worthless and so on. Humility means bringing a realistic look at what we are and in fact recognize the dark side in us. Blaise Pascal in his thoughts was very well perceived value of humility as essential truth in our Christian life. Yes, the truth of our being is that we are neither angel nor beast. We 're human beings. And we must get the balance of truth when we come before the Lord in prayer. We do not present ourselves as saints or as beings who are merely fishing. We introduce ourselves as we are: as sinners forgiven and justified, on the way to holiness. Pascal advises the Christian, as a result of the Gospel, to avoid the two opposite temptations: the pride of a document, the despair of another. For us to cultivate the simple and joyous Christian humility, knowing to accept the humiliation but also by choosing to demean ourselves in the presence of the Lord and others.
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