Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Vigil
October 26, 2019
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday.
- Jesus will give us the parable of the two men who went up to the temple to pray.
- The first man was a Pharisee. He prayed, “Thank you, God, 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.” The man was what most people would call today a good religious man. Like his fellow Pharisees, he never sought to do the minimum in the practice of the faith but as much as he could can. Whereas Jews were required to fast only once a year on the Day of Atonement, the Pharisees fasted twice a week. Whereas Jews needed to tithe only certain things, he tithed on his whole income. He was outwardly a role model. But there was something drastically wrong in his conception of God, his conception of the faith, and his conception of others. The first clue is that Jesus says, “He spoke this prayer to himself.” That doesn’t mean that he simply said it quietly so that he alone could hear, but, in a sense, he was praying that prayer to himself, that he was something special. Second, he thanked God that he was not like so many others, who were thieves, rogues, adulterers and publicans. He rejoiced in what he saw was his virtue, but failed to recognize was that he was proud, judgmental, vain, boastful and uncharitable. He didn’t see his own sinfulness and failed to ask God for mercy, because he didn’t think he needed it. Compared to so many around him, and the other person praying in the temple, he considered himself a saint among sinners.
- Jesus contrasts him with a tax-collector who had also gone up to the temple to pray. Tax collectors were hated by his fellow Jews not only because they were collaborating with the Romans who were subjugating the Jewish people, but because in the carrying out of his duty, tax collectors would routinely rip off their people for greed. They were assessed a certain amount that needed to be collected; whatever they could get beyond that was theirs to keep. Many of the tax collectors were corrupt Mafiosi ripping off the poor precisely in order to live well. One would think that someone in such circumstances wouldn’t pray at all. To do so, some might say, was hypocritical. But he knew that even if others might never forgive him, God could, and he knew he needed God’s forgiveness. With no arrogance at all, no self-importance, and great humility, he remained in the back, beat his breast and say, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” As the first reading from Sirach will tell us, “The prayer of the humble pierces the clouds!” His prayer did.
- Jesus gives a startling conclusion to the parable. He told his listeners that of the two, the good man who fasts, tithes and lives outwardly by the mosaic law, and the detested one who rips off his own people and conspires with the pagan authorities, only one of them had their prayer heard and left the temple in a right relationship with God. It was the publican! To understand the surprise, it would have been like Jesus substituted a religious sister for the Pharisee and a drug pusher for the publican and said that when the two left the Church only the drug dealer was justified, was truly on good terms with God. Such a comment was not about the type of life they were leading, but about the type of humble prayer they made.
- This whole parable points to what Jesus says elsewhere, “I have come not to call the self-righteous, but sinners!” If we wish to come to Church and leave on good terms with the Lord, we need first to grasp that we’re sinners, that we need his mercy, ask for it and seek to live by it. Only sinners need a savior. Only those who pray for mercy will receive it. Only the truly humble will be exalted.
- There are of course still self-righteous people in the Church, who when they look at themselves in the mirror, think that they’re something special, that they’re better than other people, that, sure, they may have their weaknesses and problems, but at least they’re not like those who have “really sinned.” They focus mainly on what they have done right rather than what they have done wrong. They might admit that they, sure, they need a “little” of God’s mercy, but nothing near what other’s need. But this self-righteousness isn’t just a problem for those who, like the Pharisees, actually do try to live religiously. It can also afflict those who live like the publican. That’s very popular today in our culture and even in the Church. Those who are clearly violating the Lord’s commandments left and right — by never praying, or living with an immoral lifestyle, or being awful to others — rather than repenting for their sins and coming to beg for God’s forgiveness, actually attack the Church or those who are seeking to call them to conversion for being “intolerant” or “judgmental.” They can pray like this, “I thank you Lord, because I am not one of those hypocritical and intolerant modern Pharisees, who worry about fasting, who worry about coming to Church and praying, who worry about tithting, but who in real life am worse than I am!”
- What’s the Lord want from us? He wants us, first, to recognize that, whether we have been religiously observant or not, in order to have our prayer heard, we humbly need God’s mercy and need to ask for it. And second, rather than focusing on others’ sins, we need to concentrate on our own. The problem with the Pharisee in the Gospel was that he preferred to focus on the commandments he was keeping, rather than the ones he was breaking. We can do the same thing. Some of us, including those of us who pray, can leave prayer unjustified, because we haven’t been humble enough to beat our breasts and acknowledge our need for God’s help. There’s an obvious application here to the Sacrament of Confession.
- On Sunday, we will all go to Church to pray. Some of us like the Pharisee. Some like the Publican. Most of us, a little bit of both. All of us, however, want to leave justified. The only way to do so is with humility, contrition, and openness to God’s merciful love. At the beginning of Mass, we will say, “I have greatly sinned … through my most grievous fault.?,” and cry out, “Lord, have mercy! Christ, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!” Later, we will beg the “Lamb of God” who “takes away the sins of the world,” to “have mercy on us, have mercy on us, and grant us peace” from our sins? And perhaps most poignantly, when that Lamb of God is elevated and we behold him, will we pray with great conviction the words, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed?” But the Lord wants to justify and make us worthy! Let’s prepare well!
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