10th March >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflections on Luke 18:9-14 for  Saturday, Third Week of Lent: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” (2024)

10th March >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflections on Luke 18:9-14 for Saturday, Third Week of Lent: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

Saturday, Third Week of Lent

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Luke 18:9-14

Let the little children come to me

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 not grasping, 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.’

Gospel (USA)

Luke 18:9-14

The tax collector went home justified, not the Pharisee.

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.”

Reflections (4)

(i) Saturday, Third Week of Lent

In both readings today, there is a contrast between what God wants and what people bring him. In the first reading, the people bring sacrifices and holocausts to God in the Temple, but in response God, speaking through the prophet Hosea, says, ‘what I want is love, not sacrifice; knowledge of God, not holocausts’. God wants the love of his people, a love that finds expression in the love of others. In the parable Jesus speaks in the gospel reading, the Pharisee lists what he brings to God. He fasts twice a week; he pays tithes on all he gets; he is not grasping, unjust or adulterous. All of that is true. However, what he brings to God is not accompanied by love, in particular, love of others. While telling God in prayer what he offers him, he is, at that very moment, looking down on a fellow worshipper, the tax collector. Indeed, he is despising him. He hasn’t been listening to God’s word spoken through the prophet Hosea, ‘what I want is love’. His prayer is not the kind of prayer that God wants. The prayer of the tax collector is much simpler, but more authentic, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner’. There is no lack of love towards others in his prayer. His focus is on his own failure to do what God wants, his sin. In the language of today’s responsorial psalm, he prays with a ‘contrite spirit, a humbled, contrite heart’. This is one expression of what God does want. ‘A humbled, contrite heart you will not spurn’. We can all make our own that simple prayer of the tax collector, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner’. We can prayer that prayer in the knowledge that such a prayer is always acceptable to God. It always corresponds to what God wants.

And/Or

(ii) Saturday, Third Week of Lent

In this morning’s parable two people went up to the Temple to pray, but only one of them really prayed. Both appeared to pray. The Pharisee prayed a prayer of thanksgiving, which began, ‘I thank you God...’. The tax collector prayed a prayer of petition, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner’. Both used traditional prayer formulas but it was only the tax collector’s prayer that was acceptable to God and that was judged to be authentic prayer. What distinguished the two prayers was the attitude of heart from which they sprung. In the case of the Pharisee, it was an attitude of pride and of judgement of others; in the case of the tax collector it was an attitude of humility, recognizing his poverty before God. Both men who went up to the temple to pray were equally poor, spiritually poor, before God, but it was only the tax collector who recognized that truth. We always come before God as beggars, as needy. Even in our need, there is of course room for the prayer of thanksgiving. However, whereas the Pharisee thanked God for himself, ‘I thank you God that I...’, we are to thank God for who God is, not for who we are. In the words of the glory of the Mass we pray, ‘We worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory’. We petition God out of our poverty; we thank God for his goodness.

And/Or

(iii) Saturday, Third week of Lent

The parable in today’s gospel reading suggests that how we see ourselves and others is not always how God sees us and others. The Pharisee in today’s gospel reading saw himself as virtuous and saw the tax collector as a sinner. The prayer that he prayed reflected this view of himself and of the tax collector. In his prayer he told God his moral achievements, which he believed put him in a different category to the other man praying some distance away, the tax collector. How we pray can be very revealing of who we are. There was a great deal of himself in the prayer of the Pharisee; we can’t help but notice the repetition of the little word ‘I’. The prayer of the tax collector was quite different. It was much shorter and it consisted not in telling God the good he had done but in asking God for God’s help, in the form of God’s mercy. His prayer, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner’, reflects one of the petitions in the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, ‘Forgive us our trespasses’. Without having heard the Lord’s prayer, he prayed in the spirit of that prayer. The prayer of the Pharisee isolated him from God; it kept him closed in on himself. The prayer of the tax collector opened him up to God. His prayer didn’t just have the appearance of prayer; it was genuine prayer. Authentic prayer is when we come before God as beggars, recognizing our own poverty before God. Both the Pharisee and the tax collector were sinners, in different ways, but it was only the tax collector who recognized himself as a sinner. He recognized his own truth and thereby entered into communion with God, the source of all truth.

And/Or

(iv) Saturday, Third Week of Lent

The parable in this morning’s gospel reading relates to prayer. One man prayed a prayer of thanksgiving and the other a prayer of petition. We all pray in petition and thanksgiving at different moments in our lives. Indeed, probably the prayer of petition comes easier to us. It is often when we are in need that we pray with greatest fervour and when we are in need our prayer is generally one of petition. We can neglect the prayer of thanksgiving. At one level the Pharisee’s prayer of thanksgiving was very appropriate. He thanked God that he had kept God’s Law, which suggests that he understood that his keeping of God’s Law was due to God. It was God who enabled him to live according to God’s will. However, his prayer was fatally tainted by his disdain for a fellow human being, the tax collector who was present in the Temple at the same time. He seems to have forgotten that love of God was inseparable from love of neighbour, even if the neighbour left a lot to be desired. There was no disdain for anyone in the tax collector’s prayer of petition, except perhaps for himself. His prayer reminds us of the little speech of the prodigal son when he arrived home, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you’. The gospels assure us that such a prayer for mercy when prayed with sincerity of heart will always be heard by God. As one of the psalms, which is this morning’s responsorial psalm, expresses it, ‘a humbled, contrite heart, O God, you will not spurn’.

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

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