“Two people went up to the temple area to pray”.
Is there anyone – a Christian of any denomination – who does not know the story of a Pharisee and a tax collector? I doubt it. I myself have heard the message hundreds of times, if not more often.
So let’s have a look at it. Two men come to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray. One is a man who fulfils his religious and social duties to the letter: he never misses a prayer, a prescribed fast, who is faithful to his wife, who is honest, who shares his wealth. In other words, he does all the right things and he does not do any of the bad ones. He is eager go above the required norm, too – he fasts twice a week, he contributes more to the Temple’s treasury, too. He does it all surrounded by the pagans, half-pagans, fallen-off Jews, the Romans, the God-less lot.
If you look at how he performs, without looking into his heart, as only God can do – and did – you can only admire the man.
You can compare him to one of those contemporary silent heroes of Christianity. They live in the pagan West or the dangerous East of our times, yet go to Mass every morning (or travel miles to get to Mass at all), say full Rosary daily, pray outside the abortion clinic once a month, do not “steal” even a pen from work, donate to charities, live a chaste life or have been married only once.
They are lucky if they do it without noticing it themselves. No doubt, many do all of the above in the spirit of “we are useless servants”.
Yet always – just as it was 2000 years ago and is now – there is a catch to perfection. No matter how good we all are on the outside – the truth about us lies in the heart.. it is all in the heart.
One God’s look into the Pharisee’s heart reveals that this perfect man’s thoughts are not on God, even if the words he says sound like a thanksgiving. “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity”..
The man is proud of his perfect stand in view of his duties as a worshipper of God – but above all that he is not sinful – greedy, dishonest and adulterous – like the “rest of humanity”, exemplified by the tax collector “who stood off at a distance” and begged God to have mercy on him, the sinner.
My own reception of the story changed over time. When I was a young Catholic, full of energy, with easy confessions every month, daily Masses and “good deeds”, I loved it and, duly aware of its spiritual value, practiced the prayer of a tax collector with eagerness. Sure enough, I was unable to notice that I was a Pharisee ANYWAY.
Is there anything more funny than a Pharisee saying the prayer of a Tax Collector, the humble sinner?
Then, our circumstances changed and from the Giver, I became the Recipient. Any new immigrant knows the feeling. When you arrive in a new country, you have contents of a suitcase. You suddenly need the basic things – a bed, a table, some plates and cups, winter boots, a dictionary. Kind people donate some of the stuff. You are given what others no longer need. You can see how often your benefactors (discreetly) look down on you : your inability to cope with new reality, your desperation sometimes, your obvious clumsiness. I observed this and I thought back, back to the years before – and was forced to admit that my own past “good deeds” inflated my pride, no matter how I fought it. Had I known how to attribute them to God alone.. to give back the good to the source of all Good…
So, I shrank somewhat in those first years in Canada. No material goods to share, much to be grateful to others for, roles reversed. Healthy, if unpleasant.
Still, I had my spiritual pride to inflate me: my fully Catholic, church going family. Oh, for the pride of watching our parish church’s pews filled with the lot of us: the old, the middle aged and the young.. those weddings, the baptisms, 1st communions and confirmations.. It felt so good to know we all are still “holding on to faith”, while (sigh, sigh) so many of “others” are already outside the Church, divorced, living in sin, not even baptizing their offspring born out of wedlock.
So that type of pride had to go, too..
Sometimes God has to break our hearts to shake us out of our spiritual blindness. He needs to strip us of everything we rely on, everything we take pride in – so that we may learn to extend our genuinely empty hands to Him, begging for mercy.
Was Pharisee’s pride broken eventually? Probably, because God gives us all many, many chances to see…