Today’s gospel is about prayer and humility. Jesus tells the parable of a Pharisee and a tax collector who go to the temple to pray. The contrast between their demeanour, their gestures, and their prayer is evident, and so is the outcome: one goes home justified, and the other one does not.
The Catechism tells us that prayer is “a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God.” (CCC 2558) Implicit in this definition is a right understanding of the relationship; of who God is and who we are. In fact, for any relationship to work, to be fruitful, there must be a right understanding of who each person in the relationship is. For instance, if the slave regards and treats his master as a fellow servant, or if the master treats his slave as his master, there is something utterly wrong in the relationship. It is no different with our relationship with God: a proper understanding of who he is and who we are is critical.
This lack of understanding is what we see in the parable. In his prayer of thanksgiving, the Pharisee is addressing God, but in reality, his words are no more than a litany of self- worship. He does not understand his relationship with God correctly. God is our creator, and we are his creatures, He is our saviour and us who are saved. Whether our prayer is of praise, of thanksgiving, or petition, it ought to be grounded in this recognition of who we are and who God is. We praise Him because He is God – we are not; we thank Him because of His many blessings and gifts – which we could not procure for ourselves; we bring our petitions to Him because we know He is all-good, all-loving, and all-powerful to bring these about – we are not.
In short, our prayer needs to be grounded in humility, which is precisely what the Pharisee lacks, and what the tax collector does. This understanding of prayer is the same that Saint Teresa of Avila taught. For her, the Pharisee’s actions at the temple are not even prayer, but only lip service: “A prayer in which a person is not aware of whom he is speaking to, what he is asking, who it is who is asking, and of whom, I do not call prayer however much the lips move.” Prayer, our time spent with God and the growing of that relationship with Him, should continually make us more humble since for it to be prayer, there ought to be this right understanding of who God is and who we are. Humility, as indispensable for prayer, is what today’s gospel is all about. It is easy to dismiss this parable as obvious in the point it is trying to make. The contrast is so evident that we immediately understand the Pharisee’s fault, and are tempted to do just as the Pharisee himself: to think that we are not like him and thus feel that it does not concern us. But, when we allow the parable to challenge us, we realize how much more we need to grow in our relationship with God, that is, in our understanding of who God is and who we are in relation to Him. The critical point is to realize that it is not an intellectual understanding that we are talking about. Instead, it is an understanding at the level of the heart. It affects our experience of prayer and truly brings about humility. In the end, it moves us towards greater love and surrender because of the wonder of knowing and experiencing that we, who are nothing, are loved by Him, who is everything. This is what I think the tax-collector understood and was at the root of his short, but humble prayer.
Santiago Torres – St. Joseph Seminary, Edmonton, Alberta
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