Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 150​

I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former;

for whoever exalts himself will be humbled,

and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

We're all familiar with braggarts. They take up all the oxygen in the room; they want and demand attention; they insist upon their superiority, even when they have nothing to show for it.

A psychologist might say they need to cover their sense of inadequacy, or they feel neglected and must overcompensate. The rest of us just think they're tiresome.

The Gospels expose the pharisee as, among other things, a braggart. Failing to believe in a merciful God, persuaded of the need to prove their worth in God's sight as well as that of an indifferent world, they shore up their anxieties with tales of their superiority. If others notice them at all, they laugh at the braggart. 

I often recall the old priest who said, "When I was a young man I worried about what people thought of me. Then, as I grew into adulthood, I said, "I don't care what people think about me!" Now that I am an old man, I realize people don't think about me at all."

Our gospel today concerns a fellow who thinks excessively about himself. The eleventh verse of Luke 18 is variously translated: did the Pharisee pray "to himself" as our NABRE renders it? Or "by himself" as the King James Version renders it? Or, " thus with himself" according to the Douay-Rheims Bible? In any case, his prayer failed to reach God's ear. As Thomas Merton said, "God cannot hear the prayers of those who do not exist."

The man is fake; he has no real existence for he has never experienced the presence of another person, divine or human. In Jesus's parable he is placed up front where he cannot notice the company of a publican who is also in prayer. He sees the man only as a competitor for the prize of God's attention.

With this parable Jesus recalls the ancient feud of Cain and Abel. Like the Pharisee's, Cain's prayer is not accepted. Genesis does not tell us why God preferred Abel's prayer to Cain's, but he also showed the older boy an infinite mercy, he spoke to him. A pleasure Abel never knew. And so the jealous brother kills his younger brother. In the temple, the story is reenacted as the Pharisee dismisses the publican. The violence has a continuous history to this day; it has never stopped.

The Pharisee tells God all about himself, as if God doesn't know him. Why? Because God doesn't know the lies this man tells. Nor does the man know himself. He cannot face the essential emptiness in the core of his soul. 

I met a young woman who complained about what other's said of her. I assured her, "They do not know you. They can neither see nor hear you. They're thinking only of themselves and when they speak cruel words to you they're only talking to themselves about themselves. They do not see themselves in you because they're afraid to. What you must do is discover your own emptiness and remain in that sacred place until you're ready to meet someone else; but don't come out too soon." 

"What a person is before God." Saint Francis said, "That is what we are, and nothing more."