29 March 2025 - Saturday of the 3rd week in Lent
Homily
At the beginning of each Eucharistic celebration, we confess our sins and ask the Lord for forgiveness. Is this always more than a simple religious formality? Are we sincerely aware that we are sinners? Of course we know that we have sinned. Normally, we have already accused these sins in confession and they have been forgiven. In fact, we know that they have been forgiven by God from the moment we regretted them. But being a sinner is more than simply having done this or that sin. Perhaps we aware that we are good Christians or not so bad monks, rather of being sinners.
It is dangerous to be a good Christian, and perhaps even more dangerous to be a good monk! It was to good people like us that Christ said that prostitutes and tax collectors would precede them into the kingdom of heaven.
Today's Gospel tells us about a publican and a Pharisee. What was a publican? Publicans were Jews who accepted to be officials of the Roman authorities at the time when Judea was under Roman occupation. A bit like the collaborators in France or Belgium during the last World War. They were considered public sinners because they accepted an authority other than that established by Yahweh and were therefore considered traitors to their people. What's more, they were regarded as thieves because, when collecting taxes, they demanded higher sums to supplement the meagre wages they received from the Roman authorities.
Jesus' parable tells us that a Pharisee - a religious man - and a publican go up to the Temple to pray. The Pharisee is really praying, and according to our way of seeing things, his prayer could be considered humble: “God, I thank you because I am not like other men; they are thieves, unjust, adulterers...”. He gives thanks. He is aware that it is by grace that he is what he is. He prays to a god up in heaven. As for the publican, he does not pray to that god up there in the sky. He doesn't even dare raise his eyes to heaven. He simply says: "God, show favor to me, a sinner".
They both prayed. The publican returned to his house a righteous man, but not the Pharisee. Why didn't the Pharisee? What was the difference between the two? They both prayed. Was the prayer of the second better than that of the first? Perhaps it was. But I believe that the real reason for the different result of their prayer is that they were not praying to the same god. We always have the tendency to make ourselves a god in our own image, a god corresponding to our own dimensions and above all corresponding to our needs. The Pharisee's god was the god who had given him his virtues, who had made him better than the rest of mankind. This god does not exist. It is an idol. So the Pharisee didn't really believe in God but, as the Evangelist Luke says, he believed in his own righteousness.
The publican, in his humility and poverty, had no image of God. He had not built himself a God according to his needs. He did not speak to a god up there. He didn't even dare to look up. He looked at himself and saw that he was a sinner and therefore in need of healing. ‘God, show favor to me, a sinner’. And he received new life because he was open to it. He had found God in the very experience of being a sinner.
Saint Peter tells us in his Letter that we must be ready to give an account of our hope. Let us ask ourselves this morning what our hope is based on. On our conviction that we are righteous, like the Pharisees, or on our faith in God's mercy? Is our faith that of the Pharisee or that of the publican? Let's not forget that Luke writes that Jesus told this parable ‘to some who were convinced that they were righteous’.
Armand Veilleux