26 October 2025, 30th Sunday "C”
Sir 35, 12...18; 2 Tim 4, 10...18; Luke 18, 9-14
Homily
Luke tells us that the Pharisee and the Publican both went up to the Temple to pray. Even the Pharisee really prayed, and his prayer could well be considered humble. It is true that he is aware of his righteousness, but he knows that it is a gift from God. He thanks God for the grace he has received to be a righteous man: "My God, I thank you because I am not like other men... I fast twice a week and I pay a tenth of all I earn.” In reality, his attitude is not very different from that of Paul in the letter to Timothy: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith..." As for the Publican, he does not even dare to raise his eyes to heaven. He simply sais: "God, have mercy on this sinner!"
They both prayed. The Publican came out of the Temple justified, but not the Pharisee. What happened? What was the difference between the two? Was it simply a difference between humility and pride? -- No! The difference was that they were not praying to the same god.
We always tend to make God in our own image and size - a god according to our desires. And this was precisely the point of rupture between Jesus and the Pharisees. The god of the Pharisees was a god who gave them all their virtues and made them better than the rest of the people. This god does not exist; it is an idol. It was certainly not the God that Jesus was proclaiming. The Pharisee of this Gospel did not believe in God but, as Luke says, he believed in his own righteousness.
The Publican, in his humility and poverty, has no image of God. He has not built a god according to his desires. He does not raise his voice to God. He looks at himself, sees his sinful state and therefore his need for healing and his ability to grow and receive new life. "Have mercy on the sinner that I am," he says. And he receives new life. He has found God in the experience of his own unworthiness.
Quite often, in our Sunday Gospels, we have seen how easily we tend to interpret as moral teaching what Jesus had presented as teaching about his Father. In other words, we turn a teaching about God into a teaching about ourselves! And this way of bending the original meaning of a parable is, in some cases, as old as the very writings of the New Testament, which began as collections of Jesus' words. Each evangelist has passed on to us not only the words of Jesus, but his or her own interpretation of those words - an interpretation that is often manifested simply by the context in which a story or parable is placed.
By placing this parable with a word of Jesus on prayer (which was our Gospel last Sunday), Luke presents it as a teaching on prayer. Then, Luke himself or more likely someone else, later, has attached a well-known saying of Jesus "He who exalts himself will be humbled; he who humbles himself will be exalted." He also introduces it with the words, "Jesus spoke a parable for certain men who were convinced that they were righteous and despised all others." This is all good and very interesting. But if we consider the parable itself, apart from this introduction and conclusion, it is, like almost all of Jesus' parables, a teaching about God.
The God of the Pharisees was a God who had established a number of rules and precepts. If you knew the recipe and put all the right ingredients into your life, mixed them right and cooked them right, your salvation was assured. You had done everything you were commanded to do, so you were entitled to what was promised. The God of the Publican, that is, the God of Jesus, is not a God who can be bought, not even with a virtuous life. He is a God of mercy. The justification and salvation he so earnestly desires to give us are founded not in our good deeds and virtues, but in his mercy. "O God, have mercy on me, a sinner!
For us, who are so conscious and jealous of our rights, it is very disconcerting to learn from Jesus that we have no rights to claim from God. Everything He does for His creatures is a free manifestation of His kindness. God's intervention to save us from sin is not a reward for our merits, but a demonstration that He is a God of mercy, tenderness and forgiveness.
Armand VEILLEUX