Lord Have Mercy!

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time C-2

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 105 (104):3-4 Let the hearts that seek the Lord rejoice; turn to the Lord and his strength; constantly seek his face.

Collect Almighty ever-living God, increase our faith, hope and charity, and make us love what you command, so that we may merit what you promise. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture today: Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18; Psalm 34:2-3, 17-19, 23; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14

Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else. "Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, 'O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity – greedy, dishonest, adulterous – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.’ But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, 'O God, be merciful to me a sinner.' 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." (Luke 18:9-14)

Lord Have Mercy! In the course of the history of religions, generally the main attribute of God which man thinks of is his power. It is to that divine power that he appeals in his religious life. He needs the aid of heavenly power, and he knows he must not alienate the powers above. Now, God has revealed that his power is manifested in mercy. His almighty power has a certain kind of character, a face, as it were. Its face is not menacing, hostile, irritable, or indifferent — which is what one might think were one to go on the menacing course of much of nature, or on the myths and rituals of man’s religions as they have appeared in history. Rather, God has revealed that his power is merciful. He is rich in mercy. But at the same time, God is a God of truth and holiness. He cannot accept one who presents himself before him as unrepentant of his sins, or as if he is without sin and therefore as having no need of His mercy. One of the great religious thinkers of the modern age was Cardinal Newman. He wrote that for man as he is, the sense of sin is the starting-point of authentic religion. Without that sense of one’s sinfulness one’s religion is hollow. The popes have taught over the last century that one of the distinguishing features of the modern age, indeed one of the greatest of modern sins, is the culpable loss of the sense of sin. We tend to think that we are not sinners at all. We tend even to have difficulty thinking what our sins are. We tend to think that we do not need pardon. This is because for modern man God tends not to be a reality. The Catholic who is infected with this way of thinking does not make many acts of contrition. He does not approach the Sacrament of Penance very much. He has difficulty even thinking of his sins. And of course, we all tend secretly to compare ourselves very favourably with others. We are, in fact, a little like the Pharisee of today’s Gospel. We tend to be unlike the Publican in our prayer, in the sense that it is not often that our prayer is like his.

In today’s Gospel, our Lord tells his disciples the story of a despised tax collector praying in the Temple (Luke 18:9-14). He prays some distance behind the Pharisee, and he prays genuinely, acknowledging his true condition before God and asking God for mercy. The reality was that both he and the Pharisee were sinners, but the Pharisee was blind to his own sins. In his view of himself, the Pharisee was virtuous. He was not grasping, unjust, adulterous like the rest of mankind, so he “prayed to himself” (Greek: pros eauton proseucheto; Vulgate Latin: apud se orabat). Other men were sinful, unlike himself. In particular, he thought he was much more virtuous than the Publican he saw some distance behind him in the Temple, and indeed the implication in our Lord’s story is that the Publican had not been living a virtuous life. But the Pharisee considered himself good because all he thought of were the good things, as he saw them, that he did. He forgot the bad things he did, especially his bad attitudes of pride and vanity that informed the good things. Moreover, there was no acknowledgment of his dependence on God for whatever good things he may have done. The result was that he virtually forgot God. All he thought of was himself in his favourable comparison of himself with others. By contrast, the Publican looked to God, and looked to him for mercy. God was for him a God rich in mercy, which is the very teaching of Scripture and revelation. God loves all, but especially the one who recognises the truth of his own condition, which is one of sinfulness and complete dependence on Him for his mercy. It was the Publican who went home right with God, because of his prayer. Of course, he did not go home right with God because of his past good deeds. Rather, he went home right with God because he had obtained God’s pardon for his sins. He had acknowledged his sins before God, before whom he had bowed down in all humility and reverence, asking him for his mercy and his pardon. The Pharisee had failed to do that, and his prayer left him alienated from God.

Our Lord implies that the publican’s prayer for pardon lies at the heart of true religion, and is essential to get to heaven. Well, let us make that prayer our own, all through life to our dying moments. I remember seeing a wonderful movie in which one of the notable characters was shot to death by arrows. At his last moment he fell to the ground repeating the prayer from the start of Mass: Kyrie Eeleison! (Lord have mercy!). That prayer revealed his authentic religion at the last. Every time we pray this prayer at the beginning of Mass, let us ask our Lord to give us a true sense of our sinfulness, and a firm belief in his infinite mercy.

(E.J.Tyler)

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