The Pharisee and the Publican (2027)
By Fr. Conor Donnelly
(Proofread)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins, and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
“Two men went to the temple to pray. One a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself: I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like everyone else, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week. I pay tithes of all I get.”
“The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven, but he beat his breast and said, God, be merciful to me a sinner. This man, I tell you, went home justified. The other did not. For everyone who raises himself up will be humbled, but anyone who humbles himself will be raised up” (Luke 18:10–14).
The purpose of the parable is to teach us the difference between true piety and false piety.
St. Luke points out that Our Lord told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, but they despised others.
Our Lord uses two figures who are familiar to his audience. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. Right from the start of the parable, we can see that the men share an external purpose but have entirely different agendas.
The Pharisee did not come to pray to God. He’s really talking to himself instead. There is no love for God in his words, nor any vestige of humility for that matter.
The Pharisee stands before God and gives thanks for his own rectitude. He compares his upright behavior with that of other people and finds himself justified. It would appear that he does not really need God after all.
The tax collector, on the other hand, stood afar off because he didn’t thrust himself forward. And because of that, God was able to approach him the more easily. St. Augustine says, “He who would not lift up his eyes to heaven now had the Lord of the heavens within him.”
Whether the Lord is near or far actually depends on you. Love, and he will approach.
God is very attentive to everything that we say to him. The tax collector won God over through his humility and trust, because “God opposes the proud, but gives his grace to the humble” (James 4:6).
The parable teaches us that our prayer should be full of humility, attentive, and trusting. We should avoid acting like the praying Pharisee with his self-centered monologue.
Jesus reminds us that humility has to be the foundation of our dealings with God. He wants us to pray like needy children, desirous of his mercy.
St. Alphonsus Liguori says, “God wants us to go to him with confidence. Bring to him your work, your projects, your fears, and whatever interests you. Act with a trusting and open heart, for God does not speak to those who never speak to him.”
Therefore, we need to flee from the prayer of self-sufficiency, which is evidenced by complacency in our apostolate and pride in our interior struggle.
We need also to avoid negative attitudes which reflect a lack of trust in God’s grace. Pessimism can be a manifestation of hidden pride.
The time spent in true prayer should always be a time of joy, confidence, and peace.
We should try and prepare well for our time of prayer. St. Teresa wrote, “Mental prayer is nothing else in my opinion, but being on terms of friendship with God, frequently conversing in secret with him whom we know loves us.”
Let us draw strength from our prayer to sanctify our daily work, to convert our contradictions into blessings, to overcome all difficulties. We will be strong to the extent that our prayer is authentic.
When we begin our prayer, says St. Peter of Alcantara, we need to ready our heart like someone who’s tuning a guitar.
We can offer up all our day’s work to Our Lord, along with small mortifications and our interior recollection. When we make our act of the presence of God, we have begun our special time of conversation with him.
A short prayer may help to begin our dialogue. We should pray with devotion and attention. I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me.
God sees us. Our recognition of this reality is itself prayer, even though we may not say a word. He understands us, and we understand him.
We ask many things of him, and he asks us for more generosity, more love, more struggle.
We may not experience any special feelings in our prayer. This shouldn’t bother us. For the person who makes a serious effort, there will, however, be moments in which he seems to be wandering in a desert, and despite all his efforts, he feels nothing of God. That person should know that these trials are not spared anyone who takes prayer seriously.
In these moments, says one document of the church, his prayer, which he will resolutely strive to keep to, could give him the impression of a certain artificiality, although really, it is something totally different. In fact, this is at that very moment an expression of his fidelity to God, in whose presence he wishes to remain, even when he receives no subjective consolation in return.
We may think that our struggle in prayer is not bearing fruit, while God himself may be immensely happy at our progress. Our Lord will always give us his peace and his strength so that we can accomplish his work.
We should never abandon our prayer. St. Teresa of Avila has advised that to lose one’s way is, she says, so it seems to me, nothing else but the giving up of prayer. Perhaps this is one of the more serious temptations which can afflict souls committed to the Lord’s service, to abandon this daily conversation with God for apparent lack of fruit, for the sake of more important things, even for apostolic activities.
Nothing is more important than our daily appointment with Jesus. He’s waiting for us. At all costs, the decision to persevere in devoting a set time to private prayer daily must be made and must be carried out inflexibly.
It doesn’t matter, says Eugene Boylan, if one can do no more than remain on one’s knees for the period and only battle with complete lack of success against distractions, one is not wasting time.
When we spend time with the Lord, we will always in the end be richer for it.
The gospels show us that Jesus was in constant contact with a great variety of people: sick people looking for a cure, sinners seeking forgiveness, the merely curious, and even spies. But closest to the Master are his friends. And that’s what Jesus calls his disciples, “my friends.”
Contemplating Our Lord at the tomb of Lazarus is moving. We see him there in tears. It makes the local people exclaim, “See how he loved him” (John 11:36). A few days later at the Last Supper, Jesus will explain the meaning of his death on the cross. “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). And when we see their surprise, he insists, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you” (John 15:15).
From the very beginning of Opus Dei, people who approached these spiritual activities of formation realized that St. Josemaría lived in very close union with God, because they saw this so clearly in his preaching.
One person has said that when talking to God, St. Josemaría addressed the tabernacle with the same directness as when he was speaking to us. Thus, we felt we were there among Our Lord’s apostles and disciples, just like one of them.
And that’s the approach to scripture that St. Josemaría always recommended to people later on. He said, “My advice is that in your prayer, you actually take part in the different scenes of the gospel, as one more among the people present. First of all, imagine the scene or mystery that you have chosen to help you recollect your thoughts and meditate. Next, apply your mind, concentrating on the particular aspect of the Master’s life you are considering: his merciful heart, his humility, his purity, the way he fulfills his Father’s will. Then tell him what happens to you in these matters, how things are with you, what’s going on in your soul. Be attentive because he may want to point out something to you, and you will experience suggestions deep in your soul, realizing certain things and feeling his gentle reprimands.”
When St. Josemaría said these things, in a certain sense, he was opening up to us about a secret of his soul.
Commenting on his way of approaching scripture, Blessed Alvaro del Portillo said, “He’s very familiar with Our Lord, and with his mother Mary and St. Joseph, with the first 12 apostles, with Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, with Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, the disciples of Emmaus and the holy women. He has come to know them through constant conversation, by placing himself in the gospel, becoming one more among the participants in the scenes.”
The validity of praying like this is confirmed by the lives and teachings of many saints. It has also been recommended by recent popes, when talking about the importance of approaching the gospels in an attitude of prayer with the practice of Lectio Divina. This means approaching the gospels calmly, taking our time. When reading a passage, we can pause and think, what must that have been like? Putting ourselves into the scene like another of the persons there, we can imagine what the people were like and picture Our Lord’s face.
We will then try to understand what his words mean, knowing that we will often need some kind of explanation, because this is an ancient text originating in a culture different from our own.
Thus, it can be important to use an edition with appropriate notes or to refer to good books about the gospels and scriptures.
After reading the passage, we can again ask, “Lord, what do these words say to me? What is it about my life that you want me to change? What troubles me about this passage? Why am I not interested in this? Or perhaps, what do I like about it? What is it about these words that move me? What attracts me? Why does it attract me?”
Possibly, the words will bring to mind someone close to us who is in need, or that we need to say sorry to someone. Finally, we should consider how can I respond in my own life to what Jesus is suggesting to me in this passage.
Be attentive, we’re told in Friends of God, because he may want to point out something to you, and you will experience suggestions deep in your soul, realizing certain things and feeling his gentle reprimands.
Sometimes it will draw forth from us our love, a desire for self-giving, and always the certainty that Jesus is with us. Contemplating Our Lord’s life, this is essential for a Christian, because it aims at creating within us a truly wise and discerning vision of reality, as God sees it, and forms within us the mind of Christ.
There are undoubtedly many ways of drawing close to Jesus through scripture. St. Josemaría did not aim to offer a method, but to give practical pieces of advice that could be useful for meditation and contemplation, “until we break into acts of love, sorrow,” he said, “acts of thanksgiving, requests, resolutions, which are the ripe fruit of true prayer.”
One saint has said, “In prayer, the soul cleanses itself from sin, charity is nourished, faith is strengthened, hope is made secure, the spirit rejoices, the soul grows tender, and the heart is purified. Truth discovers itself, temptations are overcome, sadness takes to flight, the senses are renewed, failing virtue is made good, tepidity disappears, the rust of sin is rubbed away. In it are brought forth lively flashes of heavenly desires, and in these fires rises the flame of divine love.”
Our Lord reveals himself and communicates himself to those who seek him and want him. St. John of the Cross said, “The Lord has always revealed to mortals the treasures of his wisdom and his spirit. But now that the face of evil bears itself more and more, so the Lord bears his treasures more.” If St. John of the Cross said that many years ago, what would he say today?
Prayer is faith, hope, and love. What is needed to have a fruitful prayer life, one that really allows for an encounter with God and transforms our life little by little? St. John of the Cross said, “There are people who think they pray well but pray poorly, and others who think they pray poorly but pray very well.” Where does the difference lie? What puts us truly in communion with God in prayer?
In the time we devote to prayer, we can do various things: meditate on a passage of scripture, ruminate slowly on a psalm, dialogue freely with Our Lord, or remain silently in his presence. What is decisive in the end is not this or that method, such and such an activity, but the deep disposition of our hearts while we are in prayer. These profound dispositions are nothing other than faith, hope, and love. All the rest is included in these attitudes: expressing them, nourishing them, maintaining them.
One writer says, “The greater is the faith of the soul, the more closely it is united to God.”
Sometimes while praying, we may have agreeable feelings of peace and happiness, a sensation of the presence of God. We also may receive enlightenment regarding some aspect of the mystery of Christ or intuitions of what God expects from us. These graces that move our senses or enlighten our intelligence are very precious, and we must welcome them in recognition that they are a kind of food and an encouragement for faith and love. Even so, they are not the essence of what brings us closer to God and places us in communion with him.
In fact, God is infinitely beyond all we can know with our senses or perceive with our intelligence. When the senses are in a dry spell and the intelligence is darkened, we should never be discouraged or feel far from God. What ensures, what gives rise to contact with God are neither feelings nor rational knowledge, but an act of faith. The book of Hosea says, “I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord” (Hos. 2:20).
From the moment I make a sincere and real act of hope, a loving, confident hope, desiring to give myself to God, I can be certain of being in touch with God, no matter what positive or disagreeable emotions I may happen to be feeling, or what thoughts, whether light or dark, may fill my mind. St. John of the Cross often insisted that faith suffices for someone united to God, a great consolation indeed.
Sometimes when we feel very low, we have the sense of being far from God, even though a simple act of faith would be enough to stir up absolute certainty of being in profound communion with him. Communion that sooner or later will bring the fruits of interior transformation. A faith simultaneously consisting of both total confidence in God and full adherence to what he reveals to us of himself through the scriptures and the church.
One writer said, “This is given to me like the wings of the great eagle of the apocalypse, which carries me as it were to the limit of faith, towards what the eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor heart felt. Nor do I see, hear, experience, but the gift of faith goes infinitely further, leading to the reality that infinitely surpasses any humanly accessible reality. Faith leads us to him who gives it, well beyond all experience or personal conviction, beyond even what love would dare if God were not present to the very mystery of his own love. I saw that faith, imbued with love, makes us attain this other side, the profound depth of the life of the Trinity, not through Christ and in him, but drawing us into it as he himself resides in it. And I was there myself through mercy and in faith embedded with love, and I saw how near at hand it is.”
I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
EW