30th Sunday Year C - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2007

The Gospel we have just heard said that Jesus directed his story to some who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else. That attitude seems to be a professional hazard for everyone who takes seriously the business of growing in holiness. It’s certainly a professional hazard for me as a priest. We mightn’t publicly, or even consciously, pride ourselves for being virtuous, but there we are, up in our ivory towers, taking pot-shots, not necessarily at everyone else, but certainly at those whom we judge to fall short of those standards that, to us, are so obvious.

It can often be easy for those of us who have been schooled to do so, to say: God, have mercy on me, a sinner, in a half-hearted way because, even though we can accuse ourselves of the list of things we were taught to confess as kids, we don’t think we are really into sin in a bad way. We might admit to the occasional use of bad language, or bit of gossip, or distraction in prayer, or sexual attraction. but we tend to think that we’re not going all that badly. At least we’re trying, and are certainly a lot better than those who are into drugs, or who drink themselves stupid, or brazenly flaunt their sexuality, or drive like maniacs, or who never come near Mass.

What was the Pharisee up to that led Jesus to say that, while the tax collector went home at rights with God, the Pharisee did not? What was his sin, that meant that he was not at rights with God?

Well, Jesus told his story against all those who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else. The Pharisee believed that he didn’t need mercy because, really, as far as he could see, he didn’t sin. Yet Jesus saw what he didn’t. Like most of us, the Pharisee was quietly pleased with his virtue; and he despised others: his approach to others lacked love. He failed in the one thing necessary – love. And he was proud. The way Jesus put it, what the Pharisee didn’t see was his pride, and his pride kept him clear of God.

His lack of self-awareness of his pride on the one hand and the absence of love on the other closed him off from the God who is mercy. His sin – what kept him out of reach of God – seemed to have been that he didn’t – couldn’t – surrender himself to a merciful God.

Have you ever said, or were you even taught to say: “There, but for the grace of God, go I”? When you consider it, to think like that is to skate dangerously close to the wind.It is not all that different from: “I thank you God for your grace that has kept me different, and virtuous.” Or, as the Pharisee put it in today’s story: I thank you God that I’m not like the grasping, the unjust, the adulterous, or whatever.

Of itself, sin is no barrier to God, provided that people let God get at it. The tax-collector’s prayer for mercy and God’s ready forgiveness showed that. The 14^th century English mystic, Julian of Norwich, once wrote: “We need to sin, or we would never discover the unconditional love of God”.

What matters is: 1) that we learn to recognise our sin; 2) that we then accept our sin; and 3) that we let the God who is merciful get at us and forgive us.

The problem will always be our pride. The only way to deal with our pride is to grow in self-knowledge, to face the truth of ourselves, and to discover our compulsive need to feel, and to look, perfect (or almost perfect!).

Beyond owning our pride, and our difficulties with loving, we can’t do much about it. The very effort to beat our pride comes almost inevitably from our pride! All we can do is to hang out for God’s transforming love, ask for God’s mercy, forget about how we’re progressing, and leave it all to God.

Rather than: “There, but for the grace of God, go I”, perhaps the truth is: “There, with the grace of God, go I, too” – both of us totally in need of God’s merciful love, both of us saved simply by the saving grace of Christ.