Luke’s Gospel speaks clearly about and to those who live their life in a twisted way. These are people who only trust in themselves (self-righteous) and who need to hold others in contempt to bolster their own fragile egos. Today’s Parable suggests another way of living.
The Pharisee at prayer is wonder to behold. His prayer separates him from everyone else and creates fertile conditions for his contempt. The tax collector, on the other hand, takes the opposite way – hoping to touch and feel Gods Mercy. Both need it, but only one has the wisdom to ask for it.
Thomas Merton puts it beautifully in his Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander p.156-157″
“In Louisville, at the corner of fourth and walnut, in the centre of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the realisation that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I was theirs… It is a glorious thing to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes terrible mistakes; yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race!
Once we know that we are absurd and that we make terrible mistakes, a door opens that remains closed to the ones who don’t know. We must be poor enough in spirit to receive the gift. God pours herself into empty vessels. Divine, unconditional love is unleashed the moment we stop trying to save ourselves. This might be why dying is so vital to the journey.
But it was Teresa of Avila who captured this beautifully, when in ‘Divine Sparks’ (p.206) she wrote, “Humility is the Queen without whom none can checkmate the divine King.”
