October 27, 2013 Reflectionss

The Pharisee & the Tax Collector

Prayer has been called “an hour of truth.” But it has to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. No doubt the Pharisee was telling the truth: he was living an upright life, he was doing everything he claimed to be doing. But he was not praying; he was giving God an inventory of his good deeds: “I fast twice a week, I give 10 percent of my income….” At any rate he could not be accused of having a low self-image. He prefaced his remarks by saying, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers….” His high opinion of himself depended on his low opinion of others.

Yes, we have to wear that cap and see if it fits. Most of us would be too clever to boast openly of the things we do, but there are subtle ways of putting others down in order to make ourselves appear better. How does it work? I am not sure what I am in myself (or I am afraid to look), so I develop an eye for the worst in other people. It allows me to feel, “I'm not as bad as they are, or at least I'm no worse.” I am aware of all the time I have wasted, all the big and small acts of cowardice and meanness, all the betrayals: I feel shabby, so I focus on other people’s rags. This is not a decent way to live, and deep down I know it.

We live nowadays in a culture of suspicion. There is a generalised suspicion that goodness is hypocritical. This clears the coast for anyone who wants to belittle others and what they do. The trouble is that there's a half-truth in it. A lot of ‘virtues’ actually come from the opposite of virtue; they are attempts to prove that I am not what I am. Cowards become daredevils, lonely people become gregarious, weak people look for subtle ways of getting power. ‘Virtues’ can be over-reactions to the unpalatable truth of what I am. Everything hides its opposite within itself - that is, if there has been no real transformation, but only dissimulation.

But what a dead-end this suspicion is! I may appear very clever if I am able to unmask false virtue, but if it means that I don’t believe in virtue any more, then I am the real loser. What drives me now is not a passion for truth and honesty, but the Pharisee’s self-congratulation: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people.”

Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” Love your opposite. Then you cannot clothe yourself with their vices. You may even see that their vices are sometimes the unrepressed form of your own virtues, and you can learn a kind of compassion and encouragement instead of criticism. It is always useful to ask yourself, Why is this person MY enemy? He touches something painful in me, reminds me of something I would rather forget. In the end I may even learn to say, “God, me merciful to me, a sinner!” That is the sincerest form of prayer: it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

-- from Today’s Good News, the Dominicans of Ireland

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In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that -– and therefore know yourself as nothing in comparison –- you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you. – C.S. Lewis

Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful. ― Ann Landers

Reflection for October 27, 2013: Welcome to Pharisee World

If you can listen to Jesus talk about Pharisees without feeling an uncomfortable twinge somewhere deep in those secret regions responsible for self-knowledge, you must be a better person than I am. This is what today’s Gospel says: 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.”

Ouch. Welcome to Pharisee World, the place where most of us live today – and not just today but apparently always, at least according to the New Testament. Sometimes it seems as if we were awash in Professional Christians, the kind of people who wear their religion on their lapels rather than their sleeves, who display it as if it’s the badge of a Very Exclusive Club. That doesn’t mean actually living by Christianity’s tenets, of course, because we’ve all agreed that they’re much too hard and impractical to follow, but rather standing securely on all the talking we about how religious we are, as if we expect to impress the saints by our bragging. It’s a phenomenon that’s especially noticeable during election seasons, when political candidates talk as if they’re running a religious revival. Me, I’m old-fashioned in a lot of ways. I don’t particularly care what religious beliefs a politician or anyone else professes; I care what a person actually does with his or her time. Fine words are nice, but they’re also just words. And too many of the words we hear and, unfortunately, speak, tend to be malicious and nasty in nature. Whatever happened to the notion of Christians refusing to bear false witness? It’s even less popular than the idea that we should love one another and be kind to the least of our brothers. I am waiting for a political candidate, or even any public person, who will respond to questions about religion by simply quoting Matthew 6: Be on guard against performing religious acts for people to see. … When you are praying, do not behave like the hypocrites who love to pray in synagogues or on street corners in order to be noticed. … Whenever you pray, go to your room, close your door, and pray to your Father in private. … That is what Jesus says we should do. But then again, Jesus’ advice is far too radical to ever catch on with us.

The thing about the Pharisees that we tend to forget is that they were actually very goodpeople – “good” in the sense that they did all the right things correctly -- they prayed and fasted and did all that stuff exactly as required. They were utterly rigorous when it came to fulfilling their religious duties. The problem is that they went out of their way to make sure that everyone knew how good they were at performing their duties. The thing about Jesus is that he wants more than that. He’s not interested in religious “duties.” He wants nothing less than the deepest core of our hearts. And he wants us to show that we’re his followers, not by talking about it, but by giving our love away to the rest of the world – loving our neighbors, whoever they are, and watching out for the least of our brothers and sisters. Even if we don’t really like them, we still have to do our best to love them – to care about their well-being, to forgive them as we hope to be forgiven. And Heaven knows – as does Hell – that this is not easy.

There are so many ways in which I fail as a Christian. I’ve become a bit of a miser when it comes to giving away my deepest love; I’m stingy with my time and energy. I’m opinionated and lazy and cranky and sometimes angry and judgmental; the sad truth is, I generally do the wrong thing if given a choice and the opportunity. It’s certainly not because I am humble and enlightened that I never stand up in front of the church like the Pharisee in the Gospel. I just know that if I were to say out loud, or even to myself, “Thank you, Lord, for making me righteous and good” my words would be drowned out by the raucous laughter of all the saints and angels in heaven, and all the devils below. They know better, after all. They see me clearly – more clearly than I want to see myself, most of the time.

Fortunately, there is one prayer I can always pray with a straight face, even on very bad days – and that is the prayer of the tax collector: “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” Yep, I can always say that, and mean it, too, because it is always real, and true, and honest, and urgent. Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night, jostled by back pain or worried by life – frightened by fears for my family and friends, worried about my country and the looming future of the whole planet -- I quietly say the Jesus Prayer: “Jesus, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” And it always helps, at least partly because I always sincerely mean this prayer whenever I say it. I need – and I know that I need – God’s mercy the way I need water and food and sunlight; I need God’s mercy as I need the next breath in my body. More than that, even – because if there’s more to come once I’ve quit breathing, I’m gonna need every precious drop of mercy I can get. And so I love it when we say or sing the Agnus Dei at Mass: “Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us, and grant us peace.” I figure that any God who’s big enough to handle the sin of world ought to be able to handle my sins as well. He’s really good at the heavy lifting, this merciful Savior of ours. For which I thank God, on my knees, in Jesus’ name.– Diane Sylvain

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On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom. ― Michel de Montaigne