Humility
October 23, 2022: A Reflection for the 30th Sunday in OT, Year C
Luke 18:9-14
Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else. ( Lk 18:9)
We humans are so multi-layered and complex. It takes us a long time to know ourselves and learn to love and live in peace with our reality. The parable that Jesus gives us in today’s gospel is an example.
We have two people who went to pray. That is surely a good thing, right? But as T.S. Eliot wrote in Murder in the Cathedral, “The last temptation is the greatest treason/ to do the right thing for the wrong reason.” We can engage in a good act but for an entirely different reason than it would appear on the surface. We might not even be aware of the true motive out of which we are acting. In the case of the pharisee, I would bet you that he had no idea that he was acting out of an unaccepted part of himself. As Jesus said, “He was convinced of his own righteousness and despised everyone else.” He went to pray to God but ended up praying to himself.
The tax collector, on the other hand, seemed to be more in touch with himself. He was doing the right thing for the right reason and was aware of his motives. He knew where to go with the places within that he found hard to accept and he placed them under the direct gaze of a God he had experienced to be merciful. And mercy is what he found.
I don’t think we can be too hard on the pharisee, though. If we’re honest, we all have to acknowledge that we don’t fully know ourselves. After all, it took us a long time to figure out ways to survive in our world and we did the best we could. As a friend of the community, Doris, would say, “If we knew a better way, wouldn’t we have done it?” Some ways were good and mature, but others weren’t. We can grow. We can let God in, let God’s mercy wash over us. Then we don’t need to live in a defended world. We can realize we ARE like others. That we all share the same challenges but each with a different wrinkle. We can be humble. We can be like Jesus, the humble Son of God whose love has exalted us and taught us how to live.