When You Pray...

Gospel: Luke 18: 9-14

The prayer of the Pharisee is the prayer of the "faithful Catholic" - one that asks for nothing for the self-righteous have all they need in themselves.  They have given themselves the descriptor of "faithful" through a self-referential criteria that miraculously places oneself in this category.  The Pharisee places himself in the holy of holies, a place he is not worthy to be, and looks down on all others as unworthy outcasts whom in their minds God does not hear.  

The prayer of the Publican is the only authentic prayer any of us is qualified to utter.  It expresses our condition before God as sinner and outsider.  This Publican is a male Jew - he has the right to be in the court of Jewish men in the Temple when he prays.  But he places himself in the court of the Gentiles and sinners and utters his prayer.  His position is our position, the position of every single human being.

None of us is a faithful anything.  We are all sinners before God, ever in need of God's mercy, ever in need of mercy from one another.  If we look about the world and find it harsh, cruel, and unloving it is not because God lacks mercy but because we do.  To truly experience Lent is to become more merciful to others because we have experienced God's mercy.  "Lord, be merciful to me, a wretched sinner."