30th Sunday Reflection: The Fruit of Pride
Franciscan Reflections From The Hermitage – The Fruit Of Pride – 30th Sunday In Ordinary Time – (Luke 18:9–14) –
Without a pledged time, without a place set apart, our commitment falters… maybe soon, possibly when, perhaps if… and so our lives flow on with getting the ‘important work’ of living done. And so also prayer is forgotten.
Yet even as we are doing this living, disaster strikes, as it must in every life, leaving us rudderless, without control, moving into unknown dark and fearful waters. In desperation, we reach out for answers, for hope, and for understanding. We find ourselves in those well-known stages of grief… denial, anger, bargaining, and depression but perhaps without reaching that acceptance necessary for our lives to continue with meaning.
Our prayer now has the taste of ashes with both despair and presumption as the fruit of pride, a stumbling block and so we do not know how to pray as we ought. But it is not this pride of the Pharisee that estranges him from God?
Pride has led the Pharisee to compare himself to the unworthy tax collector. He has compared, judged, and convicted the tax collector as unworthy. He has chosen the way of non-Love, the way of comparison, of judgement and conviction.
God respects our choice, for that is the way of free will that makes Love possible. The Pharisee has chosen another way and in turn becomes a reflection of that comparison, judgement, and conviction. The Pharisee has condemned himself.
There is something of the Pharisee and the tax collector in each one of us. They represent two types and two states of being… the one is the story of the law and sin, and the other is the story of grace and redemption. Both are of equal importance. We live both of these stories as individuals, as communities, and as Church. We find them also active in ethnic groups, nations and cultures. The human family and its journey as a whole is both the story of the Pharisee and the story of the tax collector.
The Pharisee of the Gospel stands tall in the Temple of God, full of his own importance. He speaks to himself about himself, full of himself and his good works. The word ‘I’ is used five times. We may feel uncomfortable listening to this boasting and we may even get a sense of the extent to which this person has lost not only the sense of who God is but also the sense of who they are.
But such a judgement replicates and exposes the self-righteous Pharisee that lies hidden in each of our hearts, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. Jesus exposes that part in each of us that compares, judges, and condemns… this to be better than that… this more sacred than that… this more holy than that… it was better in my day than now… I am better than that one over there… who is in and who is out… all according to my judgement… who is worthy and who is unworthy.
This judgement that we make is the very same judgement that condemns us because we have chosen to depend on our own righteousness within the Law. By our free choice, we effectively put ourselves under the jurisdiction of the very Law that only can, and does, condemn us.
We no longer depend on God’s grace and Mercy but on the law, and on ourselves. Contemporary culture, like the Pharisee, thereby loses its sense of God. This loss is of critical importance because we are made in God’s image and likeness, and we can only know ourselves and how we should act when we know God. The more we lose the sense of God the more we lose a sense of who we are.
This vacuum left by the loss of the presence and awareness of God is filled by ourselves as we try to replace the loss of God with the self, and soon every person becomes their own God, choosing for themselves what is right or wrong. I think therefore I am… there is no place for God here!
Humanity can now create its own reality; but whose reality will prevail? The strongest, of course, and the strongest will tell the rest of us what is right or wrong, what truth means, what beauty looks like, and where our destiny lies. Inevitably we end up with the ‘tyranny of force’ or the ‘tyranny of Man’. Instead of obeying God’s plan we are forced to obey another person’s plan. And so instead of life being defined in terms of Love it becomes defined in terms of a huge power struggle. Might is right!
This is how we come to lose our sense of identity as human beings and our sense of moral truth. The Pharisee in the Gospel had entirely lost the sense of his own sinfulness. How can this have happened to him, right there in the Temple? The answer is… bit by bit, step by step.
The loss of the sense of God happens in our Church also, bit by bit, step by step. This is the journey that humanity has taken by stepping into the vacuum.
But there is also a story of hope, the other story of the tax collector, humbly asking forgiveness from God; the story of grace is a good image upon which our Catholic community must base its renewal. We have sinned oh Lord, for we have judged so many others as unclean and unworthy. Forgive us Lord and help us to begin again.
With St Francis we pray, Most High glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart. Give me right faith, sure hope and perfect charity. Fill me with understanding and knowledge that I may fulfil your command.
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