Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

I have always been drawn to the line in today’s responsorial psalm, ‘The Lord is close to the broken-hearted; those whose spirit is crushed he will save’. We have all had the experience of being broken-hearted. We have all known times when our spirit was crushed. We feel weak in ourselves, broken and drained; we sense we have very little to give. It is above all at such times that the risen Lord is close to us. As he hung from the cross, he himself knew what it was to be broken in heart and crushed in spirit. When we find ourselves in a similar place in our lives, he is there with us, as strength in our weakness, as hope in our despondency.

This was the experience of Saint Paul in today’s second reading. He writes to Timothy, his close companion, from prison. He senses that his death is approaching, ‘the time has come for me to be gone’. He recalls that at his first defence, ‘there was not a single witness to support me. Every one of them deserted me’, but then he immediately goes on to say, ‘the Lord stood by me and gave me power’. At a time when he was very vulnerable, with his heart broken and his spirit crushed, he knew that the Lord was standing by him and giving him the strength he needed to keep going. The Lord’s supportive presence at that dark and difficult time convinced Paul that the Lord would always be there, standing alongside him. As he says, ‘The Lord will rescue me from all evil attempts on me, and bring me safely to his kingdom’. When all our inner resources, all human supports, fall away, the Lord remains faithful to us. He never falls away. He is there with all the resources of his risen life whenever we call upon him in prayer.

The parable Jesus speaks in the gospel reading is about two men who went up to the Temple to pray. The Pharisee would have been considered very religious, devoted to doing God’s will in all areas of his life. The tax collector would have been considered a sinner. Not only were tax collectors working for the Romans, the occupying power, it was assumed that they were collecting more than was necessary, so as to enrich themselves. Why did the tax collector go up to the Temple to pray? Perhaps he went there because his heart was broken and his spirit was crushed. He was locked into a livelihood that he was uneasy about, and, yet, it may have been the only work available to him to keep his family alive. He went to the Temple knowing that he had nothing to offer God. We are told that he stood some distance away from the other worshippers. Perhaps he felt that he didn’t really belong in the Temple at all, that his livelihood had cut him off from God and God’s people. The only prayer he could manage was, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’. It was a short, simple, prayer. Yet, it was a prayer that came straight from his heart. He stands there knowing that he has nothing to give God and everything to receive from God. He recognizes his own truth, acknowledges how he is, and he hopes that God’s mercy can somehow take care of it. According to Jesus’ comment on the parable, it was this man, rather than the Pharisee, who went home at rights with God. Jesus is saying that whenever we come before God broken- hearted and somewhat crushed, our prayer will touch the heart of God. In the words of today’s first reading, ‘the humble person’s prayer pierces the clouds’. At the heart of all genuine prayer is the realization that we are poor within and utterly dependent on God. We are all broken people in need of God’s healing grace and that reality finds expression in our prayer. The way we pray always says something about how we see ourselves in relation to God, how we relate to God.

The prayer of the Pharisee was very different to that of the tax collector. His prayer also revealed how he saw himself in relation to God. He was a good man who took his relationship with God seriously. However, he felt the need to promote himself in his prayer, reminding God of how well he had lived. This promoting of himself went hand in hand with a dismissive, judgemental, attitude towards what he calls ‘the rest of mankind’, of which the nearby tax collector was a conveniently placed example. He seems to have forgotten that love of God is inseparable from love of neighbour. If our religious faith leaves us feeling morally superior to others, prone to judging others, something has gone seriously wrong with it. In his prayer, the Pharisee compared himself with others, and he came out very well in his own eyes. In his prayer, the tax collector compared himself with God, and he came out poorly in his own eyes. Yet it was the tax collector’s prayer that was acceptable to God. We can easily exalt ourselves by comparing ourselves favourable to others. Yet, when we compare ourselves to the Lord we soon realize how much we need his supportive presence if we are to grow more fully into his likeness.