21 March 2020 - talking to himself

Today's Readings

(Audio)

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.’

Our sense of entitlement can block us from receiving from God. It can be a barrier between us and the mercy and healing that we need. Entitlement changes the destination of our prayers from God to ourselves, just as the Pharisee "spoke this prayer to himself". Our prayers become less like petitions and more like performances. Through such prayers we show our unwillingness to open ourselves out toward God for the mercy we need.

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.’

We need to learn that we deserve nothing and can earn nothing. This sounds negative, but is not. It is the truth of the reality that everything is gift. Creation has no necessity in itself. It need not be at all, and ourselves with it. We are already indebted to the creator beyond anything we can repay before we draw our first breath. Within this creation we find that we have been given the ability to choose freely. We can offer our lives back to the creator in love. Yet we try to use our freedom for purposes other than it was intended. We cut ourselves off from the source and lose sight of the destination. The tax collector was a man who learned the hard way that his own efforts amounted to nothing. He let go of the sense of being owed something, a sense that may have justified his exploitation of others. Like the tax collector we need to learn that coming before God is about who he is and not who we are.

Do you know daughter, who you are and who I am? If you know these two things you have beatitude in your grasp. You are she who is not, I AM HE WHO IS.” 

- from Saint Catherine of Siena's Dialogue.

We fear to let go of our grasp on our identity. It seems negative to us to have such little thought for ourselves. We are so used to hearing the need to project of positive self-expression, to define our own identity, that we fear that we may just dissolve into nothing if we don't. But what we learn is that the more we empty ourselves like the tax collector, like Saint Catherine, and like John the Baptist, the more God can fill us.

He must increase, but I must decrease.” (see John 3:30).

The LORD allows us to experience our need for him in order that we can learn to seek him and not ourselves.

Come, let us return to the LORD,
it is he who has rent, but he will heal us;
he has struck us, but he will bind our wounds.

Let us come before him, seeking to know him so thoroughly that there isn't much space less to think about ourselves.

Let us know, let us strive to know the LORD;
as certain as the dawn is his coming,
and his judgment shines forth like the light of day!

The tax collector was not someone with self-esteem issues. He did not return home sad, but justified. He discovered the mercy of God and found healing for his broken past. May we too discover that we need this mercy. May we find it.