Looking at the parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector, Fr Oliver Treanor is able to point our what are the central attitudes that will win us the kingdom of God.
In the kingdom that Jesus came to preach there is no room for saints. Only sinners. So if you are a saint already, don’t read any further. However, if you are conscious of sin in your life, then ‘Welcome home!’ says the gospel, ‘the doors are open to you’. You’re in!
Jesus himself was the very one who said it. ‘I did not come to call the virtuous to repentance,’ he announced, ‘but sinners’ (Luke 5:32). Repentance is the passport to God’s kingdom because it is proof of conversion, which we saw last month is the starting-point of real holiness.
Plain speaking
To illustrate, Christ left us the most plain-speaking of all his parables – about the Pharisee and the tax collector. These two men both went into the temple to pray (Luke 18:9-14). The Pharisee marched away up to the front and gave thanks that he was so different from the tax collector. ‘Everyone knows what they are,’ he told God. ‘Sharp-shooters! Extortionists! Greedy, dishonest, adulterous and sly!’
Not like the Pharisees, this one in particular. He fasted twice a week, paid his dues, set the right example. ‘But observed Jesus, ‘he was praying to himself‘. God wasn’t listening. His gaze was fixed on the man at the back, head bowed, humble, confessing his sins. ‘I tell you, finished Jesus, this man went back home again justified, at peace with God. The other did not’.
Need of forgiveness
The funny thing is that what the Pharisee said was true. He was upright in the moral sense, but his sin was greater than the sins he condemned because he set himself above the mercy of God. He did not need the mercy of God so he flung it aside, trampled it underfoot even as he stood in God’s presence. He failed to realise that there is no salvation without forgiveness and , since only sin merits forgiveness, that there is no salvation with sin.
The tax collector understood this. Which is why he was able to enter the Father’s house with confidence, trespasses and all. He was not afraid to face the truth because the truth is that God loves sinners.
Sign of love
Luke’s Gospel is very strong on this. He recounts an incident where the parable actually came to life. A prostitute came in and knelt at Jesus’ feet when he was dining at the home of a Pharisee named Simon (Chapter 7). With her tears she washed the Lord’s feet and then dried them with her hair. Like the tax collector, she impressed Jesus deeply with her humility.
Simon the Pharisee, however, was not at all impressed. How dare this vile woman enter his house and make a fuss? If Jesus were as holy as people made him out to be, surely he would know who it was that touched him! Once again, a Pharisee and a sinner in God’s presence. One sorrowful and sincere, the other proud and aloof!
This time, however, the sinner heard God’s response to the situation. ‘The one who has been forgiven more, loves more,’ Christ explained gently to his host. ‘This woman has shown much love. Therefore (turning towards her)
your sins are pardoned. Go in peace.’
Simon was left speechless, the sadder person. He was incapable of real love. He did not know what it was to be in need of God. And his behaviour bore this out. He had failed to show even the commonest signs of affection for Jesus, the simplest courtesies of a host to a guest. His religion had no warmth in it, no humanity. It was as cold as his heart.
Models of humility
What both stories are telling us is this: that all of us depend on God’s mercy for salvation. Even if we are not guilty of grave sin, it is divine mercy that keeps us in grace. When we acknowledge this we become saints.
Take for instance the Virgin Mary who was conceived without sin and did nothing displeasing to God. In her great hymn of praise and thanks she rendered back to God the honour he had paid her by preserving her from fault.
‘My soul rejoices in God my saviour;
He has done great things for me.
He has looked on the lowliness of his handmaid;
And his mercy is from age to age
On those who fear him’ (Luke 1 :46-55).
St Therese of Lisieux, whose centenary we celebrated last year, said the same. God shows his greatest mercy, she wrote, in giving us the grace not to sin.
In other words, no matter how blameless we may be, none of us can claim to have remained so without the Father’s tender pity towards us. And that is why the Pharisee will always be a stranger in heaven. The self-righteous would simply not know how to find their way around paradise.
The tax collector and the prostitute, Our Lady and St Thérèse, all are models of humility. They draw heaven towards themselves because they draw the Fatherliness of him who responds only to need.
Unlocking the gates
It was the needy that Jesus drew into his heart on the Cross when he bowed his head before God and prayed for forgiveness. On Calvary his parable achieved the ultimate expression of its truth. For there he so touched the heart of his father with his own humility that henceforth he unlocked the gates of the kingdom for all who make his prayer for forgiveness through him their own.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (February 1998), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
