Jesus continues the theme he began two weeks ago: our approach to prayer. Two weeks ago, he began by emphasizing the importance of gratitude, exemplified by the thanksgiving of the cured Samaritan leper. Last week, he stressed the importance of persistence in prayer through the parable of the widow and unjust judge. This week, he speaks of our attitudes in prayer in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican.
Two men decide to go to Temple to pray. One is a Pharisee, one a publican, i.e., a tax-collector. Jesus reveals the content of their prayers.
The Pharisee is convinced of his righteousness. His “thanksgiving” informs the omniscient God of his moral qualities: he is not “greedy, dishonest, [or] adulterous.” Lest God think the Pharisee is only enumerating abstract sins, the Pharisee zeroes in on the concrete man behind him: “even like this tax collector” (emphasis added).
Having illuminated God the evil things he is not, the Pharisee proceeds to list the good things he is. “I fast twice a week and I pay tithes on my whole income” (emphasis added, lest someone accuse him of tithe shelters). Apparently, he was not around when Jesus spoke about “your Father who sees in secret” (Matthew 6:6) not needing this press release in the form of a prayer.
So ends the Pharisee’s “prayer.”
The publican’s far less loquacious prayer consisted of eight words: “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
It’s good that the Pharisee was not avaricious, corrupt or lewd. It’s great that he wanted to pray, fast and give alms. All good things.
But all good things done for the wrong reasons. As we, though apparently not the Pharisee, learned three weeks ago: “we are useless servants.” In doing what God wants of us, we are not doing God a favor, much less making him our debtor. God is God and we’re not.
Salvation is not something that comes from “doing the right things” if done for the wrong reasons. The Pharisee failed to realize that everything he had, including his goodness, came from God.
Whatever good we do begins with God’s grace and inspiration. We are incapable of doing good purely on our own. If we could, we wouldn’t have needed Jesus, the Cross, or redemption: we could have repaired sin all by ourselves. But that is neither Judaism nor Christianity.
So, needing God’s grace so that “he who began this good work in you will carry it through to completion” (Philippians 1:6), we should in humility recognize our utter dependence on God. Because the Pharisee lacked humility, he couldn’t recognize that. His prayer was all about “I.”
The publican, for all his moral faults — and they are real — does recognize his spiritual poverty. He does recognize that he cannot put the moral Humpty Dumpty of his life back together again. Only God can. He sees what his life has been. He turns to the only one who can fix it. “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
He knows he’s a sinner, not just notionally but really. The Pharisee might have theoretically admitted he sometime sinned, but he certainly sensed nothing of his spiritual impoverishment.
So, after having asked help of the God who is the Prodigal Father, the publican “went home justified.” So, after having informed God the All-Knowing Judge of his righteousness, the Pharisee did not.
The publican talked to God. The Pharisee talked to himself. Each spoke with his preferred conversational partner. After all, even the Gospel says “he spoke this prayer to himself,” a likely double-entendre: praying interiorly and praying to his own ego.
Jesus concludes today’s Gospel reading with the same warning he gave weeks ago speaking about where to sit at a banquet: “for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
Tax-collectors in ancient Israel were often little more than thieves. Given a concession for a certain area, their job was to collect a certain sum. However they padded tax bills beyond them was for their own profit.
So, did our publican leave the Temple and stop grafting people? We don’t know. Maybe our publican was the future St. Matthew or Zacchaeus, ready to make amends. What we do know is that the man who left that Temple was spiritually ready to make a change.
And we do know that the Pharisee who left was not. He had every intention of continuing to be just like he was because he saw no problems with it.
That’s why one was justified, and one wasn’t.
Today’s painting, by Dutch Golden Age painter Barent Fabritius (1624-1673) captures those truths. The two brown marble pillars divide the painting into three parts and three different times. The center scene depicts what happened in the Temple. The Pharisee is kneeling right in front of the altar, proudly declaiming his virtues. His hand gestures betray his false humility: while his right hand touches his breast, his left hand is lending emphasis to the goodness in his talking points. It may also be pointing, at least indirectly, to the publican lurks in the background. He stands with his face sad, clearly placing his less-than-model life before God. In the background, other people move around, oblivious to the spiritual drama taking place beside them.
The center scene is perhaps somewhat Biblically inaccurate. Luke says the Pharisee “took up his position” which Our Lord elsewhere noted was typically “seats of honor in the synagogue” (Luke 11:43). Taking up his position is compatible with kneeling, as Fabritius shows him, but elsewhere in Scripture Jesus notes Pharisees loved “to pray standing in the synagogues” (Matthew 6:5), and most artists who depict this scene have the Pharisee standing.
The two edges of the painting show the consequences of the prayer. Each man leaves the Temple. On the left, the Pharisee exits, his face staring at us smugly and arrogantly, as if we viewers were as morally suspect as “this tax collector.” He is about to pass a man who, at least from his bent head, seems a bit humbler. The important point is the devil who accompanies our Pharisee. He looks at the Pharisee and carries a mask on his right, indicative of mask behind which this “righteous” man hides. Because my copy of this painting is cut off, I cannot fully read the Latin inscription on the black banner he carries, but it seems to be “he who exalts himself will be humbled.” And you do not want demonic humbling.
On the right, the publican exits. His face exhibits a certain reflective peace — not unlike penitents after a good Confession. Perhaps he is thinking what he now needs to do to set things right. Compare his facial expression to the Pharisee’s. Above the publican’s head is an angel, with a white banner, “he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Fabritius apparently painted this work and two others (the Prodigal Son and Lazarus and the Rich Man) as a set of three parables for the Lutheran Church in Leiden in 1662. Barbara Haeger considered it somewhat unusual, because “Protestant churches seldom commissioned such works.” It hangs today in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
The publican moves the heart of the Son of God by his appeal to God’s mercy. One way to imitate that attitude in one’s own life is to incorporate the Chaplet of Divine Mercy into one’s daily prayers. For information on the Chaplet, see here.