Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time, C, Vigil

October 22, 2022

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.22.22_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, in which Jesus will speak to us about the importance of prayer in general and praying for mercy in particular. He does so by means of a famous parable in which he describes two men who went up to the temple to pray.

* The first man was a Pharisee. He prayed, “Thank you, God, 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.” The man was what most people would deem today a religious man. He was going up to Jerusalem to the temple to pray. He, like his fellow Pharisees, never sought to do the minimum in the practice of the faith but as much as they could. Whereas Jews were required to fast only once a year on the Day of Atonement, the Pharisees fasted twice a week. Whereas Jews needed to tithe only certain items, he tithed his whole income. He was outwardly a role model. But there was something drastically wrong in his conception of God, his conception of the faith, and his conception of others. The first clue is that Jesus said about him, “He spoke this prayer to himself.” That doesn’t mean that he simply said it quietly so that he alone could hear, but, in a sense, he was praying the prayer to himself, not to God, that his prayer, like his life, had himself in the center. The man thanked God that he was not like so many others, whom he said were thieves, rogues, adulterers and publicans. He rejoiced in what he saw was his virtue, but he failed to recognize that he was proud, judgmental, vain, boastful and uncharitable. He failed to see his own sinfulness. He didn’t ask God for mercy, because he didn’t think he needed it. Compared to so many around him, and the other person praying in the temple, he considered himself a saint among sinners.

* Jesus contrasts this man’s prayer with that of the other man, a tax collector, who went up to the temple to pray that day. Tax collectors or publicans were hated by their fellow Jews not just because they were collaborating with the Romans who were subjugating the Jewish people, but because in carrying out their duty, they would routinely rip off their people for greed. They were assessed a certain amount that needed to be collected; whatever they could get beyond that was theirs to keep, and many of the tax collectors were ripping off the poor precisely in order to live well. They were in general corrupt, similar to an ancient mafia class that the authorities with whom they were conspiring would do nothing to stop. One would think that someone in such circumstances who had given his life over to this type of betrayal of his nation and of so many people who lived around him, wouldn’t pray at all. For him to pray, some might argue, was hypocritical. But he knew that even if others might never forgive him, God might, and he knew he needed God’s forgiveness. With no arrogance at all, no self-importance, and great humility, he stayed in the back of the temple, beat his breast and cried, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” He was totally conscious that he didn’t deserve forgiveness, but knew that the Lord was kind and merciful, that the Lord’s mercy endures forever, and with great repentance prayed for that gift.