“If ignorance makes beasts of us, arrogance makes us like demons,” said St. Bernard of Clairvaux, which is true. It’s an aphorism that reminds us of the danger, the violence of our pride. We understand the great Cistercian here.
And we see it — this pride and potential cruelty — in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector at prayer, which Jesus tells in Luke’s Gospel. The Pharisee’s prayer isn’t prayer; it’s pride, the praise of self. Thus, he can’t help but belittle others. Only the triune God can enjoy self-praise; creatures cannot. In creatures, it becomes an arrogance that inevitably carves up human equality and soon human dignity. Again, that’s what we witness in the Pharisee, what we see all the time — in all our racial, religious and socio-economic tribalisms, in cults of celebrity, in our clericalisms, in ourselves.
Which is why Jesus places this uncomfortably recognizable buffoon next to the humble tax collector: to make the simple point that the tax collector is closer to God than the Pharisee. Not because one is a tax collector and the other a Pharisee (those details are not all that important) is one closer to God than the other, but rather because one is humble while the other isn’t. Which is the lesson; it’s what Jesus has been saying all along, and what he says at the end of the parable, that “whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (Lk 18:14).
| October 23 – 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time |
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Sir 35:12-14, 16-18 |
It’s a Lukan theme — sung first by Mary — that in what Christ is and what he’ll do, the lowly will be “lifted up” (Lk 1:52). It’s the humility of those humble before Jesus’s healing miracles: the humble faith of the centurion begging Jesus to heal his servant (cf. Lk 7:1-10), the woman kissing and anointing Jesus’s feet (cf. Lk 7:36-50), the woman who just wants to be healed of her bleeding, Jairus begging for his daughter’s life (cf. Lk 8:40-56). It is the disposition of the healed and ultimately the saved. That arrogance has no place in the kingdom is the point; the false prayer seen in the Pharisee has no place. Humility is the way of Christ, the way to death and resurrection. And it has nothing to do with human status, not at all. Even tax collectors can be humble and go home “justified” (Lk 18:14). It’s open to everyone.
And so, that’s the invitation — to be humble. St. John Vianney once said, “Without humility, that lovely and rare virtue, you will be as unlikely to reach heaven as without baptism.” Now that’s a stark warning, a preacher’s sort of warning; you’re not meant to quibble its theological details. The moral point is the point, and it’s Jesus’ point. And that is, if you’re like the Pharisee in this parable, if you’re not truly humble, then you’re going to have a hard time getting to heaven. The lesson is as simple as that.
So, let’s find humility together. Let’s be humble disciples together. Let’s be a humble Church full of tax collector Catholics, not prideful. And you, don’t wait for others to be humble before you risk it (I preach to myself here too). For maybe that’s what’s lacking; maybe that’s what’s preventing so many miracles, our pride — I don’t know, maybe not, maybe so. Whatever the case — that’s God’s business — let’s just at least seek our exaltation this way, humbly. At the very least, we may shock the world around us. At the very most, we’ll know heaven. Either way, humility’s worth the risk.
Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books.
