Gospel Lectio Divina for Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time - October 23, 2022
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth.
O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations, Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.
READ
Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else. "Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. 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.' 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.' I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted."
MEDITATE
those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else
Forgive me, I could not resist mentioning the projecting going on here–but it’s only because I can so easily relate. Unwilling to face the flaws in myself, I project them onto everyone else. I do not like the way the world is, but the problems I see in the world are most prevalent in myself. Jesus wants to get to our hearts. He cares more about us being honest with ourselves than he does about our judgmentalism. Quite often, our judgments are correct. Sin prevails, and we have no one to blame but ourselves. We would be right to despise everyone else, if it were not for our own sinfulness. God, on the other hand–being completely good and righteous–is the only who has a right to despise everyone, as he sees all of the evil we do and our failure to do good. And yet he chooses not to despise us. He chooses to show mercy.
I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity
We are all a composite of good and evil, unless we are actual saints. Even the saints, many of them at least, had their moments of sinfulness. If you say you do not sin, then you are a liar. But what we tend to stress is the sinful part, and not the good part. Yes, we are all sinners–but we are all good as well. How is that so? How can we be two things that are opposite? In truth, opposites are combined all of the time. Hot and cold make warm. Male and female make a marriage. Good and evil make us human.
So the Pharisee in the parable is not all evil. The way he prides himself in his own righteousness is evil, but he may actually be a very righteous man otherwise–and that is good. It’s so easy to read this parable and claim we are nothing like the Pharisee, but if we are saying to ourselves, “Thank God I am not stuck-up, prideful, and self-righteous like this Pharisee”, then we are just like him.
Make no mistake. God wants us to be all-good with no evil in us. He tells us to avoid being lukewarm. I am challenged, everytime I write this lectio divina, to not preach because I am in no position to be a preacher of God’s word. I try only to reflect and share what I have learned from the passage. But my attempts to do good are mingled with the evil of hypocrisy, because I do not always live up to the words I share. God wants me to be a man of my word, which would make these words thoroughly good. But even as I write them I know they are not fully good because I have not successfully integrated them into my life.
Jesus says no one is good but God alone, yet he challenges us to be holy. There is a mystery to that. Are the two any different, goodness and holiness? The Lord weighs the heart, not our good deeds, not how many prayers we pray. To be holy is to have a pure heart, and this pure heart is what leads us to do good for the sake of goodness–not for recognition or some form of self-gain.
'O God, be merciful to me a sinner.'
Nothing is said of the tax collector, except that he is a tax collector and that he has a contrite, penitent heart. No other specifications are given regarding what he did, what may have led him to repentance, or even how he proceeded after repenting. Jesus said he was forgiven. He was forgiven because he had pureness of heart at least in that moment. In that moment, he saw the truth of who he was. He saw his own evil and his own goodness. He saw the evil he had done, but must have also seen the good in himself, otherwise he would not have seen how he fell short of living up to it.
Both the Pharisee and the tax collector are good and evil. The difference is in the tax collector’s plea for forgiveness. An appeal to God’s mercy is what tips the scale in favor of good. Perhaps, goodness would not win in the world if not for God’s mercy. Goodness and evil pretty much balance each other out without mercy. God’s mercy ends the struggle. Someone had to put an end to the constant battle between good and evil. Someone had to say, “Enough is enough.” Jesus did that by laying down his life, ending the constant cycle of revenge.
PRAY
Dear Lord,
Thank you for showing me that I am like the Pharisee, and also like the tax collector. Thank you for revealing that I have good in me, but I must be cleansed from my sin to fulfill the purpose you made me to fulfill. Jesus, your wisdom humbles me. The Gospel always has something to teach me, even if I have read the passage hundreds of times. I praise you for your infinite truth and goodness. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
LISTEN
When I am struggling to hear God, I search for him in the truths of life itself. His words are not just in the Bible. If we are being truthful with ourselves, we begin to see how his wisdom is always the subtext to the lives we live. They just make sense. They’re like the code that keep a program together. His teachings in the Gospel are like the abstract of the lessons we would learn in life by being honest with ourselves, and listening to others whose words resonate with a wisdom akin to the words of Christ. I speak mainly of the last line in this passage: “whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” It ‘s better to leave you with those words of Christ, because this is a truth familiar to us all–it’s familiar because it is reminiscent of the realizations we come to on our own after our own honest observations of life.
Kilby is a freelance writer from New Jersey and managing editor of Catholic World Report.
