By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ
The LORD is a God of justice, who knows no
favorites. Though not unduly partial
toward the weak, yet he hears the cry of the oppressed. The Lord is not deaf to the wail of the
orphan, nor to the widow when she pours out her complaint. Sirach 35:12-14
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." Luke 18:13-14
Piety
Piety is reflected in how
we pray. Humility perfects our
prayer. We look at ourselves in
comparison to whom we are praying. Before
our loving God who hears our prayers through his son Jesus we are nothing. We pray with Christ as our reason for being
heard. We pray in his name. Christ is the perfect expression of God’s love
for us. In his death on the cross, he
perfects our prayer by offering himself to make up for all our sinfulness. Christ is our way and our truth. He is the perfection of human life lived in
conjunction with the plan of God the Father. We come before God clothed in the love of
Christ. We become what we love and
Christ takes us into himself even as we take Christ into ourselves.
Study
We study the tax collector
of our Gospel today to see how humility opens the heart of Christ to us. We are told that we will be exalted if we pray
with humility. How we take the truth of
ourselves before God without contaminating our prayer by false comparisons to
others is seen in our realization if we
had the graces of another we would do half what they do whereas if they had our
graces they would do twice as much.
Humility is the truth of ourselves. We go before God with the awareness of how
completely Christ obeyed the Father. We
can only try to be like Christ by the truth of who we are before him. Even as we do our best to put on the mind and
heart of Christ in our prayer, we are faced by the truth of how we wander
before the God who loves us as we are.
Paul gives us a true challenge when he says of himself that he is poured
out like a libation. The crown of
righteousness awaits us when we put all our mind and heart into the moment we
are living as we try to be all there for the one we are serving. We know the Lord will rescue us from every
evil threat. We trust the Lord and
invite him into our lives to be the initiator and the fulfiller of all we are
trying to do in his name.
Action
We go before the God of
justice who loves us as we are. Christ
hears the cry of the oppressed. He was
one of us in his humanness when he walked the face of the earth. He is still one of us in the hungry, the
thirsty, the sick, the naked and the prisoners of poverty in any form. He will judge us in terms of all we did for
him when we worked for the needy of our lives. Our petitions reach heaven in our service of God
in those who ask or do not ask our help. We can pierce the clouds in what he ask in all
humility of the Lord. God will not delay
to answer us when we ask in the name of his Son. How we open our hearts to each person who
needs us is the way God hears the cry of the poor in our need to serve God in
all truth. Our practice of humility
allows us to put on the mind and heart of Christ who emptied himself out of
everything that belongs to God to make us by our belonging to Christ one of
God’s children. Our claim to fame in
heaven will be the way we honor Christ by finding him in the needs of the
people of our world.
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