Today's Message: 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time C

Sirach 35: 12-14, 16-18; 2 Timothy 4: 6-8, 16-18; Luke 18: 9-14

My dad would use a variety of sayings/quotes and  I have no idea if they were his own or from another not-so famous person or famous person.  I preface them by saying:  ‘my dad used to say.’  One that fits in with today’s readings is ‘…one might say to you, ‘I use to be proud but now I don’t have any faults.’  I certainly have seen this attitude.  Probably it has found its way in me too. 

We will be ‘celebrating Halloween’ this week.  Now it is restricted and protected in all areas, I hope, so that our little ones can have fun and  get dressed up while parents try to control their input of sweets.  The idea of disguising who one is goes back to even before Jesus’ time.  Actors would put on masks to ‘pretend’ to be someone else. The Greek word for hypocrite means actor.  The actors would wear large masks to mark which character they were playing.  This word became extended to any person who was wearing a figurative mask and pretending to be someone or something they were not.  The history of Halloween goes back to a pagan festival called Samhain.  The word halloween comes from All Hallows Eve and means hallowed evening.  Hundreds of years ago, people dressed up as saints and went door to door in costumes and trick-or-treating.

Today’s readings asks us to dig deeper into ourselves and see if we are the people God intended us to be or are we being who we’re not.  The New American Bible tells us that “Sirach was a sage who lived in Jerusalem, was thoroughly imbued with love for the law, the priesthood, the temple and divine worship.  As a wise and experienced observer of life he addressed himself to his contemporaries with the motive of helping them to maintain religious faith and integrity through study of the holy books, and through tradition.”  Today he is showing us the difference between God’s justice and the justice of mortals.  In the human world justice can be distorted by personal agendas.  Bribes can change a verdict.  Personal opinions can hide a valid decision.  This is not God’s way.  God plays no favorites.  Wealth has no sway nor does sympathy for the poor.  But those who are weak, oppressed, homeless, widowed, in pain and need receive God’s love and support.   Am I mindful of the needy?  Do I look only to myself and my own needs?  Is my world centered on me? 

Paul is elderly and in prison.  He is pondering his future and looking at his past.  He is confident of his life living in Christ.  Even though it seems that all have abandoned him and no-one was there to defend him in court and no one to champion his cause, God strengthened him.  He was “rescued from the lion’s mouth” meaning that God saved him from death in the Roman arena.  God is with Him every minute as God is with each one of us every minute.  Paul tells us that we should treat others as God does.  We are to be people of justice and love that attend to the needs of all and seeks their good.  We must be conscious of the needs of people who come into our lives and not oblivious of them.  We are not fake actors in a play.  We are living the real drama of life.  This can be sad or happy, uplifting or disastrous, messy and ugly or made beautiful by seeing the good done to those in need.  Am I an actor or am I a participant?  Do I watch and stay aloof or do I get my hands dirty and be a lover? 

The very first verse of the gospel tells us that Jesus is addressing those who are convinced of their own righteousness and who despise everyone else.  ‘I am right, I do not do wrong.  Come and see the great me.  I take care of numero uno, me alone.  Jesus sets up the contrast between a Pharisee and a tax collector.  His purpose:  to show that what appears acceptable from a human point of view is quite different from God’s perspective.  The Pharisee is the first to speak and he immediately separates himself from the ‘rest of the world’.  Those others are greedy, dishonest and adulterous.  He doesn’t do those things, the tax collector certainly does. He continues to show how great he is in his own eyes by his charity and fasting.  He doesn’t make himself attractive to others, he doesn’t want to…I like myself just the way I am.  To top it off, he doesn’t even notice what he is doing and how he is judging.  The tax collector now speaks.  He doesn’t like the person he has been, he just asks God to be merciful.  TAKE NOTE.  How often when we sin, especially those sins that come powerfully when we are weak and troubled, just bring us to our knees.  In our great agony and need we beg God’s forgiveness, Lord please help me I’ve fallen so low AGAIN. Jesus is telling us He’s with us with His care, mercy and forgiveness. The Tax collector trusted in God, the Pharisee only in himself. 

The Pharisee was probably telling the truth, other than his opening line.  He may have very well avoided greed and adultery.  He no doubt fasted twice a week and paid tithes on all his possessions.  He was afraid really because he just wanted to make sure that God knew all he had done.  What he had failed to do was notice the people in need who crossed his path.  Does he realize God’s sees others differently and much more accurately? 

Sunday Homily Helps for today gives us a reflection stating that we tend to hold back because we fear God might ask too much of us.  It states:

•     “A stingy love can protect us from that possibility.  God has received quite enough from us, we may tell ourselves.

•     Genuine love is always honest.  It never enables someone else’s false image of himself or herself.

•     Has stingy love ever made anyone a saint?

•     This Friday we celebrate the feast of All Saints.  Which of them is recognized as a saint because she or he prayed as the Pharisee did in today’s Gospel?

•     In today’s first reading, we hear, ‘The prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds.’  What matters is not social status but radical honesty.

•     In today’s second reading, St. Paul says, “I have kept the faith.’  Even so, his conversion was not complete until he drew his last breath.  New challenges always await faithful disciples of Jesus.”

I also look at:

•     How I describe the quality of humility?  Does this mean I am weak? Does it mean I should put others before myself?

•     Being REAL means modeling the humility of Jesus in my life… HOW AM I DOING?

•     Am I being real to the person I am called to be or am I living make-believe?

Sacred Space 2019 states:

   “In what ways am I tempted to ‘regard others with contempt’?  Sharing gossip about someone I don’t like?  Posting criticism or sarcasm about

individuals or groups of people on social media? I pray for wisdom to see my own heart and its deceptions.

   How easy it is to measure our goodness by the things we do and not by what fills our heart.  I ask for the grace of a pure heart.”