Scripture: Hosea 6:1-6. Psalm 51:3-4, 18-21. Luke 18:9-14. Lectionary #
243:

Prayer is a very important in our lives as we search for God through it and
the scriptures. We look for reconciliation, forgiveness, and humility.
These are possible because we pray. Jesus gives us a good parable today
about the self-righteous one who prays but is too self-centered in his
prayer which is more a praise of himself rather than a communiction with
God. Whereas the tax collector does pray with great humility and openness
in his seeking forgiveness. He considers himself unworthy, but he is
focused on God not on looking at the one who is praying too, but without
humility. The religiously minded with his own ritual and selfcenteredness
has no humility and is making a comparison of himself with the tax
collector whom he disdains and judges rashly. God looks to the heart of
the tax collector and leaves the religious righteous one to his own
thoughts. It is sin that can lead us to prayer and to true humility the
handmaid of prayer. We are all awared that we have regular patterns to our
faults, sins, and wrongdoings. We seem to travel through life with the
same baggage and we are supposed to be light and free of such a heavy load
while on the royal road of the Cross to Easter. The religious person in
the parable has too much baggage and no humility. We can rely on St.
Luke's Gospel for helping us to learn how to pray sincerely and humbly. He
has more passages and sayings of Jesus on prayer than the others--if we
leave aside the long priestly prayer of Jesus in chapters 13-17. Luke
gives us over twenty such examples of prayer and uses the Greek words for
prayer that describe it in three or four different ways. He gives us hymns
and canticles that we use daily in our structured prayer called the liturgy
of the hours : The Benedictus, the Magnificat, the Nunc Dimittis are all
from Luke ( Luke 1:67-79; Luke 1:46-56; and Luke 2:29-32). We are led to
pray with humility through these passages. Mary's especially is a humble
prayer that is similar to the tax collector's though she is not a sinner!
Thus Jesus in the parable is teaching us how to be truly humble and
contrite today. We have a good Lenten prayer from the tax collector who
prays humbly: "O God, be merciful to me a sinner." Amen.