30th Sunday, Year C
As seminarians we would look forward to the prayers of the faithful or intercessions during Mass or the Liturgy of the Hours. It is very important to remember here that in South Africa, where I come from, we have twelve official languages with Sign Language included. The National Seminary can easily have students from each language group in the country. During the prayers of the faithful many of us would pray each in their mother tongue. Everybody reached for the most eloquent and high registered forms of expression. It was impressive. We got to hear the most wonderful titles and references to God in the different languages. It was theatrical, perhaps very little to do with God. Yes, in theatre actors come to showcase their talents and skills to win admiration, fame and hopefully some money.
Last Sunday the readings encouraged us to pray without ceasing. This Sunday we are given examples of how to pray and how not to pray. Our Lord, Jesus, offers us a parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector who both go up to the temple area to pray. Who were they?
The Pharisees were people of prayer, faithful to the laws and assiduously observing penances. Good people it seems, yet they were highly criticised by Jesus. The tax collectors, sometimes referred to as the Publicans, were collaborators of the Roman Empire. They took from their people taxes for the ‘enemy’ and for themselves.
Think of the politicians in Africa who collaborate with superpowers who come into African countries to suck mineral resources and leave the locals fighting for leftovers. Think of those in public office who collaborate with drug cartels and human trafficking cartels. They are the publicans of our time. Terrible people in today’s parable yet they seem to have the sympathy of Jesus. The one in our parable today is justified, Zacchaeus has Jesus stay in his [pent]house and Matthew even makes it to the Twelve.
This parable is not so much about the socio-religious affiliations of the two people. The truth of that matter is that we are not always either-or but both-and.
Sometimes we are very faithful followers of Jesus and obedient to God’s commandments like the Pharisee. At other times we are collaborators with the powers that undermine dignity of others, we harm the good name of others and perhaps we simply become feeders of our own insatiable greed and bad habits like the Publican.
I suspect that this parable is not an advert for us to choose to be card carrying members of either of the two groups. The parable is however about the Good News of effective and efficacious prayer.
Remember, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches in paragraph 2259, ‘Prayer is the lifting up of the mind and heart to God’. In other words, through prayer we intentionally expose to God what is in our heart and in our mind with the hope of being made right or as the text has it ‘justified’. This parable suggests that prayer can and has been done incorrectly by many of us who sometimes pray to ourselves, making ourselves the mirror through which our neighbour is judged and belittled.
However, the Good News is that prayer can be done correctly when we begin to look to God as the source of mercy and salvation: a source of healing. When like Mary, a daughter of Israel, we wrestle with the angel that brings us God’s message but eventually we say fiat, be it done unto me according to thy word: I am just a servant. We can let her be the mirror if we want learn effective and efficacious prayer, if we want to be made right with God. We don’t have to choose between the Pharisee and the Publican. We can let Mary teach us true humility in prayer. Still in the month of the Rosary, we can turn to her.
The first reading suggests that the Lord hears the wail of the orphan and He hears the widow when she pours out her complaint. I understand this as saying when we raise our heart and mind full of grief and guilt even, the Lord hears.
In one of his Homilies, St Anthony the Syrian, a 7th century bishop says: “the fullness of prayer is the gift of tears”. Another saint, a great African Bishop; St Augustine of Hippo in his letter to Proba writes:
“To spend much time in prayer is to knock with a persistent and holy fervour at the door of the one whom we beseech. This task is generally accomplished more through sighs than words, more through weeping than speech. He places our tears in his sight, and our sighs are not hidden from him”.
Therefore, may our prayer express everything in our hearts: when we are broken-hearted and crushed in spirit but also when we feel grateful because we have finished the many races and kept the faith. May our prayer express our humility, hope and gratitude like the lowly handmaiden who is called Blessed by all generations; the mirror of prayer.