Sunday, February 5 (January 23), 2023

Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee

2Tim. 3:10-15; Lk. 18:10-14

Yesterday the Gospel taught us persistence in prayer, and today it gives us a lesson of humility and modesty in our claims.   Never claim for yourself a right to be heard  ─ but rather pray to the Lord as one having no rights whatsoever, as one having boldness to open your mouth and beseech the Lord solely because of His boundless condescension to our miserable human race.

Let it never come to your mind, that you have done this-and-that, and now the Lord should give you such-and-such thing!  No matter what good you might have done, you must regard it as your duty: you should have done it anyway.  Had you not done it, you would have been punished; having merely done your duty is nothing special, nothing deserving a reward.

Look at the Pharisee: he listed all his achievements and walked out of the Temple fruitless [Lk. 18:14]. The problem is not in doing what he did ─ for that was just what he had to do; the problem is in his pretense that it was something great ─ for he shouldn’t even have thought about it. 

Deliver us, O Lord, from that Pharisaic sin!  It is not so often that we say things like he did, but far too often our hearts harbor exactly the same feeling.  And this is why our prayer is so meager: we just feel perfectly good about ourselves before the face of the Lord.

Read more about the author