THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH Her Doctrine and Morals Tenth Sunday after Pentecost 5 August 2012

The Sunday Sermon

Dear Friends,

We have heard how necessary it is for us to pray and to persevere in prayer, so today our Holy Mother Church has chosen a gospel text that will teach us how to pray. God hates and detests the proud and He loves the humble. All who exalt themselves He will humble and those who humble themselves He will exalt.

The Pharisee went to pray, but prayed with himself and not with God. Even though this man had many works of justice to his credit he failed to pray to God, and only prayed to himself. It is kind of like he has forgotten God in his own prayers. Emboldened with his own works he does not stop to realize that these works were made possible by God and so attributes them to himself. He sees himself as not in any need of anything from God. There are many in the world today who are very much like this Pharisee and think that they need nothing more from God. Therefore they do not bother to pray at all. These poor souls think that they have made their own lives and God had no part in it. Perhaps even worse, they forget God and live and think as if there were no God at all. Even when they pray and go to the church their prayers are with themselves or as a show to all the others who may see them. Like the Pharisee their “good works” are now, in prayer united with the vice of pride. It is this one vice that tears down and destroys all the other good and renders it worthless in the eyes of God. It is therefore, necessary that we fight against this vice of pride at all times, but especially when we pray.

On the other side we see the prayers of the Publican. This man either has no good works to bring to his prayers or chooses not to bring them. All that this man has to lay before God is his sins. His prayer is simply: “O God be merciful to me a sinner.” The only good work that he has is humility. This humility is more pleasing to God than all the other virtues. He compares himself with no one else, he places himself before God all alone and sees what he is as he considers God and what God wants from him. Too often even today we judge ourselves by way of comparison with our neighbors. It is easy to see the faults of our neighbors and conclude that we are better because we do not have their particular faults, never stopping to consider that God’s graces are different for each of us and perhaps our faults are worse than the ones that our neighbor possesses. If our neighbors had received the graces that we have received perhaps they would be better than us.

We do need a standard to measure or compare ourselves with and that is why Christ came to this earth. Let us look to Him and see how miserably we have failed in this comparison. Our goal as Christ tells us is to be perfect because Our Heavenly Father is perfect. (Matt 5:48) As we place our lives next to God we see a stark difference; no matter how many virtues we may have, we are never as good or perfect as we should be; we could always have done better. With this before our eyes it is not hard to put on the virtue of humility. This virtue is more pleasing to God than all the others.

The proud man boasting of his good works in a sense challenges God to find fault with himself which God can easily do; while the humble man only shows God his faults and this encourages God to find that which is good. We therefore have no need to keep a tally of our good works because God already does that. When we do good therefore let us not dwell upon it and swell ourselves with pride, but rather forget it or even consider that we have even failed in this because we have not done it as well as we could have. This is the obvious truth and it is this that will keep us humble. It is this humility that pleases God to lift us up and exalt us; as opposed to pride that pleases God to humble. We must, therefore, never exalt ourselves but always humble ourselves, leaving it to God to exalt us if He finds anything good in us.

When good works are coupled with pride all is ruined and made worthless before God. When our many sins are coupled with humility, God readily washes away the sins and puts goodness in its place. How much more wondrous must it be if we unite good works with humility! In combining these two virtues we are guaranteed to find ourselves pleasing to God.