In 1995, Pope John Paul II established the Sunday after Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday, and the popes who have followed him have continued emphasizing God’s mercy. Perhaps it was this Sunday’s Gospel parable, more than any other Scripture, that inspired this new feast of our liturgical calendar.
In it, a Pharisee and a tax collector are praying at the temple area. Pharisees were apparently roundly criticized by Jesus — his negative comments about them appear in three of our Gospels. But they were not bad people. Obedience to the Torah (the first five books of Hebrew Scripture) was their thing. They apparently believed that all Jews should live with utmost sanctity, and that meant following rituals and purity laws prescribed in Scripture. That’s why the Pharisee in today’s Scripture brags to God that “I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.” Tax collectors, on the other hand, were regarded as not such good people. They worked for the Roman government and were allowed to take a cut from what they collected, obviously a loophole for gouging people. Not surprisingly, then, the tax collector prays, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
Jesus ended his parable by saying that it was the tax collector who was blessed by God (justified), “for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Rituals and laws are important in religion. They bind us into a community and give us external ways to express our common beliefs. But as we all know, sometimes we do not follow them. We sin. And sometimes we cannot follow them: marriages end, but annulment is not possible; everyone is not born heterosexual. Among those who helped Pilot condemn Jesus to death were some of the hardline Pharisees of Jesus’ day. They could not live with Jesus’ apparent casual attitude toward Jewish religious law. Jesus healed people on the Sabbath, forgave the woman caught in adultery, let his disciples pick grain on the Sabbath, ate with sinners. Today we have our own debate over our Catholic religious rules. Pope Francis was rather viciously criticized when he suggested that priests use a more pastoral approach to divorced Catholics, and CARA — the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate — recently documented a significant minority of Catholics who want Catholics “outside the law” of our Church just to leave it. So this Scripture gives us lots to think about.
When I compare myself with others, and we all do, who do I think I am better than? When I brag to myself about something I’ve accomplished, do I consistently also give thanks and praise for God’s hand in it? How comfortable am I, in my heart of hearts, with the mercy behind our Church’s condemnation of the death penalty? Or its insistence that we welcome immigrants? What does humbling myself really mean to me?
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia
The post October 26, 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Mercy: a Sunday Scriptures blog first appeared on Sisters of the Precious Blood.