Category: Authors

Publican & Pharisee Class

In our class this week, we’ll focus on three basic areas shown below all related to this powerful week of the Publican & Pharisee. This Sunday we begin using the Triodion as we officially start preparing ourselves for Lent.

I.Reading and group reflections on this week’s key themes of our hearts, humility and pride (30 minutes)

Condition of our Hearts – Key Quotes Father Stephen Freeman Reflection

Humility – OCA Rainbow Series – Father Thomas Hopko

Pride & Self Reliance C.S. Lewis Father Phillip LeMaster

II. Key Quotes/Messages From Triodion (10 minutes)

Sunday of Publican & Pharisee Matins Service Selections

III. Matins Change – ‘Open the gates of repentance’ Hymn

YouTube of hymn with lyrics

What is pride and how is it central to what separates us from God and each other?

Arguably , the C.S. Lewis classic Mere Christianity in Chapter 8 entitled ’The Great Sin’ captures the essence of how pride distorts our lives and denies us what we most need in coming to participate in this daily possibility of communion with God and each other.

Excerpts from Chapter 8 ’The Great Sin’ Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

I now come to that part of Christian morals where they differ most sharply from all other morals. There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.

The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now, we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

Does this seem to you exaggerated? If so, think it over. I pointed out a moment ago that the more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others. In fact, if you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, ‘How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronise me, or show off?’ The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with every one else’s pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree. Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive—is competitive by its very nature—while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone. That is why I say that Pride is essentially competitive in a way the other vices are not. The sexual impulse may drive two men into competition if they both want the same girl. But that is only by accident; they might just as likely have wanted two different girls. But a proud man will take your girl from you, not because he wants her, but just to prove to himself that he is a better man than you. Greed may drive men into competition if there is not enough to go round; but the proud man, even when he has got more than he can possibly want, will try to get still more just to assert his power. Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of Pride.

The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that—and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison—you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound’s worth of Pride towards their fellow-men. I suppose it was of those people Christ was thinking when He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils in His name, only to be told at the end of the world that He had never known them. And any of us may at any moment be in this death-trap. Luckily, we have a test. Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good—above all, that we are better than someone else—I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.

It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly. For the same reason, Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy’s Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper, by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity—that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride—just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

Before leaving this subject I must guard against some possible misunderstandings:

We must not think Pride is something God forbids because He is offended at it, or that Humility is something He demands as due to His own dignity—as if God Himself was proud. He is not in the least worried about His dignity. The point is, He wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble—delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life. He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible: trying to take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are. I wish I had got a bit further with humility myself: if I had, I could probably tell you more about the relief, the comfort, of taking the fancy-dress off—getting rid of the false self, with all its ‘Look at me’ and ‘Aren’t I a good boy?’ and all its posing and posturing. To get even near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert.

A really humble man …will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all. If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realise that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

What are you relying on?

We live in a culture that idolizes individual power and self-reliance. We miss something very crucial if we approach our preparation for Lent without deepening our humility and dependence on Christ. This short extract from a homily by Father Phillip LeMaster may be helpful in identifying how this trap of self-reliance can manifest itself during Lent. It’s interesting that a central tenet of his homily is drawn from the short desperate prayer found in the Gospel of Mark which many of us can so deeply relate to … ‘I believe, help my unbelief’. Perhaps this prayer epitomizes this necessity of a relentless cycle of receiving from Him all that is good and then circling in our emptiness back to Him as the ‘treasury of good gifts’ and ‘giver of life’.

As we think about the condition of the hearts of the Publican and Pharisee, it’s useful to ask this question of what is the power source for how they are praying and living their lives. It seems clear that much of what was missing in the heart of the Pharisee is a ‘with God’ experience and realization of how dependent he is upon God for whatever manifestation of virtue appears in his life. The Pharisee was living in the delusion and distortion that he was the creator of these virtues and he was worshipping and praying to the small imaginary god of self and self reliance not the True and Triune God. And perhaps one of the greatest assets and aspirations of the Publican was the clarity in his heart that only in the humility of a ‘with God’ reliance could he be delivered from his darkness to Light.

Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. 

Mark 9: 23 – 24

Father Phillip LeMaster

As we continue the Lenten journey, we must remember that this season is not about us and what we think we can achieve spiritually by relying on our own willpower or virtue to perform acts of religious devotion.  Spiritual disciplines are not exercises in self-reliance, as though we earn something from God by being diligent in performing them.  Instead, they are simply ways of helping us share more fully in the life of Christ as we grow in recognizing our sinfulness and opening ourselves to receive His healing mercy.  No amount of piety could conquer the power of death and make a path for us to participate personally in the eternal life of God by grace.  Only the God-Man, in His full Self-offering on the Cross, could do that. Lent is preparation to unite ourselves to Christ in His Passion, for “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and after He is killed, He will rise on the third day.” He is the eternal High Priest Who “has gone as a forerunner on our behalf” into the Heavenly Tabernacle where He intercedes for us eternally (Rom. 8:34).

The healing of our souls is found by sharing in the life of Christ.  We will be able to unite ourselves to Him in holiness only when we know the weakness of our faith as we turn away from self-reliance and receive His mercy from the depths of our souls.  The disciplines of Lent are teachers of humility that should help us “commend ourselves and one another, and all our life, unto Christ our God.”  He accepted the imperfect faith of the father of the demon-possessed boy, and He will do the same with us if we come to Him in the same humble spirit.  Doing so is really the only way to prepare to follow the Savior to His Cross and empty tomb.

Why is humility the ’mother of all virtues’

“Humility is the root, mother, nurse, foundation, and bond of all virtue”

St. John Chrysostom

We begin our Triodion journey with the powerful and timeless example of the Publican’s humility and the Pharisee’s pride. We cannot manifest any of the virtues authentically without God. Without humility, we find ourselves isolated and alone without what we most need. With humility , we open the door of our hearts to the Triune God and our thirst for the true sustainability of the living water of His mercy and grace.

I love Father Thomas Hopko’s description of humility as “seeing reality as it is in God”. And in this reality , we can see each of our breaths as an unceasing reminder of our dependence and reliance on Him. In this deepening awareness and vision of His moment by moment grace that enlivens us ; we have a chance to see more clearly our ‘right size’ and become more open to the majesty of His.

We cannot authentically produce any virtue without this foundation of humility that allows this flow from God to us. The distortion of what we believe we are producing autonomously in good without Him is simply not real ; it is the vanity and ignorance of what we imagine. Our vanity and ignorance separate us from His Holy Spirit as the ‘giver of life’ who is ‘everywhere present and filling all things’. With this distortion of what we see as a reality without God, we ease God out (EGO) of our daily consciousness as well as the vision and experience of how we live our lives. We place ourselves in the center of our lives instead of God.

We can now see in our Church Fathers the ’inner coherence’ and great wisdom in placing the Publican and Pharisee as our first encounter in the Triodion. Whatever good we may experience in Lent will rely and depend upon its birth from this ‘mother’ of humility and our openness to be ’with God’ in the whatever of our lives.

The short extract below from Father Thomas Hopko also reminds us that Christ in his Triune relationship is our perfect model and demonstration of humility.

Volume IV – Spirituality … The Virtues … Humility by Father Thomas Hopko

In the Orthodox tradition, humility has often been called the “mother of all virtues,” and pride has been named “the cause of all sin.” The wise and honest person is the one who is humble.

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor, than to divide the spoils with the proud.

A man’s pride will bring him low, but he who is lowly in spirit will retain honor 

Proverbs 16.18, 16.19, 29.23

According to the Gospel, in the Song of the Virgin, the Lord scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts and exalts those who are humble and meek (cf. Lk 1.51–52). This is the exact teaching of Jesus.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted (Lk 14.11, 18.14, Prov 3.34).

Humility does not mean degradation or remorse. It does not mean effecting some sort of demeaning external behavior. It does not mean considering oneself as the most vile and loathsome of creatures. Christ Himself was humble and He did not do this. God Himself, according to the spiritual tradition of the Church, has perfect humility, and He certainly does not act in this way.

Genuine humility means to see reality as it actually is in God. It means to know oneself and others as known by God—a power, according to Saint Isaac, greater than that of raising the dead! The humble lay aside all vanity and conceit in the service of the least of God’s creatures, and consider no good act as beneath one’s dignity and honor. Humility is to know oneself, without the grace of God, as dust, sinful and dead.

God is humble because He cares about the least: the birds in the air, the grass in the fields, the worst of sinners (cf. Mt 6.25–30). Christ is humble because He associates with the lowly, becoming the slave of all in taking on Himself the sins of the world.

If I then, your Lord and Master have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you (Jn 13.14–15).

You know that the rulers of the pagans lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many (Mt 20.25–28).

All Christians are to follow the example of Christ in His divine humility. Saint Paul teaches:

Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2.3–11).

The exaltation of Jesus as a man depended entirely on His self-emptying humility. True greatness, divine greatness, is the ability to be the least and do the least with the absolute certitude that it is externally and divinely important, that it is an imitation of God Himself.

True humility for the sinful man is to know that indeed, according to one’s own possibilities and gifts, each one is truly the first and greatest of sinners (cf. 1 Tim 1.15), for each one has sinned in his own way “like no other man” (Saint Andrew of Crete, 7th c., Penitential Canon). The truly humble person is the one who, confessing his sins, is “faithful over little,” and doing so, is exalted by the Lord and is “set over much.” Only such a person will “enter into the joy of his Master” (Mt 25.14–23, Lk 19.17).

The Sunday of Zacchaeus – Homily by Father Alexander Schmemann

To prepare us for Great Lent, the Orthodox Church starts announcing its approach a full month before it actually begins. Lent is a time of repentance, and repentance is a re-examination, a re-appraisal, a deepening, a shaking upside down. Repentance is the sorrowful uncovering of one’s neglected, forgotten, soiled “inner” person. The first announcement of Lent, the first reminder, comes through a short Gospel story about an entirely unremarkable man, “small of stature,” whose occupation as a tax collector marked him, in that time and society, as greedy, cruel and dishonest. 

Zacchaeus wanted to see Christ; he wanted this so much that his desire attracted the attention of the Lord Jesus. Desire is the beginning of everything. As the Gospel says, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). Everything in our life begins with desire, since what we desire is also what we love, what draws us from within, what we surrender to. We know that Zacchaeus loved money, and by his own admission we know that to get it he had no scruples about defrauding others. Zac­chaeus was rich and he loved riches, but within himself he discovered another desire, he wanted something else, and this desire became the pivotal moment of his life. 

This Gospel story poses a question to each of us: what do you love, what do you desire–not superficially, but deeply? “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” the New Testament says (Revelation 3:20). Do you hear this quiet knock? Desire. The soul taking a deep breath. The little man, Zacchaeus, with his eyes to the ground focusing on earthly desires, encounters Christ and now ceases to be little as his victory over himself begins. Here is the start, the first step from exterior to interior, toward that mysterious homeland which all human beings, unknown often to themselves, long for and desire.

Zacchaeus Homily Feb 4th – Prologue of Ohrid – St. Nikolai Velmirovich

“Today, salvation has come to this house” (St. Luke 19:9).

Thus it was spoken by the One Whose word is life and joy and restoration of the righteous. Just as the bleak forest clothes itself into greenery and flowers from the breath of spring, so does every man, regardless of how arid and darkened by sin, becomes fresh and youthful from the nearness of Christ. For the nearness of Christ is as the nearness of some life-giving and fragrant balsam which restores health, increases life, give fragrance to the soul, to the thoughts and to the words of man. In other words, distance from Christ means decay and death and His nearness means salvation and life.

“Today, salvation has come to this house” said the Lord upon entering the house of Zacchaeus the sinner. Christ was the salvation that came and Zacchaeus was the house into which He entered. Brethren, each one of us is a house in which sin dwells as long as Christ is distant and to which salvation comes when Christ approaches it. Nevertheless, will Christ approach my house and your house? That depends on us. Behold, He did not arbitrarily enter the house of the sinner Zacchaeus, rather He entered as a most desired guest. Zacchaeus of little stature climbed into a tree in order to see the Lord Jesus with his own eyes. Zacchaeus, therefore, sought him; Zacchaeus desired Him. We must also seek Him in order to find Him and desire Him in order that He would draw nearer to us and, with our spirit, to climb high in order to encounter His glance. Then He will visit our house as He visited the house of Zacchaeus* and with Him salvation will come.

Draw near to us O Lord, draw near and bring to us Your eternal salvation.
To You be glory and thanks always. Amen.
The Prologue from Ohrid: Lives of Saints by Saint Nikolai Velimirovič
http://livingorthodoxfaith.blogspot.gr/2009/12/prologue-february-4

*Later on, Zacchaeus followed the Apostle Peter who appointed him bishop of Caesarea in Palestine where he faithfully served the Gospel and died peacefully.

What does Zacchaeus have to teach us about repentance – St. Nikolai Velimirovic

“Repentance is the abandoning of all false paths that have been trodden by men’s feet, and men’s thoughts and desires, and a return to the new path: Christ’s path. But how can a sinful man repent unless he, in his heart, meets with the Lord and knows his own shame? Before little Zacchaeus saw the Lord with his eyes, he met Him in his heart and was ashamed of all his ways”

By The Waters Of Babylon Psalm 137 – Recording and Father Seraphim Rose Homily

YouTube Recording

“By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion”.

In these words of the Lenten Psalm, we Orthodox Christians, the New Israel, remember that we are in exile. For Orthodox Russians, banished from Holy Russia,[2] the Psalm has a special meaning; but all Orthodox Christians, too, live in exile in this world, longing to return to our true home, Heaven.

For us the Great Fast is a season of exile ordained for us by our Mother, the Church, to keep fresh in us the memory of Zion from which we have wandered so far. We have deserved our exile and we have great need of it because of our great sinfulness. Only through the chastisement of exile, which we remember in the fasting, prayer and repentance of this season.

Do we remain mindful of our Zion?

“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem…”

Weak and forgetful, even in the midst of the Great Fast we live as though Jerusalem did not exist for us. We fall in love with the world, our Babylon; we are seduced by the frivolous pastimes of this “strange land” and neglect the services and discipline of the Church which remind us of our true home. Worse yet, we love our very captors – for our sins hold us captive more surely than any human master – and in their service we pass in idleness the precious days of Lent when we should be preparing to meet the Rising Sun of the New Jerusalem, the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There is still time; we must remember our true home and weep over the sins which have exiled us from it. Let us take to heart the words of St. John of the Ladder: “Exile is separation from everything in order to keep the mind inseparable from God. An exile loves and produces continual weeping.” Exiled from Paradise, we must become exiled from the world if we hope to return.

This we may do by spending these days in fasting, prayer, separation from the world, attendance at the services of the Church, in tears of repentance, in preparation for the joyful Feast that is to end this time of exile; and by bearing witness to all in this “strange land” of our remembrance of that even greater Feast that shall be when our Lord returns to take His people to the New Jerusalem, from which there shall be no more exile, for it is eternal.

+ Fr. Seraphim Rose, March 1965

Footnotes:

[1] “By the Waters of Babylon” is the entire Psalm 137 sung to a plaintive melody, after the Polyelos Psalm during Matins. It is only sung in church the three Sundays that precede Great Lent: Sunday of the Prodigal Son, The Last Judgment (Meatfare) and Forgivensss (Cheesefare) It is significant that this same hymn is chanted at the beginning of the service of monastic tonsure.

[2] This homily was written in 1965, when the church in Russia was still under captivity to the Communist regime.

Open To Me The Gates Of Repentance – Song & Lyrics

YouTube Recording

Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Open to me the doors of repentance O Lifegiver; for my spirit rises early to pray towards Thy Holy Temple, bearing the temple of my body all defiled. But in Thy Compassion purify me by the loving kindness of Thy Mercy. Now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen. Lead me on the paths of Salvation O Mother of God, for I have covered my soul in shameful sins and have wasted my life in lazy acts. But by your intercessions, deliver me from all impurity. Have mercy on me O God according to Thy Great Mercy and according to the multitude of Thy Compassions blot out my transgressions. When I think of the many evil things I have done, wretched I am, I tremble at the fearful day of Judgement, but trusting in Thy loving kindness, like David I cry to Thee. Have mercy on me O God, have mercy on me O God, Have mercy on me O God according to Thy great Mercy.

Open To Me The Gates of Repentance – Ancient Faith- Homily on Pharisee & Publican – Father Patrick Reardon

Audio LInk


In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Well, this morning at matins, after the recitation of the 50th psalm, we all knelt down and began the Triodion. “Open unto me the gates of repentance.” Yesterday I called Hannah, and I said, “Let’s make sure we do that during communion tomorrow as well: Open to me the gates of repentance.” This little hymn-snatch signifies that the Church begins the season known in the East as the Triodion, which consists of the Great Fast and the three Sundays just prior to the Great Fast. Until recent times, this period was known in the West as Septuagesima, which also consisted of the Great Fast and the three Sundays just prior to the Great Fast. They stopped calling it that some time back in the ‘60s, I believe—at least the Roman Catholics did; the Episcopalians persevered for another ten years, and then they petered out.

In English-speaking countries, but only in English-speaking countries, the season of the Great Fast came to be called Lent. The Church actually knows nothing about a “Lent.” It’s a term derived from the Old English expression, lencten, which means, simply, “spring.” The purpose of the first part of the Triodion, or Septuagesima, as it was called in Latin, is to get our hearts and minds ready for the Great Fast. Now, one would think it’s enough just to do the Great Fast just to get ready for Pascha. You would think that would be enough getting ready. No, that’s not enough getting ready. You’ve got to get ready for the Fast, too. At least if you’re going to take it seriously, you’ve got to get ready for it!

Consequently, the gospel readings for these three Sundays were chosen with great care, because they are directed at themes central to the purpose of the Great Fast. It may be said that the gospel story we just heard—the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee—goes to the very heart of the matter by introducing the Pauline theme of justification. Indeed, let us make this idea, justification, the first of today’s three reflections on the gospel reading.

Here, once again, the first sentence of that reading says that Jesus spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were just and despised others. Observe here the word “just” in the plural form this morning is dikaioi. We recognize in this adjective a basic concern with the theology of St. Paul. Beginning with the Galatian controversy in the early 50s and going on to its full elaboration in the epistle to the Romans about five years later, the Apostle Paul was preoccupied with the question: How do human beings become just, dikaios, in the sight of God?

This question came to the fore in the mind of Paul when certain Christians arrived in Galatia in the early 50s, claiming that Christians were obliged to observe the Mosaic law, all the prescriptions of the Mosaic law, just as Jesus had observed the Mosaic law. This was the claim that Paul himself felt obliged to refute. He contended that God’s eternal word did not come to earth simply to reinforce the claims of the Torah; he came, rather, to elevate human beings into the divine life and to transform them by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, Paul insisted that one does not become a child of God by observing the Torah—now, that’s a Jew saying that: one does not become a child of God by observing the Torah—but by the transformation of the heart and mind, by the energy of the Holy Spirit.

In the epistle to the Romans Paul wrote that

There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, for as many as were led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out: Abba, Father! The Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit (he says) because we are the children of God.

Now, in today’s parable, just what was wrong with the prayer of the Pharisee? Luke indicates the problem when he declares that Jesus spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves. It is with this verse that we commence the period of the Triodion, that Jesus spoke this parable to those who trusted in themselves. The first parable of which we are warned in this season, brothers and sisters, is the real danger of self-reliance. As we prepare for Lent and for this great celebration that follows it, our first concern must be not to trust in ourselves. So important is this message in today’s parable that it appears again at the end of the story where Jesus says of the publican: “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.” Here is a man who did not trust in himself.

Once again, notice the modifier: the just man (dikaios) is the justified man (dedikaiōmenos). The former is the perfect passive participle: we become just by being justified, and we are justified only if we rely on God and not on ourselves.

We don’t fast because the man in this morning’s gospel is standing up there bragging that he fasts—twice a week! He was a Jew, so it was Monday and Thursday, but for us it means Wednesday and Friday—but not this week! I’ve always had a feeling—but I must be hesitant to say this, I think—that the chief purpose of Lent is to prove to yourself that you have got the guts to hurt yourself, but maybe that’s not right.

Ironically, one of the normal aspects of the annual observance of Lent is the experience of failure. I say it’s a normal aspect simply because it happens a lot. Indeed, the rigors of the lenten discipline are so severe that arguably most Christians fail to observe all of them. Somewhere along the line they’re going to inadvertently going to eat peanut butter or something, which certainly none of the early Christians would have touched. Even now, the fast we have is so modified. Now, I do not find this view written down anywhere as a point of principle, but I have not failed to observe over the years how many Christians feel like failures during Lent. And, you know, that’s not the American way. America is the country of winners! So it’s very hard to have this experience of failure. We’re supposed to win.

Recently, I was visiting the grandchildren down in Georgia, and they’re all into sports. It seemed to me, my impression was that no matter where you appeared in the standings in the league, everybody got a trophy at the end of the year, because America’s a country of winners! It’s very difficult, with that kind of mindset, to appreciate the Cross. If you find this to be the case in your own lives, I ask you to remember this parable we heard today. The evangelist tells us that Jesus spoke this parable “to some who trusted in themselves.” Perhaps the most important lesson that we may learn in this annual “spring cleaning” of our souls is not to trust in ourselves, but in the God to whom we plead, “Have mercy on me, a sinner!” I don’t believe it’s going to be possible to become a saint at all unless we find some way of dealing with a sense of failure, incorporating this sense of failure into our experience of the Christian life. And that’s what the Cross means.

Second, this morning, let’s speak of prayer. The parable begins: “Two men went up to the temple to pray.” This is the story about prayer. Specifically, it is a story about how to pray. Now draw your attention to the personal nature of this prayer. The prayer in this morning’s parable is not liturgical prayer; it is solitary prayer, which in the gospel stories is chiefly exemplified by Jesus himself. Indeed, there is the major mark to prove that Jesus is a human being: he prays. He prays. On so many occasions, we read that Jesus went out to a solitary place to pray. This is the kind of prayer concerning which Jesus instructs us. “When you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to the Father in secret.”Beloved, let me spare no efforts of rhetoric in emphasizing how fundamental this kind of prayer is. It is absolutely essential that each of us, every day, and if possible several times a day, retire from everything else and pray to the Father in secret, all by ourselves, placing our hearts and minds under the gaze of the Father who sees in secret. Jesus tells us to do that. I sometimes ask people—very often I ask people, in confession—“How often do you pray?” “Well, I sort of pray while I’m doing other things.” Not good enough! You’re supposed to do that anyway. You must retire from what you’re doing and pray exclusively. Praying to the Father in secret: that’s the instruction that Jesus himself gives us.This kind of prayer, this dialogue with God, is the most important part of the day, and we need to be convinced on this point. There is no life in Christ without this solitary prayer. What do we say to God when we come to him in secret, when we enter into the inner temple and close the door to all distractions, when we lay aside, at least for a while, all earthly cares? What are the words and sentiments that rise in our minds, take shape in our hearts, and are expressed with our lips? It could be all sorts of things, but the one thing we must not do is tell God something we don’t mean, just pray empty prayers, just recite prayers that we really do not mean because they’re just words, they’re just formulas.In the words of prayer, I believe, we’re not left on our own. Primacy of place belongs surely to those prayers which we know to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. If one cannot pray and mean the psalms, then revert to what we had today—beat your breasts—because there’s something seriously wrong. If you can pray the psalms and not mean them, there’s something seriously wrong with the heart and mind. Beat the breast and pray for mercy.When we pray those prayers, we are surely praying in the Holy Spirit, because they’re inspired by the Holy Spirit. So we stand before the holy Father and say to him something like this: “Receive me according to thy word, that I may live, and let me not be put to shame in my expectation.” May I have a show of hands of those of you who would not mean that if you said it?Receive me according to thy word, that I may live, and put me not to shame in my expectation. Come to help me, and I will be saved, and I will meditate on thy statutes continually. My flesh trembles for the fear of thee, and I am terrified by thy judgments. I have done judgment and justice; leave me not to mine oppressors. Receive thy servant unto good, and let not the proud oppress me. Mine eyes have failed for thy salvation and for the word of thy righteousness. Deal with thy servant according to thy mercy, and teach me thy statutes. I am thy servant; give me understanding that I may know thy testimonies.Where did I find this prayer? Opened the Bible and put my finger on something. The Bible’s full of such prayers! If you have a better prayer than that, then for heaven’s sake, pray it! [Laughter] But we make our own the inspired prayers of holy Scriptures. Let us try with all our hearts and with the full force of concentration to mean what we say, use great effort to mean it, work at it. Prayer must be worked at. And thereby we become such worshipers as the Father seeks. What we hope for in such prayer is a total transformation of our inner life, keeping our minds fixed on God, and remaining aware that he reads our hearts.This Triodion, this Lent, let’s be resolved to become people of prayer—but don’t give it up when Pascha comes. Keep working at it.Third, this parable indicates that we pray from a sense of need. The Pharisee in the story didn’t need anything; he had it all. He was not like other men, and he thanked God for the fact. He practiced tithing; he kept the fast days. Indeed, he needed nothing and he asked for nothing. You might notice that in today’s prayer: the Pharisee didn’t ask for anything. The presumption of Jesus is that we’re praying from a position of need, and therefore we ask for things.According to St. Cyril of Alexandria, this Pharisee was practicing self-deception. His prayer lacked one of the most essential components of prayer, which is vigilance over one’s soul. The publican, on the other hand, prayed entirely out of sense of need, even desperation. He asked only for one thing, the one thing necessary: God’s mercy. According to the story, this publican, as he prayed, beat his breast. That is to say, he attempted to break his heart, because “a broken and contrite heart, God will not despise.” In this respect, several Church Fathers commented that being a repentant sinner is a better state than not being a sinner at all. I don’t believe I would have the nerve to make such a claim if it had not already been made by the likes of Macarius the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom. I rely on their authority.Repeated prayer for the divine mercy is, above all, an affirmation of Christ’s redemptive lordship as the defining revelation of God in history. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God”—there is the act of faith: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” It’s a proclamation of faith in the form of address to the Savior of the world. It’s only in the Holy Spirit can we proclaim that Jesus is Lord. It is permeated with the divinizing energies of that Holy Spirit. Furthermore, it is a confession of sinfulness, trapped in a place with a broken and contrite heart, continuously in the presence of the living Christ and under the bounteous mercy of his blood.