Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee
Often, we forget how lucky we are. As Byzantine Catholics, we have a number of rich liturgical cycles to enrich our year. There is the Weekly Cycle, where we are called to remember different aspects of God’s grace and activity on each of the seven days of the week. There’s the Sanctoral Cycle, based on fixed dates, where we celebrate various acts of God working in Salvation History, acts centering on the Life of Christ, His Mother, or the Saints. Beginning on September 1, the first major feast of that cycle is the Birth of the Theotokos on September 8, and the last major feast is the Dormition on the Theotokos, on August 15. The most important feast in the cycle, though, is certainly Christmas.
And then there’s the cycle that centers on Pascha and Pentecost. And that cycle starts today, on the first of the Pre-Lenten Sundays, the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee.
What is a publican? It’s another name for tax collector. In Roman times, tax collectors weren’t just low level government functionaries, like they are today. They were more like contractors. If they were tasked to collect taxes on one hundred people, they had to pay Rome the taxes on those one hundred people, even if they didn’t collect it. They would overcharge, sometimes exorbitantly. And the extra amount they collected? It was theirs. So, they became rich while being despised by the people.
Zacchaeus, the subject of last week’s Gospel, was a tax collector. And, as we saw in the reading, our Lord doesn’t care about our past. We all have a past.
Matthew was a tax collector, but Jesus chose him as an Apostle. After the Resurrection, Matthew continued preaching to the Jews. Eventually, he went to other nations and was martyred for the faith.
This parable shows us the contrast of a prideful man, the Pharisee, and a humble man, the tax collector. The Pharisee is a member of the leading religious party of the time - like the faithful church goer today. He takes pride in his righteousness, in following the rules to the letter of the law. “Thank you, Lord, that you’ve made me so righteous” is his prayer. The Tax Collector, on the other hand, knows that he’s a sinner, and he just begs for God’s mercy.
What does our Catechism say about pride and humility?
Pride is the most dangerous passion and the mother of all sins. It was because of pride that Satan fell from God, and it is precisely pride that has ruined the prolonged endeavors of many an ascetic. Pride is a person’s idolatrous self-deification: a person exalts oneself over other people and puts oneself in the place of God. The proud person is closed to God’s grace: “The Lord opposes the proud; but he gives grace to the humble” (Prv 3:34, lxx; see 1 Pt 5:5 and Jas 4:6). Saint Augustine teaches that pride is the source of all evil, and in order to overcome all other sins, one must rid oneself of the root cause—pride: “Whence does iniquity abound? From pride. Cure pride and there will be no more iniquity. Consequently, that the cause of all diseases might be cured, namely, pride, the Son of God came down and was made low.”
The proud person usually does not see his or her own sin. This person is filled with self-love, finds it difficult to forgive, and to ask forgiveness of others, and has trouble relenting. Such a person rejects all forms of authority and frequently flares up in anger. He or she bears grudges,constantly judges other people, and envies their successes. Pride deceitfully takes control even of those who, having achieved virtue, regard themselves, rather than God, as the cause of their achievements.
The most effective means of combatting pride is to train oneself in humility. This opens a person toward God and neighbor, and makes a person capable of receiving God’s transfiguring and liberating power. The apostle Paul declares: “We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor 10:4-5). Through the virtue of humility, a person stands in truth before the face of God. Therefore, Christian humility does not demean a person, but allows one to recognize one’s true dignity as a child of God. Saint John Chrysostom teaches:
He who places humility as the foundation of his character can safely build a building of any height. It [humility] is the strongest palisade, an immovable wall, an impenetrable fortress; it supports the entire edifice and does not allow it to fall… it makes it inaccessible to all attacks… and through it God, the lover of mankind, pours out on us his plentiful gifts. (Christ Our Pascha, 777-779)
Concluding, we can pray this hymn from our Matins office: “Let us flee from the boasting of the Pharisee and learn the humility of the Tax Collector that we may be exalted and cry aloud with him to God: Have mercy on your servants, O Christ our Savior, born of a Virgin, Who endured the Cross and raised up the world with you by Your divine power”.
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