A reflection on the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, on the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, the start of the Orthodox Christian Triodion, 7532 (2024 civil reckoning), by a priest at St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Lewisburg, PA.
Last week in the Gospel for the Sunday Liturgy we met Zacchaeus the publican, and experienced his encounter with our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, which pulled him down from the sycamore tree he had climbed, and away from his old life. Today the lens extends out further, so to speak, to the Publican and the Pharisee together in prayer (the Gospel readings are copied verbatim here at the end). Today’s lesson teaches us that the most destructive form of self-love is pride, of ascribing our accomplishments to ourselves and not to God. It is a deep warning for us as we approach Great Lent, and in more ways than one.
To be sure, the Pharisee in the parable utters words of thankfulness to God. But his faith in his own accomplishments leads him to despise others and turns righteousness into that which is demonic, a lie, for he is idolizing or objectifying himself, and thus others as well. In the process, he even would seek sinfully to make an idol out of God. It is his comparison of himself to others that gives away his misplaced and terrible faith in himself, as Blessed Theophylact offers in his commentary on today’s Gospel.
“I thank Thee that I am not as other men are… even this publican,” says the Pharisee. How can a man who knows that what he has he has received from God, judge others in this way, Theophylact asks? For if the Pharisee did see his accomplishments as from God, then he would know virtue as grace from God, not legalistic achievement, and not a basis for comparison with others. He would know himself, like Blessed Job, as naked having come into the world, and naked going out, blessed is the name of the Lord.
One of the achievements boasted of by the Pharisee was fasting. But fasting is a part of a larger living of asceticism in devotion to God, one in which all of us can participate, not just monastics, especially during Great Lent. An Orthodox monk would not or should not boast that, I thank Thee that I am not like my brother. Rather he should say, as we all do in pre-communion prayers, I am the first among sinners seeking salvation through you, O Lord, in my community. A monk seeks salvation ascetically through great self-discipline in community with his or her fellow brothers and sisters. So should we, brothers and sisters, in our parish and family communities, our Church and our little church in the home, which is a different kind of community than a monastery but akin in faith and ascetic spirit. The main difference is that we in the world but in the Church are called to be missionaries of the Gospel first into our own hearts, unlike the Pharisees, and then in helping others find the Church, Fasting is training for that work even as athletes train, it is like limiting the carbon footprint of our mind, getting our mind into our heart, to build faithful community rather than to assert ourselves sinfully spilling our ego everywhere like the Pharisee in his demonic despising of the Publican.
When I was first on the road to becoming an Orthodox Christian, I am grateful that my parish priest told me, the Church is the hospital of the soul, and the monastery is the intensive care unit. You need to visit a monastery, he said, noting that I needed even more than urgent care. And I did. During my unworthy visits, one time as I have told some of you, I was complaining to a monk-priest there who became my spiritual father. A fellow student in my graduate school was mentally troubled. He would follow me on the street in our college town and exclaim loudly and repeatedly to me on the sidewalks in public: “You’re going straight to hell!” This holy father said to me simply: “So what? He’s right!” That put the situation in a new light. Likewise Dostoevsky, under the influence of the Optina Monastery elders, through some of his monastic characters famously expressed the view that we are all responsible in part for each other’s sins, despite who might be legally guilty. That’s because our lives are so entwined and we are so complicit in many ways with the sins of the world by our omission and commission. Asking God for grace to see this is a great source of the love we owe to one another.
We should not like the Pharisee distance ourselves from others by having faith in ourselves. We should give up on ourselves and instead give all to Christ and then to our neighbor in Him. In the Septuagint version of the Old Testament that we use in the Orthodox Church, the blessed Job after his many struggles is told to pray for his friends who had turned on him, and to forgive them. When he does so, he has the fullness of his human life restored to him, and we are told that he will rise again in the resurrection. The Holy Prophet Job ascribed his righteousness to God and was saved by Him.
In our parable, the publican, like Zacchaeus whom we met last week in the Gospel reading, penitently gives his life over to the Lord. “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” he exclaims from the heart. The deepest cosmic music of the heart lies in that prayer. In fact, it is the basis of the Jesus prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!” Yet the Publican has kept his eyes lowered and smote his breast in ascetic penitence. He is aware of his sins, his compromises with the world, including his worldly identity as both an agent of Roman power and presumably someone working with public contracts through the corporations of his day. He is so penitent even as a public person whose persona is based on worldly success. In effect they have switched positions, the Publican and the Pharisee. The Pharisee, the supposedly religiously faithful man, has become the public person whose persona is based on a type of worldly success in religion. But the Publican has found true righteousness. Jesus’ teaching points to the truth that righteousness in the Church, the true Israel, is not religious but a way of life, indeed the Way, the Truth, and the Life, in the Person of Jesus Christ.
It is truly said, based in Scripture and Holy Tradition, that fasting must be from the heart, and not theater. The Parable illustrates this. But it warns us on the brink of Lent also not to be tricked into thinking that if we say we are doing various good things of our own doing, including even being kind to others, which itself also can be a source of pride, that we therefore do not need ascetic penance as written in the Fast on our own bodies. Bishop Luke of Syracuse, abbot of Holy Trinity Monastery, says, “force yourself!” If you can do nothing else in these latter days, be obedient to our Mother the Church and keep your mouth closed so to speak in fasting, as a small way of reminding ourselves how to fast also in greater and deeper ways of the heart. The Church gives us this coming week fast free as a reminder that our blessings come from God, so that when Lent begins, we should follow the Publican’s humility, rather than the Pharisee’s delight in his own goodness. We are weak but God helps. In living iconography of the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit, let us acknowledge in the coming Great Fast that all our accomplishments come from God, and pray for strength from Him. Fasting should be in that way like the training of an athlete so that the athlete can better help the team in humility.
With God’s help, may we look to the upcoming start of Lent in that spirit of repentance, brothers and sisters. Let us say with the blessed Job, naked came I out of my mother’s womb. We were reminded of this by the newly illumined baby Evangelina baptized yesterday, may God grant her many years. And naked shall I return. Some of us remember standing over the open body of our brother Noah throughout the night, reading the Psalter in Church, may his memory be eternal. The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away. I prayed in this spirit the night my sister died, and I unworthily stayed awake out of fear for my parents in their extreme grief, grieving penitently my own failures in not helping her more. And blessed be the name of the Lord. Recognizing our sins, giving up on ourselves to Christ, strengthening one another by encouragement and example, helping the stranger, may God prepare us for the season of our Lord’s resurrection and for our own, in His Body the Church. May we recognize that all our accomplishments and all good things are His.
Glory to God for all things!
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The Reading from the
Holy Gospel according to Luke,
§89 [18:10-14]
The Lord said this parable: ‘Two men went up into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are: extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the publican, standing afar off, would not so much as lift up his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other; for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.’
Holy Gospel according to Luke,
§24 [6:17-23a]
At that time, Jesus stood on the plain with the company of His disciples and a great multitude of people out of all Judea and Jerusalem, and from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear Him and to be healed of their diseases, and those who were vexed with unclean spirits; and they were healed. And the whole multitude sought to touch Him, for there went virtue out of Him and healed them all. And He lifted up His eyes on His disciples and said, ‘Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in Heaven.’