Reflection on today’s Gospel
Luke is the evangelist of prayer, offering frequent hints about it. In his Gospel Jesus is explicitly mentioned as being in prayer more often than in any other, at the Baptism, the Transfiguration, when called upon to teach his disciples the Lord’s Prayer (3.21; 6.12; 11.1). The Agony in the Garden is shaped to show the need for prayer in time of testing (22.40). In the Infancy Narratives his characters burst into prayerful praise on every occasion, and from these we derive the three great canticles of the Church, the Magnificat, the Benedictus and the Nunc dimittis. His parables insist on the need for perseverance in prayer, especially the parables of the Friend at Midnight (11.5-8) and the Unjust Judge (18.1-5). Their motives may not be perfect: the Friend at Midnight eventually caves in because he does not want to be shamed for inhospitable behaviour when the whole village hears the hammering on the door. And the appellant to the Unjust Judge seems to be on the edge of violence, threatening to hit the Judge in the face! But the message is to persevere!
Today, in this parable of the Pharisee and the Tax-Collector, Luke combines deadly earnestness with humour in a typically Lukan fashion. The pompous and self-contradictory bragging of innocence by the Pharisee is duly repellent, while the humble self-accusation of the tax-collector is something to which we can all aspire.
HW
from Universalis today
