Saturday of Week 3 of Lent – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 18:9-14

In today’s Gospel we see two ways of praying. One is arrogant, proud and contemptuous of others. As the Pharisee ‘prays’, God is somehow meant to feel grateful that there are at least a few people as observant of the rules as he is, in comparison with the sinful and despicable outsider, symbolised by the tax collector behind him:

God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

On the contrary, the Pharisee fasts twice a week and pays tithes on all he earns—he goes well beyond what the law demands.

Yet his ‘prayer’ is not accepted. It is not really a prayer at all, but a hymn to himself. As Catholics, or as regular churchgoers, we can sometimes feel superior to those who have dropped out, to those who have no religion, those who lead what we regard as ‘immoral’ lives.

The tax collector is certainly a sinner; that is not denied. But he knows and acknowledges his sinfulness. He is deeply repentant, and he puts himself totally at the mercy of God:

God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

His prayer is accepted because he acknowledges God as his Lord and Saviour. As well, he does not compare himself with anyone else; he does not judge anyone else—only himself.

Our prayer must always be an expression of our total dependence on God. There is nothing that we can give him which he has not given us first. All we can do is to make an effort to return a fraction of the love that he showers constantly on us. We are and always will be in his debt.

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Saturday of Week 3 of Lent – First Reading

Commentary on Hosea 5:15—6:1-6

Both readings today are about our attitudes in relating to God in prayer. The passage from Hosea in the First Reading used to be read every Good Friday. As is described in the Vatican II Missal:

“…the northern kingdom (Ephraim) and the southern kingdom (Judah) are criticised for their shallow religion and trust in animal sacrifices. God wants a life of sincere service.”

The prophet here composes a penitential prayer and puts it into the mouths of God’s people, who are terrified by threats of punishment and of being abandoned by God. They exhort each other to return to Yahweh, but the return is only superficial—there is no real repentance.

The people say:

Come, let us return to the Lord…

Though this is their call, it lacks sincerity. The people complain that God has treated them roughly, but they are confident that he will heal them again.

…he has struck down, and he will bind us up.
After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him.

Some have seen in these words a reference to the resurrection of Christ, by which God’s healing will be brought back to his people.

…he will come to us like the showers,
like the spring rains that water the earth.

Israel believed that, as surely as the seasonal rains fell and revived the earth, God’s favour would return and restore her, and that his anger would come to an end.

The reason for God’s toughness is the superficiality of their commitment to him. Their:

…love is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that goes away early.

God sees through the emptiness of their pious expressions:

What shall I do with you, O Ephraim [the northern kingdom]?
What shall I do with you, O Judah [the southern kingdom]? Your love is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that goes away early.

They have used high-sounding words of repentance, but their actions have not been in harmony with utterances.

Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;
I have killed them by the words of my mouth,
and my judgment goes forth as the light.

Not literally killed them, of course, but condemned their sinful behaviour.

God now spells it out clearly (and this sentence is quoted twice in Matthew’s Gospel):

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

What God has wanted from them is genuine loving actions, not empty rituals, however piously performed. Knowledge of God is not simply knowledge about God, but a knowledge implying a deep interpersonal relationship instead of ostentatious holocausts.

This is what we see criticised in today’s Gospel too. And, for us, it is not the Masses we attend, or the prayers we say that count most, but the genuine love of God shown by the way we live our lives and the way we relate to the people around us. Our prayer must flow out of such a lifestyle and, at the same time, bring about such a way of living.

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