Voices October 13, 2022
A prayer for sinners: ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’
By Father Vincent Hawkswell
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
First reading: Sir 35:15-17, 20-22
Second reading: 2 Tim 4:6-8, 16-18
Gospel reading: Lk 18:9-14
In this Sunday’s Gospel reading, God seems perverse: he wants us to be good, but he rejects the good man and “justifies” the sinner.
The key is the verb “justifies.” It means not “approves” or “accepts,” but rather “makes just.” Only God can make us just, holy, or righteous; we cannot do it ourselves.
From the time of Adam and Eve’s fall until “the fullness of time,” when God sent his only Son, God offered us covenant after covenant, as we say in the fourth Eucharistic prayer.
In the covenant he made with Moses, he said, “If you continue to heed the voice of the Lord, your God, and are careful to observe all his commandments, the Lord, your God, will raise you high above all the nations of the earth” – and there follows a list of the blessings that “will come upon you and overwhelm you.” However, “if you do not hearken to the voice of the Lord, your God, and are not careful to observe all his commandments,” then “curses shall come upon you and overwhelm you” – and there follows a list of curses.
It sounds like the blustering of a tyrannous yet impotent parent – until you realize that the curses are simply the inevitable consequences of our attempts to live in ways that run counter to our nature, made in “the image and likeness of God.” The blessings are the divinity that God planned to share with us from the very beginning.
Not realizing that we could not be happy except with God’s happiness (for there is no other), we broke covenant after covenant with God. We found by experience that we could not be just or holy or righteous on our own: we had to be made so by God.
God accomplished our justification when, in the fullness of time, he sent his Son to be our Saviour. By his life, Jesus fulfilled perfectly all the old covenants for us; by his death, he assumed and bore all the curses we had incurred; by his resurrection, he defeated death, the chief curse; and by his ascension, he put a human at the heart of the Holy Trinity.
Now, if we believe in Christ, are baptized, and eat his body and drink his blood, Jesus can make us just, like himself.
However, God will not force his gifts on us. From the beginning, he gave us free will, so that we could have a love relationship with him. Accordingly, the only ones whom God can make holy are those who freely admit that they cannot do it on their own, who beg God to do it for them.
We cannot go to God claiming that we keep his law – his covenant – for we do not. We cannot claim that we keep most of the law, for we cannot enter heaven clinging to even one sin. We cannot even claim that we keep the spirit of the law, for the “first commandment, and the greatest” is to love God with our whole being, keeping nothing back.
For us sinners, therefore, the only prayer that makes sense is “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” This is “the prayer of the humble” that “pierces the clouds and will not rest until it reaches its goal.”
Pope St. John Paul II said that “the first way of facing the grave spiritual crisis looming over man today” is “the restoration of a proper sense of sin.” For the people of our time, it means repenting and believing in the Gospel, accepting the good news of love and adoption as God’s children.
That is why we start the Mass with a penitential service. This is the prayer God always answers.
We cannot ourselves become righteous: we can only beg what St. Paul calls “the crown of righteousness” from our brother, the Lord, “the righteous Judge,” who will refuse it to no one.
Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English, with new insights. The whole course is available in written form and, one session per week, in YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Father is also teaching the course in person: on Sundays at 2 p.m. in the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 Saint John Paul II Way, Vancouver (33rd and Willow); and on Mondays at 10 a.m. in St. Anthony’s Church hall, 2347 Inglewood Ave., West Vancouver. Next week’s topic is “Prayer.”