Roc Homily (c) – Thirtieth Sunday Ordinary Time 2016

Can we endure being found out? This is one scary proposition.

The Pharisee couldn’t look behind his own curtain to see that he damned others of the things he was hiding.  In his woundedness, he projected a pure, high-minded, righteous image: “Look, I am innocent, not like this unrighteous guy here.”  However, Luke tells us that the other went home righteous, innocent.  Seems to me that the kind of humility Jesus speaks about in the gospel it the sort that becomes willing to ‘look behind the curtain.’   What if that’s the the journey toward an adequate adult spirituality?  Notice the passages I quoted yesterday below.

        Righteous, right; innocent

Luke 18:9  — 9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt:

Luke 23:47 — 47 When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, “Certainly this man was innocent.”

        Rogue; unrighteous, unjust, false

Luke 18:10f  — 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues [unrighteous], adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

Luke 16:10f ) — 10 “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 11 If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?

Could it be that true riches involve the blest self-awareness of our wounds and how we take them out on others?  And to know ourselves as immersed in Christ?