" We are saved together "

 

                             

Luke 18:10-14

 

 

 

On Sunday we begin our long journey through the services of the Triodion to Easter. And here, at the very beginning, we come upon the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, placed here to remind us that whatever effort we may expend in keeping the Fast, ultimately it is contrition of the heart and openess to God that is the goal of all ascetic endeavour. Without this our efforts remain empty, unable to reunite us with our Creator.

I wish to look briefly at another aspect of today's reading, the words of the Pharisee himself: "God , I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterous, or even as this publican". These words - and the thoughts which they express - are among the most destructive we can ever entertain. On one level they destroy our solidarity with one another, in that they deliberately introduce division in the body of the Church, in the worshipping and praying community. On another level, they destroy our unity with ourselves: for to the extent that we are blind to our own problems we can never hope to find that integration of mind and heart that enables the inner and outer man to be one. And finally, such thoughts destroy repentance, which is our only means of access to the Father.

 

And all this they do essentially because they are false: they are false when uttered by the Pharisee: they are false when we say them in one form or another to ourselves' they are false whenever they are used by anyone' because we are in fact like each other, not unlike. The difficulties and temptations that one of us has, we shall all have, sooner or later, in one form or another. For anyone to think that he or she is somehow different in this respect is a profound untruth, which can only have its origin in the "father of lies" himself.

 

We are each of us unique, irreducible in our personhood' but the temptations, the difficulties we experience are the same, differing only in their intensity and in the way they combine themselves in our lives. No one of us can truly say: " I thank thee, O Lord, that I am not as other men". We are like each other. And to realise this is to make a start on the road to Easter. Because the purpose of the Fast , in which we share, and the purpose of Christ's Ressurection itself, is not that we should be saved individually, but that we should be saved together. That we should become one body, the Body of Christ, and enjoy corporately patricipation in his victory over death.

Let us put aside then the thought that we are unlike others, whether better or worse, and make our own the words of the Publican: " God be merciful to me a sinner ".

Amen.

 

From the book "Speaking of the Kingdom"

by Bishop Basil Osborne

 

 

 

 

Δοξαστικόν Αίνων Κυριακής του Ασώτου

 

 

Υάκινθος