October 26, 2025; 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)

Readings: Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18; 2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18; Lk 18:9-14

What is your Prayer Posture?

The posture we adopt during prayer can express the attitudes of our hearts. Biblical characters adopted different postures when they prayed. Abraham prostrated himself before God (Gen. 17:3, 17). Moses prayed on the hill with uplifted hands for the defeat of the Amalekites. (Ex. 18:8-13). Solomon knelt with hands outstretched toward heaven (1Kings 8:54). The leper prostrated and pleaded, ‘Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.’ (Lk. 5:12). Jesus prayed, looking up to heaven (Mk. 6:41; Jn. 11:41; 17:1). Ps. 95:6 urged us, “Let us bow down in worship; let us kneel before the Lord who made us.” What is your prayer posture?

“Pride goes before the fall” is a saying we are familiar with. So, if we are too conceited or feel too important, something will happen to make us look foolish. This saying captures the attitude of the Pharisee, one of the two men who went to pray in the temple in today’s Gospel. Let us consider the Pharisees and their kind of prayer: Pharisees were members of a party that believed in the resurrection and in following legal traditions, ascribed not to the Bible but to ‘the traditions of the fathers.’ They were lay people who dedicated themselves to keeping God’s law as perfectly and as scrupulously as they could. They performed spiritual practices over and beyond what the law demanded and looked down on anyone who did not live up to their standards.

The prayer in the Gospel is typical of a pharisaic prayer. “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity – greedy, dishonest, adulterous – even like this tax collector” (Lk. 18:11). According to William Barclay, “There is a recorded prayer of a certain Rabbi which runs like this, “I thank, Thee, O Lord my God, that thou hast put my part with those who sit in the Academy, and not with those who sit at the street corners. For I rise early, and they rise early; I rise early to the words of the law, and they to vain things. I labor, and they labor; I labor and receive a reward, and they labor and receive no reward. I run, and they run; I run to the life of the world to come, and they to the pit of destruction.” Rabbi Simeon ben Jocai once said, “If there are only two righteous men in the world, I and my son are these two; if there is only one, I am he!”

So being puritanical and scrupulous, the Pharisee may have, no doubt, done all that he said he did. He may not have cheated anyone, nor was he adulterous. He fasted, prayed many times a day, paid tithes on all he had and more, but he said the prayers of himself and to himself, not God. He was not humble but conceited. He was like a peacock, who flashed his beautiful, colored tail feathers for everyone to see how handsome he was. He was ostentatious, boastful, proud, and narcissistic. He called attention to himself! His was not prayer, but a list of accomplishments, expecting God to praise him. His is the sin of Lucifer - “light-bringer”, referred to as ‘the morning star’ (Is. 14:12), who turned that light on himself and refused to worship the Most High God. The Pharisee gave his advertisement to God for his glorious achievements and expected God to congratulate and reward him. He clearly demonstrated that he did not need God. In fact, he felt that God needed him more than he needed God to show the world what true holiness looks like. True prayer should be directed to God and God alone. God does not require a record of our good works; He knows them all. Instead, He needs us to have a contrite heart—one that is forgiving, caring, loving, compassionate, and merciful. A heart that is condescending, boastful, conceited, and spiteful is loathsome to God. That is why the Pharisee was not justified before Him.

 

The proud place themselves at a distance from others, and through that distance, others perhaps appear small or even contemptible, as the tax collector appeared to the Pharisee. ‘I thank God that I am not like this tax collector.’ How morally contemptuous his words are! Moral contempt is a far greater indignity and insult than any crime. We can feel good about our gifts, but genuine self-esteem is ruined by arrogant self-righteousness that judges others. I once saw a poster of a powerful tawny bearded lion with the caption: ‘It is so difficult to be humble.’ And yet, it is ‘the prayer of the humble that pierces the cloud and does not rest till it reaches its goal’ (Sirach 35:17), because only the humble can fully appreciate the grace of God.

Now the tax collector and his prayer. Tax collectors, who were Jews, served as public employees of the Romans. They collected taxes and sent them to Rome, but to earn a living, they often collected more than what was required. As a result, they enjoyed a decent income but developed a bad reputation. The community despised and hated them, viewing them as public sinners. The tax collector in our story was acutely aware of his status and knew that God was also aware of it. Lacking any friends, he depended entirely on God for everything. With a heavy heart, he approached God in prayer. Feeling unworthy, he could not even lift his eyes toward God. Instead, he beat his chest and pleaded for mercy. He didn’t simply see himself as a sinner; he viewed himself as the sinner. It was this heartbroken, self-deprecating prayer that gained him acceptance before God. He found peace with God through his humility, for pride hinders genuine communication with the divine.

These readings serve as a warning against comparing ourselves to others. Instead, we should measure ourselves against God’s standards. Our goal in this world should always be to please God, not people. All that we are and all that we have is pure grace—a gift from God. Therefore, we should never look down on anyone. With the strength bestowed upon us by God, we should work to uplift others rather than bring them down. When we compare our lives to that of our Lord Jesus Christ, one undeniable truth becomes clear: we are not as holy as we might think. We will soon realize that we, too, are sinners in need of God’s mercy and love. We will come to see ourselves in the same way as the tax collector at prayer, echoing his cry: “Lord, be merciful to me, the sinner.”

Questions to ponder:

·        Am I as good as God wants me to be?

·        Do I approach God with pride or with a humble spirit?

·        What posture best describes my attitude to God in prayer?

·        What do I need to pray for this week?

“The prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds; it does not rest till it reaches its goal, nor will it withdraw till the Most High responds, judges justly, and affirms the right. And the LORD will not delay” (Sir. 35:17-19).

“Don’t forget to pray today because God didn’t forget to wake you up this morning.”

Rev. Augustine Etemma Inwang, MSP