Scripture Reflection - October 26, 2025

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

First Reading: Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18

Psalm 34: 2-3, 17-18, 19, 23

Second Reading: 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18

Gospel: Luke 18:9-14

In this Sunday’s gospel, we again encounter Jesus using a parable to address the crowds. This time he specifically addresses behavior of undeserved righteousness and a lack of filial love and concern for others. His characters represent individuals with two differing roles and social statuses within their local community: a Pharisee and a tax collector both of whom are at prayer in the local temple.

The Pharisee takes his superior position at the front of the temple and begins his prayer. With an apparently puffed-up ego, he highlights for God his righteousness and his pious works. Meanwhile, the tax collector keeps his place at the back of the temple, beating his breast in sorrow in clear admission that he is a sinner.

It appears easy to feel disdain for the Pharisee’s manner and pronouncements, but perhaps his actions are not as intentional as they appear. In the culture of Jesus’ day, Pharisees were revered men of faith, accustomed to their religious power. They held fast to the prescriptions of the Law as they tried to preserve the old way in a changing and widening society in which Gentiles were now being welcomed. The Pharisee can only see himself through one lens: his perceived righteousness before God and his determination to hold onto his power to maintain what he believes is God’s preferential choice of the Old Law.

Our hearts seem to connect more with the repentant tax collector, whose self-assessment marks him as one of Luke’s “lowly” ones. While he has indeed committed crimes and is despised within the community, it is his transparency before God, not his label as one of the lowly, that enables Jesus to declare him justified. This tax collector, by humbly admitting his guilt, chooses the path of willingness to become someone new for God and someone who will now go forward in being just to others.

The transparency of the sinner in prayer becomes a transforming agent for him and the key to his justification. The Pharisee has not yet demonstrated this ability, and this becomes his greatest downfall. He is stuck in a self-righteous hole of limited vision and lack of concern for anyone outside of his social, cultural, and religious circle. His inability to self-assess leads to a reversal in the hearers’ view of him as Jesus announces his social demotion.

While, as sinners ourselves, we can be thankful for the mercy that Jesus emphasizes in his justification of the tax collector, his view of the Pharisee presents us with a clear challenge. Transparency before God leads to humility of heart, which in turn enables us to become new persons for God and a transforming agent for others. This is good news for all who strive to bring God’s unconditional love, care, and justice to a suffering earth.

The task for us, then, is openness of heart – an openness that reveals our transparency as we stand before God in prayer. We must be willing to consider if we are like the Pharisee, determined to view our actions through one lens, limiting and distorting our influence as we pronounce ourselves good.  We must be willing to ask if we are determined to hold onto our power to keep in, or put in place, what we desire.  

In asking these questions of ourselves, we must also be willing to accept the reality of what we learn, for it matters not only to God and to us but to the future of our world.

Sr. BarbaraAnn Sgro, OP