A Homily for the 10th Sunday after Pentecost

+ God did not become man in order to condemn us. He became man that we might be saved, that we might come to Him. Certainly, He knows that we sin – He knows our particular sins better than we do. But He knows them in order to be able to absolve them if we but allow His grace to work in us. The first manner in which we must respond to His grace is to confess them. St Benedict, presenting the tools of good works, follows the example of the publican, and instructs his sons: “Daily in one’s prayer, with tears and sighs, confess one’s past sins to God” (Rule, chapter 4).
 
It would be easy to apply this command in a manner which is scrupulous. We do not continually bewail our past sins for fear that God has not pardoned, and forgotten, them so long as they are sacramentally absolved. Rather this precept is to form us in two fundamental realities about ourselves; our weakness without grace, and how to avoid those sins and the occasions thereof in the future. That is to say, the daily confession of past sin to God is a means to personal conversion rather than a form of relentless and useless self-destruction.
 
Following from the daily confession of sins, St Benedict presents a second tool of good works, which is nothing more than a natural fulfilment of that private confession: “To amend those sins for the future.” The intimacy of the connection between these two tools of good works is developed in the prayer with which we confess the past sins. They are already forgiven; we cannot let them oppress us – but we can ask God to direct us to better understand our frailty and how to avoid them for the future.
 
Yes, the publican is put before our eyes as the one justified. His humility has lifted his guilt in the eyes of God – he has made the first step towards correcting his life. Unquestionably he is still entangled in a web of sins that it is exceedingly difficult to escape from, but the first and most important step has been made. He has turned to God to ask the grace for that escape. His will is now turned to amending his wrongdoing. But this will require a lot of patience and work on his part. How different is this from the pharisee who turned all his works ordinarily ordered to justice and made them purely selfish? The mighty tower of good that might have been there, has become a great anchor dragging him to the depths of perdition.
 
If the publican, a public sinner, was justified by his humility, how much the greater would it be for a pharisee who prayed from afar not daring to raise his eyes to heaven, and beating his breast, saying “Lord have mercy on me, a sinner”? All of Scripture cries out for us to live in justice. It is still proscribed that we fast on certain days, and to a lesser extent to do so each Wednesday and Friday outside the Easter season is very much a part of Christian tradition; so to that we tithe our income, just as, and more than (cf. Matthew 5:20, St Augustine on Psalm 146, n. 17), the pharisee does. But these things must teach us humility, we must train ourselves through them to act according to God (cf. I Corinthians 9:24-27), cooperating with His grace in all things. For He alone is good (Mark 10:18). Without this, these tools of virtue are not only useless, but are in fact destructive.
 
How well this reality is stated in the most holy Rule! Another of the tools of good works is: “To attribute to God, and not to self, whatever good one sees in oneself.” We can all recognise many good gifts that God has given us but must recognise that they are, but gifts received. These gifts are given us to take us, and those around us, to heaven. They are not given for our self-satisfaction or aggrandisement. This is true notwithstanding whether it is the most banal ability or the most elevated spiritual grace.
 
Keeping the sheer gratuity of all that is good before our eyes it is then possible to raise one’s eyes to heaven and cry out to God with a far greater humility than that of pure self-abasement - the humility of knowing that God, in all His absolute and ineffable perfection, condescends to all who truly seek Him. No longer am I the focus, even in my miserable need for Him, but He is the centre drawing me to Him. Now the entire world can be seen as if in a single ray of light (cf. St Gregory the Great, Life of St Benedict, ch. 35), for all that He created points to Him and without Him is nothing.
 
In being so drawn to God, with a true recollection, our sin as everything else is put in perspective; The just judge will not accuse us of what we have already accused ourselves before Him. Sin truly becomes detestable because we see those sins as God sees them, but there can no longer be fear of His judgement for we judge it just as He does. +