DGEMs

True Humility – Faith: In today’s Gospel, Jesus proclaimed the “Parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector” to highlight how our faith should be lived with true humility instead of self-righteousness.  Ponder on: When we fall into sin, do we beg God for His Mercy with true humility, or does our pride prevent us from being more fully reconciled with God?

Jesus spoke the following parable to some people who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else: ‘Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, “I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like the rest of mankind, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get.”

‘The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

‘This man, I tell you, went home again at rights with God; the other did not. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the man who humbles himself will be exalted.’