By St. Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and All Crimea
(Delivered on February 25, 1945)
(Delivered on February 25, 1945)
Great Lent is approaching, a time of prayer and repentance, the most important time of our lives, for there is nothing more important for the Christian soul than repentance and prayer.
When the Lord Jesus Christ came out to preach His message, the first thing He said was: “Repent!” (Matthew 4:17).
There are many great human deeds, but there is none so great, so important as repentance and prayer, for in prayer the spirit of man has direct communication with the Spirit of God. And the one whose prayer becomes bottomlessly deep and therefore extremely effective knows from his own experience how communication with the Spirit of God occurs. He knows that in prayer people receive direct instructions from God and the true direction of their life activities.
There is nothing more important than prayer, but if this matter is so important, then it is clear that it is also the most difficult matter, for the more important the matter, the more difficult it is. Through our own efforts we cannot comprehend the full depth of prayer; we cannot pray in the way that pleases God. We need the almighty help of the Holy Spirit in this great matter, for this is what the Holy Apostle Paul says in his letter to the Romans: “The Spirit helps (us) in our weaknesses; for we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be expressed” (Rom. 8:26). But for us sinners, for us who stand low in our spiritual development, it is difficult for us to dream of such a great, all-encompassing prayer as all the saints prayed.
We need to know at least the most important, at least the most elementary things about what our prayer should be. In the Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, which you heard today, in this short but deeply important and saving parable, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself said how one should and how one should not pray. You should not pray the way the Pharisee prayed. What was his prayer? It was self-exaltation before God, it was boasting about his moral perfections. In his prayer, he brought gratitude to God for the fact that he was not as low as other people, he only boasted, thanked God for his merits.
And the sinful publican, the tax collector, hated by people, stood humbly in the distance, with his head down, and repeated: “God, make atonement for me the sinner” (Luke 18:13).
In this prayer, he fulfilled the first beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” He showed deep spiritual poverty, he was aware of his unworthiness, his sinfulness, he was aware that he was low and contemptible before God, and a saving feeling of self-abasement reigned in his soul, a holy, great need for repentance before God was manifested in his soul. Deeply humbled, considering himself unworthy, he only, with downcast eyes and beating himself in the chest, asked: “God, make atonement for me the sinner.” The Lord had mercy on him, for with God the most important thing is the humble, repentant state of our soul, the consciousness of deep sinfulness, of his own deep unworthiness.
“God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5). God gave His grace to this sinful, unfortunate publican, who humbled himself before Him; God took away grace from the proud Pharisee.
God opposes the proud, for pride is the main property of the devil, Satan. Satan is thoroughly saturated with pride, and all proud people are like him.
This is what the Holy Prophet Isaiah says: “Thus says the High and Exalted One who lives forever, Holy is His name: I dwell in the high place of heaven and in the sanctuary, and also with those who are contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the hearts of the contrite” (Isaiah 57:15). The publican’s heart was quickened by the grace of God for his humble and repentant prayer, and he left the temple much more justified than the Pharisee.
It is not said in the parable that the Pharisee was completely condemned, but that he walked away less justified than the tax collector.
The righteous God will reward us even for the smallest merit; He leaves nothing without reward: and that legal truth that the Pharisee boasted about, that truth that he put on display in his prayer, the Lord God also accepts, the Lord also rewards for it.
But look, the Pharisee, the teacher of the people of Israel, the teacher of piety, the leader of the people, in the eyes of God turned out to be much lower than the despised publican, who left more justified for his humility, forgiven for his sins.
The publican violated the commandments given through Moses, but he fulfilled the most important commandment of Christ - he was imbued with holy humility.
But the Pharisee violated what the Holy Apostle Paul speaks of in his great hymn of love: “Love does not boast, it is not proud” (1 Cor. 13:4), but he was proud of his righteousness, he exalted himself over the sinful tax collector. This means that he was deprived of love, and whoever is deprived of love is far from God. In his prayer he showed all the ugly features of self-righteousness; he considered himself righteous and pure before God.
And all the great saints never considered themselves righteous. They deeply recognized themselves as sinners and low before the greatness of God. That was the Venerable Seraphim, who did not call himself other than “poor Seraphim.”
Tell me who is greater than one of the greatest saints and teachers of the entire universe, Saint John Chrysostom? Who was closer to God and righteous before God? And in one of his many prayers, which we read every evening, these are the words he lifts up to God: “Lord of heaven and earth, remember me, Thy sinful servant, cold and unclean, in Thy Kingdom.”
He calls himself cold and unclean, but God exalted him, God made him one of the first in the great host of the righteous.
All priests and bishops experienced in confession know that among you there are many people who are like this Pharisee and suffer from the vice of self-righteousness. More than once they happened to confess before their death people who always diligently went to church, performed all the prescribed church fasts and rituals, but at the dying confession the priest could not force such a self-righteous person to repent of anything; no matter what he asks, the answer is the same: “I have not sinned in anything.”
Isn’t this a Pharisaic disposition, isn’t this the complete opposite of the disposition in which all the great saints lived and died? These unfortunate self-righteous people never thought about the words that are written in the book of Job: “Behold, He does not trust His servants, and sees shortcomings in His angels” (Job 4:18). If God sees shortcomings in His Angels, then what can we say about ourselves? How can we pray this Pharisaic prayer? How can we not be imbued with the humility of the sinful tax collector, whose only prayer befits us: “God, make atonement for me the sinner!”
This is what the Holy Prophet Isaiah says about the proud and exalted: “The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the Lord of hosts shall come upon everything proud and lofty, upon everything lifted up — and it shall be brought low — upon all the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan;... The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be brought low; the Lord alone will be exalted in that day" (Isa. 2:11–13, 17).
Before the greatness of the glory of God, we must all bow our heads low and lower our gaze, and we must not be like everything that is high and exalted, against which the wrath of God is coming. This is what this holy parable of Christ about the publican and the Pharisee teaches us.
Let us always remember this - even when we begin the feat of repentance during Great Lent. Let us pray as the publican prayed. And the Lord will have mercy on us, and He will justify us, and He will give us the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.