"Save me, God!".
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The biblical parable about the publican and the Pharisee is filled with a deep meaning that all people are sinners, both righteous and those who lead an immoral life. It remains relevant regardless of time, changes in politics and history.
Characters
First of all, we need to understand who is a tax collector and who is a Pharisee.
The publican, if we look for correspondences to him in our time, is most similar to the current collector: he was a person who bought debts and tax obligations of the population from the state and then collected these debts from the population with interest, using gangster methods.
And a Pharisee is roughly the current active parishioner: a person who regularly visits the temple, prays according to the rules, convinced that faith is the center of human life and one must live according to the laws and regulations defined by the Holy Scriptures.
I believe that if we remember this, the parable will seem much more ambiguous to us than when we read it with blurry eyes, when we remember not the original meaning of the words, but only those meanings that the words developed on the basis of this parable.
They say this parable is about pride and the humiliation of the proud. Perhaps she talks about this too - but not only this. And perhaps she doesn't talk about it the way (or the way) we think.
How to properly prepare for Lent
The meaning of Great Lent for the Orthodox is repentance of sins in order to celebrate Easter/Bright Sunday with a pure soul and thoughts. Fasting involves limiting the consumption of certain foods (for example, meat, milk, eggs) on certain days. Entertainment is contraindicated on these days.
During the four-week period before Lent, the church prepares believers for abstinence. During the Week of the Publican and the Pharisee, there are no restrictions on products or food intake. Starting next week, fasts on Wednesday and Friday will be restored. During the meat-free week, one is supposed to abstain from meat. In the last week (cheese day or Maslenitsa) it is allowed to consume milk, cheese, butter, eggs, but it is required to fast until the evening on Wednesday and Friday.
On the Week of the Publican and the Pharisee, the Orthodox Church reminds believers of the essence of religion: humility before God.
Without humility, true repentance for sins is impossible. The source of sinful deeds and thoughts is the pride of a person who considers himself equal to God. The order of services on these days is determined in the Lenten Triodion.
In the second week at the liturgy they read the parable of the prodigal son, in the third - about the Last Judgment, in the fourth - they remember the saints who became famous for the feat of fasting, the sin of Adam and Eve and expulsion from Paradise. Remembering the prodigal son, the church says that any sinner can count on God’s mercy if his humble repentance is sincere.
On Saturday of Meat Week, the dead are remembered at a service (Ecumenical Parental Saturday).
The Church prays especially for those who left the earthly world without a funeral service:
- died in a disaster;
- at war;
- from violence;
- sudden illness.
The reminder of the final judgment should warn people against careless sinfulness, since no one knows the day when he will appear before the Lord. On the last Sunday before Lent, believers are called upon to follow the rules of abstinence, reminding them that the sin of their forefathers was due to intemperance.
What is the Pharisee asking for?
Amazingly, he doesn’t ask for anything! His prayer is a prayer of thanksgiving, not a prayer of need; apparently he is praying the most perfect of prayers. And he does not take credit for his merits and his perfect life - he attributes the merit of the fact that he fulfills everything commanded entirely to God. He feels like a favorite of God, created differently from other people who are mired in sins and do not keep the law. The Pharisee fulfills even more than the law and regulations require: he fasts more than what is commanded and gives more than the law requires, according to which tithes were levied only on crops and livestock (and not on everything purchased). The Pharisee appears here as a thing that has completely, and even with a slight excess, filled its boundaries, occupied its allotted limits, and has been fully realized. A thing with which its Creator seems to have nothing else to do.
What does the publican ask for?
The publican asks the Lord for reconciliation (this is the intended meaning of the verb ʻιλάσκομαι used here: to propitiate in order to restore peace). That is, he does not ask for anything specific - he asks only to come into contact with God again. That the certainty of him, which he created with his sins and which hangs over him like a coffin lid, shielding him from the sky, would be removed - and the field of possibilities would open up for him again.
The Pharisee thanks for the fact that he is perfect, that is, completed, but the publican asks for the opportunity to begin.
Interpretation in context
But let us not be mistaken - any (even the most correct and well-formed) certainty shackles a person with a tomb - which is what Jesus says, comparing the Pharisees in another place with painted, beautiful tombs, inside of which there are only bones and dust (Matthew 23:27).
Note that this is how distant parts of the Gospel reveal each other’s true meaning.
But even more help to reveal the meaning of each other are the gospel episodes that are close to each other - at first glance, disparate and even causing us dissatisfaction with the intermittency of the plot. I believe that in a number of cases, the smoothness of the plot progression was sacrificed precisely to semantic condensations and correspondences. As is the case with the parable of the publican and the Pharisee. For immediately after this parable in Luke there follows an episode about babies being brought to Jesus - and the words that only by accepting the Kingdom of God as children can we enter it (Luke 18:17).
Let the children come to Me. Karl Bloch. Date unknown
Why do you need to be like children?
The Holy Fathers, who were mostly monks and rarely saw children, interpreted this episode in the sense that to enter the Kingdom of Heaven one needs childlike kindness, humility and meekness. We, being lay people, can only be amazed at how these properties can be attributed to children. In any case, children possess them as rarely as adults. To understand exactly what is being said here, it is necessary to highlight a property that is irreducibly inherent in children, constituting the property of “childhood.” There is only one such property - the ability to grow. The difference between an adult and a child is that he has already grown up. Thus, those who have not lost the ability to grow enter the Kingdom of Heaven. They grow into the Kingdom of Heaven. And those who lose this ability become beautiful coffins of themselves long before their apparent death. The Lord is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living (Luke 20:38) - and He has nothing to do with painted tombs.
In this regard, the final words of the parable become clear: “for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” The one who exalted himself turned out to be above everyone else - and therefore he no longer needs to grow. He will stop growing because he already looks down on everyone. When everyone is below you, this is an obstacle to development.
He who humiliates himself and sees those around him who are higher opens up space for growth and within himself a desire for growth. Because it is very interesting to see what is there at the level of those who are higher. Because when someone is taller, it’s an incentive to develop.
Interpretation of the Gospel for every day of the year. The Week of the Publican and the Pharisee
Luke, 89, 18, 10–14
The Lord spoke the following parable: two men entered the temple to pray: one was a Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed to himself like this: God! I thank You that I am not like other people, robbers, offenders, adulterers, or like this publican: I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of everything I acquire. The publican, standing in the distance, did not even dare to raise his eyes to heaven; but, striking himself on the chest, he said: God! be merciful to me, a sinner! I tell you that this one went to his house justified more than the other: for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
Two people entered the temple to pray. One is a Pharisee and the other is a tax collector. Two people, two sinners with only one difference: the Pharisee did not see himself as a sinner, but the publican was deeply aware and experienced this. The Pharisee stood in a prominent place, in the middle of the temple or in front of the altar, he is a worthy person in society and in the Church, and the publican, not daring to go forward, stood at the very threshold, as it is said in the Gospel, in the distance.
The Pharisee's pride and confidence in his own righteousness were such that he sought first place not only in the eyes of people, but also before God, and took the best place not only at dinners and meetings, but also at prayer. This alone is enough to understand what terrible unrighteousness the Pharisee was struck by and how blinded he was by sin. Sin blinds. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). The limit of wickedness lies in the fact that we, being deceitful, as the word of God testifies, consider ourselves righteous, and present “He who came into the world to save sinners” as deceitful (Compare 1 John 5:10).
Let us pay attention to what is said about the Pharisee: he prayed to himself: “God, I thank You that I am not like other people.” Saint Theophan the Recluse says that outwardly in the Church everyone prays in true words, those that are sung and read during divine services, and all these words are filled with repentance. But it is more important to God how each of us prays within ourselves. God listens more carefully to what the heart says, and not to the lips, to what a person thinks and feels during prayer. The tongue can deceive, but the heart does not deceive; it shows a person as he is. Blessed Maxim the Fool for Christ says: “Know that neither God can deceive you, nor can you deceive Him.” “Everyone is baptized, but not everyone prays.” A Pharisee is one who is “Abraham in beard, but Ham in deeds.”
A sinful man came to the temple to dishonor other people and boast about his good deeds. He is not a robber, not an offender, not an adulterer, like others. Little of! He fasts twice a week and gives a tenth of everything he has to the Church and to the poor. Let us remember, brothers and sisters, from the very beginning of our journey to Great Lent: fasting and prayer, and our good deeds, it turns out, may not bring us closer to God, but, on the contrary, move us away from God and from people. Fasting and prayer and alms exist so that we learn humility and love for God and man. The Pharisee fasted and gave alms, but he despised and hated others, was arrogant and exalted himself before God. And in general, why did he need to come to the temple if God sends him home with nothing! The Lord shows false piety - that Pharisaism that is ineradicable in humanity and is still alive among Christians. It is like a tall, green tree that has no fruit and is rotten inside.
How to learn to pray? This is how to pray: the publican, standing in the distance, did not dare to raise his eyes to heaven, but struck himself on the chest, saying: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” He stood in the distance. God sees him just as well when he stands inconspicuously in a crowd as if he stood alone in the middle of the temple. Truly, prayer is always a prayer of repentance. “Man’s repentance is God’s holiday,” says St. Ephraim the Syrian. He stands in the distance, he feels his insignificance before God and is filled with humility before the greatness of God. The Lord ends the parable with the words “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” “Until a person achieves humility, he will not receive a reward for his labors,” says St. Ephraim the Syrian. “The reward is given for humility, not for work.” Not for fasting, not for prayer, not for good deeds. But who humiliates himself? Not the one who tries to appear smaller than he is, say the holy fathers, but the one who sees his smallness because of his sins. Truly, a person, even if he wishes, cannot humiliate himself more than sin humiliates him. For a person who feels and recognizes the depths to which sin has plunged him, it is impossible to sink lower. Sin can always push us down into the abyss of eternal destruction, lower than we can imagine. Only through humility in the knowledge of our own sinfulness can the secret of the humility of Christ, in which the beauty and perfection of Divine love is hidden, be revealed to us.
Our sense of sin, the holy fathers say, depends on our closeness to God. The feeling of sin is a measure of the soul's knowledge of God. Saint John the Baptist, the greatest of those born of women, is filled with fear at the approach of Christ: “I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of His sandals” (Mark 1:7). When the prophet Isaiah found himself in God's presence in a vision of the Lord sitting on the Throne, he realized his sinfulness: “Woe is me! I'm dead! for I am a man of unclean lips... - and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Is. 6:5). When the power of God was revealed to the Apostle Peter in a miraculous catch of fish, he fell at the feet of Christ, begging: “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
Because of his closeness to Christ, the Apostle Paul could call himself the chief of sinners. These words are repeated by Saint John Chrysostom and the entire Church until the end of the century, and by each of us when we approach the sacrament of communion of the Body and Blood of Christ. Woe to us if we repeat them with only our lips.
We live in a world where there is less and less sense of sin. One might think that in a “sinless society”, which has only one concern – that there be “safe sin”. Modern man is no longer worried about sin, he is worried about the consequences of sin: illness, disasters, wars, inner emptiness and despair. As long as we spend all our energy trying to overcome the consequences of sin, hiding sin until we offer it to God in humble repentance, the consequences of sin will make our lives more and more miserable.
The most important thing that is happening in the world today is that people are losing their sense of sin. For example, the ancient sin of adultery is now perceived by the majority as an expression of love and freedom, and therefore it is not a sin at all, but a virtue. The ancient sin of sodomy is simply like a different lifestyle. And if this is not a virtue, then at least it is no longer immoral. It's just different.
And two more obvious and significant patterns. The more sin there is in the world, the less sin feels like sin. And until a person begins to feel that sin is sin, and that
such a sin, he will see others as greater sinners than himself, he will be a Pharisee.
And finally, the most important thing that we must remember today forever. No matter how great the sin, there is something greater than sin, this is God's grace. God's grace is always greater than sin, and therefore the Apostle Paul says: “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first.”
It seems that the madness of the world has already reached its limit. But the holy fathers say that we do not see a thousandth of the evil that is in the world, and in the same way a thousandth of God’s love for the world. We know that evil will never completely overcome love. Never! That sin will never be stronger than mercy. Moreover, we know: the more evil rages - even if the beast already seems to have broken free - the more the Spirit of God leads us. Where evil becomes insolent, the presence of the Spirit becomes obvious to the faithful. “And when sin abounded, grace abounded all the more” (Rom. 5:20).
Never, perhaps, has the power of Christ to His Church been revealed as it is today. And repentant sinners are called to enter this glory as never before, for the Kingdom of Heaven has approached as never before.
"Pharisee" means "separated"
The word “Pharisee” comes from a Hebrew verb meaning “to separate,” “to set apart.” And our Pharisee also feels like a complete thing in the sense that he is “not like other people.” Meanwhile, Christianity teaches us that our every step towards God is at the same time our step towards each person, that our growth towards God is at the same time our growth towards merging with everyone. By receiving the blood of Christ in communion, we not only give the blood of God the opportunity to flow in our veins, but we also give room for the blood of all those who partake to flow in our veins. They “grow” into the Kingdom of God, “increasing” in many directions at once, revealing God in every neighbor and opening up to God in every neighbor. Therefore, in Christianity there are only two commandments - about love for God and about love for neighbor - and these, as we see, are also commandments of growth. To love your neighbor as yourself means (at least in one of the senses) to see in him not a separate person, but also yourself. “Grow” into community with him. So the fingers of the hand can suddenly become aware of their involvement in one palm.
What did Jesus Christ want to convey in this parable?
In ancient times, a tax collector was called a tax collector. This profession was considered one of the most shameful. And the Pharisees were representatives of the nobility who were among the elite of society. They received a good education and had many privileges. But in reality the Pharisees were very pompous, false and arrogant.
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In the parable, publicans are represented as people who sincerely repented of their sins. They understand that they are bad people and can only count on the mercy of the Lord. But the Pharisees are proud people who elevate themselves above those around them. Even when they pray to God, they exalt themselves.
The main point of the parable is that what matters is not how people behave in society. Much more important is what they carry in their soul and what actions they perform. If a person lives without love, repentance and humility, then he will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven. His prayers will never be answered. Therefore, you should never consider yourself better than others, looking for disadvantages in others.
