Неделя мытаря и фарисея (33-я)

(2 Tim. 3, 10–15; Luke 18, 10–14) Yesterday the Gospel taught us persistence in prayer, and now it teaches us humility or a sense of powerlessness to be heard. Do not arrogate to yourself the right to be heard, but begin to pray, as if you are unworthy of any attention, and give yourself the boldness to open your lips and offer prayer to God, according to the Lord’s boundless condescension towards us poor. And don’t let the thought occur to you: I did this and that; give me something. Whatever you do, consider it due; you had to do all that. If you hadn’t done it, you would have been punished, but what you did, there’s nothing to reward, you didn’t show anything special. There the Pharisee listed his rights to be heard and left the church with nothing. The bad thing is not that he did as he said; That’s what he should have done, but the bad thing is that he presented it as something special, when, having done it, he shouldn’t have even thought about it. – Deliver us, Lord, from this Pharisee sin! Rarely does anyone say this in words, but in the feeling of the heart it is rare that no one is not like this. For why do they pray poorly? Because they feel that they are already in order before God. You might be interested in: