Lourdes 23 June 2006

It may seem strange at a Mass for the Sick to hear the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. They both seem to be perfectly healthy individuals – well able to make their way through the crowds and into the Temple.

The point of the parable is that neither of them is healthy. It is obvious that the tax collector’s life is not very impressive. He has had to take a job which puts him on the side of the Romans and which makes him unpopular with the people. Tax collectors had a reputation for bullying and cheating people. They were looked on with contempt.

But at least the tax collector knew that his life was a mess, that he was weak and that he needed God’s forgiveness and help. That was his prayer: God, be merciful to me, a sinner”.

The Pharisee never for one moment imagined that his life could be a far greater mess than the tax collector’s. He had no understanding of his own need. He is not open to the wisdom that helps us to learn what is pleasing to God. And so, in spite of the fasting and almsgiving and the rest, he was much further from the truth, and therefore from God, than the tax collector.

He was so far from understanding his relationship with God and from realising his need for God that he could stand before God imagining that God must be very impressed! He seemed to think that God should be grateful to him. He thought that God must be pleased that he was so much better than the tax collector. He thought that he could stand in the presence of God and boast ( I Cor 1:29 ).

Our world, I’m afraid, sometimes looks very like the Pharisee. We are proud of our achievements in science and technology, even though in many ways the world is less human than it was; the environment is more threatened than it has ever been; inequalities grow rather than diminish; basic values like respect for life, the importance of the family and even for faith, are weaker. We ride on the back of the Celtic Tiger, apparently unaware of what a dangerous thing it is to be on the back of a tiger.

All of this should remind us of another parable – the rich man who gathered all his wealth into barns and sat back satisfied that now he was secure and comfortable.

God said to him, “Fool, this very night your soul is required of you – the things you have prepared, who will have them now?” ( Lk 12:20 ).

The tax collector was closer to the truth than the Pharisee. And very often sick people, and those who are not as strong as they once were, are are closer to the truth than people who are caught up in their own strength and possessions and achievements and talents.

That is why Lourdes is a very important experience for people who are healthy – it teaches us the fragility of human successes and hopes and plans. If they are what we found our hope on, we build on sand. All these things, like the things that the Pharisee build his confidence on, will pass.

You who are sick, you who are at the centre of our pilgrimage, show us that the truth and meaning of our lives cannot be built on our own strength, because it will fail, or on our possessions, because we can’t take them with us, or on our intelligence because it cannot grasp the deepest mysteries, or on our plans or designs because as the reading says, they are “likely to fail”.

Here in Lourdes we can help each other to learn the truth – we are saved by something infinitely greater than our own strength: by the wisdom of God.

In the Eucharist we come face to face with the death of Jesus, where as Fr David Gibson put it yesterday, he gave everything for us, even his Mother whom he gave to us. Those who feel that you are losing your strength and abilities, the ability to enjoy things and places that mean a lot to you, are near to that self-giving love of Christ, which is the all-powerful love of God.

The love of Christ is the power at work within us, “to accomplish abundantly far more than we could ask or imagine” ( Eph 3:20 ). This is the weakness of God that is stronger than human strength, the foolishness of God that is wiser than human wisdom ( 1 Cor 1:25 ).

That is the light of hope, the wisdom that guards us with her glory. Here in Lourdes, we can help each other, sick and healthy to keep that lamp lit in each other’s hearts.