Can we buy graces? Can we work our way into Heaven? How many candles will it take to be a lit in a church for the forgiveness of our sin? Or a pilgrimage to the Holy Land so that we can finally walk in the ancient footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ?
Nay the message today is simple and clear. No need for pomp or words laden with grandeur. In the silent rend of our hearts we cry out “Lord be merciful to me a sinner!” For a humbled contrite spirit I will not spurn says our ever loving and merciful Father in Heaven. Because it is by grace that we have been saved, through faith; not by anything of our own, but by a gift from God; not by anything that we have done, so that nobody can claim the credit. We are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live it. (Eph 2:8-10)
Lord Jesus I will do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with You. Amen
First reading
Hosea 5:15-6:6 ·
What I want is love, not sacrifice and holocausts
The Lord says this:
They will search for me in their misery.
‘Come, let us return to the Lord.
He has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us;
he has struck us down, but he will bandage our wounds;
after a day or two he will bring us back to life,
on the third day he will raise us
and we shall live in his presence.
Let us set ourselves to know the Lord;
that he will come is as certain as the dawn
his judgement will rise like the light,
he will come to us as showers come,
like spring rains watering the earth.’
What am I to do with you, Ephraim?
What am I to do with you, Judah?
This love of yours is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that quickly disappears.
This is why I have torn them to pieces by the prophets,
why I slaughtered them with the words from my mouth,
since what I want is love, not sacrifice;
knowledge of God, not holocausts.
Gospel
Luke 18:9-14
The tax collector, not the Pharisee, went home justified.
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.’
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