In publicanum et pharisaeum

On the Publican and the Pharisee. The passion of avarice desires covetousness; but it is healed through almsgiving, when one runs to repentance. The manner of fornication pursues sin; but this is cured by the weeping of repentance, and it shows the soul purer than the sun, gleaming with the virtues of temperance. The inhumanity of robbery, when it changes its deeds of bloodshed and cries out to Christ, “Do not deprive me, Christ, of your kingdom,” that soul enters paradise. The error of idolatry itself has a remedy of healing, when it faithfully accepts the proclaimed Christ, renounces the error of lawlessness, and clothes itself with the grace of piety through baptism, which signifies the eternal Trinity by the three invocations of God. The filth of brotherly hatred is itself washed away, when with a grateful mind they accept that evangelical saying: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Who does not rejoice to be called a child of God and Father? For God fashioned man, and governs the world with a benevolent nod, and all things yield to his will; by an excess of goodness he brought the visible things from non-being into being, placing man as steward of his creations, so that, becoming faithful, he might receive the reward of the five talents and rule over the ten cities recorded in the Gospels.

If anyone is found negligent when entrusted with one talent, and conceals it, and does not bring to the master double the price—that is, together with the perceptible man also the intelligible man—but begins to say, "I was afraid because you are a harsh man," and the other words of ingratitude and perversity, then even what he has will be taken from him, and he will be cast into the furnace of fire. For this world was given as a training ground, which sometimes provides grief to men, and sometimes joy. But he who lives gratefully in both of these will be entrusted with the kingdom of heaven. For just as the flood of abundant waters, receiving the influx, raises bubbles, and some of them burst as soon as they are formed, while others, swollen larger, later burst as well—in the same way, the sea of life has covered some who appeared for a short time, and has drowned even those who lasted longer. Therefore let us resume the argument: Every occasion of sin has the grace of forgiveness swift, when repentance runs before it. The gangrene of pride is a disease hard to cure, a pretext for misanthropy, a haughty fall, an elevation cast down from itself, a shadowy fantasy, a reed shaken by the wind, smoke rising into the air and dissolving into nothing.

What do you think, O boastful one, that you possess more than the poor man? Nothing. Do you see a different heaven, while he is scorched by the sun's ray? When the air becomes frosty, are you warmed by the sun while he is chilled by the cold? Do you not breathe the same air? Do you not walk the same earth? Do you not wear the same body? Ought you not rather to give thanks to God, who entrusted to you so much as the needy man is able to measure? I tell you, brother, this ought rather to urge you toward humility. For the rich man who is moderate shows his philanthropy; the poor man, even unwillingly, has humility. You, then, will be shown to be great when you practice by choice what he does by necessity. But if you are not persuaded by these things, hear the Scripture: The Lord sets himself against the proud, but to the humble he gives grace. And if you despise even these things, you will be despised by God; then the arrogance of your insensibility, wishing to raise you to a lofty height, will lift you up greatly only to cast you down more mightily.

What then is wealth? A substance that leaps from one to another; for when death enters, it departs from you, but the evils that come from it never depart from you. See that you do not give yourself airs, being earth and ashes, and fall into the fall of the Pharisee; know yourself; for this the Lord also enjoins, speaking through the parable: Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. Two men went up, but not two men came down, traveling the same path without deviation. And the Pharisee manifestly missed this. They entered one place to pray, and they were not found to have come out into one place. The Pharisee ran confidently, the publican went away timidly; and the one who ran fell behind, while the one behind went ahead. The Pharisee ran to proclaim his righteous deeds; the publican hastened to announce his transgressions. They went up to pray; and one was seen puffed up, the other was shown praying. For the Pharisee legislated for himself thus, saying: I am not a debtor to the commandment of the law; I am not subject to what the prophets commanded; I have no need of the teaching of Moses, from which I have not erred in any of these things; but I go up to pray, paying the debt of custom, which my ancestors performed. What then, O Pharisee, do you worship the temple for the sake of your ancestors, but do not see the temple for the sake of prayer? Your ancestors faithfully performed the thanksgiving, but you parade the thanksgiving, so that your sacrifice may be glorified by men; and the saying of David applies to you:

Let his prayer be turned to sin, and let another take his office, that is, the publican. And what of the publican? He went to the temple condemning himself, calling himself unworthy of prayer. He called himself unworthy; and therefore Christ accepted his intention. He declared himself heavily indebted to sin, but Christ showed him liable to righteousness; he granted him forgiveness for his transgressions, and purchased his intention; he freed him from sin, that he might enslave him to righteousness. O slavery, through which we escape evil slavery and flee to the freedom of Christ! O slavery, offering a light yoke, and after it possessing and bestowing eternal life! O slavery, called slavery in this world, but in the future granting an unending kingdom! Let us run to this slavery, brothers, that we may reap the freedom of our souls. When someone becomes a good slave, then the Lord declares him a true son, then he fulfills upon him the saying through the Prophet: I said, You are gods, and all sons of the Most High. Blessed are those deemed worthy of such honor! Blessed are those who have hastened to escape corruption! Blessed are those who through this slavery have acquired freedom, and cry out to freedom, whom Christ has ransomed us, we stand having the cross of Christ propping us up! Let us cry to Christ: Count us, the good Shepherd, as one of the lost sheep.

Seek us in the thoughts of our hearts, and finding us wandering and about to be caught by the enemy, gather us into your flock. Count us as a single drachma, and kindling us with the fire of your divinity, search us out, and having found us, rejoice with the saints and the angels who dwell together with your pure divinity; show us forth as the publican, so that praying we may embrace humility, and turn away from pride, and put off the mother of sin, which is haughtiness, and embrace the mother of repentance, which is sobriety. Let us cast off the old man together with his deeds, and put on the new man together with his deeds and his grace; let us groan from the depth of our heart as we pray, so that we may drive off the depth of the furnace of Gehenna, our enemy. For when you groan, he is struck; when you beat your breast, he is wounded; when you receive the blows, he receives the slaughter. For the publican, beating his breast, struck back at the Pharisee, and refuted the reasoning within him that activated the arrogance of pride. For the Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed saying: "O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of men, rapacious, unjust, adulterers, or even like this publican; I fast twice a week, I tithe everything I possess.

O Pharisee, you emptied your reward through your boasting! For this reason you received a verdict of condemnation. You say, "I am not like the rest of men." He was a man by nature and by God's formation, but irrational by his participation in pride; a man as having the image, but a beast as possessing arrogance. For he placed himself outside the nature of men, legislated a different creation for his own body, declared himself to be higher than earthly things, and supposed himself greater than every prophet and patriarch. Did you not remember, O Pharisee, the boasting of Elijah, who boasted the same things, though not from conceit but from divine zeal, when he said, "Lord, they killed your prophets and tore down your altars, and I alone was left"? And what was the response to him? "I have left for myself seven thousand men who did not bow the knee to Baal." What then? When all had transgressed, there were seven thousand who had divine zeal and were equal to the prophet, and you cry out, "I am not like the rest of men—rapacious, unjust, adulterers"? Did no one under heaven escape the abomination of greed? Does no one embrace temperance, O Pharisee? You condemn yourself, who are condemned by all; you pass judgment against yourself, who are rejected by God; you crown yourself through your boasting, but you lost your crown through your condemnation; you praise yourself as sinless, but you were shown to be liable for sin.

You set yourself up as one who has fulfilled the law, but by touching the law you insulted the lawgiver. You proclaimed all your achievements before everyone; you turned them into transgressions. The publican, by crying out through his silence, shamed the Word of God, whom you, by shouting against yourself, provoked. You were not ashamed to say, "I am not like the rest of men—thieves, unjust, adulterers, or even like the publican, defiled by sins, steeped in debauchery, who profaned the sacred place by his entry, who prays unworthily with me, the worker of every lawlessness." But the name itself suffices as testimony to his condition: for he is a publican, exacting the works of wickedness for sin. Even if these things are not written in these very words in the immaculate Gospels, still the purpose of pride preserves this manner. O Pharisee, you disdained the publican's things, but Christ approved of the publican; you humiliated him against yourself, but Christ crowned him before all. Christ was pleased, having seen the publican's repentance intertwined with shame, and a groan sent up from the depth of his heart straight to heaven, and tears flowing; Christ was pleased, rather he respected the publican, who shook off shame by shame. Well did he fit himself to

The publican the saying of wisdom: "There is a shame that brings sin." This he pursued in the life of ingratitude. And there is a shame that is glory and grace. This he approached through the way of repentance, healing opposites by opposites through faith. Imitating a physician, he applies a plaster opposite to the body, consuming the flesh but cleansing the wound, so that when the vital body is revealed, the device of healing may be recognized. The channels of pleasures, using a groan like a red-hot iron, he stopped up, and the swelling wound of passion he soothed with tears and healed, and after packing the opening of the wound with the striking of hands he scarred it over, and the flux flowing into the soul from the body he checked, and this soul he presented pure to the Creator through repentance. But let us also hear the remaining words of the Pharisee: "I fast twice a week." This indicates abstinence on the fourth day and the day of preparation. The Sabbaths are a rest for the Hebrews. "I abstain from varied foods; I do not defile my lips with impure taste; I am wholly clothed in abstinence; I am wholly arrayed in holiness; and further, I bring the tithes of what I acquire to God." O pride breathing senselessness! "I fast twice a week." Is he not disposed as one offering his rations to God? "I fast twice a week." Lord, does not fasting, he says, present to God the commandments of the law? And what men have accomplished by toil, do I do by intention? What then does the philanthropic judge, the ambitious umpire of the course of repentance?

And while the Pharisee was boasting, He endured it, and while the publican was repenting, He took delight. Since the one, by his words as by violent winds, shook off the fruit of the soul, while the other, having crushed himself, awaited no other accuser, He assigned to each according to his worth. For the publican, having become his own accuser, He set free from condemnation; but the Pharisee, having set his achievements in the midst, He declared poorer than the publican. The manner was opposite for both: for one, wealth was the occasion of poverty; for the other, a slip from wealth into poverty. For what says the Master? "Truly I say to you, this one went down to his house justified rather than that one." Oh, how evil is the disease of pride! The Pharisee went up adorned, crowned with his achievements as with flowers; the publican accompanied him, stripped of any defense. One, having easily humbled himself, was raised up; the other, having hurled himself to an untimely height, endured a ridiculous exposure. Was it not better to use restrained speech? Was it not better to hear the prophetic voice saying, "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will raise you up"? Was it not more profitable to hold the tongue and preserve the wealth which he acquired with many labors? For the virtues he gathered over time, he scattered with his voice. Did the Pharisee not hear what is written, that "Every high-hearted one is unclean before the Lord"? Was he not taught the well-said saying, "What your right hand does, let not your left hand know"? Perhaps he knew both, but the power of vainglory conquered.

Let us therefore acquire the humility of the publican and cast off the weight of our sins; and let us hate pride, through which the Pharisee lost the wealth of his virtues. For the Lord sets Himself against the proud, but to the humble He gives grace. To Him be glory and power, now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.