Why Am I Not More Like Christ?

10th Sunday After Pentecost

This Sunday’s Gospel presents us with one of our Lord’s most familiar parables: two men who went up to the Temple to pray. They entered the same Temple, stood before the same God, and prayed—but they left very differently.

There was only one Temple, and it was in Jerusalem. It stood at the very center of Old Testament worship. Synagogues could be found throughout the towns and villages, and it was there that the Sacred Scriptures were read and explained. But the Temple was unique. It was the place of sacrifice, the great center of Israel’s worship, and the dwelling place of God among His people.

Our Lord tells us that two men went up to this sacred place to pray: a Pharisee and a publican.

We know very little about either man beyond what Jesus tells us. And, at first glance, the Pharisee seems to have been a devout man. He prayed. He fasted twice a week. He gave tithes. He avoided serious sins.

Those were all good and worthy things.

The problem was not that the Pharisee prayed, fasted, tithed, or tried to live a moral life. His problem was what he did with those good works.

First, he placed his confidence in what he had accomplished. His prayer became almost a résumé presented to God: Look at what I have done. Look at the kind of man I am.

Second, he compared himself with someone else.

“I am not as the rest of men…”

There is the danger.

Instead of looking toward God, the Pharisee looked toward the publican. And once he began comparing himself with another man, he found a reason to exalt himself and despise the other.

The publican did something entirely different.

He stood at a distance. He would not even raise his eyes toward heaven. He struck his breast and prayed:

“O God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

And Jesus tells us that it was this man who went home justified.

There is an important lesson here for every Christian.

We cannot save ourselves.

No amount of prayer, fasting, penance, good works, or religious observance can make us our own redeemer. Christ alone has redeemed us. Christ alone saves us. Everything begins with His grace.

That does not mean that our actions do not matter. Quite the opposite. We must cooperate with God’s grace. We must fulfill the duties of our state in life, strive to live according to the moral law, worship God as He has commanded, receive the sacraments, practice charity, do penance, and avoid sin.

Yes, there are things we must do.

But we must never confuse cooperating with God’s grace with saving ourselves.

There is also a second lesson in the Pharisee’s prayer: we must grow in charity.

One of the great dangers of the spiritual life is that we can begin doing good things and then use those very things as reasons to look down upon others.

We can become proud of our prayer. Proud of our knowledge of the Faith. Proud of our sacrifices. Proud of our devotions. Proud even of our fidelity to the Church.

And then the very things that should lead us closer to God become occasions of pride.

The Pharisee thanked God that he was not like the rest of men.

Perhaps the rest of men could thank God that they were not like the Pharisee.

The road to holiness is not about comparing ourselves with others. It is about comparing ourselves with Christ.

If I compare myself with other people, I can almost always find someone who makes me look good. But if Christ is my standard—if His humility, His purity, His charity, His patience, His mercy, and His obedience are my standard—then I begin to see how far I still have to go.

And that changes the way I look at everyone around me.

Instead of asking:

“Why isn’t he more like me?”

I begin asking:

“Why am I not more like Christ?”

If Jesus is truly our model, we will spend far less time noticing what others are not and far more time recognizing what we ourselves are called to become.