30th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Lk 18: 8-14)
Humility is a virtue that Jesus valued. He didn’t like self-righteous people.
The story is told of a Pastor and his Parochial Vicar going to pray in church after a they have a disagreement. The two of them were hoping for healing. The two priests knelt before the tabernacle. The pastor said, “Lord be merciful to me a sinner.” The assistant prayed, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.” Suddenly, the two priests heard a voice in the back of the church, “Lord be merciful to me a sinner. When the two men looked around they saw the cleaning lady praying on her knees. The pastor said to the other priest sarcastically, “Look who thinks she is a sinner.” The story reminds us of how we all want to be superior even when it comes to sin. My sins are more serious. God needs to pay attention to me.
We need to lose that sense of superiority. Does this mean that we should live our life with a feeling of constant shame. No, we should live our life with a sense of compunction. Compunctions are different than shame.
The word compunction has an interesting etymology. The English word comes from the Latin word com pungere, which means to puncture. We might picture a balloon slowly inflating. At a certain point someone might come along to plunge a pin into the balloon. We know what happens then. The balloon pops.
We can have a sense of moral superiority towards those around us. “I would never commit the sins that other people do,” we might say. If we are like that, we are like the Pharisee in Jesus’ story. But then we may fail. We may commit the same sin that we have been criticizing other people for. We realize that we are no better than the people we have critiqued. The moment we realize that our ego can be greatly deflated. We might even fall into a funk. We also might try to try to fix ourselves. Usually that ends in failure. We might then wallow in shame.
All of this doesn’t describe compunction. Compunctions usually happen in a moment of prayer. The Holy Spirit moves us to see a fault that we might have never seen before. When that happens, we aren’t reduced to shame but we are overcome with a feeling of gratitude. Because we have acknowledged a fault, we can become a different person. And the God who has moved our hearts with remorse will give us the grace to change. None of this can happen unless we are people who pray with a sense of openness.
One of the most famous instances of compunction in Christian history happened in the life of St. Augustine, one of the greatest bishops in the history of the church. Augustine was an intellectually proud young man who studied many different philosophies as he tried to find the meaning of life. He became convinced of the truth of Christianity because he listened to the preaching of St. Ambrose. But even though he accepted Christian teaching he still fell into the same sins.
One day he was praying in a garden in Milan. He was so frustrated by his failings that tears of remorse ran down his face. Suddenly he heard the voice of a child chanting from a nearby house repeatedly, “Take up and read. Take up and read.”
He grabbed some scripture that was nearby. His eyes rested on Romans 13:13-14 which said, “Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in strife and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.” Augustine’s conversion was immediate. The spiritual pricking of his heart led directly to the moment of true conversion.
We read in the Gospel. “One man walked away from prayer justified. The other did not.” The Pharisee lacked spiritual vision. He was unable to admit his arrogance. Nothing changed. The publican let God prick his conscience. He felt compunction. He also had an overwhelming sense of the mercy of God. The publican left the temple with a sense of resolve, with compassion towards himself and others. The publican knew that he could begin his life anew.