The Pharisee in Our Mirror: A Pre-Lenten Warning
A Reflection on the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee
Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee- (II Timothy §296 (3:10-15) / Saint Luke §89 (18:10-14))
Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee
Beloved in Christ,
The Holy Church, in her maternal wisdom, does something remarkable today. Before she calls us to the rigors of Great Lent, she sits us down like a loving mother and tells us a story. Not a story necessarily to inspire our fasting, but a story to warn us about what our fasting might become.
Consider this: we stand at the beginning of the season of the Triodion, that sacred journey toward Pascha. Yet in the Scriptural lessons, the Church doesn’t begin with Moses fasting on Sinai, or Christ fasting in the wilderness. She begins with a man whose fasting condemned him.
Two Men, Two Prayers, Two Worlds
Our Lord presents us with two men ascending to the Temple. One is everything admirable: disciplined, religious, successful. The other is everything despicable: a tax collector, a collaborator, a public sinner.
The Pharisee stands – and notice how the Gospel says he “prayed thus with himself.” Not merely that he prayed about himself, but that his prayer never actually reached God. It circled back upon itself, a closed loop of self-congratulation. His thanksgiving is poisoned at its root, for he thanks God not for divine mercy, but for his own superiority.
“I thank Thee that I am not as other men…”
Do these words not echo through our own age with frightening clarity?
The Ancient Sin in Modern Dress
Today, in our Western societies, we witness this same spiritual disease, though it wears different clothing. The modern political movements often function as secular Pharisaism. They create elaborate hierarchies of virtue, careful catalogs of who is righteous and who is not, endless comparisons and measurements. They stand in the digital temple and thank the universe that they are not like other men.
The Subtlety of Spiritual Pride
But before we become too comfortable in this critique, let us remember why the Church gives us this Gospel today. She knows that we who are about to enter the Fast face exactly the same temptation.
How easy it becomes, as we progress through Lent, to notice who is fasting and who isn’t. How natural to feel a small surge of satisfaction when we maintain the fast while others falter. How tempting to let our prayer rules become résumés presented to God rather than conversations with Him.
The Pharisee’s sin wasn’t his fasting or his tithing. These were good things. His sin was that he used these good things as weapons of comparison, as building blocks for a tower of pride. He measured his righteousness not against God’s infinite holiness but against his neighbor’s visible failures.
The Revolutionary Humility of the Publican
And who was this neighbor? The publican, the tax collector, the public sinner, the man everyone knew was corrupt. He brings no achievements, offers no comparisons, claims no superiority. He cannot even lift his eyes to heaven. He strikes his breast in grief and repentance and speaks seven words that contain more theology than a library: “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
Notice: he doesn’t say “a sinner compared to the Pharisee” or “a sinner, but not as bad as some.” He stands before God in the radical solitude of personal responsibility. His prayer admits no comparison because he knows that before the face of God, all human comparisons become meaningless.
The Paradox of True Righteousness
Here is the scandal that should shake us: Christ tells us that this publican, this man who had built his wealth on exploitation, who had betrayed his own people in service to Roman money, went home justified. The religiously observant man went home condemned; the public sinner went home forgiven.
This is not because God prefers sin to virtue. It is because God prefers truth to performance. He prefers reality to appearance.
A Warning for Our Time and Our Fast
As we prepare to enter Great Lent, the Church warns us: our fasting can make us a Pharisee or a publican. Our prayers, our prostrations, our disciplines, all these holy things can become instruments of pride or pathways to humility.
If our fasting makes us critical of those who fast less, we are becoming Pharisees. If our prayer rules make us feel superior to those who pray differently, we are becoming Pharisees. If we use our traditional values to despise those caught in modern confusions, we are becoming Pharisees.
The spirit of Pharisaism, whether dressed in religious garments or secular ideologies, always manifests the same symptoms: comparison, contempt, and self-congratulation. It matters not whether one is signaling religious virtues or secular ones; the spiritual disease remains the same.
The Medicine of Mercy
What then is the cure? The publican shows us: radical, personal humility before God. Not humility as another performance, not humility as a strategy for being noticed, but humility as simple truth.
We are, each of us, that publican. Whatever our achievements in fasting, whatever our success in prayer, whatever our theological precision or liturgical correctness, before the face of God, we can only beat our breast and beg for mercy.
This is why the Church begins our Lenten journey here. She knows that without humility, our fasting becomes a weapon – not against sin within ourselves, but against our neighbor. Without repentance, our disciplines become decorations. Without the publican’s prayer in our hearts, we will end Lent more prideful than we began it.
The Challenge Before Us
My beloved, as we stand on the threshold of the Fast, let us make a choice. Will we use this Lent to build a case for our own righteousness? Will we carefully catalog our spiritual achievements? Will we thank God that we are not like those modernists, those liberals, those worldly Christians?
Or will we dare to pray the publican’s prayer, not as a formula, but as a fact? Will we stand before God with no comparisons, no excuses, no elaborate justifications? Will we let the Fast strip away not just food from our tables but pride from our hearts?
The publican went home justified not because he was better than the Pharisee, but because he knew he wasn’t. His humility was not a performance but a fact. His prayer was not a speech but a cry.
Conclusion: The True Fast
This, then, is how we must begin our Fast: not by comparing ourselves to the weak modern world around us, not by congratulating ourselves on maintaining ancient traditions, not by measuring our righteousness against the chaos of contemporary society, but by standing alone before God and speaking truth: “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
If we begin the Fast as publicans, we may, by God’s grace, end it as saints. But if we begin it as Pharisees, we will end it as something worse – Pharisees who have fasted.
May the God who justified the publican justify us also, not according to our achievements but according to His great mercy.
Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
1 February 2026