By Archpriest Dr Georgios Lekkas
Our Lord directed his harshest words against the Pharisees, who, though they observed the Law, were far from God in their hearts.
A Pharisee is someone who has such a high opinion of himself that he fails to recognise how greatly he is in need of God. The Pharisee believes he has faith in God, but the reality is that he acknowledges no god outside himself. He follows God's Law not in order to please God, but only to appease his own conscience. And because he is so satisfied with himself, his heart is as closed to God as it is to his neighbour.
After the departure from Paradise, God gave humanity a second chance to return to Him. In Paradise, man was free to grow spiritually and increase eternally through God's grace. However, because man chose independence from God, his Creator permitted him to live autonomously, separate from Him, though only for a limited period. Clearly, the Lord’s purpose was to give us the opportunity to return to Him of our own free will, like the Prodigal Son, once the reserves of energy we have for an autonomous life have been exhausted.
The Pharisee ignores the fact that this ontological autonomy is given to us by God, so that we can freely make the choice to return to Him—otherwise, we would be doomed to suffer eternally apart from Him. The Pharisee does not repent, for he believes he is entitled to salvation - simply because he is the rightful heir of the Sacred Tradition. The Pharisee is saved only in his imagination. The pride he takes in being a rightful heir hardens his heart so much that he is both incapable of forming a relationship with the Living and Humble God of the Sacred Tradition he claims to serve, and also becomes a harsh judge of his brothers and sisters.
Having a heart that is hardened against our brothers and sisters prevents us from being filled with divine mercy. As a result our debt remains unredeemed, even though God has forgiven us. It is not possible to have a heart which is both hard and soft at the same time—hard toward one’s brother, refusing to forgive him, and soft toward God, able to receive His forgiveness.
The harsh words Christ addresses to the Pharisees of every age are not intended to condemn them, but rather to open their eyes. We usually think that the Lord taught through His parables and then healed those in need. In reality, the Lord first offered spiritual healing through His word and then physical healing, when He deemed it beneficial. The Lord’s words, whether delivered in parables or not, are deeply therapeutic, for they aim primarily at our spiritual healing, seeking to win us for eternity.
The Lord's parables typically include both positive and negative protagonists, so that we will first despise the evil acts of the negative figures and, conversely, desire the good deeds of the positive ones. On a deeper level, however, the Lord’s parables call us to recognise in ourselves the wrongs of the negative protagonists, so that we may in time be found worthy of the virtues of the positive ones. We tend to place ourselves on the side of the Publican and condemn the Pharisees, thereby only repeating the Pharisee's error. Yet, because we all are in need of the justification granted to the Publican, we should entreat the Lord with tears to grant us deep repentance for anything in us that makes us resemble the Pharisee. [8.2.25]
Archpriest Dr Georgios Lekkas is a priest of the Holy Orthodox Metropolis of Belgium.
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