SHORTHAND VERSION OF THE HOMILY OF MSGR. DIEGO MONROY PONCE; GENERAL AND EPISCOPAL VICAR OF GUADALUPE, RECTOR OF THE SANCTUARY
FOR THE XXX ORDINARY SUNDAY.

Sunday, October 28th of 2007

From the little house of the sweet Lady of heaven, our little girl, Holy Mary of Guadalupe, I greet all you, I invite you all to deepen the Word that the Lord gives us this Sunday: be blessed and praised the Lord, our God, who in His mercy has forgiven us because of the merits of His loved Son, and He has became us in His holy town.

My brothers and sisters, the word that Jesus gives us today, it is very clear and forceful, and it is not easy to assimilate. I want to say that we can conclude the parabola in a real and objective way, but not always we apply it with honesty, because immediately we put the virtue and the prestige as if they were the main message, it means, arrogance against humility, and the commonest is that we feel of the side of our town, never of the side of the arrogant ones.

It seems that Jesus in this parabola invites us to see a God who is merciful and that knows very well what is in each heart. My dear brothers, the Lord does not look at the appearances, we have to listen to the first reading that was taken from the book of the Ecclesiastes. The human being make mistakes when we make judgments about ourselves, with a greater facility we make mistakes when we make judgments about the others. Who really knows us, in a serious and deep way, it is God, for that reason He is who can judge us with absolute certainty, and I also will say: He does it with mercy.

The evangelist Saint Luke indicates that Jesus pronounces the parabola seeing that some people fight to be better than the others, despising Him. My brothers, the prayer is not the moment to do it, this moment is sacred, it is the space of the encounter with the true God before whom we should become aware of being exactly like we are, being humble, and the great mystic Saint Teresa said: the humility is walking in truth. The fact is that we can not deceive Him, to our God; we can deceive each other, like the Pharisee.

Through this parabola, this Sunday Jesus are telling us, the believers of the century XXI that the fact of practicing in all aspects the Christian faith, the catholic faith, is not a right to believe that we are better than the others; my brothers, we have to reflect seriously about the things that God wants to give us. We do not have the right to appropriate all the merits. Who are we?

In the previous Sundays we had the opportunity to meditate on the gratitude before the gratitude of the salvation. Today we see that the Pharisee of the parabola, according to our last reflections, started well, but he did not finish in the same way. He centered the prayer on his “ego”, as if he were the protagonist of his salvation, and it is counterproductive. It is important to be grateful before God, that it was the thing that we reflected the previous Sundays. It is important not to centre our attention on ourselves, in order to be able to see the favors that God has made us, and also to be grateful with Him; we do not have to be compared with anybody, because we will not know how to distinguish with the same clarity like God, between evil and good. The Genesis says it to us. We must not forget that in spite of our pretensions we make mistakes when we distinguish between the good and the evil, brothers, even more, we get confused not only when we try it, we get confused also when we do it.

This is our more drastic reality, and we can not accept it, for that reason we have inside of us this image of the Pharisee, and we are taken by our morality with a style like a Pharisee, we like to classify everything, specially to the people that are good and bad, and if we identify ourselves with the bad people, it is often in a wrong way, it means that we would not feel truly sinners, we would not feel truly in need to be forgiven, to receive merciful, for that reason it is very good for us to be humble, let us remember that humility is a virtue that is very difficult to live and  express, it is to walk on truth. 

My brothers, when we try to be humble, we are like the Pharisee of the parabola. This Sunday Jesus invites us to be humbler, starting by not classify ourselves, because we make a mistake, and not to put ourselves on the others.

It is good that the Pharisee was grateful, because it is an attitude very noble, but why was it at the cost of the dignity of the others? When do we have to humiliate the others in order to excel before God? in addition to being arrogant we make the mistake of treating God as if He were one of us to whom we can impress with lies. My brothers, I invite you to look at inside of our hearts, inside of ourselves. When we see ourselves, we must give thanks to God, because He treats us amiably, He forgives many big sins; He has a great mercy for us. Lord, if you examine our faults, who would resist?

My brothers and sisters that is our reality: we are sinners that have been forgiven before the Lord, the Holy Spirit, and the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit moves us to the conversion, He encourages us to the conversion, and He never will condemn us. The Holy Spirit will help us to recognize our own sins. We are sinners, and for that reason we are so far from being better than the others.

My dear brothers and sisters, I invite you to do like Mary, our little girl, this morenita of the Tepeyac that in her hymn of praise to God, She indicates as cause of her joy and of her deep gratitude, that He has looked at the humility of his servant. Let us learn from this sweet Lady, Holy Mary of Guadalupe to pray for the others with the Spirit of the ones who are blessed and not of who demand merits.

Amen.