THAT’S what we can get from the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. (cfr. Lk 18,9-14) Especially before God, we never have any reason to brag about our own righteousness. We may be doing a lot of good, but let’s not spoil them and render them useless by crowing about them.
We need to be humble in our prayer. That is what would effectively connect us with God, please him and “nudge” him to give us more favors. A humble prayer “pierces the clouds” and reaches the ears of God.
Humility in our prayer, as shown in that parable, would win us our own justification before God. It enables us to recognize our constant need for God’s mercy. It puts us in the state of always seeking and doing God’s will, rather than seeking our own personal recognition.
Yes, with God, we have no reason at all to show off whatever good we have done, for everything good comes from him. He knows them already, and for sure is happy with that fact. What we have to do instead is to feel the great need we have of him since we cannot deny that despite all the good things we have done, we continue to have defects and weaknesses, if not all kinds of sin themselves.
Let’s remember what St. James in his Letter said in this regard: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” (4,6) With the current tendency in our culture to fall into virtue signaling or moral posturing, we really need to do some extra effort to remain humble and simple, always feeling the need for God, for forgiveness and for more grace.
One source defines virtue signaling as “the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue.”
Another source puts it as “a pejorative neologism for the conspicuous and disingenuous expression of moral values with the intent to enhance one’s own image.” Still another source describes it as taking “a conspicuous but essentially useless action ostensibly to support a good cause but actually to show off how much more moral one is than everybody else.”
This is not to develop in us a gloomy and negative self-esteem. Rather the contrary. It is to be realistic about ourselves that would enable us to know more objectively both the good and bad aspects of our life. If we have a realistic and healthy self-esteem, we would know how to approach God properly in prayer, since we would be both thankful to him for the good things we have, and begging for mercy for the bad things.
The acknowledgement of the negative things in our life before God does not undercut the value of the good things we have done. Such acknowledgement would in fact reinforce the merits of those good things. Thus, it is always worthwhile to remain humble in our prayer in the way the publican prayed.
We need to continually work on the proper dispositions for our prayer which should be marked by humility, trust in God’s goodness and willingness to listen, a sincerity that really comes from the heart, and perseverance.
That’s because we should always to contend with our human weaknesses, the hostile environment that we always have in the world, not to mention the powerful spiritual enemies that are ranged against us.
