BEGGARS OF FAITH

The Gospel today is a story of two “pray-ees”: a Pharisee and a tax collector. At first glance, it seems clear who the protagonist and the antagonist are—but looking carefully, we are invited to ask this question: “Who am I really before God?” The Pharisee stands upright, praying not so much to God as about himself. His prayer is a list of spiritual accomplishments: fasting twice a week, giving tithes, and living a moral life. He was doing everything right—on the surface. But Jesus tells us he went home unjustified. Why? Because he turned prayer into a performance, not an encounter. Instead of opening his heart to God, he made himself the center. He was not praying to seek mercy—he was praying to avoid needing it.

On the other hand, the tax collector stands at a distance. No impressive words. No spiritual resumé. Just one simple line: “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And Jesus tells us: he, not the Pharisee, went home justified. This parable is not just about how we pray—it’s about who we are when we pray. And who we are, in the deepest sense, are beggars of grace. Prayer is not our way of showing off to God. It is our act of surrender—of placing everything, our gifts, our wounds, our sins, our hopes—into the hands of the One who sees and loves all.

A few weeks before my priestly ordination, I visited a grieving family in Payatas. Their father had died of cancer, diagnosed far too late because they simply couldn’t pay for regular checkups. They couldn’t even afford a proper Church funeral. And yet, in their pain, they reached out—not for help, but for presence. Nanay Anna, one of our chapel volunteers, told me that they were asking if someone from the Church could come, even just for a prayer.

Arriving at their humble home, I noticed something deeply moving: a pair of sandals outside the door. In our culture, we remove our sandals when we enter someone’s home as a sign of respect. But that day, it reminded me of Moses removing his sandals before the burning bush, having found himself on holy ground. That family, in their grief, had created a sacred space—emerging not out of grandeur, but out of humility. Like the tax collector, they were not performing their pain. They were simply present in it, and they were inviting God into it.

As I knelt to pray with them, I felt the weight of their suffering, but also the quiet strength of their faith. And I thought: this is what prayer looks like—a plea, a wound, a whisper for mercy. I was drawn to ask: are we more like the Pharisee—measuring ourselves by what we do, what we’ve accomplished, how “holy” we seem? Or are we like the tax collector—honest, broken, and open to grace?

Humility, after all, is not about self-hate. It is about self-truth: the deep awareness that everything we have is grace. That nothing is ours to boast about. That we are never far from needing mercy. It is in that very cry that we are found. It is in that cry that we are healed. It is in that cry that we are brought home: “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”