What’s God’s Version of Your Story?
Br. Michael Thomas Cain, O.P., reflects on the Gospel for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
One of Aslan’s lines from C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy really struck me this past summer: “Child, I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”
It’s so easy, isn’t it, to focus on others, and in doing so to construct a sort of bloated autobiography that has little to with who we really are.
Today Jesus, like Aslan, invites you to face who you really are, and to read the version of you that He has written.
Notice in our parable today that the Pharisee describes himself negatively: “Thank you that I am not like rest of humanity” and also by performance: “I fast and I tithe.” In other words, he is describing himself not by who he is but by what he does and in comparison to others. This is always what happens when we try to define ourselves for ourselves, when we read and believe self-written versions of ourselves.
Contrast this with what the publican says: “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” He has heard God’s version of his story. Has faced it. And has invited God into it. He is reading the true version of himself.
Can we do the same? Can we face those dark places in our hearts, those places of resentment, of false pride, of judgement. Those desires and doubts that we are afraid to verbalize even to ourselves, much less show to our Lord.
We must, because God is the God of “I am” and not of the “Thank you God that I’m not”. He is the God of the real, and so the place of encounter with him, the place of his Mercy, is the real. He saves you not your idea of you. And thank goodness for that.
So, this Sunday let us ask for the grace of true repentance, to have true sorrow for our sins. for the grace to accept our true stories, no matter how dark they are, to invite Jesus into them. To go to confess our sins. For as the publican teaches us, mercy is only found in truth.
