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Gospel Reflection for Saturday, March 29, 2025
Returning Home Justified
Today’s readings give us two promises: healing and justification. But there are also demands and challenges. It’s about shedding the cloak of piety that only hides pride and self-exaltation and going deep, to the heart. Superficial piety is like a morning cloud that passes. It’s useless. The deep piety of the heart receives from God the healing of wounds. He will bandage them; He will heal them. On this Lenten journey, this announcement of healing and bandaging of wounds already points to Good Friday: His wounds have healed us. But we never heal ourselves. Our task is simply to go deep and recognize the truth.
“I do not ask for sacrifice, but for love,” says the Lord. Love asks, from the depths, for mercy and healing. Superficial, appearance-based sacrifice seeks external recognition and personal satisfaction. It tries to buy God’s favor. And God’s favor cannot be bought if there isn’t something deeper and truer. That kind of sacrifice goes nowhere. But what is deep, the truth of the heart, like that of the tax collector who sits at the back of the Temple, is what catches God’s attention and receives justification. Scripture says it over and over: a contrite and humbled heart You do not despise, says Psalm 51. Because what we can do on our own, without the powerful hand of God, achieves nothing. It is the recognition of God’s grace and mercy that requires and calls for the sacrifice of the heart. It’s not that God doesn’t want sacrifices; it’s that He wants the one that springs from the heart, which is truth and love for God, not for oneself.
The tax collector had sinned, certainly. The Pharisee had fulfilled all the laws, but his heart was in himself and not in God. The difference was, nothing more and nothing less, than the truth of the heart. Goodness cannot reside in oneself but in the grace and favor of God. The tax collector recognizes this: “I am a sinner.” The Pharisee claims to be good. But only God is good. The Pharisee cannot return home healed, with the promise of Hosea fulfilled, because his piety is like morning mist. The tax collector returns home justified, with the light of truth, the plea for grace from the depths of his heart; his wound will be bandaged.