Saturday of the Third Week of Lent – March 13, 2021

For every day during Lent, Bishop Edward Malesic writes a scripture reflection for the faithful. Follow the bishop on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Click HERE for the readings.

Righteousness is the quality of having a right relationship with God. Righteousness, which is related to justification, is having everything in order, like the justified margins of a paragraph.

To be self-righteous is to believe that I have done enough to make everything good with God, with an emphasis on “I”. Jesus cannot touch the hearts of the self-righteous because they do not believe that anything of theirs is out of order, they have done everything right (“self-righteous”).

Jesus came to call sinners. Those who have ragged edges and are in need of the justification Christ’s power to forgive.

Perhaps, second only to the Lord’s Prayer, is the prayer that Jesus gives to us in today’s Gospel: “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

This is the prayer that allowed the tax collector to go home justified. God justifies us. We can’t.