When am I like this Pharisee? When am I preoccupied with my personal virtue, convinced of my own righteousness, judging everyone else who falls short of my standards? Do I recognize how much pride has inflated my ego, hiding those shadow parts of myself that quietly eat away at my soul because I am afraid to be marked as a sinner?

When am I like this tax collector? When do I beat my breast and pray, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner”? Do I recognize, as the writer Francis Spufford says in his book, Unapologetic, my membership in the “international league of the guilty,” that I, too, share in this “family resemblance”?

The Pharisee focuses on how he is not like the tax collector. He attempts to justify himself before God by exalting himself. Instead, God demonstrates true justification by humbling himself in Jesus, becoming like us in every way but sin.

We only really get Christianity when we have experienced ourselves at rock bottom, in the place of the tax collector. When I know myself to be a sinner, I discover my profound need for God’s mercy. So often, we think of religious practice as doing the right thing when it is really about humbling oneself before God. To be religious is to bind oneself to God, “to seek God again, whom we had lost by our neglect,” as St. Augustine wrote. Once I have truly experienced God’s mercy, I can extend forgiveness to others, recognizing our likeness, renewed in Christ through the gift of the Spirit.