How often we catch ourselves thinking, when something happens that we, to put it mildly, do not like: 'Why is this happening to me?' Why did the Lord arrange everything this way, and if He did not arrange it, why did He allow it to happen? What did I do that now this has happened? And so on... But if we are to seek an answer to such a question, it should be formulated differently - beginning with the question 'For what purpose?' And then the answer is not far away: 'We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose' (Rom 8:28).

In addition, the apostle Paul directly warns Timothy in today's passage: 'All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted' (2 Tim 3:12). So it would seem that everything is sealed... But people believe and strive toward Christ not in order to be persecuted. People seek God and find communion with Him, and this becomes far more important than any surrounding problems. Persecutions, in Paul's words, are only a consequence of the desire for a godly life in Jesus. For as long as the whole world has not received the message about our Lord and the Lord Himself, there will remain people who do not acknowledge Him. And accordingly, they will not acknowledge those who follow Him.

What follows? What is alien is rejected, especially what 'condemns' us. But this 'condemnation' is of a different kind from the one we are used to. 'And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil; for everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, so that his deeds may not be exposed' (John 3:19-20).

Still, what exactly is the self-exaltation Jesus is talking about with regard to the Pharisee? Is it bad to keep the commandments and be a religious person? In itself, obviously not, since even the Savior does not condemn the Pharisee; He only says that the tax collector, who has nothing to say to God except words of repentance, is more righteous before Him than the Pharisee, who is ready to list his religious successes and achievements. But the problem, as one can see, is not religiosity as such, and not even that it allows one to look down on a sinner, but that it, paradoxical as it may sound, can sometimes distract a person from God.

In fact, the very fact that the Pharisee, standing in the Temple before God, thinks and speaks about himself, about the tax collector standing nearby, about his religiosity - in short, about anything at all except God - can be considered a spiritual failure, at least in that particular situation. Of course, one failure does not cancel out the Pharisee's achievements, but on that specific day he spent his time in the Temple without any spiritual benefit. And paradoxically, it was his own religiosity that brought him to this result.

But the tax collector did not spend his time in the Temple without spiritual benefit: he did not evaluate either himself or others. He simply communed with God. That turned out to be enough, because God does not need us to evaluate anyone at all. He Himself knows the worth of each of us. We need only look at Him. And then there will be no one before whom we can "exalt ourselves."

The tax collector and the Pharisee are two sides of a person that coexist peacefully within us. At the same time, the Pharisee living in us can be a very worthy person: fasting, prayer, a tithe of everything one has. This is already not so little.

Even the Lord says that "this man went down to his house justified rather than the other." That is, the Pharisee received his justification, but not to the same extent as the tax collector. This happened because the Pharisee demanded fair treatment for himself, while the tax collector hoped for mercy.

In the end, we too need not justice, whose triumph the Pharisee within us wants so often; we need mercy, for which the tax collector quietly asks. For according to justice we are entitled to very little, if not to nothing at all, while according to mercy the Kingdom has been promised to us.