Realizing Your Problems

I admit, it took awhile to settle into any understanding of this gospel today.  I'm in a very joyful place still, while also being entirely exhausted.

And I kept snagging at, "If you know you're a sinner, shouldn't you be doing something ABOUT it?  Shouldn't you be at least asking for the strength and guidance to change your ways?"

In the end, I think that parts probably implied.

But is thanking God really so bad?  Because I've been doing an awful lot of that.  Not as pretentiously as the man in the story, but isn't that all a manner of degree?

And then I begin to wonder: if I'm always on about how prayer and Mass are about US, if they are for OUR benefit rather than God's...should prayer be more about what we are doing wrong than saying thank you?  Thanks and praise are what gods who need US demand.  Self-reflection and realization of faults, that's what God asks for.

Not a laundry list of blessings either desired or fulfilled.  Painful, studious reflection on how we can be better people.

Maybe that's the real message of this parable -- not speaking against hypocrisy but simply showing us how to pray.