The Lord hears the cry of the poor. The readings for today (30 ^th Sunday) pick up from where we left last Sunday: a celebration of God’s accessibility to his creatures. God’s closeness to those who call upon the Lord is a quality that “forces” the Psalmist to abide in singing the Lord’s praises (today’s Responsorial Psalm). From both his experience and that of his community, the Psalmist rejoices in the knowledge that the Lord God has never turned a deaf ear to those who cry out to the Lord in their time of need. And although it can appear as if the Lord is biased toward the poor (Response to the Psalm, vs. 7a), Sirach reminds us in the First Reading that the Lord is impartial and has no favorites. The Lord God is both a Creator and a Father who hearkens to the cries of all creatures. But Sirach also admits that the Lord is “duly biased” towards the weak and the lowly (widows, orphans, the oppressed, the poor). Whereas he attributes this to the Lord’s concern with establishing, maintaining, and restoring right relationships (the Lord is God of justice), it is also the case that it is the lowly and humble of heart who “know” how to cry out to the Lord: “the prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds and does not rest till it reaches its goal…” In other words, it is the weak and lowly who know how to pray.  
How do we pray and what should be the content of our prayer? This seems to be the question, I believe, that Jesus is attempting to answer in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector about which we hear in the Gospel Reading. The two individuals could not have been further apart from each other. Although the two individuals would ordinarily avoid keeping the company of each other at all cost, they were brought together by the need to say a prayer. And as fate would have it, they ended up being within each other’s earshot as they said their respective prayers. It was a development that perhaps played a role in the content of the prayers that the two men said. The Pharisee offered a prayer of thanksgiving in recognition of the many ‘good things’ that God had afforded him in life. He even went as far as acknowledging the presence of the tax collector in his prayers as he thanked the Lord for sparing him the fate of the tax collector and others like him (those who were considered sinners because of their place in life or their professions). The tax collector, assuming he had rehearsed the prayer he was going to say, forgot the words when he heard the Pharisee referencing him in his prayer. All that he ended up doing was to bow his head in shame, beat his breast in acknowledgment of his unworthiness, and in humility implored the Lord’s mercy. At the end of their prayers, Jesus tells us, it was the tax collector who went home justified. In other words, it is the tax collector’s prayer that was “heard” by God. Does this mean or imply that prayer should only be about recognizing one’s sinfulness? Shouldn’t prayer also be about recognizing, in gratitude, God’s blessings as the Pharisee did?   
Prayer is all about speaking with, and listening to God. Prayer is the only means of living out our relationship with God. It is the only means through which we can remain in relationship with God. Since remaining in relationship with God is our final end, prayer should inform every single aspect of our lives. We should pray during good times (thanksgiving) and in bad times (supplication). Nonetheless, whether as a thanksgiving or as a supplication, prayer should always help us remain focused on our relationship with God as well as enhancing it (the relationship). Inasmuch as our prayer should be a thanksgiving, it should not be turned into an occasion for showing off, as the Pharisee apparently did. This is probably why, according to Jesus, his prayer did not attain its goal of unifying him with God. The Pharisee forgot that prayer should be an occasion for humbling oneself before God, that even as one enumerates his/her blessings before the Lord, the focus should always be on God’s generosity and not on one’s worthiness (for doing so would lead to the conclusion that those who have not been blessed such as we have been are less worthy of God). In contrast to the Pharisee, the tax collector recognized his unworthiness to even stand before God in prayer. In his prayer of supplication, he asked God in his mercy not to let his sins place him outside a relationship with God. God is our creator, provider and sustainer, he without whom we cannot be. And even though we are mere creatures, God invites us into an intimate relationship with him. It is an invitation that exalts us for thus close to God, we are made into little ‘gods’ (cf. Psalm 82:6; John 10:34). Being able to abide in a relationship with God to the extent of calling on him despite our unworthiness is something that should humble us and fill us with gratitude. And it is this that should form the basis of our prayer.