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Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Agnes Nelson SNDdeN

October 26, 2025

Luke 18: 9-14

In his Gospel St Luke has many stories that relate to prayer and in the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican there is a lot to absorb. Jesus seems to address those who pride themselves on being virtuous and despise others. The Tax Collector on the other hand is quite different. He comes to prayer

  • aware of his need
  • with few words
  • quite still in God’s presence
  • with body language that speaks of self-knowledge
  • aware of God’s graciousness

This “just being there” before God reminds me of one of Thomas Merton’s stories about prayer. He said, “How does an apple ripen? It just sits in the sun and it cannot ripen in one night by tightening all its muscles, squinting its eyes and tightening its jaws in order to find itself quite miraculously large. It takes time. We too must wait for God, we must be awake; we must trust God’s hidden action within us.”

There is another lesson from this tax collector. He went up to the Temple. We too must go to prayer. Until we go there is no prayer. And when we go we confront our poverty and our helplessness. We find we can offer only the widow’s mite which is small but great in God’s eyes for it is all we have.

Let us pray today with our tax collector

Our siient prayer is poor Yet its poverty is its wealth

if we offer our poverty to God. Our silent prayer is emptyYet its emptiness makes it full

if we open ourselves to God who, upon the Cross

showed us the fullness of emptiness and upon our emptiness all things depend.  (Thomas Merton)

 

Luke 18: 9-14

Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else. “Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity — greedy, dishonest, adulterous — or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.’ But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’ I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The Gospel of the Lord

 

Meet Sister Agnes Nelson, SNDdeN

Sister Agnes Nelson entered the Congregation in 1965. She taught in Primary and Secondary Schools and worked for four years in a Family Learning Unit. Then from 1983-84 she studied the SPRED Method – a catechetical programme for children and adults with developmental disabilities in Chicago. Agnes returned to Scotland and has been involved in SPRED ever since. The work is amazingly life-giving despite the uphill struggle to support these people, and their families, to take their rightful place in the parish community. Training the catechists, who are all volunteers, is a delight. Scotland has proved to be a rich soil for this ministry as SPRED is now established in five dioceses and at present there is outreach to England and Malta. Malta SPRED has now been established from Glasgow.