You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Sprods. Today is Thursday, April 4th. It is also the feast day of St. Isidore.

This week on the Catholic Sprouts podcast, we are continuing to journey with Christ through Lent.

We are talking particularly about the parables he told and used to teach while he was here on earth.

We've already discussed that a parable is a Jewish style of storytelling.

It uses elements from ordinary life, but oftentimes has something strange in there

that should make us question and should lead us into a deeper understanding of what

Jesus is talking about, particularly an understanding about God the Father and how we are called

to follow. We have already talked about the parables of the lost sheep, the unmerciful servant,

and yesterday we talked about the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Today, we are going to be talking about the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.

This parable appears in a couple of different gospels, but we are reading the version from the

Gospel of Matthew. Jesus then 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.

Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity, greedy, dishonest, adulterist,

or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I pay ties 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 everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,

and the one who humbles himself will be exalted. The gospel of the Lord. Now this is a short

little parable, and perhaps we're used to Jesus giving harsh critiques to the Pharisees, but the people at the time were not so

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