Tax collectors are civil servants now, prostitutes are often victims more than wrongdoers; so maybe we could imagine Christ saying that the drug dealers, greedy bankers, or whatever group we feel morally superior to in our world today, make their way into the kingdom before us. The tax collectors and prostitutes listened to John the Baptist because they were aware that their professions were despised. They knew what they were. For the chief priests and elders, their position in society made them blind to themselves. They saw other people, like tax collectors and prostitutes, not as real persons, but as representatives of types of people – sinners. What attracted the social outcasts to St. John the Baptist was not so much what he said as the fact that someone was speaking to them at all. So they had at least the possibility to repent. The people who will not repent are those who do not even consider the possibility of repentance. Perhaps the shock of the crucifixion may have woken some priests up to their real need for repentance.
Prayer is preparation and prayer is repentance. Sooner or later we will be challenged by life. We can never say that we have fought our final battle, so we pray before and after each trial. The first son is not described as praying but he is very like the prodigal son in St. Luke who is said to have “entered into himself,” the phrase translated as “he came to his senses.” In prayer we enter into ourselves and discover that we are not what we think we are. We are told to pray constantly not to be put to the test, but we are also to pray after we have failed the test. The prayer of the apostles was the prayer of those who have failed their test. Yet they still had many trials, even after the resurrection.