Jesus’ arrival in Jericho, which sits down the mountain from Jerusalem, marks the next to last, or penultimate (I can’t pass up the chance to use that word!) episode in Saint Luke’s travel narrative. It is, however, the Sunday Lectionary’s final installment of this this part of the Gospel.
As Jesus and his band of followers enter Jericho, a short, wealthy tax collector, in fact, the city’s chief tax collector, “was seeking to see who Jesus was.”1 No doubt Jesus’ fame preceded him. While Zacchaeus collected and oversaw the collection of taxes for the occupying Romans, he was a Jew, like Jesus.
Being Jewish and working for the Romans collecting taxes is precisely what made tax collectors so loathsome to their fellow Jews. The contempt in which tax collectors were held by their co-religionists was highlighted well in Jesus’ teaching in last Sunday’s Gospel.2
If you remember, it was the tax collector, who recognized his need for God’s mercy, who went home justified. This is in contrast to the scrupulous man who was so convinced of his own righteousness that he felt very comfortable judging and even condemning others.
My friends, it is important to always receive Jesus’ teaching in the first person. It’s easy to make someone else’s sins and shortcomings seem worse than my own. But holiness is not a competition. Neither can you establish your righteousness by pointing out someone else’s sins and failures. Such an attempt, at least for Christians, is self-defeating and more than a little ironic
Our first reading from the Book of Wisdom tells us of God’s love and mercy. God is, indeed, the “lover” of our souls.3 Because of this, God respects our consciences. In its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, the Second Vatican Council teaches: “Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a [person]. There [s/he] is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his[/her] depths.”4
The sanctuary of your soul is where you encounter God’s law of love. By its very nature, the law of love cannot be imposed. But once discerned, it “holds” you to obedience to the Great Commandments: loving God with your whole being and loving your neighbor as yourself. It is love that summons you to do “good and avoid evil… do this, shun that.”5 Without truth there can be no love. Without love there is no truth because, as Jesus reveals by his life, passion, death, and resurrection, “God is love.”6
What makes it impossible to judge another is the only soul you can access is your own. But you still need a key to enter the sanctuary of your own soul. What is the key, you might ask? God’s grace.
There are various means of receiving God’s grace. The sacraments, in this context, especially the sacrament of penance, or confession. Always, of course, the Eucharist. Another indispensable means of grace is daily prayer. Prayer should include meditation and contemplation. It is important in prayer, which is a conversation with God, to spend at least as much time listening as you do talking. Maybe think about prayer as your own sycamore tree, the place where you seek Jesus.
In addition to being kind and merciful, God is patient and gently persistent. This is shown in today’s Gospel when, upon seeing Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree, Jesus tells him to come down because that very day he “must” stay at Zacchaeus’ house. This prompted the predictable response, one Jesus was no doubt used to: “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.”7
Here’s a little secret: there are only houses of sinners for Jesus to enter. In the Book of Revelation, in a section addressed to the ancient Church in Sardis, the risen Lord says: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, [then] I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me.”8
This reference to dining evokes the Eucharist, the source and summit of Christian faith because it provides us with the interpretative key to the law and the prophets: the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Paschal Mystery.
What Jesus said to Zacchaeus, he says to you and to me: “today I must stay at your house.”9 He says this to you with the same urgency because he “has come to seek and to save what was lost."10 Like Zacchaeus, receive Jesus with joy, which means living according to the divine law of love.
1 Luke 19:3.↩
2 See Luke 18:9-14.↩
3 Wisdom 11:26.↩
4 Second Vatican Council. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World [Gaudium et spes], sec. 16.↩
5 Ibid.↩
6 1 John 4:8.16.↩
7 Luke 19:7.↩
8 Revelation 3:20.↩
9 Luke 19:5.↩
10 Luke 19:10.↩
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