Scott Hahn with David Scott
Our Lord is a lover of souls, the Liturgy shows us today. As we sing in today’s Psalm, He is slow to anger and compassionate towards all that He has made.
In His mercy, our First Reading tells us, He overlooks our sins and ignorance, giving us space that we might repent and not perish in our sinfulness (see Wisdom 12:10; 2 Peter 3:9).
In Jesus, He has become the Savior of His children, coming himself to save the lost (see Isaiah 63:8-9;Ezekiel 34:16).
In the figure of Zacchaeus in today’s Gospel, we have a portrait of a lost soul. He is a tax collector, by profession a “sinner” excluded from Israel’s religious life. Not only that, he is a “chief tax collector.” Worse still, he is a rich man who has apparently gained his living by fraud.
But Zacchaeus’ faith brings salvation to his house. He expresses his faith in his fervent desire to “see” Jesus, even humbling himself to climb a tree just to watch Him pass by. While those of loftier religious stature react to Jesus with grumbling, Zacchaeus receives Him with joy.
Zacchaeus is not like the other rich men Jesus meets or tells stories about (see Luke 12:16-21; 16:19-31; 18:18-25). He repents, vowing to pay restitution to those he has cheated and to give half of his money to the poor.
By his humility he is exalted, made worthy to welcome the Lord into his house. By his faith, he is justified, made a descendant of Abraham (see Romans 4:16-17).
As He did last week, Jesus is again using a tax collector to show us the faith and humility we need to obtain salvation.
We are also called to seek Jesus daily with repentant hearts. And we should make our own Paul’s prayer in today’s Epistle: that God might make us worthy of His calling, that by our lives we might give glory to the name of Jesus.
Philoxenes of Mabbug (d .523), Bishop in Syria
Homily 4:78-80
Our Lord called Zacchaeus out of the sycamore into which he had climbed and, at once, Zacchaeus made haste to come down and welcome him into his house. This is because, even before he had been called, he had hoped to see him and become his disciple. It is something worth admiring that he believed in him before Our Lord had ever spoken to him and before he had seen him with his bodily eyes but merely on the word of others. The faith within him had been kept safe within his ordinary life and soundness of mind. And this faith was made known when he believed in Our Lord at the very moment of learning of his coming. The simplicity of his faith was apparent when he promised to give the half of his goods to the poor and to pay back fourfold whatever he had unjustly taken.
Indeed, if Zacchaeus’ mind had not been filled at that moment with the simplicity that belongs to faith, he could not have made that promise to Jesus and could not have spent and handed over in so little time what he had acquired in so many years of work. Simplicity handed out on all sides what cunning had gathered; purity of soul scattered abroad what duplicity had acquired; and faith renounced what injustice had obtained and possessed and it declared that these things were not its own.
For faith, God is its only good and it refuses to possess any other good together with him. All possessions are of little importance, where it is concerned, besides that one, lasting good which is God. We have taken faith to ourselves so as to find God and possess nothing but Him and so that we might see that anything outside of Him is of no value.
Pope Benedict XVI
from Angelus Address, November 4, 2007
Today, the liturgy presents for our meditation the well-known Gospel episode of Jesus’ meeting with Zacchaeus in the city of Jericho.
Who was Zacchaeus? A rich man who was a “publican” by profession, that is, a tax collector for the Roman authorities, hence, viewed as a public sinner. Having heard that Jesus would be passing through Jericho, the man was consumed by a great desire to see him, and because he was small of stature, he climbed up into a tree. Jesus stopped exactly under that tree and addressed him by name: “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down; for I must stay at your house today” (Lk 19: 5).
What a message this simple sentence contains!
“Zacchaeus”: Jesus called by name a man despised by all. “Today”: yes, this very moment was the moment of his salvation. “I must stay”: why “I must”? Because the Father, rich in mercy, wants Jesus “to seek and to save the lost” (Lk 19: 10). The grace of that unexpected meeting was such that it completely changed Zacchaeus’ life: “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold” (Lk 19: 8).
Once again, the Gospel tells us that love, born in God’s heart and working through man’s heart, is the power that renews the world.
Pope Benedict XVI
from Angelus Address, October 31, 2010
The Evangelist St Luke pays special attention to the theme of Jesus’ mercy. In fact, in his narration we find some episodes that highlight the merciful love of God and of Christ, who said that he had come to call, not the just, but sinners (cf. Lk 5:32). Among Luke’s typical accounts there is that of the conversion of Zacchaeus, which is read in this Sunday’s Liturgy.
Zacchaeus is a publican, indeed, he is the head of the publicans of Jericho, an important city on the River Jordan. The publicans were the tax collectors who collected the tribute that the Jews had to pay to the Roman Emperor, and already for this reason they were considered public sinners. What is more, they often took advantage of their position to extort money from the people. Because of this Zacchaeus was very rich but despised by his fellow citizens.
So when Jesus was passing through Jericho and stopped at the house of Zacchaeus, he caused a general scandal. The Lord, however, knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted, so to speak, to gamble, and he won the bet: Zacchaeus, deeply moved by Jesus’ visit, decided to change his life, and promised to restore four times what he had stolen. “Today salvation has come to this house”, Jesus says, and concludes: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost”.
God excludes no one, neither the poor nor the rich. God does not let himself be conditioned by our human prejudices, but sees in everyone a soul to save and is especially attracted to those who are judged as lost and who think themselves so.
Jesus Christ, the Incarnation of God, has demonstrated this immense mercy, which takes nothing away from the gravity of sin, but aims always at saving the sinner, at offering him the possibility of redemption, of starting again from the beginning, of converting. In another passage of the Gospel Jesus states that it is very difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (cf. Mt 19:23).
In the case of Zacchaeus we see that precisely what seems impossible actually happens: “He”, St Jerome comments, “gave away his wealth and immediately replaced it with the wealth of the Kingdom of Heaven” (Homily on Psalm 83:3). And St Maximus of Turin adds: “Riches, for the foolish, feed dishonesty, but for the wise they are a help to virtue; for the latter they offer a chance of salvation, for the former they procure a stumbling block and perdition” (Sermons, 95).
Dear Friends, Zacchaeus welcomed Jesus and he converted because Jesus first welcomed him! He did not condemn him but he met his desire for salvation. Let us pray to the Virgin Mary, perfect model of communion with Jesus, to be renewed by his love, so that we too may experience the joy of being visited by the Son of God, of being renewed by his love and of transmitting his mercy to others.
