“for today I must stay at your house.”

 
Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He goes out and seeks his lost sheep. Today’s Gospel this reality is put into practice. He seeks Zacchaeus out in order to save Him. Although the Gospel says that it was Zacchaeus who was “seeking to see who Jesus was” it was first Christ who sought after Zacchaeus before Zacchaeus sought Jesus. It is always Jesus who seeks man out first, and man seeking God is secondary – a response to God. All religions consist of man seeking God, Christianity consists of God seeking man (grace), man’s response to being sought out (faith), and the consequence of that relationship (works). Saint Paul explains this beautifully when he says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so not one may boast. For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.”[i]
 
Why does Jesus ask to go to Zacchaeus’ home? Jesus wanted to complete the conversion of Zacchaeus’ heart, a conversion that began when he first went to meet Jesus. Zacchaeus shows us that nothing should keep us from Jesus.
 
What limitations kept Zacchaeus from Jesus? How did he overcome these limitations? The Gospel says, “he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way.” Not only did Zacchaeus have physical limitations, but he also overcame the pressure from people. He cared more for the respect of God, than he did the respect of men. The people disrespected him and persecuted him. “When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying, ‘He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.’” Even though the people publically call Zacchaeus a sinner, he does not give up on his pursuit of Christ. He was willing to face persecution and ridicule to do it too. “Zacchaeus wants to see Jesus, and to do so he has to go out and mix with the crowd. Like the blind man of Jericho he has to shed any kind of human respect. In our own search for God we should not let false shame or fear of ridicule prevent us from using the resources available to us to meet our Lord.”[ii]
 
Why would Zacchaeus be fearful of coming out to meet Jesus? He was a tax collector. Tax collectors were despised by virtually everyone for their practices of collecting money. “The Roman Empire had no officials of its own for the collection of taxes: in each country it used local people for this purpose. These were free to engage agents. The global amount of tax for each region was specified by the Roman authorities; the tax collectors levied more than this amount, keeping the surplus for themselves: this led them to act rather arbitrarily, which was why the people hated them. In the case of the Jews, insult was added to injury by the fact that the chosen people were being exploited by Gentiles.”[iii]
 
What does Zacchaeus do when Jesus comes to his home? Zacchaeus tells Jesus he will give half of his goods and pay back what he has stolen from the people. Not because he was fear of punishment, but because he wanted to show God that he had a change of heart, and show God how much he truly loved Him. “Desire for true happiness frees man from his immoderate attachment to the goods of this world so that he can find his fulfillment in the vision and beatitude of God.”[iv]
 
Who does Jesus seek? Jesus seeks all the descendants of Abraham. Jesus calls us out personally as He did with Zacchaeus. “Jesus’s burning desire to seek out a sinner to save him fills us with hope of attaining eternal salvation. ‘He chooses a chief tax collector: who can despair when such a man obtains grace?’”[v]
 
Abraham is the Father of all, both Jew and Gentile are his decedents. What did the decedents of Abraham loose that needed to be restored? In order to answer this question we must go back to Adam and the Fall of Adam. The Fall of Adam is the “first sin of the father of the human race. As a result, he lost for himself and his posterity the supernatural gift of sanctifying grace and the preternatural gifts of integrity, bodily immortality, and impassibility.”[vi]
 
What are these losses of, and how does Christ restore them?
 
Sanctifying Grace – This is the divine life, the life of God infused in our soul. Not only does this grace make us holy, but it also gives us a participation in the divine life. Sanctifying Grace as does all grace flows from the side of Christ crucified on the cross for the salvation of man. Through His passion, death, and resurrection we are made holy and participate in the divine life. Jesus restores this grace through His passion, death, and resurrection. We can have sanctifying Grace in this life.
 
Integrity – Integrity is “wholeness of character without duplicity or internal conflict of interest.”[vii]Many times we know something is evil but we do it anyway. Many times also we know something is good but we fail to choose it. In both cases there is not a wholeness or integrity within us. We are divided in what we know and what we do. “You can never explain to someone who uses God’s gift to enslave that you have used God’s gift to be free.”[viii] We have all been given free will. Adam used free will to enslave him and humanity. Jesus, the New Adam, used free will to free humanity. Jesus restores are integrity by first giving us the example of using God’s gift of free will to be free. Jesus also restores are integrity by giving us not only the example but giving us the strength to use our free will to be free rather than to enslave. We can have integrity in this life. We struggle with segregation between our reason (what we think) and our will (what we do). We also struggle with a segregation between our thoughts and the thoughts of God and our will and the will of God. We long, through the grace of God, to think as God thinks and to live out our prayer, “Thy will be done.” We can live out the Our Father by integrating with the will of God, which is the purpose of prayer.
 
Immortality of Body – Immortality is “freedom from death or the capacity to decay and disintegrate”.[ix] Jesus restores this first by resurrecting from the dead. He then extends this resurrection of the dead to us. Death, the capacity to decay and disintegrate is a constant reminder to humanity of the fall. We can do nothing about these things no matter how hard we try. We can search for a cure or a fountain of youth, but the mortality of the body is a reality that humanity can do nothing about. We do however see miraculous exceptions. Mary was preserved body and soul, and assumed into heaven; she did not experience death, decay, or disintegration. Many Saints are incorruptible, which means they have experience death, but their body did not decay or disintegrate. Both the incorruptibles and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary are promises of the hope that it is Jesus alone that can restore the gift of immortality of Body. Although we do not experience immortality of the Body in this life, we will experience it, and this is why we pray in the Creed, “I believe in the resurrection of the Body”.
 
Impassibility – Impassibility is the “quality of the glorified human body in being free from every kind of physical evil, such as sorrow or sickness, injury or death.”[x] We suffer. Jesus did not come so that we will not suffer, but rather Jesus came to show us how to suffer and the meaning of suffering. We will suffer in this life; we will not suffer in the life to come. Jesus restores impassibility by giving us eternal life and beatitude, eternal happiness. Jesus also shows us how to suffer through the example of His life, most especially His death on the Cross. Jesus shows us that suffering is salvific, or in others words our suffering, united with His, brings about the salvation of our soul and the souls of others. Jesus shows us that suffering has a meaning, that no suffering is wasted.
 
What should we do? Zacchaeus knew that he could not restore all of these ailments. Humanity fails when they think that they can fix these things on their own. Zacchaeus knows that he needs Jesus; he knows he can live on his own. We should be fearless like Zacchaeus in our pursuit of Christ and the restoration He offers. “Convince yourself that there is no such thing as ridicule for whoever is doing what is best.”[xi]  “This tax collector, whom the Pharisees looked upon as a sinner who was irredeemably lost, was offered salvation and had accepted it by opening his home and his heart to this Savior. Christ does not cease making this same offer to each of us: ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock…if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me’ God, in his infinite mercy, is not content to convert men and to pardon them, but offers them his friendship and invites them to fellowship with him.”[xii]

When we encounter Christ, we must remember that Jesus does not just want to have a brief conversation with us. He wants to build a relationship with us. Jesus treated Zacchaeus as if they were old friends. Christ knows us better than we know ourselves. We should strive to get to know Him better to build on our relationship with Him. This is how friendships grow and deepen. We should ask ourselves daily what are we running to? If Jesus is seeking us out, what are we doing to help or hinder this?
 
Blessed Pope John Paul II in an address to the general audience brought forth these thought provoking questions (Activity – reflect and write down these answers. You may or may not want to share them depending on the group):
 
“Do I want ‘to see Christ’? Do I do everything ‘to see him’? This question, two thousand years later, is as relevant as it was then, when Jesus passed through the cities and villages of his land. It is a relevant question for each of us personally today: Do I want to? Do I really want to? Or do I perhaps rather avoid the encounter with him? Do I prefer not to see him and do I prefer him not to see me (at least in my way of thinking and feeling)? And if I already see him in some way, then do I prefer to see him from afar, not drawing too near, not venturing before his eyes so as not to perceive too much…so as not to have to accept the whole truth that is in him, that comes from him – from Christ?”[xiii]

[i] Ephesians 2:8-10
[ii] Navarre Bible, Luke, pg. 201
[iii] The Navarre Bible, note to Matt. 5:46
[iv] CCC 2548
[v] Navarre Bible, Luke, pg. 202
[vi] Hardon, Modern Catholic Dictionary, pg. 206
[vii] Hardon, Modern Catholic Dictionary, pg. 282
[viii] From the movie Basquiat (source St.Udio – monkrock.com0
[ix] Hardon, Modern Catholic Dictionary, pg. 268
[x] Hardon, Modern Catholic Dictionary, pg. 269
[xi] J. Escriva, The Way, 392
[xii] Gabriel, Divine Intimacy IV pg. 180
[xiii] John Paul II, Address, 2 November 1980