Zacchaeus - Sinner and Saint

"Zacchaeus, come down immediately.”
Zacchaeus – Sinner and Saint
October 31, 2010, 31th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Wisdom 11:22-12:2 II Thessalonians 1:11-2:2 Luke 19:1-10

Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you, Lord.

At that time, Jesus came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was the chief tax-collector in Jericho and a very wealthy man, was trying to get a glimpse of Jesus, but he couldn’t because of the crowds, for he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus passing by. Drawing near, Jesus called up to him, saying, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I am going to stay at your house today.” He came down quickly and received Jesus into his house with great joy. When the crowds saw this, they were displeased and began to complain, saying, “This man Jesus hobnobs with sinners.”

Meanwhile, Zacchaeus defending himself said to Jesus, “Lord, I promise to give half my property to the poor, and to pay back four times over anyone whom I have overcharged.” Jesus said to him, “I tell you, today salvation has come to this house, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. I, the Son of Man, have come to search for and save such souls as his."

The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

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Introduction
The Eve of All Saints

Today October 31 is the last day of October, and tomorrow November 1 is the feast of All Saints. Tonight is the eve of All Saints – the eve of all the `hallowed ones’ -- thus Hallow-een. All Saints is a harvest feast: we’ve gathered all the apples and pumpkins into bins against the long winter night; now we gather in all the saints. Throughout the year we celebrate a list of Catholic saints, like Francis of Assisi and Mother Theresa of Calcutta. On all Saints we celebrate a `catholic[1] list of saints.’ On All Saints we “rejoice in all the holy men and women of every time and place.[2]” That’s “a great multitude which no one can count.” (Rev 7:9) That’s a multitude which not even the Church can adequately count with her official list of canonized saints, for the best of the saints have not and never will be canonized. Sooner or later All Saints was a feast-day waiting to be instituted.[3] It’s a feast-day particularly dear to us who have deceased loved ones, whom the Church will never canonize but who, we know, are saints.

Zacchaeus – Jericho’s chief tax-collector & sinner

Last Sunday’s gospel related Jesus’ parable about a proud Pharisee and a humble tax-collector who went up to the Temple to pray. (Lk 18:9-14) This Sunday’s gospel is not a parable but an account of a real experience which Jesus had with a tax-collector. His name was Zacchaeus. He was not just a tax-collector; he was the chief tax-collector in Jericho, and therefore `chief sinner’ in Jericho. Short in stature he climbed a sycamore tree to get a glimpse of Jesus passing by. Jesus called him to come down, and informed him that He was going to be guest at his house. This angered some in the crowd who complained, “Look at this fellow Jesus! He hobnobs with sinners!” (Lk 19:7)

Zacchaeus -- a rich man perched in a tree

By his own admission Zacchaeus was a sinner. He overcharged some of his fellow-Jews, and the money went straight into his pocket. But there was also a good side to Zacchaeus. As Jesus was passing through Jericho, a very enthusiastic crowd ran after Him, and Zacchaeus standing in their midst was caught up in the enthusiasm. He too wanted very much to get a glimpse of this famous preacher. He wondered whether He was really the one whom the prophet Isaiah was referring to when he cried out, “Oh you heavens, rain down the just one!” (Is 45:8) But Zacchaeus was short of stature. Wealthy man and important officer of the Roman Empire though he was, he put aside all decorum and dignity, and climbed the sycamore tree to get a good view of Jesus passing. It’s a funny picture to imagine: a rich man perched in a tree to see an itinerant preacher passing by.

Zacchaeus – saint in the Eastern Church

When Jesus saw Zacchaeus in the tree, He called up to the rich but despised tax-collector, and informed him that He was inviting Himself to be a guest in his house. When the crowds heard about that, they grumbled that Jesus was going to hobnob with a sinner. Meanwhile, Zacchaeus has promised Jesus to reform his life by giving half his property to the poor and by making fourfold restitution to anyone he had cheated. Zacchaeus’ goodwill and good resolve made Jesus exclaim, “I tell you, today salvation has come to this house, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham.” Jesus called Zacchaeus "a true son of Abraham,” and as a true son he could look forward to be at Abraham's side in the banquet of eternal life.

Zacchaeus is there now at Abraham’s side. Tradition tells us that after having accompanied St. Peter on his travels, he became the Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine where he died in peace. The Eastern Church has declared him a saint, and celebrates his feast-day on April 20. In addition to that, it celebrates a `Zacchaeus Sunday.’ In the Eastern Church Lent is preceded with a series of Sundays, and the first of those Sundays is called `Zacchaeus Sunday.’ On that Sunday the Zacchaeus gospel is read, because the desire and effort to see Jesus (like Zacchaeus climbing the sycamore) and to follow Him (like Zacchaeus promising to reform his life) is the underlining message of the Lenten season.

A priest who hobnobbed with sinners

Franciscan Fr. Mychal Judge was a chaplain for the New York Fire Department. His death in the line of duty was one of the first to come out of the horrific tragedy of 9/11. Fr. Judge, a chaste and celibate gay man and a recovering alcoholic, made a great effort to see and follow Jesus passing by in the crowded streets of New York. At this he was remarkably successful.
He saw Jesus passing by in the drunkards he came upon on in the streets of that great metropolis. He’d tell them, “Look, you’re not a bad person; you have a disease that makes you think you’re bad, and that’s going to foul you up.” Fr. Judge saw Jesus passing by in the gay community of that immense city. He opened the doors of St. Francis of Assisi Church on 31st Street in Manhattan to Dignity, an organization for gay Catholics. Then to top it off he marched in the first gay-inclusive St. Patrick’s Day parade. Some modern-day Pharisees and teachers of the Law watching the parade go by complained, “This Fr. Judge hobnobs with sinners.” And no doubt about it, the Archdiocese of New York was equally disturbed with Fr. Judge.

He did such a magnificent job of hobnobbing with sinners on the busy streets of New York that at the Mass of Christian Burial for him (held on saturday, September 15, 2001 and presideded over by Cardinal Edward Eagan) more than 2,800 people attended. And when on October 11, 2001, a Month's Mind Memorial was held for Fr. Judge, an endless flow of priests, nuns, lawyers, cops, firefighters, homeless people, rock-and-rollers, recovering alcoholics, local politicians and middle-age couples from the suburbs streamed into Good Shepherd Chapel on Ninth Ave in Manhattan, an Anglican church, to memorialize a Roman Catholic priest. No Pharisees or teachers of the Law were these devotees of Fr. Judge, who had converged from many and diverse directions, to celebrate the life and death of a man whose greatest achievement was that he had hobnobbed with sinners.

Conclusion

A saint you personally canonize of your own making

Tomorrow, Monday, November 1, 2010 is the feast of All Saints. That feast celebrates “a great multitude which no one can count.” (Rev 7:9) It also celebrates a motley crowd. It celebrates clean-cut saints like Mother Teresa and Padre Pio. It celebrates messy saints like the humble tax-collector who went up to the Temple to pray and bent down to ask God to forgive him, a sinner. Messy saints like Zacchaeus, the wealthy tax-collector who climbed a tree to see Jesus pass by, and then came down to promise he’d never cheat again. Messy saints like Fr. Mychal Judge who marched in the gay section of a St. Patrick’s Day parade, and who hobnobbed with sinners all his life, and who very probably will never be officially enrolled in the Church’s official list of saints. New York City has already canonized him, and with that we are content.

Though tomorrow, All Saints Day, isn’t a holy day of obligation in many places, do not pass up that great feast. Celebrate a liturgy of your own at home. Light a vigil light, and let it burn all day long in memory of someone you love very much, and who, you know, is indeed a saint, even though he or she will never be inscribed in the Church’s official list of hallowed ones. Tomorrow, invoke a saint you yourself personally canonize, and ask him or her to intercede for you at the Throne of Grace.

[1] The word means `universal.’
[2] From the opening prayer of All Saints Day.
[3] Pope Gregory IV (827-844) established November 1 as the Feast of All Saints.

A Chilean Lady Praying for the Trapped Miners

A Chilean lady praying for the trapped miners

A Winning Combination
(The Prayer of Petition)

October 17, 2010, 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Exodus 17:8-13 II Timothy 3:14-4:2 Luke 18:1-8

Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you, Lord.

Jesus told his disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always and not lose heart. There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being. And a widow in that town used to go and beg him to take her case and get some justice for her. For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought to himself, ”While it’s true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being, because this widow keeps bothering me I’m going see that she gets her justice, otherwise she’ll keep coming back and wear me out!”

Then the Lord said, “If even an evil judge can be worn down like that, don’t you think that God will surely give justice to His people who plead with Him day and night? Will He be slow to answer them? I tell you, God will not delay but will be swift with justice. But when I, the Son of Man, come, how many will I find who have faith and are praying?” (Lk 18: 1-8)

The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

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Introduction
All about the prayer of petition

On August 5, 2010, 33 miners were trapped 2,257 ft down deep in a gold and copper mine in Chile, when the mine’s shaft collapsed. After 17 days of no communication with the trapped miners, on August 22, a rescue team on the surface reached the spot where the miners were trapped, by drilling small shafts. To their utter surprise and overwhelming joy, they discovered all 33 miners alive! A support team, which had grown to more than 300 men, included communications experts, doctors, psychologists, launderers and cooks, in addition to drilling engineers.

Through the small shafts the miners received water, food, oxygen and messages, as well as telephone, power and television lines. After drilling a 28-inch-wide chute, for a good month and a half, on Saturday, October 9, workers managed to break through to the miners, amid ecstatic jubilation from the trapped miners below and anxious families above. It took 4 more days to insert an iron sleeve into the 28-inch-wide chute. Then on Tuesday, October 12, the process of extricating the 33 miners one by one in a capsule lowered through the chute began. That precarious operation, which the whole world watched, continued through the night and into Wednesday, when finally all 33 were liberated from their dungeon of darkness in which they were incarcerated for more than two months.

On August 29 Pope Benedict, at the end of his Angelus address, prayed that St. Lawrence, the patron saint of miners, intercede for the trapped men. The miners, the entire Chilean people (and all of us who are the miners’ brothers and sisters in the human family) earnestly prayed to God that they be rescued and reunited with their loved ones. That blessed event happened much sooner than first estimated.[1] The prayer persistently begging God for the rescue of the miners is called `the prayer of petition,’ and that’s what today’s gospel is all about.

A parable about persistence in praying

In the gospel Jesus tells a parable about being persistent when praying to God in some great need. The parable is a bit daring, as it compares God to a bad judge in town who fears neither God nor man. A tough little lady, who wants the judge to take her case, keeps knocking at his door. Her persistent knocking wears the godless judge down, so he agrees to take her case, if for no other reason than to shut her up. Jesus makes the parable’s point: “If even an evil judge can be worn down like that, don’t you think that God will surely give justice to His people who plead with Him day and night?” (Lk 18:1-8)

Another parable about persistence in praying

Back in the 11th chapter of Luke, when the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, the Lord teaches them the Our Father. (Lk 11:1-4) Then He immediately goes on to tell them another parable about being persistent when praying to God in a great need. This parable is quaint and amusing, as it compares God to a father in bed with his kids. The door has already been bolted for the night and all are snuggly tucked in. Suddenly a neighbor is persistently knocking at his door. A friend has unexpectedly arrived, and he needs some bread to accommodate the hungry man. The neighbor’s persistent knocking annoys the sleepy man. He gets up, unbolts the door and hands him the bread he asks for. He does so not because the man is his friend, but because he simply wants to get rid of him, and get back to sleep. Again, Jesus makes the parable’s point: “And so it is with prayer. Ask, and you shall receive. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and the door shall be opened for you.” (Lk 11:5-10)

Good things or the Holy Spirit?

In Luke, Jesus’ parable of the neighbor knocking in the middle of the night for loaves of bread to feed an unexpected visitor ends with a rather puzzling line, which seems to come straight out of nowhere: “If you fathers, bad as you are, know how to give your children good things, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask for Him?” (Lk 11:13) Where in the world did the Holy Spirit come from, in the first place? The passage speaks about asking for a fish or an egg, but not for the Holy Spirit.

In the parallel passage in Matthew, however, there’s nothing puzzling at all; it ends with Jesus saying what we would expect Him to say: "If you fathers, bad as you are, know how to give your children good things, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask for them.” (Mt 7:11)

In Matthew, the parable has the Father in heaven giving us the good things we ask for -- like a cancer-cure, help for a child with special needs, a reconciliation in the family, a way out of some terrible mess, a job in these hard economic times, and at this moment, the successful rescue of 33 loved ones trapped in a mine in Chile. In Luke, however, the parable has the Father in heaven giving us not the good things we ask for but rather the Holy Spirit, whom we didn’t ask for!

A more profound theology

Does Luke offer a more profound theology of the prayer of petition? Is he intimating that, at the end of the day, it’s better to pray for the Holy Spirit than it is to pray for some particular thing, like a cancer-cure or a way out of some terrible mess or the successful rescue of 33 miners? At the end of the day, is it better to pray not for something but for Someone -- the Holy Spirit, who is nothing less than “Power from on high?” (Lk 24:49) With the Holy Spirit the Chilean people had power from on high to deal with the harrowing ordeal that confronted them. With the Holy Spirit they had the power to keep their hearts hoping and their hands drilling day and night through 2,257 feet of rock until they reached their loved ones.

And if the rescue efforts had failed (yes, that too!), with the Holy Spirit the Chilean people (and all of us, the miners’ brothers and sisters in the human family) would have had the very power to forgive `God’s sin’ (!) of not having heard our prayers and rewarded our tireless efforts! Scripture says, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Receive the power to forgive sins.”(Jn 20:22) If the rescue efforts had failed, with the Holy Spirit the Chilean people and we would have had the power to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is heaven.”(Mt. 6:10)

Different responses

We’re usually `too pious’ to speak frankly about the prayer of petition. When we do speak frankly, some people get angry. One woman writes, “When you pretentiously purport to tell us that heaven doesn’t give us the things we earnestly pray for, but that we must strive with all our might and ingenuity to give ourselves these things, you talk like a Marxist![2] You also shock and depress us.”

A whole light year away from that angry response is that of a mystic lady who writes,

When you intimate that God, in response to our prayer of petition, doesn’t give us something but `only’ Someone (His Holy Spirit) you are really speaking to us about the poverty of God who comes to us so poor that He has nothing to give us but Himself: His Holy Spirit. And when we receive Him in that poverty, God becomes human and we become divine.

Your words remind me of a quote of unknown source which I wrote into my Bible several years ago: “I tell you nothing for your comfort nor yet for your desire, save that the sky grows darker still and the sea rises higher.” Your words rob us of a Santa Claus to whom we can pray. You lead us into deep waters and into the darkness of God. You are invite us to leave our `playgrounds of prayer’ and follow you into the river of rebirth.

“Power from on high”

At the end of the day, whatever might be our theology of the prayer of petition, we keep knocking at God’s door in our need, as the tough little lady seeking justice kept knocking on the door of the corrupt judge. We keep knocking as the man in need of bread to accommodate an unexpected visitor kept knocking on his neighbor’s door. We keep on knocking in our need because Jesus says we should: “Ask, and you shall receive. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and the door shall be opened for you.” (Lk 11:10) And if, when the door is opened, we are, indeed, given the thing we asked for, like justice from a mean judge; or bread from an annoyed neighbor, or the rescue of 33 miners by a bevy of 300 members of the human family, God be praised and thanked.

If, however, when the door is opened, we are not given the good thing we asked for (like the successful rescue of 33 miners) but are given `only’ the Holy Spirit, God be praised and thanked for that too. For with the Holy Spirit we have Power from on high to forgive `God’s sin’(!) of not giving us the thing we asked for. With the Holy Spirit we especially have Power from on high to pray, ”Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And that is power indeed!

Conclusion
A winning combination

Chileans kept on digging strenuously day and night for two months, as though everything depended on them. They also kept on praying fervently day and night, as though everything depended on God. That was a winning combination for them. It’s also a winning combination for us, who sooner or later will have to strenuously drill through some very hard problem, and at the same time, like the Chilean lady, will also have to call on God for help.

[1] It was first estimated that the miners would be rescued only around Christmas!
[2] It is, indeed, pretentious to purport to know what heaven does or does not give us in answer to our prayer.