Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

Bold Enough

This Sunday’s Gospel selection builds on last Sunday’s. The repentant tax collector went back home, reconciled with God. But what happens next? Here we see a sinner whose desire for mercy is graphically portrayed by his willingness to lose his dignity by climbing a tree just so he can see Jesus. When Jesus reaches out to him in love, his immediate response is not just restitution for his past fraud by openhanded generosity to the poor.

Here is a story of conversion! Zacchaeus is bold enough to climb a tree! In what ways do we find ourselves climbing a tree, like Zacchaeus, so we can have a better view of Jesus and to get closer to Jesus? And once we can see him, what is his effect on us? Who are the rich today who use their authority to extort people? Have we ever been guilty of such extortion?

Jesus says in the Gospel that he has come “to seek and to save what was lost.” At various times in our lives, we may feel like the lost or the seeker-saver. Which are you now? Seeking and saving is, of course, our work also, and one of the means by which we allow God to find the parts of us that are lost. So what sort of seeking and saving work is right for you? Pray for guidance, talk to a friend, or write in your journal, asking to be led to the situations that need you.

The Prayer for Generosity of St. Ignatius Loyola can guide us this week:

Lord Jesus, teach me to be generous;
teach me to serve you as you deserve,
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to seek reward,
except that of knowing that I do your will.

Amen.