“But
you have mercy on all, because you can do all things; and you overlook people's
sins that they may repent.” (Wisdom 11:23)
You
never know when God’s mercy will embrace you, you never know when you will feel
the need to receive God’s mercy right away, and, as a priest, you never know
when you will be called upon to dispense God’s mercy through confession. It happens to priests all the time. When we least expect it, someone will grab us
for confession. We can be working on something, walking through a hospital, an
airport, or even relaxing on a beach when someone will grab us to ask us to
hear their confession (yes, the beach confession has happened). On this Priesthood Sunday, as priests we are
reminded that we are Ministers of Mercy in a unique way through the Sacrament
of Reconciliation. That so many times
people will stop us before Mass, after Mass, or whenever or wherever they can
find us to ask for forgiveness and we need to be ready to hear their confession.
Today
God’s mercy hits the tax collector in the gospel in an unexpected way. Jesus was just intending to pass through
town when he looks up and sees small Zacchaeus in a sycamore tree trying to get
a glimpse of Jesus. This is the moment
where God’s mercy strikes: the gaze of
Jesus, then the invitation of Jesus to abide in your home. This tax collector was simply “seeking to see
Jesus.” The gospel writer doesn’t tell
us Zacchaeus’ intentions or his reasons for wanting to see the Lord. But whatever his motives were, whatever was
in his heart, even if it was simple curiosity to see Jesus, it was enough to
catch the Lord’s attention. All Jesus
needs is the tiniest of openings. When
Zacchaeus comes out of the tree, he hears the grumblings. He hears the chatter. “How can Jesus be with this sinner?” Even through the gossip of others, God’s uses
this sin to draw out something greater in Zacchaeus’ acts of repentance. He will give half of what he has to the poor
and pay back anyone he has extorted 4 times over! So Jesus enters his life, he experiences his
mercy and we immediately see the results.
“Today salvation has come to this house,” Jesus tells him, “because this
man too is a descendant of Abraham.” You
see when Jesus looked up into that tree, he didn’t see a tax collector, he
didn’t see a sinner, what he saw was a child of God. The beauty of God’s mercy is that it looks
past our faults, our imperfections and our sins. It embraces us always because we are his
children. Now if we could only apply
that same mercy to each other…
We
hear the people grumbling in the gospel.
They don’t like that Jesus had treated such a sinful man in this
way. They don’t have rooms in their
hearts for mercy. Just like last week,
we see division. Last week we saw the
gulf that separated the Pharisee and the tax collector and this week we see the
gulf between Zacchaeus and the people that were looking on and grumbling. They only saw in Zacchaeus a thief and a tax
collector. Jesus saw a child of God in
need of mercy. If we could only treat
each other with more mercy, more respect, more like Jesus treated this tax
collector, and how Zacchaeus, in turn, started treating everyone else. We spend so much time demonizing those who
are sinners or that simply don’t agree with us that we fail to see that ALL of
us are children of God and that ALL of us are in need of his mercy. If we could only see each other with the gaze
of Jesus.
