Category: Zaccheus Sunday

The Sunday of Zacchaeus – Homily by Father Alexander Schmemann

To prepare us for Great Lent, the Orthodox Church starts announcing its approach a full month before it actually begins. Lent is a time of repentance, and repentance is a re-examination, a re-appraisal, a deepening, a shaking upside down. Repentance is the sorrowful uncovering of one’s neglected, forgotten, soiled “inner” person. The first announcement of Lent, the first reminder, comes through a short Gospel story about an entirely unremarkable man, “small of stature,” whose occupation as a tax collector marked him, in that time and society, as greedy, cruel and dishonest. 

Zacchaeus wanted to see Christ; he wanted this so much that his desire attracted the attention of the Lord Jesus. Desire is the beginning of everything. As the Gospel says, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). Everything in our life begins with desire, since what we desire is also what we love, what draws us from within, what we surrender to. We know that Zacchaeus loved money, and by his own admission we know that to get it he had no scruples about defrauding others. Zac­chaeus was rich and he loved riches, but within himself he discovered another desire, he wanted something else, and this desire became the pivotal moment of his life. 

This Gospel story poses a question to each of us: what do you love, what do you desire–not superficially, but deeply? “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” the New Testament says (Revelation 3:20). Do you hear this quiet knock? Desire. The soul taking a deep breath. The little man, Zacchaeus, with his eyes to the ground focusing on earthly desires, encounters Christ and now ceases to be little as his victory over himself begins. Here is the start, the first step from exterior to interior, toward that mysterious homeland which all human beings, unknown often to themselves, long for and desire.

Zacchaeus Homily Feb 4th – Prologue of Ohrid – St. Nikolai Velmirovich

“Today, salvation has come to this house” (St. Luke 19:9).

Thus it was spoken by the One Whose word is life and joy and restoration of the righteous. Just as the bleak forest clothes itself into greenery and flowers from the breath of spring, so does every man, regardless of how arid and darkened by sin, becomes fresh and youthful from the nearness of Christ. For the nearness of Christ is as the nearness of some life-giving and fragrant balsam which restores health, increases life, give fragrance to the soul, to the thoughts and to the words of man. In other words, distance from Christ means decay and death and His nearness means salvation and life.

“Today, salvation has come to this house” said the Lord upon entering the house of Zacchaeus the sinner. Christ was the salvation that came and Zacchaeus was the house into which He entered. Brethren, each one of us is a house in which sin dwells as long as Christ is distant and to which salvation comes when Christ approaches it. Nevertheless, will Christ approach my house and your house? That depends on us. Behold, He did not arbitrarily enter the house of the sinner Zacchaeus, rather He entered as a most desired guest. Zacchaeus of little stature climbed into a tree in order to see the Lord Jesus with his own eyes. Zacchaeus, therefore, sought him; Zacchaeus desired Him. We must also seek Him in order to find Him and desire Him in order that He would draw nearer to us and, with our spirit, to climb high in order to encounter His glance. Then He will visit our house as He visited the house of Zacchaeus* and with Him salvation will come.

Draw near to us O Lord, draw near and bring to us Your eternal salvation.
To You be glory and thanks always. Amen.
The Prologue from Ohrid: Lives of Saints by Saint Nikolai Velimirovič
http://livingorthodoxfaith.blogspot.gr/2009/12/prologue-february-4

*Later on, Zacchaeus followed the Apostle Peter who appointed him bishop of Caesarea in Palestine where he faithfully served the Gospel and died peacefully.

What does Zacchaeus have to teach us about repentance – St. Nikolai Velimirovic

“Repentance is the abandoning of all false paths that have been trodden by men’s feet, and men’s thoughts and desires, and a return to the new path: Christ’s path. But how can a sinful man repent unless he, in his heart, meets with the Lord and knows his own shame? Before little Zacchaeus saw the Lord with his eyes, he met Him in his heart and was ashamed of all his ways”

2018 Homily Zaccheus Sunday – Holy Cross Monastery Abbot Seraphim

Today, as we stand at the threshold of Great Lent, the Holy Church gives to us in the Gospel story of Zaccheus an icon of the Lenten journey which lies ahead. It is precisely an icon, because everything happens as it were in a flash, in one single image passing before our eyes. We hear nothing of Zaccheus’ past, and after these few short verses he never again appears on the pages of the New Testament. In fact, it is only in St. Luke’s Gospel that we hear of him at all. Yet for all its brevity, this Gospel passage contains within itself the entire narrative of salvation.

Zaccheus was the chief among the publicans. The publicans, the tax collectors of the Roman Empire, were considered to be the lowest of the low by the Jewish people. This was not only because they had betrayed their own people, becoming officials of the hated Roman occupation. It was not only because they enriched themselves by preying upon the poor, the weak, and the defenseless, openly committing thievery and extortion among their own neighbors and kinsmen. No, they were considered to be abominations above all because in order to become officials of the Roman Empire, they were required to voluntarily make pagan vows and to offer pagan sacrifice. In exchange for the fleeting riches of this life, they had willingly betrayed their God, their people, and their own souls.

Here is vividly shown the ineffable compassion of our Savior. Even before Zaccheus showed any sign of repentance, the Lord not only did not disdain him, but was even willing to voluntarily take upon Himself this greatest of shames before the people of Israel by eating and lodging in Zaccheus’ house. Truly, the Lord gives nobody up as lost, not even those who have deliberately and knowingly betrayed God and cut themselves off from their divine inheritance as “the seed of Abraham, and heirs according to the promise.” Such is the hope and the power of repentance, which the Church places before our eyes on this last Sunday before the Lenten Triodion is opened and the “Season of Repentance” begins.

And truly, all of us … have betrayed and continue to betray our ineffable and divine calling, choosing to turn away towards the riches of this present life, whatever the form they may take in each of our sinful hearts. As Abba Dorotheos warns us monastics: “We think that having left the world and come to a monastery, we have left everything worldly; but here also, for the sake of meaningless things, we are filled with worldly attachments.” We have crucified ourselves to the world, and yet we have not crucified the world to ourselves. We monastics, far more than those living in the world, are without excuse in our love for the fleeting things of this life, yet all of us alike fall many, many times each day.

This is tragic, and yet we will never pass out of the reach of our own failings so long as we are on this earth. In the words of the Apostle James, all of us stumble in many things. Each of these stumblings has idolatry at its heart; in every fall, we sacrifice a bit of our souls which rightly belongs to God. And yet, though seeing more clearly than we do our deep impurity and ingratitude, the Lord does not reject us as we have rejected Him. He yet comes to us, and even now He is coming to us in the Holy Gifts about to be consecrated, coming to lodge with us in the unworthy and neglected house of our soul.

Seeing this, we must all like Zaccheus hasten to come down and prepare a place for the Lord. As the Holy Fathers teach us, to “come down” is to humble ourselves, which is the absolutely necessary prerequisite to any work of virtue. Had Zaccheus not come down and humbled himself, then doubtless he would have been filled with vainglory and smug self-satisfaction at such a great deed as his giving away of all his goods to the poor and to those he had wronged – and he would have thereby lost Christ, who “resisteth the proud but giveth grace to the humble.”

These works of virtue, however, are still quite necessary, especially – as Zaccheus practiced – those virtues which oppose the passions that run strongest in ourselves. It is a spiritual law that if we are not progressing in virtue then we are falling back into sin, and consequently falling away from the presence of the Lord. Yet at the beginning of this Lenten journey, it is essential to firmly remind ourselves that all virtue, all asceticism, and all piety will serve only for our condemnation if they are not accompanied by a sincere striving for humility.

Yet even more than all of this, there is one aspect of today’s Gospel story which we must learn without fail in order to properly begin our Lenten struggle. What happened to Zaccheus which wrought such a great change in his soul? What was it that not only brought about sincere repentance for his former deeds, that not only filled his heart with longing for a better way of life than that of treachery and ill-gotten gain, but which also inspired him to imagine that such a great change was even possible for such a one as he? Certainly not the hatred, scorn and derision of the righteous ones of his day. In short, what turned him away from all the false glamor, ease and pleasure of this life toward the Kingdom of Heaven, and what made him believe that even one who had fallen so far as he had any hope of entering therein?

The answer is quite simple: he caught a glimpse of Christ. We do not know what was happening in his heart up until that time, but we do know that when he saw Christ, everything changed. His life was instantly and forever transformed. Though he was not touched by the healing hands of the Savior, though he was still separated from the Lord by the crowd of his own sins and passions, yet one glimpse which he caught from the top of a sycamore tree was enough to renew and recreate his heart.

And though all of us standing here have betrayed our God like Zaccheus, yet all of us have also, at least once in our lives, in a brief and fleeting instant, beheld His saving face. Some of us may be given the grace to perceive His presence often. For some of us, that moment may never come again on this earth. But it is enough. It is enough, as long as all the rest of our life is a striving (even if through constant failure) to remember that Holy Face, and to purify – as far as we are able – the house of our heart, in the knowledge that He is coming again at the end of the ages to abide there forever. This was the real meaning of Zaccheus’ asceticism, of his total renunciation of all his former life. It was this that led him to his holy death as a martyr. And so it must be for us also, during this Lenten season and during all the season of our life on this earth. All the righteousness and all the asceticism in the world will avail us nothing if at its heart there is anything other than the all-merciful, all-compassionate, and all-forgiving Face of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, to Whom be honor and dominion, together with His Father Who is without beginning and His all-holy and good and life-creating Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.