Luke 19:8 “But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.”
HOW TO REPENT LIKE ZACCHAEUS
Dear Friend,
Last week, we saw humility, contrition, and service as three aspects that make our prayers heard and powerful before God. Just as it is not enough to feel grateful, but to express it in words and actions, today, we are invited to go beyond the genuine felt contrition of the tax collector of last week. Action is the perfection of what we feel and say. The question we seek to ask today is: How
can we express the contrition we feel in words and actions like Zacchaeus? I would like to show that genuine repentance involves three things: contrition, making a resolution, and doing restitution like Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector. When all these three are present in our process of repentance, they help us with the grace of God to avoid repeating the same sin over and over again.
1) Contrition
The Church teaches us that for a confession to be valid, the penitent must express contrition (perfect or at least imperfect), that is sorrow for the sins committed. It is not enough for us to just recall our sins and say them. Perfect contrition is confessing one’s sin for love of God. Perfect contrition says, “I have betrayed God’s love; I am sorry.” Imperfect contrition is confessing one’s sins not out of love, but out of fear of God’s punishment. Contrition in essence says, “If I could go back to yesterday, I would not do this again. Such a genuine disposition begins our conversion, and invites the mercy of God who does for us what we would love but cannot do for ourselves.
We are moved to genuine contrition when we encounter God’s unconditional love and eternal mercy. This is true of Zacchaeus’ encounter with Jesus as it is with the sage’s understanding of God’s mercy in the first reading: “You have mercy on all, because you can do all things; and you overlook people’s sins that they may repent. For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated you would not have fashioned… But you spare all things, because they are yours, O Lord and lover of souls.” In a word, God loves us because we are His and He has mercy on us because we are His. All He expects of us is to accept His mercy and return to Him with trust. How do we return?
2) Making a Resolution
Having been contrite, we must make a resolution to leave the place of sin and any near occasions of sin just as we say in the act of contrition: “to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin.” The more concrete our resolutions are, the more effective our repentance. In the Gospel, Zacchaeus makes a series of resolutions that are worthy of emulation.
The First resolution Zacchaeus makes is to see Jesus in spite of the crowd. Why do we want to see Jesus? What is the connection between vision and salvation? Jesus is our salvation. To seek to see Jesus is to seek to see God. To see God is the goal of our lives. St. Irenaeus simply states: “The glory of man is to see God.” One could say, the whole of life is a pilgrimage to see God. However, on this pilgrimage, there are various obstacles and things that seek to cloud our vision of God. These we must name and renounce. For Zacchaeus it was the crowd and his limited height. Let us take a look at some of these obstacles and how to overcome them by a firm resolution.
i) The crowd. I would like us to see the crowd as a symbol of noise. We live in a world as Cardinal Sarah has pointed out, ruled by the dictatorship of images. God can only be seen and heard in silence. To overcome the obstacle of the crowd, we must make the resolution to punctuate our day by moments of qualitative silence when the phones, TV, radios go on vacation, and we are still before the God of love. Silence is the sycamore tree by which we climb to see Jesus and overcome the noise of the crowd.
ii) Lack of discipline: St. Teresa of Avila describes those who never follow with their resolutions as follows: “They are like a soldier in a painting ready to strike the enemy but never ever does so.” The Book of Wisdom gives us a clue on how to attain discipline: “The first step toward discipline is a very earnest desire for her; then, care for discipline is love of her; love means keeping of her laws; To observe her laws is the basis for incorruptibility; and incorruptibility makes one close to God” (Wisdom 6:17-19). Getting someone to hold us accountable for our resolutions is the best way of remaining disciplined.
iii) Pride: Pride makes us under look others. Humility, on the other hand, enables us to see that everybody is somebody created in God’s image and likeness to be loved and respected. Humbling ourselves enables us to do whatever God tells us. Humbling ourselves helps us to see God in everyone. Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s humble response to being called a living saint is very instructive in this regard: “I am glad that they see God in me. I try to see God in everyone especially in those who suffer.” St. Irenaeus puts it thus: “Our Lord said: He who receives you, receives me, and he could say this because the impress of himself is in us.” Humility enables us to see God especially in the poor, the suffering and less privileged. Humility gives us a vantage position to always see Jesus in spite of the crowd.
iv) Unforgiveness. Zacchaeus was not only unable to see Jesus because of the crowd, but also because of his shortness. Many people do not grow and remain as a child whenever they seek vengeance instead of forgiveness. Unforgiveness makes us stunted and stuck, whereas forgiveness liberates us and makes us grow as children of God who show mercy without restriction.
v) Impurity: Sin in general blinds us from seeing God, but the sin of impurity made worse nowadays by the internet is one of our greatest obstacles in seeing God in others. “Blessed are the pure for they shall see God.” Sin makes our hearts to be hardened. When our hearts are hardened like Pharoah’s, we cannot see the will of God; we are tempted only to carry out our evil schemes; when our hearts are hardened like the leaders of the Jews, we fail to see Jesus as the Savior and abide by His truth, rather we tend to crucify truth again and exalt falsehood.
3) Restitution
Resolutions are our contrition in words, whereas restitution is our contrition in action. Such is the reason why during confessions, the priest does not only ask us to say the act of contrition, but also asks us to do penance. Penance is what we do concretely to make amends for the harm our sins have caused. Penance is our statement of justice that says, “I seek to repair the damage I have done.” We know that at the end of the day only Jesus can do a complete reparation. Such is the reason we unite our penance with His sacrifice for the reparation of our sins. The prayers given by the priest in confession as penance is not enough. We are encouraged to offer all our works, life, and sufferings in reparation for our sins especially when the thought of those sins are brought to mind. There is no limit we can go to make reparation for sins. In the life of St. Bernadette, we are told many people stopped believing her when she ate grass, drank dirty water, and robbed herself with mud. When asked, she responded, “The Lady was so sad because of sins and asked her to do so in reparation for sins.”
We are told that Zacchaeus promised to make reparation four times to any one He might have cheated. I would like us to conclude by making some practical reparations:
- What would making reparations 4X look like for someone who is always late for Mass? If you are always late by 5 minutes, that could mean being early 20 minutes before time.
- If you waste one hour watching or listening to garbage on your electronics, it could mean spending four hours watching and listening to the lives of saints or religious podcasts.
- If you are envious of a friend’s blessings, reparation could mean looking for four things to thank God for in their lives.
- If you stole x amount of money, to make reparation like Zacchaeus would mean repaying 4x this amount to the owner or making charity of a similar amount.
- Whatever it is, if we have taken a step away from the Lord, let us take four steps backwards as a concrete sign of our repentance like Zacchaeus.
Beloved, in a word, we have to be convinced that Jesus seeks us more than we seek to see Him. It is God’s desire to grant us His salvation. He rebukes us little by little that we may abandon our sinfulness and return to Him. His mercy endures forever. May Jesus Christ, the mercy of God made incarnate for us in the Eucharist today, increase our trust and hope in His merciful love.