Beginning Again & Again

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins, and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me. 

Well, today we have in the gospel the account from St. Luke about Zacchaeus, the tax collector, who got his salary from the Romans. And we can imagine he was making a good salary and was quite well-off and provoked a certain antagonism from the people because all that money was gotten off their backs because he would charge them taxes and keep all that money for himself, or a lot of it, at least, for himself. And indeed, many public officials at that time were guilty of such abuses like this, so people really painted him with the same brush as all the rest. So, the gospel implies that this man also had things to seek forgiveness for. But it's really beautiful to see that, despite the fact that he had committed wrong, we don't know exactly how much, but we know he committed wrong, that he had been unjust, that he kept money- money that was really not his own, he nevertheless was quite keen about seeing Jesus. 

He was eager about, you know, about this idea of being able to see you, Lord Jesus, meaning that he had both a good curiosity and also an openness to Jesus, to this man that he had heard so much about. But he really wanted to see Jesus for himself. He wasn't going to go just by hearsay and what he had heard. He didn't really trust entirely the gossip that he was hearing. One can imagine that he was- that he was moved by grace because his keenness was not simply an external curiosity. And I would imagine that there were other collect- tax collectors around too that were, well, also unjust and maybe even received a grace from God. But they resisted, and it didn't change or convert as we see in the story of Zacchaeus. They kind of dug their heels in, they would not change their lifestyle.

As we will see, Zacchaeus changed his lifestyle. He completely changed his life really after meeting with Jesus. And that means that Zacchaeus had this inner malleability. His character was somewhat like this soft wax that could easily take on the print of Christ when Christ passed by his way- and Christ was passing by. And that keenness to see Jesus really was what characterized him, and it was shown by the fact that he overcame a personal obstacle that he was facing. And what was that? Well, we all know he was short in stature. He was, who knows how many feet tall he was, but I'm sure he suffered a lot of humiliation from this, that there were a lot of events in his life that he simply missed that everybody else saw, but he was too short, he couldn't see over the shoulders of people.

And I would imagine that this led often to discouragement, that, you know, this was an objective obstacle. And we indeed have objective obstacles in our lives - some that we're born with, others that are just weaknesses that we've accumulated. And what is clear is that- is that we cannot let discouragement set the tone. St. Josemaria used to say that discouragement and sadness is the ally of the enemy, the ally of the enemy. So- so imagine, if you and I have given in to discouragement and we see our weaknesses, or something goes wrong, well somehow, when that happens, the devil is happy. The devil- oh, I'm so happy that so and so is discouraged or sad, I am like way happy because in some way, it- it keeps us from God in some way. And- but- furthermore, do you really want to make the devil happy? I mean, we don't want to make the devil happy.

And well, I'm imagining Zacchaeus- well, he was discouraged on numerous occasions, but he overcame that. Let us see, perhaps, a text that can help us to examine the story of Zacchaeus, is a text from World Youth Day that Pope Francis gave back in 2016. As you know, World Youth Day is a big boost for all these young people - they go out and they really want to live their faith. And then they, you know, they're living in the secularized world, they may feel quite insecure about themselves, about witnessing their faith, about being daring, and they sometimes see their own limitations, their own weaknesses, or even for that matter, the lack of knowledge of their own faith, even their own inferiority, their personal theory, compared to their peers, who maybe are very secularized or, you know, atheist or something. So that's why, when they go to World Youth Day, it really gives a boost to their sense of self-confidence. They see, hey, like the- look around. Well, there's all these other young people, you know, it's very encouraging. And perhaps- perhaps that's why, in 2016, Pope Francis zeroed in on this figure of Zacchaeus when he was at World Youth Day in Krakow 2016. And he mentioned that well, Zacchaeus didn't himself believe that he was worthy of receiving God's mercy and love. This self-doubt prevented him from realizing, really, his deepest identity as a child of God. And so, the pope explained that- that this failure to recognize our own worth, he said, "Is like walking away when God wants to look at me, trying to spoil his dream for me. God loves us the way we are, and no sin, fault or mistake of ours, makes him change his mind." That's- that's what the pope said about- about God's love for us. And then he said that every person is special, unique, and important to God. He sees beyond our external or exterior appearance and material possessions, and he goes straight to our heart. He says- the pope says, "God counts on you for what you are, not for what you possess. And therefore,” he said, “that dwelling in our sins and troubles,” he said, “is a kind of virus infecting and blocking everything. It closes doors and prevents us from getting up and starting over.” 

And- and- and this is what- what happens when we just dwell on our sins, just dwell on our troubles, our weaknesses, our limitations. And maybe this was a big temptation also for Zacchaeus- he just dwelled on them- I'm not too tall, I got to- I'm not able- I can't go on, and maybe he stayed inside all the time. In contrast, “God has unfailing hope in our potential and is always,” the pope said, “cheering us on.” And he advised us that we begin each day with the prayer: “Lord, I thank you for loving me. Help me to be in love with my own life.” This is what- okay, this is what the pope suggests as a morning offering, “Lord, I thank you for loving me. Help me to be in love with my own life.” And that's- that's quite a statement, to be in love with my own life, you know, it doesn't mean to love myself in a disordered manner, but it's the love what you have given me, Lord.

Naturally, it would not make sense to hate what God loves. If I have very low esteem for myself, and I believe, but I cannot change that I'm always gonna be like this, you know, it's- it's in a certain way, not having confidence in what God loves. It's- it's a kind of giving us ourselves permission to stay in a mediocre position and not to grow. And so, when the pope speaks, he has some very strong words for the youth of today. Even if we do see our obvious faults in our weaknesses, it's not to deny those, perhaps they have been long standing, perhaps we are tempted to say something, well, that's the way I am, I can't change. And this is well, this is the way Pope Francis describes it. He says, "Zacchaeus ignored his pride and risked his reputation as a public figure by climbing a tree to encounter Jesus. Although aware of the risk and humiliation, he mastered his shame because the attraction of Jesus was more powerful.” So, we also have to do the same, we have to risk what- we have to- whatever whatever risk this means in the context of our life. And when it comes to Jesus, we can't sit around waiting with our own arms folded. He offers us a life and we can't respond by thinking about it, or the pope said, we can't just think about it or, you know, texting a few words- just texting a few words, he said. 

Well, maybe we could look at this phenomenon in our life, and see what is an expression of a lack of robust faith in our life, this tendency to feel bad about ourselves, wrongly equating this bad feeling about ourselves with a kind of false humility. And, you know, we could just glide through life as though there's nothing to do, you know. Our Lord in St. Mark even backs this up when he attacks with powerful words from the prophet Isaiah. He says, “Well, did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites? As it is written, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” This- that people honor me with their lips. Imagine- imagine doing- just doing things externally just with our lips. And of course, Isaiah bemoans this danger. Our Lord bemoans this, that it- and it could happen to us, that we kind of just live on the periphery of- of our existence, just words, mere rituals, no real heart, we don't really do things with our heart, truly, this is not necessarily just feeling. 

Imagine all those Hail Marys we've said maybe kneeling and indeed looking pious, but my heart is full of the mold of anxiety, the mold of fear or worry, or even for that matter, just glossing over the words. I understand we can get distracted and so we come back, we realign our minds and our hearts and our lips. And- and- but it's an essential question, because if it were true that we only honored God with our lips, it would- this would poison everything. It would be like moldy carpets that come into houses, that we see in houses because there's been a water leak and they start to smell up the place and you can get sick and, you know, you have to eventually tear them out and throw them out. Now, of course, nobody thinks of themselves as a hypocrite. Yet, isn't it true that throughout our life, we have been deficient in our thoroughgoing sincerity with God, sincerity with others, and sincerity with ourselves? And we have to be like transparent with God, of course, because he sees everything. But we also have to be transparent with others, especially in spiritual direction. Well, with ourselves when we examine our conscience. This is why the examination of conscience is so essential - it stops us - I would say this, the examination of conscience every evening stops us from just living a life on autopilot- autopilot, which is going along and not really seeking to improve ourselves. 

You may have heard that story of the Helios Flight 522. It was a Boeing passenger jet 737 in 2005 in Greece, there are 125- no, 121 passengers on board. And well, it took off and- and shortly after takeoff, it stopped responding to calls from the control tower and just kept going. And, you know, they were trying to call the pilots, the pilots weren't answering and, it was like, I don't know, like over half an hour, they were just not answering. So they sent up these- these F-16 fighter jets to see what was going on, maybe had been hijacked or something. And so the F-16 came along right alongside the plane and they could see the pilots in the window and they were kind of like- kind of like bowing forward and they could even see oxygen masks dangling ahead of them. And even, you know, like through the windows, but they were just- people were- they could see people, but oxygen masks hanging. And they were still not getting responses from the pilots, and it looked like they're all passed out due to lack of cabin pressure. And so, what turned out was that somebody, one of the pilots, had not turned a switch that would automatically send oxygen to those masks. And so, well, the plane was on autopilot - it just drifted along, just kept going. There was no oxygen in the plane, and just kept going until it ran out of fuel and then ended up landing in the- in the field. And of course, just everybody was killed. And it came to be known as the ghost plane. It was very sad tragedy. 

And, you know, could it happen, that I'm going through my life like it- like a ghost plane, without real oxygen infusing my daily life, and that my soul might pass weeks, maybe months, just living on the thin veneer of religiosity, without a real life-giving oxygen, the life-giving oxygen of freedom in my response to God's grace? I apply that to my Lord- to myself now, Lord, because you see through those veneers. You can make a house look like solid wood, but the structure is weak, the revetment is only, of course, it's only an appearance. It's, it's not what makes it strong.

Well, Pope Francis says that there are times in our lives when we aim lower than higher, and this permanent insecurity is accompanied by a fear of error and failure because this would reveal to others our worthlessness, our- our inferiority. Indeed, the pope speaks of Zacchaeus who had this intense curiosity to see Jesus, but at the same time, well, this human respect was stifling him and he was afraid to look ridiculous. So, Pope Francis resolves this dilemma that Zacchaeus was facing. He said, in Krakow again, at World Youth Day, “You know what happens when someone is so attractive that we fall in love with them, we end up ready to do things we would never even have thought of doing. Something similar took place in the heart of Zacchaeus when he realized that Jesus was so important that he would do anything for him, since Jesus alone could pull him out of the mire of sin and discontent. The paralysis of shame did not have the upper hand.” That's from- from World Youth Day in Krakow in 2016. 

Well, the grace of that unforeseeable moment was- was such that it completely changed Zacchaeus’ life. That's when he said, "Behold, half my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor. And if I've extorted anything from anyone, I shall repair it four times over." Well, that's a lot. I mean, who knows how much he would be left with, right? This was a very generous response to a grace that he received from Jesus. It was a way of thanking him. He never thought of that before, even when people sneered at him. His conscience had been hardened. It was hardened before. Maybe God kind of sent him that grace, but we- he had a hard conscience. But now, upon meeting Jesus, opening his heart, being transparent with him, everything changes. This is what happens, certainly, in spiritual direction- you open your heart, you articulate your faults, your struggles. Well, if you can, if you do that, both in confession and in spiritual direction, you can receive a huge grace, just like the huge grace that Zacchaeus received. When you can do that, ask for the grace of Zacchaeus. It's a special grace of God for real conversion. 

And the more one advances in the interior life, the more clearly one sees one's own faults. Maybe your spouse has been trying to show you, or a friend has been trying to show you, or a spiritual director has been trying to show you, so we have to be open to grace like Zacchaeus because grace works in us like a magnifying glass so that even the tiniest speck of dust or even the invisible grain of sand can appear large. And for the soul, it requires a kind of- the soul acquires a kind of divine sensitivity. And even the slightest shadow irritates one's conscience which finds delight only in the limpid clarity of God. 

St. Josemaria said in The Way of the Cross, referring to Zacchaeus- referring to Simon of Cyrene, to Dismas the bad- the good thief, rather, and to the centurion, “Now you know why Our Lord has sought you out. Thank him! Opere et veritate - with deeds and in truth.” And so, Zacchaeus realizes that he's responsible now with his- with his wealth- he's responsible, and he understands that he has to make restitution in some way. And he sees it now that he owes others - that is what the grace made him see. So what has the grace made you see? How and in what can you begin again? Have I been generous in my life - in deeds and in truth, as St. Josemaria says, opere et veritate. What will it be like when they tell me that I have cancer and I'm basically going to die? Can I say that I've been generous with my life? With my works? With my time? 

Maybe- maybe you've heard that story about John D. Rockefeller, the famous oil tycoon in the 19th century. At the age of 53, John D. Rockefeller, sometime in the 1890s or something, he was struck by a very mysterious illness that caused all his hair to fall out and made him unable to just digest food. And he was- he was reduced to eating these- these thin soda crackers and water and he kept growing weaker and weaker and more and more depressed. And he had a whole team of doctors, the best doctors that money could buy. And they couldn't provide a medical diagnosis and just couldn't offer any medic- medicines that could cure him of his malady. So he was utterly perplexed, and they were perplexed, so they gave him a year to live. 

Then, one night, unable to sleep and fretting over his life, he came to a life-changing insight. He realized that even though he was the wealthiest man in the world, his money couldn't extend his life and he couldn't take it with him. And that maybe, well, despite all that, he had missed the mark. So, when he got up the next morning, he rose with a new result. He started giving away the wealth that he had accumulated and used it to make a positive difference in the world in the very brief time that he had left. And he gave away hundreds of millions of dollars for hospitals, universities, medical research, to his Church and to missions. And his contributions actually helped with the discovery of cures for many deadly diseases, like even for plagues, you know, for a long time. And his generosity, you know, keeps on giving to this very day through this- this Rockefeller Foundation which he founded. And, you know, and it was continued by his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr. And then suddenly, the illness that threatened his life, well, it just disappeared as mysteriously as it had appeared. And miraculously, his health returned. And, you know, even though they said they gave him one year, he ended up living another 45 years, and he died at the ripe old age of 98. He wanted to get to 100 but, well, only made it to 98. Well, it's not too bad, 98 is not too bad. So, I think the cure was found only when he stopped focusing on himself and this insatiable appetite for just a little bit more, as he used to say. I just want a little bit more, instead of discovering the meaning of, you know, of life and generosity - that was the key of his conversion. 

So as we saw in the story of Zacchaeus, the key of his conversion is that he- he turned to Our Lord in trust, and this helped him overcome his own weakness, his own attachments. And he had that weakness, but he really became strong when he trusted in the Lord. And of course, here's the advice of St. Josemaria on how to become stronger, ultimately how to convert. He said in- in Friends of God, in one of his homilies, "What other advice do I have for you? Well, simply to do what Christians who have really tried to follow Christ have always done and to use the same means employed by the first men who felt prompted to follow Jesus: developing a close relationship with Our Lord in the Eucharist, a childlike recourse to the Blessed Virgin, humility, temperance, and mortification of the senses or penance. You do that and you're very- you're very well off," he said. 

There is, after all, a serious danger that we lose the focus either by going on autopilot all the time and not stopping to begin again, not stopping to examine our conscience, and to see where we are going. There's the danger, you know, that we just, well, that we just work and work and work, and we call it activism - we end up neglecting our prayer, we neglect self-denial and those means which allow us to arrive at solid interior piety - when we receive the sacraments frequently, we have time to meditate, a spiritual meeting, our love for our Blessed Mother. Those- those things help us not to be on autopilot. If we stay on autopilot, we'll end up eventually running out of fuel, right? That's certainly what happens with somebody who's focused on activism, they eventually just run out of fuel. Well, they- they could crash and burn out and crash into the- in the hills of Greece, as that story of the ghost plane was, right?
So, let us ask our Blessed Mother now, as we finish our time of prayer, to give us that humility to begin again, to start again, and get that guidance, especially in spiritual direction. And we’ll be able to- be able to point out our defects or weaknesses and count on very- a very unique grace of God so that, like Zacchaeus, we can suddenly become much more generous than we ever imagined we could be and live our life in the service of the Church, in the service of all. 

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations which you have communicated to me in this meditation. I ask your help to put them into effect. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.