Sunday of Zacchaeus. Octoechos Tone 8. Leave-taking of the Feast of the Holy Theophany. Our Venerable Fathers Massacred in Sinai and Rhaithu (c. 370). Repose of the Holy Equal-to-the Apostles Nina, Enlightener of Georgia.
1 Timothy 4:9-15. Luke 19:1-10.
Read Luke 19:1-10
Christ is born! Glorify Him!
It’s kind of funny to characterize a guy who ran ahead of Jesus and climbed a tree to get a good look at Him as someone Jesus “came to seek.” It’s more like Zacchaeus was seeking Jesus. But today’s gospel reading reminds us that, in His sovereignty, God’s action is always prior to ours. We can seek God and even think we’ve found Him but the bigger question is how do we know that He has sought and found us?
Jesus “entered Jericho and was passing through.” He didn’t stay there – he was resolutely going up to Jerusalem for the last time. Yet he did two things: “he looked up” and he said to Zacchaeus, “I must stay at your house today.” There is Jesus seeking Zacchaeus.
How do we know that Jesus found him? When Zacchaeus said that he would make fourfold restitution to those he defrauded, he was going beyond the Mosaic law’s requirement of full restitution plus one fifth; he went so far as the fourfold restitution that King David ironically declared must be paid when the prophet Nathan by a parable convicted him of his sin with Bathsheba. Jesus, who had previously said (Luke 3:8), “Bear fruits that befit repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham,” then said of Zacchaeus, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham.”
The assurance of our salvation is our faith, objectively lived. St. Paul writes: “he has now reconciled (you) in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him, provided that you continue in the faith.” (Colossians 1:22-23)