Zacchaeus: Surprising about yourself, and set your accounts straight
(Lk 19:1-10)
In what sense should we "improve" - and what should I do? Or are we scarred forever?
How do we authentically encounter Christ? What is the source of a saved path and its incomparable joy reflected in works?
How can I change my life and give it a shot in the arm? Time and again I have tried and failed: is happiness an illusion?
And... how do I relate to the exclusivists of the sacred and discipline [or the ideas in vogue]?
Does the Face of the Father really have those scratchy, ruthless, foreboding or one-sided features that they proclaim?
Lk's solution is not to deal with moralism or current opinion, because the head full of wind and fuss would suck us in.
One must fly over, looking at reality from an unprecedented point of view that is not subject to manipulation - thus grasping oneself, in Christ.
And not be plagued or hindered.
This is why the episode is set in Jericho (the last stage of the Exodus), which once served as the decisive threshold to the conquest of the Promised Land.
Jesus also passes through our city (Lk 19:1), to show the face of the Father, who even in the [considered] unpleasant, scoundrel and rich, is able to discern a resourceful son.
Zacchaeus is myself when I let myself get caught up in the race of having, and thus become an almost hopeless case.
Already having much, I could probably keep to myself. Instead I feel a malaise inside.
Restlessness, dissatisfaction, set in motion: symptoms of the parched soul, clues not to be silenced.
The professional or ministerial goal I had in mind may have been achieved, but I realise that although I am not a total failure, behind the mask I wear I remain an anguish: I realise that I have lost the goal.
My heart wanted something else, that is why I do not grasp radical harmony with my deepest essence, with the Gold of my DNA.
Then I have to put myself back into the field, because something in my centre is wrong - despite the possible role won, or partial joys.
I do not feel successful, I cannot go on like this. I have to shake myself up. How do I begin?
The Gospel tells us: from a renewed Perception. We must sharpen our gaze!
Zacchaeus wants to "see Jesus, who he is" [Lk 19:3 Greek text]: he longs to understand whether God is sensitive to his anxieties.
Although he lives in a formally devout environment, the crowd around him does not allow him to have any frank and direct relationship.
The mass of established followers only accentuates his ties and anxiety, not least because no one would allow him to climb a ladder or the roof of his house (in that area, all without pitches).
By harbouring a public sinner, it was believed that the dwelling itself became unclean: he could not even touch it, nor tread the rungs of an outside ladder; let alone go on the terrace.
In the one who is socially singled out, the problem is accentuated, and with it the conviction that there is nothing to be done.
People not infrequently hinder the growth and existence of others with purist or ideological fixations.
Petty judgements that reveal an inability to welcome, to listen, to understand, to advance, to grow, to truly promote.
Since there is no direct way forward because of the sanctimonious multitudes, one has to invent something - even at the cost of the dishonour of running ahead [in the Oriental environment, particularly disgraceful: v.4].
"Since on the main road everyone has a mean look that makes me regret existing - but I want to see with my own eyes (and not just be told) - I try to see without being seen".
The sycamore is a very leafy tree - and Zacchaeus thinks:
"Since I should climb it but they don't give me a chance to reach any ledge (lest I contaminate them) - and since the gazes are so dark as to annoy and haunt, I hide somewhere... even in the foliage... so that no one notices me".
Disturbance induced by judgements is an insurmountable barrier to a loving relationship with our Lord. How to regulate oneself?
Simply, one does not have to "regulate oneself".
Despite the uproar around, the Master sees precisely the little one, the despised and mortified.
If the stern world were to notice him, it would only notice a blemish, it would look without much subtlety.
Jesus' gaze is different. He does not mortify us, nor does he make us despair.
He is drawn to the very person who is even embarrassed about himself and uncomfortable about being noticed.
Not only: he calls him by name, and in Aramaic 'Zachàr' [Hebrew 'Zakkài'] means Righteous, Pure!
While all perceive obscurity, the Son grasps in each shaky and curious person an innate purity and the possibility of good.
Even of those who hide.
While chic people shun you, God seeks you out. Indeed, the goal of his passage is precisely your dwelling place [Lk 19:4: "he had to"].The Plan for us is that no one should be lost, so the Lord wisely discerns the gifts and opportunities that lie hidden even behind troubled sides of our personality.
Sounds transgressive?
But while the disciples remain open-mouthed at the spectacle of the paladin priests and the magnificence of the Temple in the eternal and holy city, Christ sees the insignificant gesture of the widow (Mk 12:41-44).
In short, when the Lord is with those who are in trouble or have erred in life, He is always at the bottom, because He is servant; not judge and master.
Thus in the episode of the adulteress [Jn 8:3-11 Greek text], and in the same way he also looks at the outcast: from the bottom to the top, not vice versa (Lk 19:5).
Good spiritual leaders also do the same: attracted by those who suffer because of an isolated and disfigured life under condemnation.
Ridiculous schematisms - those that invite us to erect external scaffolding and climb it - cause us an absurd waste of energy
The vain waste of attention, faculties, and commitments affects not only style and detail - even the main lines of personality.
Instead, Jesus forces Zacchaeus (all of us) to come down, so that he - by continuing to disregard all opinions - could fulfil his destiny.
Promised land that was already throbbing in his soul. Without first renouncing, nor any particular ascetic effort.
"Perceive and descend" instead of "be seen and ascend". Here is the non-rule 'rule', indispensable.
To be true to oneself, to the innate Friend - instead of allowing oneself to be conditioned by the 'best' of the club [what an extraordinary benefit and redemption!]
That which is not the rubbish of oneself, happens spontaneously; it happens without artifice or inculcated intentions.
Everything, genuinely adhering to the impulse of the candid encounter.
Letting oneself be surprised: looking out from the viewpoint of the 'new eye'.
A turning point that conveys how to internalise a growing life, punctuated by evolutionary genesis - preparing the New Birth.
The transformation then takes place on the ground, in practical life - ceasing to be told how it would (should) have been.
After all, an archaic elaboration or an overly sophisticated configuration, both laced with respectable exteriority - would only make us sick.
Zacchaeus did not want to resemble any of the actors around him.
So he realised himself in earnest - realising his own and others' needs, sweeping away the banalities of judgements and the whimpers of ethical platitudes.
The 'small in stature' can also be stunted: in the gospel mikròi (v.3) are the incipient, those with little knowledge and energy.
Those who have a modicum of Faith, and try to appear in the community, but are immediately put in line or in the hole.
And they are often scandalised by the very adulterers: that is, those who stick to habitual and impersonal practice - or the sophisticated à la page.
However, those are not the real disciples, but rather the masses who obfuscate.
As it happens, they are people who fulfil, observe, obey, and whose lives are neutered, but gossiping, conditioning - and always in a bad mood (Lk 19:7).
Although they often crowd around Jesus, they are there only out of habit, or out of fear that he will run away and do some unforeseen mischief - cheering the unhappy and out of 'the loop'.
As with Zacchaeus. Those different from the top of the class [they] are minimums to be kept away from, those who are almost repulsive.
Valued as crawling worms, or inadequate; therefore unworthy of being considered.
Instead, they are appeals to mission, a call to deepen and be more careful.
In their posturing, the promoters of their look behave as if they were sphinxes or untouchables.
And in so doing they believe the Eternal in precisely the way that is perplexing.
They seem to have no contrasts, but they are eager to project their own unexpressed cravings onto others.
Hence they see him who hides himself in shame of himself - not to retrieve him, but to bury him well.
Deluding themselves thus to annihilate their own hidden faces, which however - under the fine reputation - brood (and chronicle).
Who then is God (cf. v.3)?
He who rests with the small and microscopic - disfigured more by external judgement than by his own malice.
Inside, the 'saints' and unmarked for life [the 'would-be-but-can't' - immaculate for a matter of cosmetic respectability] are equal to him.
Once we have had the experience of gratuitousness that crumbles [pious or very modern] prejudices and the judgments of village vice, Christ takes a moment to change us and multiply the good.
The Master is in a hurry to meet every bewildered person; just like a lost lover.
He knows that we need to find joy today (vv.5.9).
So he does not make time for practices, rigmarole, or fulfilments that demonstrate contrived conversion: such a Father would not be lovable.He would not inspire transformation, nor a sense of connection and justice.
Says the Tao Tê Ching (xxvii): "He who binds well uses neither ropes nor bonds, yet he cannot be loosed".
Traditional religion looks to the past and wants to elevate man in the abstract, minding punctilious external concatenations.
Contemporary woke ideology vaunts the hedonistic, situationalist, relative, uprooted and disembodied future; without backbone, without deep thought, nor lasting good.
Jesus aims at the present and the a-head. Not the distant fact.
He unconditionally accentuates the "feelings of belonging to one and the same humanity" (cf. Brethren All No.30).
The Most High points deep and low: He desires to share His life-giving Presence with the anomalous and the isolated.
He needs them 'immediately', even if his 'friends' [not infrequently the most 'intimate'] stand around offended (Lk 19:7).
In short, the Lord's authentic Family is not made up of distrustful people. He stands in and in the midst of situations of Freedom.
He does not first observe who is already in - and who is still out. Thus He restores our stature, freely, without any conditions.
Of course, in the minds of the leaders of ancient or abstract religion, such a God is worthless: he cannot even distinguish between 'friends-ours' and 'merits-mine'.
The authorities and the phenomena reject him, of course. But they have finally understood Who He is (v.3).
Even Zac-euro has been cured of his old blindness: he used to see in God a notary, and in his neighbour only people to be exploited - all the more so because they were surly, unpleasant, hateful, unbearable.
All in all, the tax collector was the worst enemy of a world submerged by provincialism, from which he willingly extorted money.
The super offender therefore hides himself from the sight of others... because in discovering the codes that inhabit him, he no longer wants to be plagiarised.
He desires an eye that sees the Face of God and looks within, with no more seemingly obvious ballasts that do not correspond to him.
Zacchaeus no longer wants to look at how and where others look, first and foremost those safe in the saddle; bunch of troublemakers - who do not recover and do not allow for reparation.
They do not make any dreams come true within, and can still guide us.
The authentic person then wants to set out on 'his' path.
By questioning everyone's certainties, he brings into play his own innermost essence, the reason why he was born.
His own destiny does not want external certainties, common events, judgements and happenings that do not really belong to him.
The inner vision of the Zacchaeus in us is not grafted and identified; not even the one we had perhaps chosen, to become rich.
It was enough for us to turn our eyes away from that same project, as from the purposes of religiosity that was fitting, or too alternative (not to touch the flesh).
And even move away from the taken-for-granted idea of life that we had made for ourselves - within the usual 'angle'.
Zacchaeus [each] finds freedom only in his 'hiding place'.
By hiding, he defiles himself from the obligation to appear. He escapes from catwalks that conform to the environment.
Deceptive stages - because they interfere, and close much more than being with oneself and the only founding Relationship.
No one else could deal with them, apart from a higher Self, that of the inner labyrinths that one traverses oneself, which oppose conformism.
They accentuate curiosity and the never-seen-before, even for us.
They seem to take us away from the ordinary scanning of the usual intermediate goals. But they resemble us.
Zacchaeus understands that the first of his tasks was 'watching', opening up elementary (but not gross) perception.
Stimulating intuitive processes; not depersonalising, nor cerebral.
Without even changing jobs. Without dismissing his emotions: true signals to be noticed, guiding him to the authenticity of his fate.
Christ only has something to say to us if we explore Him without the peel of homologising preconceptions: nothing to do with Him and our character, in essence.
The things of the Father are to be sought, grasped, accommodated and understood as they are - encountering discomfort.
Without even struggling with extreme effort against the sides of oneself that should not belong to us.
True: elements of discernment rarely taught explicitly: e.g. 'how to change' name and destiny.
But the wearisome relationship with such narrow 'chosen ones' paradoxically makes it easier. It also makes us grasp what our own obstinacy - the only thing to disturb us - did not make us focus on and consider.
Things we never suspected, never 'knew', never saw. In fact, forces we do not use.
As the Unknown One advances (vv.1.4-5) so that we discover them with Him, and bring them forth.
On our behalf He desires to take the helm of the decisive course we never knew how to chart. And take us forward, regenerate us again.We will be brought into contact with the Fire of the Primordial Calling, which will bring forth wonders precisely from the unknown, shadowy sides; from the deep, opposite states.
An appeal to all children who do not want to get lost in the surface, in the ungenerous judgement of veterans or antecedents who lose people, and all people.
Interestingly, even in the accounts of the Chassidim reported by Buber, even at the Torah's proclamation, the search for a kind of emptiness in ideas that would make room for another Eros was recommended.
And in particular to "no longer hear oneself [i.e., one's own formation and worldview] at all, to be no more than an ear listening to what the world of the Word says in Him. As soon as you begin to hear your own words, cease".
That which we do not like and would never have chosen, becomes a Voice that without demeaning interrogates, and humanises.
Making us discover - through uninterrupted pregnancies - our own and others' full dimension.
Free of cloaks, we will trigger that ancient, future and intelligent energy that leads to the unpredictable journey.
To the Goal of total Life. To the Home that is truly ours. To the Abode of a saved life, in fullness of being.
Tent that still brings out the spontaneous naturalness of the flowers that come up, without exhausting us with artificial sweats.
Cured of the sight - of both the pious and the fallen - precisely that of the excluded, the worst impure and (even religiously) transgressor there can be, becomes the only salvageable case.
Jesus crumbles the goddess that formed the fabric of deep archetypal sacred ballast.
Now in the peer-to-peer relationship with his founding Logos, the sinner realises that it is not pristine 'perfection' that gives a licence of immunity to (then) have the right to meet the Father.
It is the immediate and gratuitous relationship with the Risen One that purifies him, enabling the heart to enjoy exponential and fruitful life already here.
No man must consider himself a hopeless case, a stranger to the bliss of a new Heaven on earth.
Perhaps we can expect everything, except that someone will tell us: inside you are indefectible, you have the key that opens the door that appears locked...
If Zacchaeus had pretended to 'improve', intoxicating himself according to a cultural, behavioural and religious model, he would have run aground, becoming insignificant.
Instead, his entire previous life was recovered and reinvested, by an immediate Friendship; without the cliché of 'perfection' first.
The raw but spontaneous person did not allow himself to be taken hostage by false teachers, who would introduce him into their absurd labels [the maze-codes on how one should 'be in the world'].
Even in the case of this loan shark, the discomforts were not overcome by opposing, but by welcoming.
In their happening within, those discomforts stimulated the recognition of a unique profile; of one's own soul so different.
It would have been detrimental to fight it with the muscles of the will, and aseptic observances, cerebral doctrines, mortifications, photocopied repetitions.
That of conditioning-induced deviations is a poisonous cosmetic for the soul and for the works we are called upon to bring forth from our unrepeatable soul.
The beliefs of others lead the lower self off the track of the orientation that deeply and uniquely belongs to it.
The deep essence calls to immediacy rather than identity. To the spontaneity (particular but full) of our Germ, which matures in stages and leaps, and will make our destiny dissymetric.
It will, however, lead to the true Goal: it is not 'the problem' - as is often imagined.
It is that Nest which within does not diverge, then to protect us - in the alliance with the self and in the exuberance of our flourishing.
Led to ourselves, we will feel our relational nature too, previously suffocated by the cloak of a homologising respectability, which gushes out of itself.
Adaptation to an external, depersonalising or conventional logic or chattering mentality and religious life distances us from the authentic purification and quality leaps that truly equate us.
They do trigger the codes of a healing that develops not from paroxysmal states, nor from practices that are all the same. But from a face-to-face with our constituent core, filled with beneficial forces; energetic and passionate.
With Jesus our becoming will never be in a trivial relationship with what we have been or how we should be: not a formal concatenation.
We will pass through unexpected and marvellous Genesis, which overrides any organigram of prediction and linear development.
The difference between religiosity and Faith?
It is explicit in the unpredictable story of Zacchaeus, who decides not to stay where they put him, slavishly following an impossible discipline that he did not want.
He realised that he would not be able to 'improve': he chose not to be infected all his life.It was first a restless dissatisfaction, then an engaging attempt at genuine vision, then a simple man-to-man encounter that prepared him for his decisions.
Even if we are not considered 'ready' [by an expert and his code], it is with immediacy and without too much inner struggle or tearing that we can reach another Territory.
And change the air for others too, sisters and brothers - simply by the 'unconditional perception' of a new Face of God.
We will find Him not at all nosy and sullen, nor patronising.
Instead, he conveys that absurd self-confidence that changes our lot, and the fate of the world.
Where welcomed, we will surprise ourselves. And we will set things right.
To internalise and live the message:
Do you have a personal view of Jesus passing by, or do you borrow it from the opinion of experts who tear your soul apart with accusations?
On what occasion has Christ conveyed an absurd self-confidence to you, which has opened up new spaces of life and set things right?
Antivedere: new Aesthetics that will save church and world
Need to see it. Antivedere: fullness, not beauty among others
The Christian, the one who wants to be a follower of Christ, the one who feels the need to cling to Him through the bonds of His authenticity and certainty, will always have, as a man, as a man especially of our time so nourished by the visual image, the instinctive need to see Him, Jesus the Christ, as He was in face, in appearance, in bearing, in person. We have said this before. But this desire remains, and recurs when questions arise about the genuine interpretation of his message, and about the duty to conform our conduct to his teaching. Is not, after all, this aspiration always present in the Gospel characters? Let us take Zacchaeus, in St Luke's account: "he wanted to see Jesus, who he was"; and, small in stature as he was, in the midst of the crowd he could not; he then climbed a sycamore tree; and from there he saw, or rather was seen by the Lord who called him and told him to come down, wanting him to be his guest on that day (Luc. 19, 1 ff.).
But the fortune of Jesus' contemporaries, who saw Him with their own eyes (cf. I. 1, 1) is not ours. Just as it is not of all humanity that came after Him. Already St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (at the end of the 2nd century) warns that the bodily images that have been attempted to be disseminated of Christ since then are apocryphal (Adv. Haereses, 1, 25; PG 7, 685). St. Augustine is categorical: "We completely ignore" what the bodily face of Jesus was, as well as that of Our Lady (De Trinit. 8, 5; PL 42, 952). We must form our figure from elements common to human nature and from the imaginative reflections that the information we have about Him, reading the Gospel or believing His word, provoke in our spirit. Art and piety help each other in this not easy elaboration.
It is not vain fantasy; it is a worthy, and in a certain sense indispensable, effort for anyone who wants to have a concrete and faithful concept of Christ, which without mythical artifice presents itself as ideal.
Let us try asking ourselves: how do we depict Christ Jesus? That is to say: what is the characteristic aspect of Him that emerges from the Gospel? How, at first sight, does Jesus present Himself? Once again, his own words help us: "I am meek and humble of heart" (Matth. 11: 29). Jesus wants to be looked at like this, seen like this. If we were to see him, he would appear to us like this, even though the vision, which Revelation gives us of him, fills his heavenly figure with form and light (Rev 1:12 ff). This sweet, good and above all humble aspect imposes itself as essential. Meditating on it, one perceives that it both manifests and conceals a fundamental mystery relating to Christ, that of the Incarnation, that of the humble God, a mystery that governs the whole of Christ's life and mission: "The Christus humilis is the centre of Christology" of St Augustine (Cf. POKTALIÉ, D. Th. C. 1, II, 2372); and which imprints the whole of the Gospel teaching on us: "What else did he teach, if not this humility? . . . in this humility we can approach God", says the Doctor of Hippo (En. in Ps. 31, 18; PL 36, 270). Moreover, does not St. Paul have a term, which smacks of the absolute, when he tells us that Christ 'annihilated himself': semetipsum exinanivit? (Phil. 2, 7) Jesus is the good man par excellence; and it is for this reason that he descended to the lowest level even of the human ladder; he made himself a child, he made himself poor, he made himself patient, he made himself a victim, so that none of his brothers in humanity could feel him superior and distant; he placed himself at the feet of all. He is for all. He belongs to everyone; indeed to each of us, in the singular; St Paul says so: 'He loved me and sacrificed himself for me' (Gal. 2:20).
It is not surprising that the iconography of Christ has always sought to interpret this meekness, this extreme goodness. The mystical intelligence of Him has come to contemplate Him in the heart, and to make, for us modern sentimentalists and psychologists, always polarised towards the metaphysics of love, worship of the Sacred Heart, the burning and symbolic hearth of Christian devotion and activity.
Here an objection arises, especially today: is this image of Christ, who realises in himself his own word, that is, the beatitudes of poverty, meekness, non-resistance (cf. Matth. 5:38 ff.), the true Christ? Is he the Christ for us? Where is the Christ Pantocrator, the strong Christ, the King of kings, the Lord of rulers? (Cf. Rev. 19: 11 ff.) Is the Christ the reformer? ("Ego autem dico vobis . . .", Matth. 5) the contentious Christ, with his contentions (e.g. Matth. 5, 20) and anathemas? (Cf. Matth. 23) The liberating Christ, the Christ of violence? (Cf. Matth. 11, 12) Is there no talk today of the Christianity of violence and the theology of revolution? After so much talk of peace, the temptation of violence, as the supreme affirmation of freedom and maturity, as the only means of reform and redemption, is so strong that we speak of a theology of violence and revolution; and often to the exciting theories the facts, or at least the tendencies of the redemption of the 'constituted disorder', correspond. One then tries to have Christ for oneself, and to justify certain disorderly, demagogic and rebellious attitudes with the attitudes and words of Him.
The discourse is many. We ourselves have alluded to it on other occasions. Just one piece of advice for now. In the face of this supposed contradiction between the figure of the meek and gentle Christ, the good Shepherd Christ, the Christ crucified out of love, and the figure of the virile and stern, indignant and pugnacious Christ, it will be necessary to reflect well, and to see how things stand in the original documents, the Gospels, the New Testament, the authentic and coherent Tradition, and in their genuine interpretation. We feel it is our duty to claim honest attention in this regard. Especially on the complexity of the figure of Christ: he is certainly both meek and strong, as he is both man and God; and then on the true reaction, certainly not political, certainly not anarchic, that Christ's reforming energy injects into the fallen and corrupt world; that is, on the true hopes that he proposes to humanity.
We shall then see that the figure of Christ presents, yes, without altering the enchantment of his merciful gentleness, also a grave and strong aspect, formidable, if you like, against cowardice, hypocrisies, injustice, cruelty, but never separated from a sovereign irradiation of love.
Only love defines him as Saviour. And it is only through the ways of love that we will be able to approach Him, imitate Him, insert Him into our souls and into the ever dramatic events of human history.
Yes, we will be able to see Him, who dwelt with us, and shared our earthly lot, to infuse us with His gospel of salvation, and to prepare us for this full salvation; we will see Him "full of grace and truth" (I. 1:14).
Faith and love are the eyes that we now need in order to be able to see him in some way; that is, to see him.
(Pope Paul VI, General Audience 27 January 1971)
