Nov 16: It is God Who Calls Us to Come

Nicholas Papas: Zacchaeus in the Sycamore Tree

Tuesday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Lk 19:1-10

“When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today (NRSV, Lk 19:5).’ ”

Lord God, how often I cry out to you in my need. I beg you to come to my assistance. I am ready, even hopeful, that you will take over in my life and act for me, act in my place, if only things would be right for me.

How forgetful I am, Lord, that you are the source of all, that it is you who begin everything that is. When I pray to you, begging for your help, it is finally not I who pray, but rather your Holy Spirit living within me. It is the Holy Spirit who cries out within me, whose prayer I then make my own.

It is the Spirit’s own prayer but the words that are uttered, suggested by my own weakness or lack of understanding, are mine. And how they fail the divine inspiration that prompts them.

Such misunderstanding. I act as if the pray is begun with me when it is your own Spirit who has empowered the prayer. I pray for you to come into my life and help me when you are there already, even when I have rejected you in sin, always pressing in upon me at the depth of my being, challenging me to accept ever more fully your divine life and power.

You are there from the beginning in my mother’s womb and you never leave me. If I am a human being, it is because of your divine presence and the offered gift of your grace. It is not you but I who must “come,” accepting the gift which you always offer to me.

In my desperation, Lord, I often beg you to take over in my life and act for me. But your love for me is too great. You have called me to freedom and you never limit or suspend that freedom. What you do for me, and for all of your children, in every moment, is to offer a greater share in your divinity. As I accept that life into my own, it becomes truly my life and empowers me to act in the true freedom of the children of God.

Even before I pray, and even if I were never to pray, you are always there calling me to “come,” to accept the gift that you offer.

In the midst of life’s pains and difficulties, in the midst of my own sinfulness, there is only one deliverance, the acceptance by me of your divine life offered at every moment, an acceptance that will enable me to transform in freedom even the darkest of moments into salvation and light.

Jesus called the tax collector Zacchaeus to come down from the tree that he might visit Zacchaeus’ home, break bread and share life.

Finally it is not we, Lord God, who call you. In your son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, it is you, Lord God, who call every one of us to accept you and to share your life with you.

Alleluia. Amen