A Reflection for Tuesday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
When they saw this, they began to grumble, saying,
“He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner”...
And Jesus said to him,
“Today salvation has come to this house
because this man too is a descendant of Abraham.
For the Son of Man has come to seek
and to save what was lost.”
Although this reflection is coming to your inbox on the morning of Nov. 19, I’m writing it on Friday, Nov. 8, the 127th anniversary of the birth of Servant of God Dorothy Day. She’s one of my foremost Catholic heroes, and I’ve been thinking a lot about her this past week—about her radical dedication to the Gospel, and her tireless devotion to the poor and marginalized in our world. One particular insight of hers has lingered in my mind over these past few days, a quote of which one of America’s Jesuits recently reminded us during the weekly office Mass: “I really only love God as much as the person I love the least.”
Well, that’s not a big ask at all.
Jesus gives us a model for this love in today’s Gospel. To understand its implications, let’s step into the crowd’s shoes for a moment. From their perspective, Zacchaeus wasn’t merely a disagreeable person; he was a tax collector for the Roman Empire, an active contributor to the oppression of the Jewish people. (Dorothy Day certainly wouldn’t have approved of his career.) It was eminently human for the crowd to view Zacchaeus with suspicion and hostility. I certainly would have “grumbled” in their place.
But God doesn’t work in those terms. The scope of God’s grace often confounds and frustrates us. Do I actually have to love this person, Lord? This person has wronged so many people I love and care about. Why can’t I indulge in a little righteous hatred? It scratches a pious itch!
Jesus’ example with Zacchaeus gives us a clear answer: We can never hate a human being, because we never know whether God might work through them. Loving God as much as the person we love the least does not mean excusing what we find genuinely abhorrent in that person. It does not mean giving even a fraction of an inch to their harmful, oppressive behaviors and beliefs. It does mean being open to their eventual redemption. It does mean remembering that the person I love the least—the wicked sinner, the despised tax collector, the cruel bully—is also a child of God, or a “descendant of Abraham,” in Jesus’ words. In this case, the crowd was wrong about Zacchaeus’ heart; the wealthy tax collector had experienced a genuine conversion to love of God and of the poor, and Jesus invited him further into that grace.
The Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost, not to push the lost off the cliff of perdition. If I forget that, am I any better than the person I can’t stand? Returning to Dorothy Day’s point: If we are not open to the possibility—however remote—of someone turning from evil to good, how much do we really love God?
I’m not claiming to have this figured out in my own life. It’s really hard for me to live by Jesus’ example. I feel like the crowd a lot of the time. Frankly, I don’t know how to get past it. I have no neat advice. I see a lot of Zacchaeuses with no external signs of imminent conversion. I sometimes wish the Christian life were a lot easier than it is. But the difficulty of living the Gospel didn’t stop Dorothy Day. And the very fact that this radical love for all people goes against our impulses means that it is likely of God.
