We are created for nobility, even if we have no inkling of it. In
not so many words, you hear it in the first reading taken from the Book of
Wisdom. Even though creation is like a grain of dust, God does not disdain His
creation. In fact, we are precious that God overlooks our sins and He gives us
the chance to learn from our mistakes. Little by little, God corrects,
admonishes and reminds us so that we can grow from them.
The Gospel follows the same tread but shifts its attention to the
nobility of spirit. Here, we have a man who is not just physically small in
size but is supposedly stunted morally. He is a senior tax collector, someone
despised for the unsavoury practices of his profession. But, through an
encounter with Jesus, this man grows in stature and nobility.
The climbing onto the sycamore tree is rather symbolic. I am
reminded of what I heard more than 20 years ago from a phone-in radio session
in Dublin. Random strangers phoned into the station to air their dark and
terrible deeds. It was like a competition to hear who had done the most
terrible thing. In particular, a B&B hostess who, in order to take revenge
on her horrible guests, would use her guests’ toothbrushes to clean the toilet
bowl. Whilst it was striking that many phoned in to divulge their darkest
secrets, yet, it was ironical for a Catholic country that people chose not to
confess their sins to their priests. Instead, they sought absolution not from
God but from the public.
This incident of the radio phone me reminded me how closely
“confessional” the encounter between Jesus and Zacchaeus was. “If I had
cheated, I will pay”. That is the restitution of the confession, is that not?
Linked to this restitution is actually what may escape some of us.
Firstly, stories. The fact that the people who have presumably
stopped going to Church, stopped receiving Holy Communion and going for the
pre-requisite Confessions, needed to air their stories. They may not do it
within the sacred space of the confessional but nevertheless, they needed to unload
their burdens. Sin, as it were, weighs us down, even if our conscience tries to
silence it. In the Gospel, Zaccheus, unbeknownst to him, was searching for the
occasion to tell his story, to make a confession. He found the confessional up
in the branches of the sycamore tree.
Secondly, disclosure is also redemptive. The history of our sin
allows us to reclaim our space lost to sin. We want to be absolved and forgiven
of our sins. Those who made their public confession through the phone-ins were
not merely telling a story but at an existential level, were really hoping for
some forms of redemption from the non-judging silent listeners of the radio
station.
Thirdly, the redemption brought about by our stories opens up the
space for nobility to surface because we are fundamentally created for
greatness and integrity. Zacchaeus through the encounter with Christ becomes a
man of integrity. Instinctively, man senses this calling, that is, the vocation
to stand tall. Sin cuts down our stature as it were. The crowd recognises that
too. In the Gospel, the conversion took place for Zacchaeus but most
unfortunately, it did not take place for the crowd. “How could He dine with
sinners”? Whilst Zacchaeus grew in stature, the crowd were stunted by their
unforgiving morality.
Recently, I read a news report, interestingly, coming from
ex-President Barack Obama. According to the BBC, Obama challenged the current
“woke” culture. "Woke" as defined by the BBC is described as being
alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice, along with being aware
of what is going on in the community.
It seems that the crowd may be likened to our current “woke”
culture for its moral “uprightness”. “Woke” culture is “moral” because it exposes
the faults of those who ethics or principles are questionable. Both the crowd surrounding
Zacchaeus and our “woke” culture act as purity filters to strain out the
unworthy. But, interestingly, Obama also said that “People who really do good
stuff have flaws”. That is really an apt description of Original Sin and no
one, except St John the Baptist, is born “immaculately”. (Adam and Eve were
created “immaculate” whilst both Jesus and Our Lady were conceived without
Original Sin and naturally born immaculate. Whereas, John the Baptist was
“immaculatised” in the womb at the meeting of the cousins, Mary and
Elizabeth. At the Visitation, St John leapt with joy for so close was he to
Salvation. Thus, he conceived with Original Sin was born without it).
In other words, we are all works in progress. Conversion and
repentance is a life-long process on our pilgrimage to nobility. We can say
that Zacchaeus can act as a poster-child of God’s infinite patience in dealing
with us, sinners. He does not give up hope on us. Instead, He allows us to tell
our story because our story, as in the story of Zacchaeus and everyone else, chronicles
our struggle for nobility.
Nobody wants to be ignoble. Nobody wakes up in the morning to
immediately hatch evil plans. Instead, closer to reality would be a desire to
be better because we are created for goodness, beauty and truth. There are at
least two parts of the human body which are considered vestigial—the appendix
and the coccyx—the coccyx being a reminder that we were once “ape” (if you buy
into that kind of evolutionary theory). The point is, one could assert that
nobility may be considered as a vestigial past we have forgotten. Call it
instinct but our struggle is fundamentally to remember or recall our greatness
as sons and daughters of God—the original goodness that God has called us to
be. If there is one thing positive about the “woke” culture, it is a
heightened sensitivity. Perhaps the advantage of a greater consciousness is not
to be found in the focus on the faults of others but rather on an acute
awareness of the nobility that God has created us for.
