31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Knowing Jesus is the best gift anybody can receive. That we have encountered him is the best thing that has ever happened in our lives. And by making him known by our deeds and our words is our greatest joy.

Pope Francis, six years before he became Pope Francis, wrote those words and they very much come to mind today for reasons I’ll explain. Before explaining, I’d like for us to reflect very quickly on them. Are they true? Are they true for you and for me? Can you and I say with all honesty and integrity, knowing Jesus is the best gift anybody can receive?

That we have encountered him is flat out, hands down, the best thing that has third: to make him known, by what we do and what we say, is our greatest joy? These questions come to mind particularly because of our parish mission of evangelization and growth in discipleship for us. It demands of us an answer to the question: why should I tell anybody about Jesus?

Why should we tell anybody about Jesus? Well, there’s an easy way to answer that. Because when you meet someone who changes your life, you tell everybody. Married couples are such a great example of that. When you meet somebody who changes your life, you tell people.

When a man meets the woman who will be his wife, he tells people he’s found someone who he wants to spend the rest of his life with. That I forego all other women for. The one I want to raise a family with. And when a woman meets the man who will be her husband, she does the same. You invite others to meet the person who has suddenly made you smile the way you smile. What’s the explanation for this joy? Come meet the man. Can we say that about the Lord?

Because we should. That’s what it means to be a Christian. To be a Christian, as Pope Benedict used to say often, is not the result of an ethical choice but the result of an encounter. Having truly met the person of Jesus. That’s what happened to Zacchaeus’ life.

Zacchaeus was a bad man. He wasn’t just a tax collector; he was a chief tax collector. Tax collectors were traitors to their own people, they were idolatrous and concerned with money and the things that money can buy. And as a result of being a traitor to his people, he was someone who was unaccepted, unloved, cut off, despised. His whole life was out of order. And then this happened.

This day that we just heard about. When Jesus comes to Zacchaeus, he doesn’t wait for Zacchaeus to get his life in order. He came to Zacchaeus to put his life in order. He came to Zacchaeus so that Zacchaeus is, in fact, loved.

That he does, in fact, have an opportunity for mercy. That he can, in fact, start over again. That there is the fullness of life being offered to him. That he’s not enslaved, or he doesn’t have to be enslaved anymore to the things that had enslaved him and in his case money. What’s Zacchaeus do as a result? He tells everybody! He would’ve had to! How is it you show up all of sudden? We considered you gone, unacceptable, unloved, forgotten.

But Zacchaeus, who would have been that was at one point in his life, is all of a sudden smiling, put together in his right mind, generous, kind, all these things he never was before. So people would’ve rightly asked him, “What’s the reason for the change in your life?” And he would’ve told them. “Because I met someone.”

Just like many of you met your wives and husbands. “I met Jesus. And as a result of meeting Jesus, my life is forever different.” It wasn’t something he did once a week, it wasn’t something that happened to have happened to him. It was the momentous occasion for his life. That’s what happened in my life. Before I met Jesus, I felt totally unloved.

My life was totally out of order and without purpose or meaning. But then, in the vacuum of my life, stepped the grace of God. And there was no going back. And while I was raised Catholic, I was baptized as an infant and I met Jesus objectively every Sunday or rather the Sundays I would go which wasn’t all that often. I never really met or encountered the Lord subjectively; I never really experienced him knocking at the door of my life.

I never made the choice to surrender my life to him. Just as Zacchaeus had to make the choice to surrender his life to him. When Jesus called to Zacchaeus, “Zacchaeus, come down, I want to have dinner in your house.” Zacchaeus could’ve said no. For years, that what I said, no. I don’t want you in my house.

Perhaps, some of us, even though we are in the Lord’s house are still saying that to the Lord. I don’t want you in my house. “Okay, you can come into the foyer, or into the kitchen, but you cannot come into the whole house. But when I surrendered to him, and I’m still surrendering to him, don’t get me wrong. But when I made the decision to surrender to him for the first time in my life, to truly surrender to him, everything changed.

Like that! And you couldn’t not notice! My brother, who I was living with, sure did! I was happier, joyful, more generous and kinder. But most of all I had peace. I had extraordinary peace. For the first time in my life, I was at peace. I met Jesus. I mean, I really met Jesus. We talk often about how when the scriptures are proclaimed at mass, it’s an event. I didn’t just retell a story that happened a long time ago.

Even as Jesus was walking through the streets of Jericho all those many years ago, so Jesus is right here, right now, in this place, saying to each and every one of us, “Come down! Come down! I wish to come into your house. I wish to transform your life.” There is a famous painting now hanging at Keble College in Oxford called The Light of the World.

You may be already familiar with it. It depicts Christ holding a lantern in one hand standing outside the door of a house and he’s knocking on the door with the other. There’s an odd thing about the house though. There’s no doorknob outside. The only doorknob is on the inside. What’s the point?

The point is that Jesus won’t just barge in unless he’s invited. It’s up to us, it’s up to us to turn the door from the inside and say intentionally, very deliberately, very specifically, these words which many of us may have never said before in our lives: “Lord Jesus, I invite you into my life. I ask you to take all of my life and put it under your Lordship. I want to know you like I’ve never known you. I want to encounter you because I don’t think I’ve encountered you. I want what Zacchaeus clearly had. I want what I see others who talk about you have. I want more! I want life.”

Just as when a man falls in love with a woman or a woman with a man, it changes their life. And for many of us, who have grown up Catholics our whole lives long, we can’t say that. Although objectively we meet Jesus every time we receive him in the Eucharist, subjectively speaking, I don’t know how many of us can say, “Having encountered him, is the single greatest thing that has ever happened in my life.”

How does it happen? Pretty simple: open the door. Jesus knocks and we open the door. So open up. Let him in. Ask him for an encounter. Here. Today. Ask to meet him. Ask to meet him who can change everything. He wants to do it.

Sunday Mass begins at 11 a.m. with the sacrament of reconciliation at 10:15 a.m. Come pray with us at St. Michael Catholic Church located at 1004 W. Gentry in Henryetta.