Reading 1 Wis 11:22-12:2 Before the LORD the whole universe is as a grain from a balance or a drop of morning dew come down upon the earth. But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things; and you overlook people's sins that they may repent. For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned. And how could a thing remain, unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you? But you spare all things, because they are yours, O LORD and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things! Therefore you rebuke offenders little by little, warn them and remind them of the sins they are committing, that they may abandon their wickedness and believe in you, O LORD!
Responsorial Psalm Ps 145:1-2, 8-9, 10-11, 13, 14 R. (cf. 1) I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God. I will extol you, O my God and King, and I will bless your name forever and ever. Every day will I bless you, and I will praise your name forever and ever. R. I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God. The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness. The LORD is good to all and compassionate toward all his works. R. I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God. Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD, and let your faithful ones bless you. Let them discourse of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your might. R. I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God. The LORD is faithful in all his words and holy in all his works. The LORD lifts up all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down. R. I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
Reading 2 2 Thes 1:11-2:2 Brothers and sisters: We always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and powerfully bring to fulfillment every good purpose and every effort of faith, that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, in accord with the grace of our God and Lord Jesus Christ. We ask you, brothers and sisters, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling with him, not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly, or to be alarmed either by a "spirit," or by an oral statement, or by a letter allegedly from us to the effect that the day of the Lord is at hand.
Alleluia R. Alleluia, alleluia. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life. (Jn 3:16) R. Alleluia, alleluia. GOSPEL Lk 19:1-10
At that time, Jesus came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man, was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way. When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said, "Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house." And he came down quickly and received him with joy. When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying, "He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner." But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over." 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."
FAUSTI - The encounter between Jesus and Zacchaeus brings salvation, impossible for everyone, but not for God, for whom "nothing is impossible" (1, 37). Finally, man's desire to see the Son of man meets His "duty" to dwell and remain beside him. Finally, God and man find a home in each other and can cease from their labors. It is the face to face with the Savior, to whom each one is called. Anticipated now for one, it will then extend to all, to the ends of the earth. In Zacchaeus (=God remembers) that God who also provides for the little ones of the crow who cry out to Him (Sl 147,9) remembers every man, however small and unclean, and makes him pure, so that he may make the holy journey. Each Word is allusive and allows each of the themes dear to the evangelist of universal salvation to resound, from those of the manger in Bethlehem to those of the wood of Calvary. The center is the "desire to seeing" of Zacchaeus and Jesus' gaze towards him. From this encounter of glances, salvation flows today: the Savior is bornes Zacchaeus, the one that cannot be saved par excellence, finds the Son of Man, who came to seek out what was lost: "it is necessary" that "today" and "quickly" " I dwell" "in your house". The unsalvable has the unique prerogative required for salvation: he sees his own misery and "tries to see" the mercy of the Lord who is passing . This is the beginning of all enlightenment. Zacchaeus - a figure of Adam who has hidden himself from the Face of his Lord - is inexpugnable Jericho. Jesus first approaches him and heals his eye, always sick by mortal envy. He can then see His gaze that seduces everyone. Once he had opened the window of his heart, he entered it and took possession of him. Just as the blind man raised his eyes to his Lord, so he who has become the smallest of all raises his eyes to Zacchaeus. As small as he may be, he is always higher than him, as are all his disciples. In fact, He has lowered more than anything, so as to be able to serve everyone. Only the humble meets God, because God is Humble. Love makes the other person superior to himself. (Phil 2:3). Nicholas of Flue, in the end of his vision of Jesus, the Pilgrim who begs for love from man, writes: "When the pilgrim was four steps away, he turned. He had his hat over his head (in which he had already received the alms from Nicholas); he removed it and bowed to the man (Nicholas himself). Then the man understood the love that the Pilgrim had for him, and he was shocked, seeing that he was unworthy of it. He knew in Spirit that the face of the Pilgrim, His eyes, His whole Body, were filled with a humility full of Love, like a vase so full of honey that it could not add a drop. At that moment he did not see the Pilgrim anymore. But it was so paid that it was no longer waiting for anything. It seemed to him that everything that was in heaven and on earth had been revealed to him. The great mystery on which to be enlightened is the humility of God that Jesus reveals to us to save us. We all have a home in which to welcome Jesus. God is pure acceptance, and He seeks nothing but to be accepted. The Father in the Son welcomes all, and all those who welcome the Son are with Him welcomed into the Father. The sixth work of Jesus - the one that restores man in his original nature - is to open his closed and shrunken hand to him, so that he may receive the Gift of God, God Himself. The whole Bible narrates God's search for man. In His Love He strips Himself of everything, even of Himself, and lowers Himself to every humiliation in order to find him. But he can only find the ones who already seek Him. And only those who have already been found and healed by Him in the eye , seek Him, so that they may desire Him. Now Jesus can enter Jerusalem and do what He came for. Zacchaeus is the anticipation of this.
BENEDICT XVI ANGELUS 31 October 2010 Dear Brothers and Sisters!The Evangelist St Luke pays special attention to the theme of Jesus' mercy. In fact, in his narration we find some episodes that highlight the merciful love of God and of Christ, who said that he had come to call, not the just, but sinners (cf. Lk 5:32). Among Luke's typical accounts there is that of the conversion of Zacchaeus, which is read in this Sunday's Liturgy. Zacchaeus is a publican, indeed, he is the head of the publicans of Jericho, an important city on the River Jordan. The publicans were the tax collectors who collected the tribute that the Jews had to pay to the Roman Emperor, and already for this reason they were considered public sinners. What is more, they often took advantage of their position to extort money from the people. Because of this Zacchaeus was very rich but despised by his fellow citizens. So when Jesus was passing through Jericho and stopped at the house of Zacchaeus, he caused a general scandal. The Lord, however, knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted, so to speak, to gamble, and he won the bet: Zacchaeus, deeply moved by Jesus' visit, decided to change his life, and promised to restore four times what he had stolen. “Today salvation has come to this house”, Jesus says, and concludes: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost”. God excludes no one, neither the poor nor the rich. God does not let himself be conditioned by our human prejudices, but sees in everyone a soul to save and is especially attracted to those who are judged as lost and who think themselves so. Jesus Christ, the Incarnation of God, has demonstrated this immense mercy, which takes nothing away from the gravity of sin, but aims always at saving the sinner, at offering him the possibility of redemption, of starting again from the beginning, of converting. In another passage of the Gospel Jesus states that it is very difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (cf. Mt 19:23). In the case of Zacchaeus we see that precisely what seems impossible actually happens: “He”, St Jerome comments, “gave away his wealth and immediately replaced it with the wealth of the Kingdom of Heaven” (Homily on Psalm 83:3). And St Maximus of Turin adds: “Riches, for the foolish, feed dishonesty, but for the wise they are a help to virtue; for the latter they offer a chance of salvation, for the former they procure a stumbling block and perdition” (Sermons, 95). Dear Friends, Zacchaeus welcomed Jesus and he converted because Jesus first welcomed him! He did not condemn him but he met his desire for salvation. Let us pray to the Virgin Mary, perfect model of communion with Jesus, to be renewed by his love, so that we too may experience the joy of being visited by the Son of God, of being renewed by his love and of transmitting his mercy to others.
POPE FRANCIS ANGELUS 3 November 2019 Dear brothers and sisters, good morning! Today’s Gospel (cf. Lk 19: 1-10) places us in the footsteps of Jesus Who, on His way to Jerusalem, stopped in Jericho. There was a great crowd to welcome Him, including a man named Zacchaeus, the head of the “publicans”, that is, of those Jews who collected taxes on behalf of the Roman Empire. He was rich not from honest earnings, but because he asked for “bribes”, and this increased contempt for him. Zacchaeus “was seeking to see who Jesus was” (v. 3); he didn’t want to meet Him, but he was curious: he wanted to see that character about whom he had heard extraordinary things. He was curious. And being short in stature, “to see him” (v. 4) he climbs up a tree. When Jesus comes close, he looks up and sees Him (cf. v. 5). And this is important: the first glance is not from Zacchaeus, but from Jesus, who among the many faces that surrounded Him – the crowd – seeks precisely that one. The merciful gaze of the Lord reaches us before we ourselves realize that we need it in order to be saved. And with this gaze of the divine Master there begins the miracle of the conversion of the sinner. Indeed, Jesus calls to him, and He calls him by his name: “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today” (v. 5). He does not reproach him, He does not deliver a “sermon” to him; He tells him that he must go to Him: “he must”, because it is the will of the Father. Despite the murmuring of the people, Jesus chose to stay at the home of that public sinner. We too would have been scandalized by this behaviour of Jesus. But contempt for and rejection of the sinner only isolate him and cause him to harden in the evil he commits against himself and the community. Instead, God condemns sin, but tries to save the sinner; He goes looking for him to bring him back on the right path. Those who have never felt they are sought by God’s mercy find it difficult to grasp the extraordinary greatness of the gestures and words with which Jesus approaches Zacchaeus. Jesus’ acceptance and attention to him lead him to a clear change of mentality: in just a moment he realized how petty life is when it revolves around money, at the cost of stealing from others and receiving their contempt. Having the Lord there, in his house, makes him see everything with different eyes, even with a little of the tenderness with which Jesus looked at him. And his way of seeing and using money also changes: the gesture of grabbing is replaced by that of giving. Indeed, he decides to give half of what he possesses to the poor and to return four times the sum to those from whom he has stolen (cf. v. 8). Zacchaeus discovers from Jesus that it is possible to love gratuitously: until this moment he was mean, but now he becomes generous; he had a taste for amassing wealth, now he rejoices in distributing. By encountering Love, by discovering that he is loved despite his sins, he becomes capable of loving others, making money a sign of solidarity and communion. May the Virgin May obtain for us the grace always to feel Jesus’ merciful gaze upon us, to go with mercy towards those who have erred, so that they too may welcome Jesus, Who “came to seek and to save the lost” (v. 10).
Reading 1
RispondiEliminaWis 11:22-12:2
Before the LORD the whole universe is as a grain from a balance
or a drop of morning dew come down upon the earth.
But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things;
and you overlook people's sins that they may repent.
For you love all things that are
and loathe nothing that you have made;
for what you hated, you would not have fashioned.
And how could a thing remain, unless you willed it;
or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you?
But you spare all things, because they are yours,
O LORD and lover of souls,
for your imperishable spirit is in all things!
Therefore you rebuke offenders little by little,
warn them and remind them of the sins they are committing,
that they may abandon their wickedness and believe in you, O LORD!
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 145:1-2, 8-9, 10-11, 13, 14
R. (cf. 1) I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
I will extol you, O my God and King,
and I will bless your name forever and ever.
Every day will I bless you,
and I will praise your name forever and ever.
R. I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.
R. I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD,
and let your faithful ones bless you.
Let them discourse of the glory of your kingdom
and speak of your might.
R. I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
The LORD is faithful in all his words
and holy in all his works.
The LORD lifts up all who are falling
and raises up all who are bowed down.
R. I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
Reading 2
2 Thes 1:11-2:2
Brothers and sisters:
We always pray for you,
that our God may make you worthy of his calling
and powerfully bring to fulfillment every good purpose
and every effort of faith,
that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you,
and you in him,
in accord with the grace of our God and Lord Jesus Christ.
We ask you, brothers and sisters,
with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ
and our assembling with him,
not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly, or to be alarmed
either by a "spirit," or by an oral statement,
or by a letter allegedly from us
to the effect that the day of the Lord is at hand.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life. (Jn 3:16)
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
GOSPEL Lk 19:1-10
At that time, Jesus came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town.
Now a man there named Zacchaeus,
who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man,
was seeking to see who Jesus was;
but he could not see him because of the crowd,
for he was short in stature.
So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus,
who was about to pass that way.
When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said,
"Zacchaeus, come down quickly,
for today I must stay at your house."
And he came down quickly and received him with joy.
When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying,
"He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner."
But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord,
"Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor,
and if I have extorted anything from anyone
I shall repay it four times over."
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."
FAUSTI - The encounter between Jesus and Zacchaeus brings salvation, impossible for everyone, but not for God, for whom "nothing is impossible" (1, 37). Finally, man's desire to see the Son of man meets His "duty" to dwell and remain beside him.
RispondiEliminaFinally, God and man find a home in each other and can cease from their labors.
It is the face to face with the Savior, to whom each one is called.
Anticipated now for one, it will then extend to all, to the ends of the earth.
In Zacchaeus (=God remembers) that God who also provides for the little ones of the crow who cry out to Him
(Sl 147,9) remembers every man, however small and unclean, and makes him pure, so that he may make the holy journey. Each Word is allusive and allows each of the themes dear to the evangelist of universal salvation to resound, from those of the manger in Bethlehem to those of the wood of Calvary.
The center is the "desire to seeing" of Zacchaeus and Jesus' gaze towards him.
From this encounter of glances, salvation flows today: the Savior is bornes
Zacchaeus, the one that cannot be saved par excellence, finds the Son of Man, who came to seek out what was lost: "it is necessary" that "today" and "quickly" " I dwell" "in your house".
The unsalvable has the unique prerogative required for salvation: he sees his own misery and "tries to see" the mercy of the Lord who is passing .
This is the beginning of all enlightenment.
Zacchaeus - a figure of Adam who has hidden himself from the Face of his Lord - is inexpugnable Jericho.
Jesus first approaches him and heals his eye, always sick by mortal envy.
He can then see His gaze that seduces everyone.
Once he had opened the window of his heart, he entered it and took possession of him.
Just as the blind man raised his eyes to his Lord, so he who has become the smallest of all raises his eyes to Zacchaeus. As small as he may be, he is always higher than him, as are all his disciples. In fact, He has lowered more than anything, so as to be able to serve everyone.
Only the humble meets God, because God is Humble.
Love makes the other person superior to himself. (Phil 2:3).
Nicholas of Flue, in the end of his vision of Jesus, the Pilgrim who begs for love from man, writes: "When the pilgrim was four steps away, he turned. He had his hat over his head (in which he had already received the alms from Nicholas); he removed it and bowed to the man (Nicholas himself). Then the man understood the love that the Pilgrim had for him, and he was shocked, seeing that he was unworthy of it.
He knew in Spirit that the face of the Pilgrim, His eyes, His whole Body, were filled with a humility full of Love, like a vase so full of honey that it could not add a drop.
At that moment he did not see the Pilgrim anymore.
But it was so paid that it was no longer waiting for anything. It seemed to him that everything that was in heaven and on earth had been revealed to him.
The great mystery on which to be enlightened is the humility of God that Jesus reveals to us to save us.
We all have a home in which to welcome Jesus.
God is pure acceptance, and He seeks nothing but to be accepted.
The Father in the Son welcomes all, and all those who welcome the Son are with Him welcomed into the Father. The sixth work of Jesus - the one that restores man in his original nature - is to open his closed and shrunken hand to him, so that he may receive the Gift of God, God Himself.
The whole Bible narrates God's search for man.
In His Love He strips Himself of everything, even of Himself, and lowers Himself to every humiliation in order to find him.
But he can only find the ones who already seek Him.
And only those who have already been found and healed by Him in the eye , seek Him, so that they may desire Him.
Now Jesus can enter Jerusalem and do what He came for. Zacchaeus is the anticipation of this.
BENEDICT XVI ANGELUS 31 October 2010
RispondiEliminaDear Brothers and Sisters!The Evangelist St Luke pays special attention to the theme of Jesus' mercy. In fact, in his narration we find some episodes that highlight the merciful love of God and of Christ, who said that he had come to call, not the just, but sinners (cf. Lk 5:32). Among Luke's typical accounts there is that of the conversion of Zacchaeus, which is read in this Sunday's Liturgy. Zacchaeus is a publican, indeed, he is the head of the publicans of Jericho, an important city on the River Jordan. The publicans were the tax collectors who collected the tribute that the Jews had to pay to the Roman Emperor, and already for this reason they were considered public sinners. What is more, they often took advantage of their position to extort money from the people. Because of this Zacchaeus was very rich but despised by his fellow citizens. So when Jesus was passing through Jericho and stopped at the house of Zacchaeus, he caused a general scandal. The Lord, however, knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted, so to speak, to gamble, and he won the bet: Zacchaeus, deeply moved by Jesus' visit, decided to change his life, and promised to restore four times what he had stolen. “Today salvation has come to this house”, Jesus says, and concludes: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost”.
God excludes no one, neither the poor nor the rich. God does not let himself be conditioned by our human prejudices, but sees in everyone a soul to save and is especially attracted to those who are judged as lost and who think themselves so. Jesus Christ, the Incarnation of God, has demonstrated this immense mercy, which takes nothing away from the gravity of sin, but aims always at saving the sinner, at offering him the possibility of redemption, of starting again from the beginning, of converting. In another passage of the Gospel Jesus states that it is very difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (cf. Mt 19:23). In the case of Zacchaeus we see that precisely what seems impossible actually happens: “He”, St Jerome comments, “gave away his wealth and immediately replaced it with the wealth of the Kingdom of Heaven” (Homily on Psalm 83:3).
And St Maximus of Turin adds: “Riches, for the foolish, feed dishonesty, but for the wise they are a help to virtue; for the latter they offer a chance of salvation, for the former they procure a stumbling block and perdition” (Sermons, 95).
Dear Friends, Zacchaeus welcomed Jesus and he converted because Jesus first welcomed him! He did not condemn him but he met his desire for salvation. Let us pray to the Virgin Mary, perfect model of communion with Jesus, to be renewed by his love, so that we too may experience the joy of being visited by the Son of God, of being renewed by his love and of transmitting his mercy to others.
POPE FRANCIS
RispondiEliminaANGELUS 3 November 2019 Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!
Today’s Gospel (cf. Lk 19: 1-10) places us in the footsteps of Jesus Who, on His way to Jerusalem, stopped in Jericho. There was a great crowd to welcome Him, including a man named Zacchaeus, the head of the “publicans”, that is, of those Jews who collected taxes on behalf of the Roman Empire. He was rich not from honest earnings, but because he asked for “bribes”, and this increased contempt for him. Zacchaeus “was seeking to see who Jesus was” (v. 3); he didn’t want to meet Him, but he was curious: he wanted to see that character about whom he had heard extraordinary things. He was curious. And being short in stature, “to see him” (v. 4) he climbs up a tree. When Jesus comes close, he looks up and sees Him (cf. v. 5).
And this is important: the first glance is not from Zacchaeus, but from Jesus, who among the many faces that surrounded Him – the crowd – seeks precisely that one. The merciful gaze of the Lord reaches us before we ourselves realize that we need it in order to be saved. And with this gaze of the divine Master there begins the miracle of the conversion of the sinner. Indeed, Jesus calls to him, and He calls him by his name: “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today” (v. 5). He does not reproach him, He does not deliver a “sermon” to him; He tells him that he must go to Him: “he must”, because it is the will of the Father. Despite the murmuring of the people, Jesus chose to stay at the home of that public sinner.
We too would have been scandalized by this behaviour of Jesus. But contempt for and rejection of the sinner only isolate him and cause him to harden in the evil he commits against himself and the community. Instead, God condemns sin, but tries to save the sinner; He goes looking for him to bring him back on the right path. Those who have never felt they are sought by God’s mercy find it difficult to grasp the extraordinary greatness of the gestures and words with which Jesus approaches Zacchaeus.
Jesus’ acceptance and attention to him lead him to a clear change of mentality: in just a moment he realized how petty life is when it revolves around money, at the cost of stealing from others and receiving their contempt. Having the Lord there, in his house, makes him see everything with different eyes, even with a little of the tenderness with which Jesus looked at him. And his way of seeing and using money also changes: the gesture of grabbing is replaced by that of giving. Indeed, he decides to give half of what he possesses to the poor and to return four times the sum to those from whom he has stolen (cf. v. 8). Zacchaeus discovers from Jesus that it is possible to love gratuitously: until this moment he was mean, but now he becomes generous; he had a taste for amassing wealth, now he rejoices in distributing. By encountering Love, by discovering that he is loved despite his sins, he becomes capable of loving others, making money a sign of solidarity and communion.
May the Virgin May obtain for us the grace always to feel Jesus’ merciful gaze upon us, to go with mercy towards those who have erred, so that they too may welcome Jesus, Who “came to seek and to save the lost” (v. 10).