19 November 1991
Antananarivo, Madagascar

My dear Sisters and Confreres,

My first thought must be one of gratitude to God who has brought me once more to this country that was so dear to the heart of St. Vincent. I am grateful, too, to God for the safe journey, walking, as the psalmist might express it, on "the wings of the wind." (Ps 104:3).

The passage from St. Luke's Gospel, to which we have just listened, is one of the slightly humorous passages in the New Testament. If humor is the ability to see the incongruous, then we have it here. Zacchaeus may have been an important figure in Jericho, but when it came to public meetings, he was lost. He had to run along the road ahead of the crowd and climb a tree if he wanted to see Jesus of Nazareth passing by. Zacchaeus was rich, remarks St. Luke, but even in 30 A.D. there were things that money couldn't buy. No money could bring it about that Zacchaeus could add a cubit to his height. It was the sight of this important but tiny little man, looking out through the leaves of a tree, that seemed to have been incongruous to St. Luke and to Our Lord.

Humor is refreshing, but it can turn sour. Then you have derision. It was, perhaps, the derision of the crowd that first attracted the attention of Our Lord to Zacchaeus. They were laughing at the sight of Zacchaeus up in the tree. Then the courtesy of Christ intervened, and He turned the vinegar of derision into the warm wine of acceptance. "Come down quickly, Zacchaeus, for I must remain in your house this day." Two questions arise here. First, is this the only place in the Gospel that Our Lord invited Himself to another man's house? Second, is this the only place in the Gospel where Our Lord hurried a person? "Come down quickly...." Perhaps that was only the courtesy of Christ, Who suited His invitation to Zacchaeus, for St. Luke depicts Zacchaeus as a man in a hurry, running along ahead of the crowd and running home so that he could receive his distinguished guest.

This passage of St. Luke's Gospel is a study in attitudes, the attitudes of acceptance and non-acceptance. Zacchaeus accepts Our Lord joyfully and the sign of his acceptance is his open house and his resolution to give half of his goods to the poor. Outside the house of Zacchaeus we have non-acceptance, the crowd protesting and murmuring because Jesus had accepted Zacchaeus with all his defects, physical and spiritual. This evening we are inside the house of Our Lord. We are sitting around His table here. We have been accepted by Him. We accept the poor. There may, however, be particular people whom we do not accept, or to whom we manifest an attitude of coldness and reserve. In this we are not like Christ. The meaning of our Holy Communion is that we accept, not only the Christ of the Eucharist, but the whole Christ, the Christ of the domestic situation, of the community situation into which St. Luke puts Our Lord in today's Gospel.

So often in our contacts with others we set up in our minds conditions for accepting people and, because we do, we are unable to change them. Have you ever noticed how Our Lord always seemed to make people conscious of their strengths before He made them aware of their weaknesses? He accepted Zacchaeus, even though in the past he had been dishonest. You will notice often in the letters of St. Vincent that he will begin by praising a Confrere before he draws attention to his faults. Very often it is prejudice in our minds that prevents us from accepting people.