That God-shaped hole within us.

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Gospel: Luke 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 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.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

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As chief tax collector, Zacchaeus was the most hated man in town.

He made a living off of squeezing money out of others, often the poorest and most vulnerable in town.

But the Gospel tells us that Zacchaeus was also “desperate” to see Jesus.

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This was a man with competing desires. After years of living high on the hog, Zacchaeus remained unfulfilled.

His career drove him into isolation.

Although he appeared strong and powerful to the outside world, he was starving for life’s intangibles: love, intimacy, and friendship.

Things he longed to share, above all, with Jesus. 

As the French philosopher Blaise Paschal once wrote, “In every person’s heart is an empty space that has the shape of God…and nothing else can fill it.”

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How many of us feel that God-shaped hole?

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Zacchaeus reminds us that nothing – no title, no amount of money or power – will ever be enough. God alone can satisfy the deepest longings within us.

This is why we are striving to live out our vision statement at St. Pius X: “We are all generations journeying together with Jesus to satisfy our hungry hearts. Come and see!”

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Image credits: (1) Christ Community Church Ocala (2) Fr. Avelino Gonzalez (3) Converge