Zacchaeus is a figure of contrasts. Though a person “short in stature,” he rises above others. An Israelite and “a chief tax collector,” he is an outsider among his people. Though pursuing an “unclean” profession, he is nonetheless the “clean one” (the meaning of Zacchaeus).

Who says it’s hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God? Well, Jesus does, in the previous chapter of the Gospel of Luke from which we’re hearing today. The metaphor of the needle’s eye sums up a wealth of sayings and stories about the danger of accumulating riches.

THEN JESUS entered and walked through Jericho. There was a man there, his name Zacchaeus, the head tax man and quite rich. He wanted desperately to see Jesus, but the crowd was in his way—he was a short man and couldn’t see over the crowd. So he ran on ahead and climbed up in a sycamore tree so he could see Jesus when he came by.

POPE FRANCIS, in his interview with Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro for America magazine in October 2013, is asked “Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?”, and his answer after much thought is: “I am a sinner who the Lord has looked upon. . . .

Brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.

God—and Jesus, together—have power, but it is power exercised in love. Because God is the creator, all things exist: “How could a thing remain, unless you willed it?” but everything exists because God loves it.

You may remember “The Beautiful Hands of a Priest,” an old-fashioned poem that places the priest on an impossible pedestal from which we have seen many fall. The humanity of the priest is obvious in the terrible sins of some, yet being human is not synonymous with sinfulness.

God creates out of nothing. . . . but he does what is still more wonderful: He makes saints out of sinners. —Søren Kierkegaard, Journals