Repentance is the abandonment of all the paths of debauchery by which man's feet, thoughts and desires have walked, and turning to a new path, the path of Christ. But how can a sinful person repent when he has not yet met God in his heart and is not ashamed of himself? Before the small Zacchaeus saw Christ with his eyes, he met Him in his heart and was ashamed of all his ways.

Repentance is the pain of self-deception, with which a sinful person has been lulling himself for a long time, for a long, long time, namely, until the moment when he feels the pain of self-deception. But this pain itself leads to despair and suicide, if shame and fear of God are not associated with it. Only then is this pain from self-deception not fatal, but healing. Blessed Augustine at first felt the fatal pain of self-deception, which would have killed both his soul and body, if it had not been quickly overtaken by the shame and fear of God.

Repentance is an unexpected vision of one's leprosy and a cry for a remedy and a doctor. When a dark-haired man does not look at himself in the mirror for a long time, then suddenly stands in front of him - and he is all gray! A sinner who has not repented thinks for a long time and asserts that his soul is healthy and sinless, until one day his spiritual sight suddenly erupts and he sees that his soul is all leprosy. But how to see your spiritual leprosy without looking in the mirror? Christ is the mirror in which everyone sees himself as he is. This is the only mirror given to mankind, so that all people look into it and see what they are. For in Christ, as in the purest mirror, everyone sees himself sick and ugly, and still sees his beautiful original image, as he was and as he should become again. And the sinful Zacchaeus, healthy and visible on the outside, having learned about our Lord Jesus Christ, discovered in himself a terrible leper and terrible pain, for which there was no physician on earth except Jesus.

Repentance is the beginning of healing from self-will, the beginning of submitting oneself to God's will. Living according to his own will, a person quickly slides from his royal dignity into a cattle barn and into an animal hole. No man on earth has ever been able to act according to his own will and remain a man. The name of a person does not mean self-will; the name of man, true man, signifies complete obedience to the higher will, the far-sighted and infallible will of God.

In the houses of madness and weeping dwell the willful, in the houses of utter darkness and gnashing of teeth. Their body is darkness and gnashing of teeth; their soul is weeping and gnashing of teeth Self-will opens the gates for the undying worm, which gnaws at the sinner's soul and body. Repentance is the discovery of a worm in oneself. Alas for me, when I managed to breed so many worms! Alas for me, who will free me from so many abominable worms that dwell in me! Thus cries the terrified sinner when his eyes are opened and he sees what lives in him.

Today's Gospel reading describes one of the repentant sinners, the small Zacchaeus, who ascended to the heights to see the Most High Christ; who was cleansed by repentance in order to meet the Most-Pure Christ; and who was healed of the leprosy of his soul, love of money and hardness of heart by the power of Christ the Almighty. The Lord turned many sinners to repentance, many who were lost He found and saved; He called many who had gone astray and returned them to the true path. But it pleased Providence that only a few examples of repentance should be recorded in the Gospel, those that are typical and instructive for all human generations. The example of the Apostle Peter shows the fall repeated because of fear from people and the repentance repeated because of God's love. The example of a sinful woman shows the leprosy of fornication and the healing of this leprosy. The example of Zacchaeus shows the leprosy of the love of money and the healing of this leprosy. The example of the thief who repented on the cross shows the power and salvific repentance of the most hardened criminals even in the hour of death. These are all encouraging examples of repentance leading to life. All these are models of repentance shown to us so that we can choose the path and method of our own salvation that corresponds to our sinful state. But there is also repentance that is destructive and deadly, hopeless and suicidal. Such was the repentance of Judas the traitor. I have sinned, betraying the innocent Blood, - he said, went out, went and hanged myself (Matthew 27:4-5). Such repentance, which leads to despair and suicide, is not Christian blessed repentance, but satanic malice against oneself, against the world and life; satanic abhorrence of oneself, the world and life. However, let us dwell today on the wondrous example of the salvific repentance of the small Zacchaeus, which is told in today's Gospel.

At the time of it, Jesus entered Jericho and passed through it. And behold, a man named Zacchaeus, the chief of the publicans, and a rich man, sought to see Jesus who he was, but he could not follow the people, because he was small in stature, and running ahead, he climbed into a fig tree to see him, because he had to pass by it. This was at the time when the Lord performed another miracle in Jericho, namely, when He restored the sight of the blind Bartimaeus. For what the Lord did to Zacchaeus is a miracle, hardly less than the healing of the blind man. Bartimaeus He opened his bodily eyes, and this Zacchaeus his spiritual eyes. Bartimaeus he cured of the blindness of the eyes, and Zacchaeus of the blindness of the soul. He opened the windows for Bartimaeus so that he could see the miracles of God in the material world, and He opened a window for Zacchaeus to see the miracles of God in the heavenly, spiritual world. The miracle of Zacchaeus is interpreted as the miracle of Bartimaeus. The acquisition of bodily sight should serve to the acquisition of spiritual sight. Each miracle performed by our Lord Jesus Christ had first of all a spiritual purpose, consisting mainly in giving spiritual sight to blinded humanity, so that it might see the presence of God, the power of God and the mercy of God. This goal is partially achieved, for example, in the healing of the ten lepers; for only one of them, having been healed bodily, was healed in soul and returned to give thanks to the Lord (Luke 17:12-20). But in the case of the blind Bartimaeus, as in most others, this goal has been fully achieved. Having seen the word of the Lord with his bodily eyes, Bartimaeus immediately received his sight in his spirit, for he immediately knew the presence of God, the omnipotence of God and the mercy of God - and he immediately received his sight and followed Him, glorifying God (Luke 18:43). And not only did the blind Bartimaeus receive his sight, but, seeing the miracle performed by the Lord on the blind Bartimaeus, many others also regained their sight in spirit; for it is said, And all the people, seeing this, gave praise to God. Probably, this miracle also influenced the publican Zacchaeus, opening his spiritual eyes. There is also no doubt that he must have heard much before about the wondrous deeds and wondrous personality of our Lord Jesus Christ, since such an irresistible desire to see Him arose in him that in order to realize it, Zacchaeus had to push forward through the crowd of people who were taller than him, and even climb a tree. The tax collectors were considered very sinful and unclean people, since while levying a state tax from the people, they mercilessly engaged in extortion in their own favor. Therefore the publicans were equated with the pagans (Matt. 18:17). And if the publicans had such a bad reputation in general, what kind of reputation did one of their leaders have? And one of these notorious leaders of the publicans was this small Zacchaeus. He was the chief of the publicans and was a rich man, that is, he was despised and envied. Contempt and envy are always two closely spaced walls, between which the soul of a rich sinner squeezes in this life. But in the sinner Zacchaeus the man Zacchaeus awoke, who rebelled against the sinner in himself and with all his might rushed forward and upward in order to see Christ, to see Man without sin, to see his unstained, all-pure type. So, the man Zacchaeus climbed onto a high, branchy and gnarled fig tree near the road along which the Lord was supposed to pass.

When Jesus came to this place, he looked at him and said to him, "Zacchaeus! come down quickly, for today I must be in your house. And he came down hastily and received Him with joy. From these words it is clear that it was not Zacchaeus who first saw the Lord, but the Lord of Zacchaeus. The Saviour, looking, saw him and called him. With His spiritual sight the Lord had seen Zacchaeus much earlier, and with His bodily eyes He saw him when He came to this place. And although the small Zacchaeus got out of the mass of people and climbed a fig tree, yet the Lord noticed him from the ground and from the crowd of people before he saw the Lord from the height of the tree. Oh, how shrewd is the Lord our God! He sees us even when we do not even know about it. While we seek Him, making every possible effort to find Him and see Him, He stands beside us and looks at us. He always sees us before we see him. If we were to fix our mind's eye on Him, seeking Him, only desiring Him, then He would appear to us and call us by name, so that we, too, would descend from the high and dangerous rocks of carnal wisdom and descend into our hearts - descend with a prayerful mind into our hearts - into our true home. Then the Lord would say to each of us: today I need to be in your house. For when the human mind descends into the heart and, having been washed in tears in the heart, reaches out to the Living God, then the heart becomes the place where God meets man. This is the inner or spiritual meaning of this event.

And he came down hastily and received Him with joy. How can one not hasten to the voice that revives the dead and rebukes the winds, heals the possessed and dissolves the petrified hearts of sinners with tears? How could he not accept Him whom he wished to see, at least stealthily from afar? And how can one not experience inexpressible joy when seeing Him in one's home, into which no one dared to set foot except the feet of inveterate sinners? But this is how the Lord has mercy when He has mercy. This is how the Lord bestows when He gives. Desperate fishermen are so overflowing with the net that it breaks through, thousands of hungry people in a desert place are fed so abundantly that many baskets of pieces remain; to the sick who ask for help, He grants health not only physically, but also spiritually; Everywhere He forgives royal gestures, royal mercy and royal generosity of gifts! So it is in this case: Zacchaeus only wants to see Him, and He does not just allow him to see Himself, but hurries to be the first to turn to Zacchaeus, and even enters under the roof of his house. This is what the Lord does. And here is how ordinary sinful people, self-satisfied and self-styled "righteous" do:

And everyone, seeing this, began to murmur, and said that He had come to a sinful man. Oh, the unspeakable misfortune of man is a language that outstrips the mind! Embittered in soul and paralyzed in mind, these people shout, mock and murmur before reflecting on the intention of our Lord Jesus Christ and on the possible change in the heart of the sinful Zacchaeus. According to their brief thoughts, our Lord Jesus Christ enters the house of Zacchaeus because of ignorance of the sins of this man. Thus the Pharisees judged short-sightedly, when the Lord allowed a sinful woman to wash His feet – if He had been a prophet, He would have known who and what kind of woman touches Him, for she is a sinner (Luke 7:39). This is how all those people judged and judge today who think with the carnal mind and evaluate others by their outward appearance, not knowing the depth of either God's mercy or the human heart. Christ said more than once that He came into this world for the sake of sinners, and most of all for the sake of the greatest sinners. And just as a physician hastens to visit not the healthy, but the sick, so the Lord hastened to visit not the healthy with righteousness, but the sick with sin. The Gospel does not say that the Lord in this case entered the house of some righteous man of Jericho, but He hastened to turn into the house of the sinful Zacchaeus. Does not every reasonable physician act in the same way when he enters a hospital? Does he not first hurry to the beds of the most seriously ill patients? The whole earth is a huge hospital, overflowing with the sick infected with sin. All people are sick in comparison with the health of Christ; all are weak in comparison with the omnipotence of Christ; all are ugly in comparison with Christ's beauty. But among people there are more and less seriously ill, there are more and less infirm, more and less ugly. The former are called righteous, the latter sinners. And the Heavenly Physician, having descended to earth not to entertain himself, but to urgently treat and save the plagued, first of all hastened to help the most seriously ill. Therefore He ate and drank with sinners; therefore He allowed sinners to weep at His feet; and therefore He entered under the roof of the sinful Zacchaeus. But, however, this Zacchaeus, at the moment when he met Christ, was far from being the most plagued man in Jericho. His heart suddenly changed, and at that moment he truly became a much healthier, stronger, and more beautiful righteous man than all these murmurers and scoffers. For he repented of all his sins, and his heart was suddenly changed. And that his heart has changed, is shown by what follows:

And Zacchaeus, standing up, said to the Lord, Lord! I will give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have wronged anyone in any way, I will repay fourfold. Who demanded this from him? No one. Who accused him of kidnapping someone else's property? No one. The very presence of the all-pure and sinless Lord Zacchaeus felt as an accusation against himself, and this very presence, without words, confession and explanations, prompted him to take such a step. A repentant heart understands God without words. To the repentant, God quickly reveals what to do next. As soon as a person heartily repents of his sin, God immediately prompts him by His power to create the fruits of repentance. Even St. John the Baptist showed people a whole method of true repentance. First he called people to repentance: repent. And immediately after this: "Bring forth the worthy fruit of repentance" (Matt. 3:2-8)! And here is a sinner who hastily studied this method and applied it! Only when he heard about our Lord Jesus Christ, Zacchaeus rebelled against himself, seeing Him, he sincerely abhorred his sinfulness; and now, when the Most Gracious Physician has shown him such attention and entered his house, he bears the fruits of repentance. He knows his main disease and immediately applies the main remedy for this disease. The illness of Zacchaeus is the love of money; the remedy for it is mercy. Even in ancient times it was said: "He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver" (Ecclesiastes 5:9). Zacchaeus loved silver and spent his entire life accumulating it in all ways, most of them sinful. This is a disease that irrevocably draws a person into the abyss. This is fire, the more it flares up, the more wealth increases. There is no amount of money that can satiate the covetous. Just as fire cannot say: "Do not put any more wood in me, enough is enough of me!" - so the passion of love of money cannot utter the words: "Enough!" It can only be quenched by the presence of God, which instills in the human heart shame and fear, and in addition to shame and fear, also the knowledge of what is greater than silver and gold. Without the presence of Christ, Zacchaeus would have lived out his sinful life, like all other publicans, would have died despised and cursed - and would have been forgotten. His name would never have been inscribed in the gospel on earth and in the Book of the Living in heaven. But the presence of the Living God revived his soul, which had been previously mortified by the passion of love of money, and made him a new man, reborn and resurrected from the dead. This is an immortal lesson to all people, teaching that no mortal can be saved from his sinful illness without the help of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But look at the way Zacchaeus confesses his sin. He does not say: "Lord, I am a sinful man!" and does not say: "My illness is the love of money!" No, but by bringing forth the fruits of repentance, he himself confesses both his sin and his illness. Half of my possessions I will give to the poor. Is this not a clear confession of one's passion for covetousness? And if I have offended anyone in any way, I will repay fourfold. And is this not a clear confession that his wealth was acquired by sinful means? He did not say to the Lord before this: "I have sinned and I repent!" He silently confessed this to the Lord in his heart, and the Lord silently accepted his confession and his repentance. For the Lord, it is more important that a person with his heart, and not with his tongue, recognize and confess his illness and cry out for help. For the tongue can lie, but the heart does not lie. Now look at how Zacchaeus atones for his sin and what efforts he makes on his part to come out into the light from the shadow cast by the accursed passion of the love of money! He immediately promises to give half of his property to the poor - he, who admired every coin he received and hid it away from people's eyes; He, who never knew the bliss of giving! But that's not all. He tries with all his might to correct and make amends for the offenses inflicted on people and offers to repay fourfold to everyone from whom he has taken something unjustly. The law of Moses deals much more leniently with sinners than this Zacchaeus did with himself. In the law of Moses it is said: "If a man or a woman commits any sin against a man, and thereby commits a crime against the Lord, and that soul is guilty, then let them confess their sin which they have committed, and restore in full that of which they are guilty, and add to it a fifth, and give it to him against whom they have sinned" (Num. 5:6-7). This was prescribed for those who confessed their sin. Zacchaeus, confessing his sin, thus had to return to everyone offended by him according to the law as much as he had taken away, and in addition another fifth of this amount. But Zacchaeus treats himself more harshly than the law; he wants to apply to himself the provision of the law that applied to thieves and swindlers who do not confess their sins, but are caught in the act; he wants to repay those whom he has offended fourfold (Exodus 22:10). Thus, everyone who truly repents becomes merciful to others and unmerciful to himself.

Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is the son of Abraham." Such was the answer of our Lord Jesus Christ to the small Zacchaeus to his heartfelt repentance, to his spiritual joy and to the fruits of repentance that had been shown. The next and final words: "For the Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost" were Christ's answer to the short-sighted sages and murmurers who blamed the Lord for having come into the house of a sinful man. As they walked along the street to the house of Zacchaeus; while they grumbled and were indignant at this indecent visitation, the Savior was silent and waited. What was He waiting for? He waited for the hearts of the inhumane grumblers and the heart of the repentant Zacchaeus to be fully opened; He allowed the demon of their malice to reach the pinnacle of rejoicing, so that his defeat would be clearer and more obvious to all. Such is the tactics of God's victory. God is never in a hurry to show evil its weakness and His strength when it first encounters it, but waits until it is lifted up in its arrogance to the clouds, so that evil can be destroyed by the breath of His mouth alone. Evil is so insignificant in comparison with the power of God that if God did not allow evil to grow as much as it can grow, in order to intervene later with His power, people would never realize the greatness of God's power. Having granted freedom to both hellish and earthly forces on Golgotha, the Almighty immediately showed both hell and earth His unheard-of power through His Resurrection. The Lord uses the same method in this case with Zacchaeus. He calmly goes to the house of Zacchaeus; the shouters shout, the murmurers murmur, the mockers mock, but He is silent and walks. He enters the house of Zacchaeus; the self-styled "righteous" remain outside the sinner's house for fear of getting dirty; And again the shouters continue to shout even louder, the murmurers murmur and the mockers mock. Thus the triumph of malice reaches its climax. All those who shout, murmur, and mock are already convinced that they are absolutely right and Christ is wrong; that they know the sinner Zacchaeus well, but Christ does not know him; that they firmly follow the law, and that Christ broke the law by crossing the threshold of the sinner's house; that they do not allow themselves to be deceived, and Christ was deceived! Hence the logical conclusion for them that Christ is not a true teacher, prophet or Messiah; for if He had been all these things, or any of them, He would have known who Zacchaeus was, and would not have come under his roof. And it means: "We, the people of Jericho, have caught Jesus Christ in a trap today, and now we will save the world from the great self-deception that He is the Messiah and the Son of God!" This is their victory. This is the exaltation of evil to the clouds. And at the same time, Zacchaeus grows, becoming more and more kind and a newer person. And the Lord, looking less at the hypocritical and malicious crowd than at the renewal of Zacchaeus' heart, stands quietly and waits until everything is done, and then the time will come for Him to speak. And when malice rises to the clouds, when all the hard mold falls from the old heart of the sinner, then Zacchaeus opens his mouth and pronounces before everyone the words, unexpected for everyone except Christ: "I will give half of my possessions to the poor." Was it not thunder that suddenly dispersed the haughty cloud? Why are you suddenly silent now, people of Jericho? Why don't you shout, murmur, and mock anymore? Why are the words stuck in your throat? Who was deceived: Christ or you? Who knew Zacchaeus better: you or Christ? Who is the greater righteous now, you or Zacchaeus?

How merciful and meek is the Lord! Like a gentle lamb, this time He stands among people embittered by invisible wolves. And how calm and confident He is in His victory, now as always! How calmly He waits in the wings! And when His time comes, He first turns to the sick man, for whose sake He turned off the road to his house: now salvation has come to this house. With these words, the Heavenly Physician gives the patient a certificate that he has recovered and is ready to join the healthy people upon discharge from the hospital. Blindness had fallen from his soul, as it had been from the eyes of Bartimaeus, and now he was free to walk the path of truth and mercy. But in order to make this reference more understandable to everyone standing around, the Lord also adds: because he is also the son of Abraham. A true son of Abraham, in spirit and truth, and not only in name and blood, like others, who boasted of their descent from Abraham only in name and blood! Abraham was philanthropic, stranger-loving, non-acquisitive, meek and filled with the fear of God, faith and joy in the Holy Spirit. This is how the short Zacchaeus became. Abraham, for his lofty virtues, was vouchsafed to become the spiritual ancestor of all the righteous. That is why Zacchaeus, through repentance, becomes his true descendant, his son in spirit. The Lord announces this to Zacchaeus for consolation, and to his accusers for reflection. And again He declares last: For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. That is: to seek out precisely those sinners whom no one seeks, but everyone repels, and to save precisely those whom both the world and they themselves consider lost. For the Great Podvig descended from heaven in order to save not so much those who had a slight cold, as the lepers and the blind, the demon-possessed and the paralytic, and in order to raise the dead who were in the graves. In another place the Lord says: "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Matt. 9:13; 1 Timothy 1:15). O brethren, do you know that this word also applies to us? Do you know that we too are sinners, for whose sake the Lord the Podvig descended to earth? His ineffable love for us brought Him down from heaven to earth, to seek out what was lost and to save sinners. Oh, look at little Zacchaeus, whom his desire to see the Lord made great. Behold, even now Christ draws near to us, as He once did to Zacchaeus, surrounded by masses of people, innumerable masses of both righteous and murmuring. The whole of human history, consisting of a two-thousand-year hum behind Him and around Him, bends over us. Don't you hear the hubbub and humming? It's all the past rushing towards you and next to you. And in the center of the multi-million crowd walks the humble Lord and Savior. Hurry, climb up to the heights to see the Lord. Everything else, past and present, is not so worthy of the view. Rise above the muddy road that you have been wandering so far, climb a high tree: He will certainly pass by. Oh, blessed is he who is called by the sweetest voice, the sweetness of which even the angels revel in!