HOMILY for 33rd Tue per annum (II)

Apoc 3:1-6. 14-22; Ps 14; Luke 19:1-10

“Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth”! (Apoc 3:16). These words had a great impact on my life over a decade ago. I was in my final year in university, and one day after Mass, I bought a book in the Catholic bookshop opposite the cathedral, and my thought was that the book could help me explain my faith to my friends. But, rather complacently, I didn’t think it would change my life much. After all, I said to myself with pride, I already knew my faith and read a lot of theology! 

But knowing the faith is not the same as knowing and loving Christ, and through this book, Christ came knocking on the door of my heart. And he used these words, cited on page 25 of that book, to knock me out of my complacency: “Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth”. And this is how the author went on to explain the passage: God “wants us on fire for Him. He wants us to love Him. How do you act when you’re in love? Do you do only what you absolutely have to in order to hang on to the relationship? Not if you really love. This person is constantly on your mind. You constantly want to please him, to communicate, and you both want to get to know each other better. You don’t say, “I spent last Sunday with you. Again now? How long do I have to stay? Is an hour enough?” God wants us to be in love with Him. He wants us to be on fire for Him. He wants to be on our minds. He wants to be central in our hearts.”

Why? Because he wants us to be truly happy and fulfilled in this life and to enjoy eternal life with him. This is why God comes in search of us, “to seek and save the lost” – especially when we don’t even know we’re lost – and his living Word is spoken to us at the right time and in the right place. These are moments of actual graces, in which God is acting and speaking, and his Spirit is already at work to prepare our hearts to listen to Christ, to be open to God’s grace. And my experience is that God uses even our most simple human motivations, and can transform that with his grace into a miraculous moment of conversion.

So it was that the Spirit moved Zacchaeus in the Gospel to look for Jesus. He wasn’t even moved by faith, as such, but merely simple curiosity. But this spurred him to make the effort to climb a tree and seek Jesus, and this is enough for the Lord. For Jesus immediately calls Zacchaeus by name, and asks to go to his house. Effectively, Christ knocks on the door of Zacchaeus’ heart; a moment of grace. But Zacchaeus is given the freedom to respond to Christ’s request, just as each of us are. And what Zacchaeus does is to say ‘Yes’ to the Lord, to receive the Lord joyfully into his home, into his life. 

So, as St John put it: “If any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me”. Each day, we’re called to let Christ into our lives, to gradually become more in love with him, and this is what our daily Eucharistic communion expresses and fosters. When we say ‘Amen’ at Communion, we invite Christ into our lives, so that we can be united to God in love and he can truly say to us: “Today salvation has come to this house”, indeed, under our ‘roof’. 

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The book to which this homily refers is 'We’re on a Mission from God’ by Mary Beth Bonacci.