We just celebrated All Saints.  It is a profound solemnity of the Church.  Each year our first Vespers opens the solemnity of All Saints with this amazing text from St. Symeon the New Theologian: “The saints in each generation, joined together to those who have gone before and filled them with light, become a golden chain, in which each saint is a separate link, united to the next by faith and works and love. 

The gospel for this Sunday is uplifting as we behold the gift of salvation in the encounter of Zacchaeus with Jesus (Lk 19:1-10).  To see, in order to see Jesus, Zacchaeus, who is short, and because of the crowd, climbs a sycamore tree.  There is a deeper intention that moves him to such an action, one where he makes himself vulnerable to collective, judgmental voices such as ‘what a fool’…‘a tax collector, what is he doing here’?  Zacchaeus will not be stopped; his heart has opened, if ever so small, there is an opening, a beginning. Grace is working in him as he seeks out Jesus.

In the gospel of today Jesus tells the story of two men who went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the upholder of the law, and the other a tax collector (Lk 18:9-14).  The prayer of one is received by God, the other is not.  One goes inward and puts his glance on himself, on his own conversion; the other looks at his neighbor, he does not go inward. 

Today’s gospel is the healing of the ten lepers (Lk 17:11-19).  There are several themes that one can draw out of this gospel.  One being ‘thanksgiving’ and how gratitude keeps the heart wide open as it acknowledges the extravagant gifts of God upon us, especially in our need.  The gospel concludes with Jesus addressing the one leper who returned to offer thanksgiving for the healing he received.  Jesus’ reply is telling us something very important on this journey of faith that we are all on. 

Right now, let us ask Jesus, like the apostles: “Increase our faith”.  To ask something, to desire something beyond our ego demands, what would this be like?   To desire and thus to ask from the depths, ‘Out of the depths I cry to you O Lord’…I cry, I desire for my faith to grow.