NOTES for Luk 19:1-10
"And Zacchaeus comes to mind too, the tax collector, a short man who wanted to catch even one glimpse of the Savior. He could not make his way through the crowd, and people despised him because he was short, but he climbed a tree and sat there, and watched... And the Lord called him and came to his house. And we too are short in stature, spiritually. We have not earned at all the right for Him to come to us. Yet He does come...
The Lord said to Zacchaeus: "Today I will be with you." And to each of us He says: "Today I will be with you." "I will be with you," says the Lord; what else do we need? Only to understand well that He comes into a poorly prepared house, not into the kind of house where everyone is waiting for the Guest, where everything shines and everything is decorated, but into a shabby, dark house, full of dust, as if abandoned.
Such is our soul, with its little faith and negligence, spiritual laziness, with prayer that barely glows like a dying flame. With neglect for the commandments and church rules, with constant irritation at everything, with continual bitterness and judgment of one another.
You come to us,
while our thoughts at that moment wander far away...
And it turns out that You are not our King,
but our pride, self-will, self-love,
ambition, vanity,
all the bustle after which we run,
to which we cling"
(Father Alexander Men, from Andrei Eremin's book "A Pastor at the Turn of the Century")