Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’ Luke 19:8-10

Well, this is original gospel text for this Sunday. I am assuming that most churches will celebrating the feast of All Saints and consequently the gospel will be about the beatitudes. I rather liked the story about this deposed tax collector. It has always been one of my favorite stories in the gospels, resonating with me in a profound manner. Perhaps at one time I identified with Zacchaeus, albeit purely a romantic notion. The truth is that I have hardly anything in common with the little man. For that matter, neither do our children and teens. He is more like the people with whom our more criminally inclined children are in cahoots. There are wealthy businessmen who buy the gold chains which our children steal. They pay them below the market value knowing very well the origin of the product. Not exactly the kind of person to whom one would naturally feel any sense of affection or sympathy. These are the Zacchaeus of our reality.

Our protagonist in the gospel story was an opportunist. He represented everything which was wrong with society. Nevertheless, he is not the cause nor the source of corrupt state but just a symptom. One who makes it easy for the people to vent all their hatred and anger. The story is very specific about his small stature. It differentiates him from the rest. The people find it easier to hate someone who is different from them. In other words, he was the perfect scapegoat and Jesus surprised everyone by choosing to dine with him. Of all the people present, this man was the perfect candidate for Jesus to transform into a saint. I am sure the people would have thought anyone was better than this scoundrel. Anyway, we cannot count on the opinion of the mass. They are swayed easily. I guess the Palm Sunday and Good Friday liturgy suffice to prove this point. Jesus Himself said, “They have eyes but they do not see and ears but they do not hear.” They can never understand why Jesus wanted to dine with a man like Zacchaeus. They couldn’t see anything in him apart from being a despised tax collector. We need the Light of the Truth to see beyond appearances.

Our young people are not saints. I think I should make this clear. Just in case someone might think that I am going to twist my words around to make them look like saints. There’s not going to be any of that. I do have to say that sometimes our children surprise us, especially the ones who initially make me shake my head and think to myself, “This child is a terror!” Then, all of the sudden, this same child surprises me and shows me how wrong I was. If we, for a moment, are able to move away from the popular notion of saints and define saintly people as those whom God graciously uses to reveal His profound love in action in this world, then I can make a case for our children, but not all of them. I think I just did what I said that I wasn’t going to do. I am making an argument for their sainthood, well not all though. Just a handful.

Every time we go to the streets, we confront what is seemingly a hopeless situation. Outwardly, nothing has become better. From the time we started this ministry till today, the number of homeless children have tripled. The homeless adults population is more appalling. The whole situation is quite bleak. However, almost every time we leave the streets to go back to our home, we are filled with a sense of hope. I was going to add joy to that but decided against. We like to combine the words, “joy and hope” together. Sometimes they do not go hand in hand. There are many days when we see disturbing and tragic things. They fill our hearts with sadness but they do not steal our hope. It is not wishful thinking. It is something based on faith and not blind faith. The kind quickened within our souls each time we talk to a child and teen and observe something in them which perhaps no one else notices. They help us see the Light in a place where everyone only sees darkness. They give us a lot of reason to dine with them because they always reaffirm in us the Truth; “With God nothing is impossible.”

Consistent to my usual writing style, I will share an encounter with a child or teen to give an instance of what I am trying to say. Thankfully, I have many to choose from. We went through a period where we were profoundly disturbed by the arrival of the new children (close to hundreds now) who behaved like characters from William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”. They were aggressively robbing and disregarding all rules of the streets. Now, these same ones are approaching us. They are still engaging in their bad behavior but we do not see them as “little monsters” anymore. We are beginning to see the “lost child” in each of them. Most importantly, they are discovering that with us, they do not need to put up a tough exterior. I can share about any one of them. However, the one who moved me in the most profound manner this week was Eric.

We knew him when he was barely ten and today he just turned 18. To say that he was a terror is an understatement. He did not engage in criminal activities but rather displayed disturbing and cruel behavior void of any remorse. He once tried to set another teen’s foot on fire. He was quite nonchalant about his actions. Needless to say, many of the children were afraid of him. We were a little concerned ourselves. He was our least favorite person. Then one day we met his parents. His mother has serious mental illness and Eric and his brother, Enrique, had to deal with her unpredictable behavior every single day. Their step father was an aggressive and violent man. These two boys never had a chance in life. Unfortunately, this information did not help us to like them more. Eventually, Eric disappeared for a while. He tried staying in a Catholic orphanage for a period but it did not work out. To his credit, he attempted to stay there for a few years. Finally he gave up and went back to the streets. When he saw us, he hugged us as if we were his best friends. Perhaps, we were a familiar face which he needed to see. We noticed a change in him too. He was calmer and even affectionate. He will always come and give us a hug and addresses us collectively as “Uncle Mary”.

This week he asked Mary if she would take a picture of him. He does not have any pictures of himself. Actually, this is true for almost all our children and teens. We have been taking pictures of them and developing prints for them to keep. It started a chain reaction. Now, all of them want us to take pictures of them. It is good thing. We have been waiting for them to ask us to do this. I commented to Eric that it was a pity that we don’t have any pictures of him when he was young kid. To my surprise, he said that he was glad of that. “I was a terrible person then and I don’t want to be reminded of that.” I never expected him to say those words. I used to think that he was a goner. Now, I look at him and realize that we actually enjoy his company. We have also seen him to do things to help other children and teens too. Once we saw him carrying heavy bags of donated food and he was taking it an ailing elderly woman’s house. It was the grandmother of the teens. They had walked for a long distance because they did not have any money for bus fare. We gave him some money and also enough for snacks. We wanted to encourage such acts of kindness. Eric gave us the biggest hug that day. And was so happy for our tiny contribution.

Eric has given me much hope. I see some of these children and teens engage in wicked and disturbing behavior. It is easy to see that this is a hopeless situation. It is even easier to develop bitterness and hatred towards them. Then Eric shows up and proves that with God, nothing is impossible. Eric is not a saint. He is just a young boy who helps us see the powerful presence of God in our midst. In our books, he is a saint but maybe not in the traditional sense.