Daily Gospel Reflection
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November 18, 2025
At that time Jesus came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town.
Now a man there named Zacchaeus,
who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man,
was seeking to see who Jesus was;
but he could not see him because of the crowd,
for he was short in stature.
So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus,
who was about to pass that way.
When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said,
“Zacchaeus, come down quickly,
for today I must stay at your house.”
And he came down quickly and received him with joy.
When they saw this, they began to grumble, saying,
“He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.”
But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord,
“Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor,
and if I have extorted anything from anyone
I shall repay it four times over.”
And Jesus said to him,
“Today salvation has come to this house
because this man too is a descendant of Abraham.
For the Son of Man has come to seek
and to save what was lost.”
“Come down quickly.” Jesus’ instruction to Zacchaeus is an invitation so clear and simple, yet so completely transformational. Rarely is God’s call one to subtlety.
The summer after graduation from high school, I spent time on mission in a town called General Cepeda in Coahuila, Mexico, repairing homes and sharing testimonies. My friend suffered through several days of a stomachache, so we took him to the local clinic.
While the doctor discussed his sickness, a victim of a serious motorcycle crash was taken into the clinic. He could not be treated there, and the doctor did not believe he’d survive the long drive to the closest hospital in Saltillo. I stepped outside and was suddenly overcome with everything I had been presented with all week in one fell swoop: intense poverty and immense suffering. The most profound realization of all was that the service I had been doing all week was really about me feeling good about myself, rather than meeting the needs of others with a servant’s heart. I broke down crying and could only hug a woman entering the clinic.
As a Catholic educator, seeing the world the way Fr. Moreau did, that is, with hope in the cross, means I have to remind myself that caring isn’t enough. We are called to live our lives in new, radical ways each day. God’s challenge to me that night in the Coahuilan desert was clear to me: “Come down, and quickly.”
The grumbling of the others around Jesus also indicates that Jesus’ welcome is not meant to be comfortable; it is meant to lead to drastic introspection. I find that this gospel reveals the great joy Zacchaeus feels in accepting Jesus’ call to conversion. It was Zacchaeus’ own selfishness that led him up the tree in the first place, but the call of Christ that grounded him in the reality beyond himself.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, come, stay at our house! Interrupt our lives. Turn everything upside down! Rouse us out of our humdrum torpor, our apathy, our complacency. Surprise us with your nearness so much so that we, like Zacchaeus, will climb the tallest tree just to get the slightest glimpse of your face. Prepare our hearts to receive you with love. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Rose Philippine Duchesne was a French nun who survived the French Revolution and was sent to America as a missionary at the age of 49. She was extraordinarily courageous in facing dangerous conditions on the frontier and was single-minded in her desire to serve the Native American population around her.
Rose was born in Grenoble, France, in 1769, to a wealthy family—her father was a successful businessman and city leader, and her mother was from a well-established family in the region. At the age of eight, Rose heard a Jesuit missionary priest give a lecture on his work on the American frontier, and the idea of serving as a missionary in America captured Rose's young imagination and became the greatest desire of her heart.
Rose was educated at home until she was twelve—after that, she was sent to a nearby convent for further schooling. When she turned nineteen, she secretly joined the community of nuns with whom she was studying, against the wishes of her family.
In 1792, at the height of the French Revolution, the convent Rose lived in was closed. For the next ten years, Rose lived as a laywoman but still ordered her life according to the vows she had professed as a religious sister. She even began a school for poor children, cared for the sick, and hid priests who were secretly leading Mass and encouraging the faithful.
When the Reign of Terror passed, Rose re-joined what was left of her community, and in 1804 the remaining members were grafted into a different community—the Society of the Sacred Heart. After a decade in this Society, Rose was asked to establish a new convent in Paris. Several years later, in 1818, at the age of 49, she and four other sisters traveled to the Louisiana Territory as missionaries to the American West.
She fell very ill on the trip to America and had to spend time recovering when they landed in New Orleans. She fell dangerously ill again on her trip up the Mississippi River to the area around St. Louis.
After arriving and recovering, she and her companions founded a school near St. Louis for the daughters of pioneers. They faced the bitter cold in the single log cabin in which they lived and worked. The community went on to open six other institutions, including orphanages and the first three schools west of the Mississippi River.
Rose had a loving concern for the Native Americans who lived by the European settlements on the American frontier, and she spent just as much of her energy educating them and caring for their sick as for the Europeans. When she retired from her administrative duties at the age of 71, she opened a school for Native Americans of the Potawatomi tribe, whose name for her meant “the woman who is always praying.”
Her work with the Potawatomi was short-lived, however—she failed to master their language, having struggled to learn English. After a year, she retired to a cabin near their original school around St. Louis and lived in prayer and solitude until she died in 1852. Before she died, she wrote:
“We cultivate a very small field for Christ but we love it, knowing that God does not require great achievements but a heart that holds back nothing for self.”
St. Rose was canonized by Pope St. John Paul II in 1988.
St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, the brave French nun who survived the Reign of Terror to bring education to the American frontier—pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne is in the public domain. Last accessed October 18, 2024 on Wikimedia Commons.
