In today’s Gospel reading, we hear that Jesus entered Jericho and was going through the town. There was a man there called Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was a chief tax-collector by profession. This was a job identified in people’s minds with deceit, theft and lies. At that time, the chief tax-collectors were reliable servants of the Roman state. In the pursuance of their duty of ensuring that taxes were paid, they managed to enrich themselves in a number of permissible and impermissible ways, at the expense of Jews who were poor. By this method, Zacchaeus became rich and acquired a great many material goods. He wasn’t a person for whom other people felt admiration, love and respect. He was someone who exploited his ...
