Very early on the morning of August 19, I saw a comment asking how I was doing with the Rosary, and the thought that immediately came to mind was, "Someone like me praying the Rosary is like Zacchaeus climbing the sycamore tree." As you will recall, Zacchaeus, the chief publican (meaning a collaborator with the Romans and thus a great "sinner"), was too short to see Jesus in the crowd, so he climbed a sycamore fig tree to get a better view. Jesus saw him, and said, "Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must abide at thy house" (Luke 19:1-10).
I think the sync fairies have been trying to get me to make this connection for a while. An August 9 comment by Debbie mentioned the sycamore tree and that it had biblical significance, but my first thought was not of Zacchaeus but of Amos the Prophet:
Also Amaziah said unto Amos, "O thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there: But prophesy not again any more at Bethel: for it is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court."
Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, "I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit: And the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, 'Go, prophesy unto my people Israel'" (Amos 7:12-15).
I like the idea that Amos, the first of the Prophets in the narrow sense of that word, began his career as a gatherer of sycamore figs. My own motto, of course, is "The highway is for gamblers / Better use your sense / Take what you have gathered / From coincidence."
The day before Debbie's comment, I had written "A few days ago I had the thought that a tree could be the equivalent of the Green Door, but I can no longer retrace the train of thought that led me there." (My own Green Door had led me to a fruiting banyan, a close relative of the sycamore fig.)
This morning, the connection became apparent. One of the meanings of the Green Door is the door at which Christ knocks: "if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me" (Rev. 3:20). When Christ knocks, you can hear that he's out there, but you can't see him because the door stands between you. So you open the door, and he comes into your house. Zacchaeus, too, could hear Jesus but could no see him, so he remedied the situation by climbing the sycamore tree -- equivalent to opening the door -- and this action, too, resulted in Jesus' coming into his house and dining with him.
I think of praying the Rosary as a sort of hineni, symbolically equivalent to opening the door, climbing the sycamore tree, or saying, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth."
