(Note that repentance only began after meeting with Christ!).
Another example – the parable of the prodigal son. This is already about the period of cycles when a person becomes unfaithful to the faith experienced, loses hope in the Kingdom of God. (This is primarily about all those who consciously experienced the grace of the Holy Spirit, the grace of communion with the Father, and through sins fell out of Paradise (communion of Faces), but not about those who were formally baptized in childhood and then did not grow in the Church, that is, in parish Eucharistic life, or those who were baptized in adulthood, but were not proclaimed, – they do not know the Kingdom of God, so they have nothing to remember (or, if we talk about infants, did not have time to recover, as they fell out of the Kingdom of God, from the house of the Father, into the country of swine pods). We are in a critical situation – the prodigal son knew, consciously knew, how good it was with the Father, even the servants had plenty of bread, let alone the children. He knew this and experienced it when he was in faith (living with the Father). Likewise, Adam, who after the Fall, falling out of Paradise (the Mystery of communion with God), bitterly wept, mourning for Paradise, when he was on the earth of suffering and sorrow. Like Adam, so the prodigal son had a memory of the Father’s house, had a conscious experience of communion with the Father and the joy of enjoying the Mystery of Communion of Faces (Hypostases) Relatives. And we, who lost the Kingdom before we realized this bliss, now (in the best case – see part I.) are at the level of non-believing pagans – our infidelity to the grace of baptism is worse than the atheism of non-believing pagans. But the Church encourages us, again showing by the example of the prodigal son, that we can return to the Father (Who accepts everyone, in whatever state they are – just as long as they turn towards the house of the Father and try, try to go (we do not even say: went!) and the Father (Who madly Loves everyone) will run out to meet him! Why did the prodigal son return? He wanted to eat, he was dying of hunger! And in the Father’s house, you can survive! That is, not some high motives prompted him to go home (Love for the Father, or conscience began to eat at him for ingratitude and sin against the love of the Father, etc.) – but simple hunger prompted him to go to the Father (yes, later repentance, confession of sins, a sense of unworthiness, etc., was born, but the reason for all this – animal, selfish hunger). And we see how this drama ended: the prodigal son returns to the house in the status of a beloved son and returns to the dignity in which he left the Father’s house…
In the first case (about Zacchaeus) the driving force of trust was simple curiosity (not curiosity that promised something: if this is so, then I put my whole life on the line to follow that Man, or: if this is so, then I will do this and that, or will have this… – no, just go see…). In the second case – ordinary selfish hunger (we take in a broad sense: hunger for knowledge, pleasure, beauty, etc. and all this for the sake of oneself, self) and the desire to survive became the driving force of trust in returning to God. In both cases, a miracle of faith, a miracle of meeting with God occurs! Even the path of satisfying curiosity and hunger to survive makes a person capable of meeting God! Blessed are the Christians who have such a God-Love, who know the Wisdom and Mercy of God-Love!