St John Chrysostom gives us good advice today in A Year with the Church Fathers. He tells us to do something like what we read that Zacchaeus the tax collector did. When Jesus brought salvation to his house, he vowed to pay back anyone he had cheated much more than he had taken from them.
St John tells us to outdo our sins. If we have stolen a dollar, pay back ten. If we have committed fornication, abstain even from marital relations for a season. Whatever we have done, we should go the other direction even further in doing good.
One good thing about this is the deterring factor. If in the future we are tempted to that sin again, we will probably find ourselves thinking, "No, I don't want to have to undo that by outdoing it... so I'm going to avoid that sin."
In this way, every time we take one step backward (by sinning), we take two steps forward towards holiness.
God, thanks for teaching us to be like Zacchaeus.
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