Dear Friends:
This week’s Gospel reading, taken from the fifteenth chapter of Luke, is the well-known parable of the Prodigal Son. There are three main characters in the parable: the father who loves his sons equally and without measure, the dutiful, loyal and faithful older son, and the wayward, selfish younger son. When we read this parable, it is common for us to focus on the sinful selfishness of the younger son. In a real sense, even though few, if any of us, sink to the depths of sin as did the younger son, we all tend to identify with him.
Perhaps we would do well to focus this year on the other two characters. The father, who is prodigal in every degree as is his wayward younger son, but prodigal in his extending mercy, welcome, and forgiveness, clearly represents God, who is rich in mercy, abundant in kindness, always searching for us, and welcoming us back with great joy, whenever we hear the call to turn away from sin and come home to him. It is interesting that Jesus makes a point of the father’s habit of looking for his younger son each day, hoping that he would return. How many days passed without his doing so. How many days of pain and heartache he endured. Then, one day, the son comes home, and the father, seeing him far off, runs with joy to meet him. He embraces him, kisses him, gives him a robe, sandals and a ring (symbols of his being fully restored to the family) and throws a gala party for him. The son tries to confess his sins, his waywardness, but the father seems not to focus on that as much as on the joy of having him back.
Then there is the older son, dutiful, faithful, always there. He becomes resentful at the extravagance of mercy his father shows his younger brother. He becomes embittered and feels short-changed, sensing that all of his faithfulness and duty were for nothing. He refuses to go in to the party. He refuses to celebrate his younger son’s coming home, coming back to life. Instead, his father comes out to plead with him to come in, to celebrate, to welcome his brother back. The older son is assured that he is still loved, that he has not been short-changed, but did he ever actually go in? That is the question.
What about us? There is a tendency in all of us to be like that older son: self-righteous, judgmental, condescending, exclusionary. We look down on those who do not live as we do. We tend to see them as outsiders, not to be welcomed, not to be embraced. We can tend to set up barriers to keep them out, to make their way back more difficult, more arduous. While in no way should we ever take sin lightly or treat it as of no consequence, we must try to do all that we can to invite those who have distanced themselves from God, from the Church, from the Christian way of life, to come home, to come back. I love the image that Pope Francis used early in his papal ministry when he spoke of the Church as a “field hospital for sinners.”
As Lent progresses, let each of us take a good, long, hard look within ourselves. May we examine ourselves, knowing both our sinfulness and our virtues. May we ask the Lord to help us to be compassionate, welcoming, and gracious to everyone, even those who fall short of our standards. May we remember that each of us is prone to sin, even very grave sin. May we always remember the old adage, “there, but for the grace of God, go I.”
Have a good week!