83. Second Saturday of Lent

Meditations no. 129 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

The parable of the prodigal son is a story that can be re-enacted in our life.

The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love; the Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made. We are reminded of this today, as the Church sets before us the picture of Jesus surrounded by publicans and sinners, who draw close and listen to him. And since the Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them”, our Lord told them one of his most moving parables: that of the prodigal son.

There was a certain man who had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of property that falls to me.” And he divided his living between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had, and took his journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in loose living. In a few words Jesus depicts the tragedy of a son who leaves his father’s home, where he had all he wanted, in order to meet with the sad experience of misused freedom. Pope John Paul II has written: That son, who receives from the father the portion of the inheritance that is due to him and leaves home to squander it in a far country “in loose living”, in a certain sense is the man of every period, beginning with the one who was the first to lose the inheritance of grace and original justice … The parable indirectly touches upon every breach of the covenant of love, every loss of grace, every sin.

Any one of us, if the Lord were to let go of our hand, could become that prodigal son. Any one of us is capable of making the great mistake which we deplore as we read the parable of the Gospel, the mistake of abandoning our Father’s home, because we Christians carry the great treasures of grace in vessels of clay; God has entrusted his gifts to the weakness and fragility of human freedom. We can be certain of the help of God’s power, but our lust, our love of comfort and our pride sometimes cause us to reject his grace and to fall into sin.

Yet we must never become disheartened, because God, our Creator and Redeemer, knows perfectly well that we are made of clay and, full of mercy, he keeps his arms open to us, and readily forgives us. Because of their weakness, men cannot always act uprightly in a world so corrupt, writes St Ambrose; hence, the good doctor has provided you with cures, even against error; and this merciful Judge has given you the hope of forgiveness. St Luke had good reason for telling us these three parables in order: the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the son who was dead and came back to life. He did so in order that we might learn from this threefold remedy how we can cure our wounds, for “a threefold cord is not quickly broken”.

Following the prayer of the Church in today’s Mass, let us always appeal to God’s mercy, so that he may free us from sin and forgive the sins we have already committed. God our Father, by your gifts to us on earth we already share in your life. In all we do, guide us to the light of your kingdom.

Returning to our heavenly Father’s home whenever we have turned away from God.

After squandering his inheritance, the prodigal son was reduced to dire poverty, so that he joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would gladly have fed on the pods that the swine ate; and no one gave him anything.

That is the extreme degradation caused by mortal sin, by voluntarily leaving our Father’s home. The prodigal son’s hunger is but a pale image of the emptiness and anguish which overwhelm a soul when it has lost God. The slavery to which he was subject is a graphic indication of how people who throw off the gentle yoke of the Lord fall under the dominion of these tyrannical masters: pride, the concupiscence of the flesh, and the desire for riches. In short, they fall under the dominion of the devil.

In these circumstances the prodigal son recalled his father’s home, where he had lacked nothing. How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger! He had not thought of that before, when he rejected not only the material well-being offered to him by his father, but more importantly, his father’s affection and generosity. But now a light shone in the depths of his heart, and he decided to return: I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants.”

The awareness that in spite of our offences and our shortcomings, we are God’s children, because Christ died for each of us, will give us the confidence to turn back to God our Father whenever it is necessary. Human life is in some way a constant returning to our Father’s house. We return through contrition, through the conversion of heart which means a desire to change, a firm decision to improve our life and which, therefore, is expressed in sacrifice and self-giving. We return to our Father’s house by means of the sacrament of pardon in which, by confessing our sins, we put on Jesus Christ again and become his brothers, members of God’s family.

God is waiting for us, like the father in the parable, with open arms, even though we don’t deserve it. It doesn’t matter how great our debt is. Just like the prodigal son, all we have to do is open our heart, to be homesick for our Father’s house, to wonder at and rejoice in the gifts that God makes us of being able to call ourselves his children, of really being his children, even though our response to him has been so poor.

Confidence: God awaits us with open arms.

But, while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and took pity on him; running up, he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. That’s what the sacred text says: he covered him with kisses. Can you put it more humanly than that? Can you describe more graphically the paternal love of God for men?

In the parable, the father of the prodigal son represents our Father God, and his reaction to his son must fill us with trust in God’s mercy. The father of the prodigal son, Pope John Paul tells us, is faithful to his fatherhood, faithful to the love that he always lavished on his son. This fidelity is expressed in the parable not only by his immediate readiness to welcome him home when he returns after having squandered his inheritance; it is expressed even more fully by that joy, that merrymaking for the squanderer after his return, merrymaking which is so generous that it provokes the opposition and hatred of the elder brother, who had never gone far away from his father and had never abandoned the home.

God never ceases to forgive us when we are repentant. Our shortcomings give him the opportunity to show the depth of his mercy, which fills the earth. As the Church reminds us, it is God who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy.

Let us not fear, then, if we have squandered our portion of our spiritual inheritance on earthly pleasures, St Ambrose writes. The father gives back to his son the treasure which belonged to him previously: the treasure of faith, which never diminishes. A person may give that treasure away, but in so doing he does not lose what he has received; he still has everything. And do not fear that your father may not receive you, for God “is not gladdened at the loss of the living”. In truth, he will come running out to meet you and he will embrace you, and kiss you, as a sign of his love and tenderness, and he will order that a garment and a ring and sandals be put on you. Still you fear, because of the offence you have committed, but he gives back to you your lost dignity; you fear punishment, and he gives you a kiss; you fear rebuke, but he receives you with a feast.

We can derive joy and optimism from today’s meditation, because as our Founder says, joy is a treasure. Only by offending God do we lose it, because sin is the fruit of selfishness, and selfishness is the root of sadness. Even then, a bit of joy survives under the debris of our soul: the knowledge that neither God nor his Mother can ever forget us. If we repent, if an act of sorrow springs from our heart, if we purify ourselves in the holy sacrament of penance, God comes out to meet and forgive us. Then there can be no sadness whatsoever. Then there is every reason to rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come back to life, was lost and has been found.