Fourth Sunday of Lent: Prodigal Son, Prodigal Father

Prodigal Son, Prodigal Father

This famous and beautiful parable of Jesus is popularly known as "The Parable of the Prodigal Son".  If you look up the word prodigal you will find it has at least two different sense, one negative and the other positive.

1

: characterized by profuse or wasteful expenditure : lavish prodigal

feast> <prodigal outlays for her clothes>

2

: recklessly spendthrift prodigal

prince>

3

: yielding abundantly : luxuriant —often used with of prodigal

of her bounty — H. T. Buckle>
Now, the reason that the son is described as prodigal is, clearly, not in a positive sense, as I am sure we all know:

"... the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation."

The prodigal son measures the value of his life in terms of things and not people.  He takes all his possessions, all gifts from the father, gathers them up and leaves home in order to use those things in evil ways, among them to lure other people into sinning with him by offering them a share in his worldly riches.  Evil compounds itself when things that are good, gifts given in love from the Father, are used in a utilitarian sense: people are not seen as ends in themselves but as means to an end whether personal pleasure or power.

The prodigal selfishness of the son finds a response in the prodigal love of the Father which cures by the power of witness because based not upon a calculus of what the Father wants but upon what the son needs. The son was not loving others and experienced a kind of slavery or bondage within himself because he used others for himself, just like things, rather than loving others for their own sake.  He encounters the real love, the love that he lacked, in the Father who loves not for his own sake but for the one loved.

".. everything I have is yours."

Real love converts, inviting others also to the freedom of loving others simply in order to love, not in order to get something for oneself.

What have we done to falsify or to cheapen love of God and others, giving less than a sincere gift of self, substituting the virtual for the real, giving what is convenient or easy instead of what is truly needed?  For example, when did you last spend cell phone-free time with a spouse or children?  When did you last attend Mass not because you had to but because it is a privilege?

"let us return"

to the LORD,
it is he who has rent, but he will heal us;
he has struck us, but he will bind our wounds.
He will revive us after two days;
on the third day he will raise us up

-- Hos 6:1-6

Christ will raise us up "on the last day"; but it is also true that, in a certain way, we have already risen with Christ. For, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, Christian life is already now on earth a participation in the death and Resurrection of Christ:

And you were buried with him in Baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. . . . If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

-- CCC 1002 

 

Saturday, Third Week of Lent

"Return"

Take with you words,
and return to the LORD;
Say to him, “Forgive all iniquity..."

-- Hos 14:2-10

Through his Word, God speaks to man. By words, mental or vocal, our prayer takes flesh. Yet it is most important that the heart should be present to him to whom we are speaking in prayer: "Whether or not our prayer is heard depends not on the number of words, but on the fervor of our souls."

-- CCC 2700 

Friday, Third Week of Lent 

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets"

I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.

-- Mt 5:17-19

Jesus, Israel's Messiah and therefore the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, was to fulfill the Law by keeping it in its all embracing detail - according to his own words, down to "the least of these commandments". He is in fact the only one who could keep it perfectly. On their own admission the Jews were never able to observe the Law in its entirety without violating the least of its precepts. This is why every year on the Day of Atonement the children of Israel ask God's forgiveness for their transgressions of the Law. The Law indeed makes up one inseparable whole, and St. James recalls, "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it."

-- CCC 578

Wednesday, Third Week of Lent

"Do not take away your mercy from us"

“Lord, if my brother sins against me,
how often must I forgive him?
As many as seven times?”

-- Mt 18:21-35

Only God forgives sins. Since he is the Son of God, Jesus says of himself, "The Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins" and exercises this divine power: "Your sins are forgiven." Further, by virtue of his divine authority he gives this power to men to exercise in his name.

 

-- CCC 1441

 

Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent

"Wash and be clean"

there were many lepers in Israel
during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”

-- Lk 4:24-30

 

Baptism

This sacrament is also called "the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit," for it signifies and actually brings about the birth of water and the Spirit without which no one "can enter the kingdom of God."

--CCC 1215

 

Monday of the Third Week of Lent

“This man welcomes sinners"

Who is there like you, the God who removes guilt
and pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance...

 -- Mi 7:14-15, 18-20

To respond to this invitation we must prepare ourselves for so great and so holy a moment. St. Paul urges us to examine our conscience: "Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself." Anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to communion.

-- CCC 1385