When I first looked this parable, for 3 days the story did not speak to my heart. “Will it ever speak to my heart?” In the original greek text I discovered 4 different words expressing a person’s identity with respect to the Father in this parable. Suddenly, today’s parable became luminous. My ardent prayer is that each of you experience similar moments by perseverance in reading and meditating Holy Scripture. Holy Scripture suddenly brings about luminous encounters with God Himself.
This is the goal Jesus has by giving us parables. Jesus wants his words to lead us from habitual darkness to luminous divine light. Let me give you, as best I can, the parable as it suddenly became such a sunlight in my night: The main identity with respect to the Father in this parable is that of son, a word repeated 7x in this parable. This parable is about two sons, a younger son and then an older son. Each one in his own way uses his freedom to distance himself from the Father.
Through these stories of these two sons is Jesus not describing Me? How in two ways I distance myself from my baptismal identity? Indeed by my baptism, I am clothed with Christ, the Only Begotten Son of the Father, I receive the most intimate relation that can be to the Father, and am I not constantly using my freedom to distance myself from my baptismal identity as child of God, son of the Father?
The younger son represents me while learning to relate to my Heavenly Father, learning to live my baptism. So often I want to take personal possession of the gifts given to me by my father for an independent life where I subject myself to the tyranny of my immediate desires and pleasures and squander all my energy so that I finish up more famished than a pig. Each detail of Jesus’ story is relevant of what happens when I follow my illusions, invest myself in my own illusions, in the little
worlds that I have fabricated and that leads me into a disordered life, by vain thoughts and actions? But if I recognize such a situation it can bring me blessings, though this may take days, weeks, even years for me to recognize that squandering my energies is a permission of God, by which He is patiently educating me to recognize one day that I have gone off away from the vitalizing life of Church sacramental life to a country where severe famines strike all its inhabitants.
This recognition is an initial great blessing. Each time I recognize that indeed I am famished, in dire need, lacking essentials and desperate for relief, even ready to be he hired myself to a local merchant of more illusions with television, internet or whatever... and recognize that my anarchic hunger leads me to the country of swine, so that I hunger for garbage that no one even gives to me and that I need money to buy that garbage! Blessed am I recognizing my awful
situation! In this experience of encounter with utter failure, like in the parable, I can turn to that little spark of life that I received with the grace of my baptism. Blessed am I if I awaken to this wonderful question: Are they not taken care of, those who are do good works? In today’s gospel comes here a new different word expressing a person’s identity with respect to the Father. Earlier in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says that such persons who put into practice the commandments of the Father, or who give even a glass of cold water to a child for the sake of the Gospel will receive their reward ... Is that not that they will be satiated with rich and abundant foods that nourish true life, spiritual life, the full nobility of a human person? Are these persons not those here present around me who are zealously living their sacramental Church life?
According to the parable, such persons can awaken me to the existence of another one: Do I not have a Father? Can I not go to Him? and say: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son; let me be counted as one of those striving to do the good works, striving to be among brothers and sisters faithful to our Church life? And such questions can give me the strength to get up and go back to my Father’s house.” What happens then? Jesus, who is the Truth, tells me in the parable: While you are still a long way off, my Heavenly Father catches sight of you, is filled with the most tender compassion, runs to you, embraces you, kisses you. And you are not to hesitate to repeat: 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.' Here, comes into action a 3rd word expressing a person’s identity with respect to the Father, which should be translated the
Father’s slaves, those to whom the Father can give orders to be a prolongation of His Divine hand, to whom He can say 'Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him’. Are this 3rd category not our priests, those whom God has instituted to put on us the robe of baptism? To the last book of the Bible, this robe they put on us is also clothing us with the prayers of the saints. In the Divine Liturgy, by their prayers, our priests are indeed clothing us with the prayers of all these saints whose icons are on the walls, the prayers of Saint Francis, of Saint Bonaventure, of the little
Therese and so many others. What marvelous sacramental life is! God adorn us! But God wants even more, He says to the priests: “put a ring on his finger”. God, through his priests, wants to make me His Bride, to look at me as He looks at the Virgin Mary, the unique God bearer. And through his priests He puts sandals on my feet, so that I may, like Peter in Acts 12 put on sandals to follow the angel out of prison. And still this is not enough, My Heavenly Father through his priests, has His Only Begotten Son sacrificed for me, the fattened calf in this Divine Liturgy. Indeed, in this parable Jesus wants me to hear My Heavenly Father say: ‘let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.' In this celebration am I hearing the Heavenly Father say to me: ‘let us celebrate this feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.'
The parable is not finished. Indeed, I can be much like the older son. I can have already engaged faithfully in the sacramental life of the Church, see myself as a sheep of the flock of the Great Shepherd, striving to never disobey his orders and be working in the field of the LORD, be a faithful representative of God’s chosen people. But the parable warns me: do I truly love God and my neighbor? What happens if, one day, I come back to this church and, to my surprise, I hear a feast already in full swing, music and dancing? And I was not invited! I hear joy and gladness that I yearn for, to which I would have wished to introduce chosen companions if I had known! But God did not first think of me! Rather, at the center of this joy and gladness, I learn that there is someone who disappointed me, maybe even belittled me: 'Your brother has come and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has come back healed.' What happens when while being a faithful Christian I keep grudges? The parable states: the Heavenly Father comes out to me, He patiently listens to my complaint: 'Look, all these years I served you faithfully yet you never gave
me a feast so that I could invite my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.' In this parable Jesus says that
My Heavenly Father humbly listens to my grudges and my judgments condemning others. But Jesus wants me in this situation to hear that My Heavenly Father will say have anything else to me but 'My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. ow we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.'
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