4th Sunday of Lent
To All the Lenten Pilgrims of Hope of the Epiphany
Grace Welcomes Home What Pride Casts Away
The Fourth Sunday of Lent (30 March 2025): Luke 15:11-32
On this Fourth Sunday of Lent, the Gospel of the father and the two sons better known as the Parable of the “Prodigal Son” (Lk 15:11-32) is proclaimed. This passage of St Luke constitutes one of the peaks of spirituality and literature of all time. Above all, this Gospel text has the power of speaking to us of God, of enabling us to know his Face and, better still, his Heart. After Jesus has told us of the merciful Father, things are no longer as they were before. In this parable the sons behave in opposite ways: the younger son leaves home and sinks ever lower whereas the elder son stays at home, but he too has an immature relationship with the Father. In fact, when his brother comes back, the elder brother does not rejoice like the Father; on the contrary he becomes angry and refuses to enter the house. The two sons represent two immature ways of relating to God: rebellion and childish obedience. Both these forms are surmounted through the experience of mercy. Only by experiencing forgiveness, by recognizing one is loved with a freely given love a love greater than our wretchedness but also than our own merit do we at last enter into a truly filial and free relationship with God. (Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus, 2010)
Dear parishioners, Luke 15 is a masterly story. Some of its phrases are so powerful that they have become proverbial: Prodigal Son, fatted calf, lost and found. No story tells us more about God or makes us feel better about ourselves. It is a short story with enormous scope, with the widest possible diameter, in that it embraces our sinfulness at one end and God’s forgiveness at the other. What led Jesus of Nazareth to tell it? The fact that the Pharisees objected to the company he kept, to his eating with sinners. Hence, Jesus tells the story to give an insight into his own mind and the mind of God. The Gospel story plays out in three vivid character sketches, namely:
Firstly, there is the younger son, an impatient lad who wanted his inheritance now. The Son could not wait for the father to die. Greedy fingers, itchy feet, a sensual nature; wanting to live it up, and to hell with the commandments. It is a life based on doing whatever he feels like doing and it is not an unfamiliar story, really. He is lost in the world but found his place in the father’s embrace.
We make excuses: as long as you are young and enjoying yourself, and stay safe. But the happiness ran out, and he came to his senses. And that’s the big point about him. He came to his senses. He really was repentant. Repentance is to be sorry to be in one place, to want to be in another, and to have the will and determination to get there. To be sorry for our sins, to want a different kind of life, and to have the motivation and determination to change. Well, he had that. He was graced with that. I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired men (Luke 17:19). As I say, the big thing about him is that he acknowledged his sins and wanted to be rid of them. He was really repentant.
Secondly, there is the character of the Father, who was on the lookout for the son’s return. While he was still a long way off, his father saw him (Luke 15:15-20). Still a long way off, a dot on the horizon.
Does not that mean he was on the lookout for him, from the day he left, watching and waiting and praying, like many a Father or Mother? Does not it illustrate how God the Father feels about each of us, how much every one of us matters to him, how anxious God is that we had come back? And he did not just wait for the son; he ran out to meet him” met him half-way. Some people feel we should call this story the Prodigal Father. To be prodigal is to be wasteful or lavish in your use of things. Well, the Father threw his forgiveness around. Not in any grudging or reproving way, but in an explosion of sheer generosity and joy: Kill the calf, we are having a feast, the son is alive again. The Father is noted for the prodigality of his forgiveness and the intensity of his joy: There will be more rejoicing in Heaven over one sinner repenting than over ninety-nine upright people who have no need of repentance (Luke 15:7).
Thirdly, there is the elder son, so angry that he could not enter into the mood of the party to celebrate his brother’s return. He is indignant at his Father’s easy pardon of the returned prodigal, and refuses even to go in.
Of course, his anger is quite understandable and he is treated with some sympathy by his Father, but the elder son’s attitude helps to illustrate how much more forgiving God is than we are, and how inclusive, all-embracing, is the Father’s embrace. It includes the two of them- the rock and the rover: My son you are with me always and all I have is yours. But it was only right that we should celebrate and rejoice, because your brother here was dead and has come to life; he was lost and is found. What a lesson for the Jubilee Year of Hope in which Pope Francis has invited us to join.
Dear friends, the story of the Prodigal Son really needs no elaboration. The most respectful response to it is personal reflection. Just think about it; savor it and let it sink in. We will all be touched by different pieces of it, because that’s the way with everything we hear. I doubt if any of us can ignore its central message, that there is no limit to God’s forgiveness and that our repentance brings joy to the Father’s heart. You imagine that God does not want us to turn away from sin? Grace welcomes home what pride casts away.
The Father’s mercy in the story, like God’s mercy, is pure gift. There is nothing that we can do to merit, earn, or deserve the gift of God’s grace. This is an important point, given the fact that our culture teaches us the exact opposite. If we work hard for something, we deserve it; if we put time and effort into something, then we earn what good comes to us. This, of course, is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. It is just not the way God’s grace works. As God once spoke through the prophet Isaiah, My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8). Grace welcomes all of us into Heaven,
The fact that in the stories of the Old Testament, the younger son receives more than the older highlights the nature of God’s grace as pure gift. In Luke’s parable, the older son resists this divine logic, instead representing a more contractual understanding of grace: “Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.”
Admittedly, I think most of us can sympathize with the older son. Why lavish the choice portions onto someone who does not deserve it? At this point, though, we are thinking not as God does but as human beings do. Again, God’s mercy, God’s love, God’s forgiveness, is freely given. It’s a gift offered to all — none of whom do anything to earn or deserve it. The act of redemption, then, is the work of God alone. Grace welcomes home what pride casts away.
In the Gospel, the younger son coming to his senses, literally returning to himself recognizes his sinfulness and his need to return to the Father. What goes beyond his own expectations is the love and mercy shown to him which he is able to receive with a sincere and contrite heart.
Dear Epiphany, as we continue our Lenten pilgrim journey of hope, a journey that leads all of us who have gone astray back to the Father, may we come to a deeper appreciation of the gift of mercy offered to us, especially through the sacraments of the Eucharist and Reconciliation. And may we who appreciate the great gift of God’s mercy that has been offered to us, though sinners, “celebrate and rejoice” with Jacob, Joseph, Ephraim, David, Solomon, and the Prodigal Son and let our prayer be:
Gracious Father, we are your wayward children
May our Lenten penance help us to clearly see
the depth of your mercy and love.
Fraternally,
Fr. John Peter Lazaar SAC, Pastor