3rd Sunday of Lent, 2022

My Dear People, 

In the Gospel of Luke today Jesus’ actions manifest God’s mercy: he receives sinners in order to convert them. The scribes and Pharisees, who despised sinners, just cannot understand why Jesus acts like this; they grumble about him; and Jesus uses the opportunity to tell these mercy parables.  

The Gospel teaches that no one is excluded from forgiveness and that sinners can become beloved children of God if they repent and are converted. So much does God desire the conversion of sinners that each of these parables ends in a refrain, as it were, telling of the great joy in heaven over every sinner who repents.  

 “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 analogy at this point is very wide-raging. The parable indirectly touches upon every breach of the covenant of love, every loss of grace, every sin”. (Dives in Misericordia, 5) 

At this point in the parable we are shown the unhappy effects of sin. The young man’s hunger evokes the anxiety and emptiness a person feels when he is far from God. The prodigal son’s predicament describes the enslavement which sin involves (cf. Rom 1;25; 6:6) by sinning one loses the freedom of the children of God, and hands oneself over to the power of Satan. 

His memory of home and his conviction that his father loves him cause the prodigal son to reflect and decide to set out on the right road. “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 which, therefore, is expressed in sacrifice and self-giving. We return to our Father’s house by means of that sacrament of pardon in which, by confessing our sins, we put on Jesus Christ again and become his brothers, members of God’s Family (Christ is Passing By, 64) 

God always hopes for the return of the sinner; he wants him to repent.  When the young man arrives home his father does not greet him with reproaches but with immense compassion, which causes him to embrace his son and cover him with kisses. 

There is no doubt that in this simple but penetrating analogy the figure of the father reveals to us God as Father. The father of the prodigal son is faithful to the fatherhood, as being portrayed as a loving father, faithful to the love that he had always lavished on his son.  The father had compassion, ran to meet him, threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. 

‘God is waiting for us, like the father in the parable, with open arms even, though we don’t deserve it. We are called his children, even though our response to God has been so poor. 

Sincerely yours in Christ,


Fr. Vincent Clemente

 

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