4th Sunday of Lent (Cycle C)

March 25, 2001

by Deacon Lawrence A. St. Onge

Today’s gospel parable is a familiar one – maybe all to familiar. It’s the story of the prodigal son. It seems there was this young son who got tired of working in his father’s pizza shop, so he went to his dad and asked him for his part of the inheritance now, so he could go out on his own. The father agreed and the son went off. He immediately bought himself a Porsche 944, picked up his swinging girl friend, and headed for Las Vegas. There he bought drugs and booze and friends and when the money finally ran out, so did the drugs and the booze and the so-called friends. He ended up working as a busboy for Wayne Newton, so he could pay off his gambling debts, and he had to eat the leftover food on the plates he cleaned from the tables to keep alive.

One day, while he was gnawing on a leftover sparerib, he suddenly realized how foolish he had been and wrote home to dad for help. Without a moment’s hesitation and without reading the whole letter, which was full of apologies and regrets, dad sent him a first class plane ticket back home. The son arrived home and was greeted by dad with the biggest pizza party ever thrown in Boston’s north-end.

But then, the wayward son’s older brother comes on the scene and sees what is going on and gets really upset. He complains to his father, and says, although he had stayed home and went to school as his father wanted, and spent all his spare time studying hard and working in the pizza shop, and always did just what the father wanted, he never threw him any kind of party for him and his friends.

Despite what he did, there is something, which is alluring about the younger son. He set off in a spirit of adventure and sowed his wild oats. We all know what it is to sin, to wander away from God, and even if we have not been as wild as the younger son was, at some point, we might still have at least dreamed of running off and ditching our responsibilities to live totally for the moment, totally for ourselves. Initially the younger son was selfish and heartless, but he grows. His virtue ends up being that he had the courage to learn from his mistakes, not to justify himself, but to grow in self-knowledge and in appreciation of what was true, and lasting and of value. His virtue – his strength – is that he knew when to say he was sorry – when to repent.

On the other hand, we have the elder son who never learned those lessons. He never risked anything, he never ventured anything, and he always played it safe. For him, life was not about joy, discovery, and growth, but rather, dry obedience, safety, and stagnation. In today’s parable he is unable to enter his father’s house. His lack of love, and joy, and forgiveness, means he can have no part in the celebration.

The younger son is the one who has learned – he has hurt and been hurt – and has discovered the joy of forgiveness and homecoming. He has changed and grown. But sadly, the elder son is unchanged, unable to move on, unable to grow, unable to live and enjoy life. His problem is that he is bitter and resentful toward the welcome given his wayward brother. He had worked hard all his life, and had been obedient and dutiful in carrying out all his responsibilities, but with the end result of this making him hard-hearted and lacking in generosity. There is always a danger that duty and hard work can make people resentful toward others, especially if they seem to be shirkers. Bitterness and resentment are like a poison in the system, which builds up slowly, but, when released, can be highly destructive to us.

We are constantly told to “forgive and forget,” but the “forgetting” may not always be possible. On the other hand, “forgiveness” is a graced act of the will. It is a choice we make to go beyond the hurt and not allow it to dominate the relationship or determine the future. It is in fact, an act of courage and hope for the future.

We find that hope in each of today’s readings. In the first reading the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have removed the reproach of Egypt from you.” In other words, no longer would God’s people be punished. In the last verse of the Responsorial Psalm we heard the encouraging words: “When the afflicted man called out, the Lord heard, and from all his distress he saved him.” And even more encouraging are the words of St. Paul in the second reading: “God, in Christ, was reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s transgressions against him...the message of reconciliation.” To reconcile means to make friendly again, to settle a difference, to bring all into harmony. And finally, with respect to today’s gospel, T.W. Mason once observed, “This parable probes the human psyche and touches it deeply. It lays down the fundamental principle of God’s relation to sinners; that God loves the sinner while he is still a sinner, before he repents, and somehow, that it is this divine love that makes the sinner’s repentance possible.

Therefore, whether we identify with the sinful younger son or the sinful elder brother, this parable assures us of a father’s love and forgiveness.

I would like to leave you with a fanciful story – a modern day parable of the Last Judgment.

It was judgment day and 2 lines of people stood before the gates of heaven waiting for the Lord to come and receive them. The Line on the right were all those who had truly kept the Commandments, obeyed the rules of the Church, went to church regularly, paid their taxes, confessed their sins and generally thought of themselves as good people.

When they looked across at the Line on the left, they saw the opposite: people who had been known for their sin, those who had left the church behind, were involved in less than honorable professions and had cheated a few folks in their life time.

Those on the right looked at those on the left and said: we tried to warn you but you wouldn’t listen, now it’s too late. You should have listened and turned your lives around.

Just then the Lord came through the gates and the people in the line on the right began to move forward. The Lord held up his hand and motioned for them to stop and to wait as he turned to those in the other line and said: Please, come in, I’m delighted to see you.

Those in the line told to wait were simply shocked. They began to complain and said, “Well, I never!” “What kind of place is this?” “How dare he let them in!” And, in that moment, those in the line on the right were condemned!