Homily for March 21, 2004
Year C - Cycle II
4th Sunday of Lent
by Fr. John Carney
Topic:  The Parable of the Loving Father
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Gospel Reading: 
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

"...So to them Jesus addressed this parable:  'A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.'  So the father divided the property between them.  After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.  When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need.  So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine.  And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any.  Coming to his senses he thought, 'How many of my father's hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger.  I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against you.  I no longer deserve to be called you son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.'  So he got up and went back to his father.  While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion.  He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him..."

 This Gospel is one of my favorite stories and it’s probably one of yours, too.  It’s the story of the Prodigal Son.  I think it’s misnamed, though.  I think it should be called “the Parable of the Loving Father.”  It’s a fantastic story.  Every year when I read it I see something I hadn’t seen before.  I learn something about myself and about others, but mostly I learn something new about God’s love and his mercy.  There are three characters.  The one who gets marquis billing, the Prodigal Son, is interesting.  He is certainly no none to emulate, but to the Jews who heard this story form the lips of Jesus, he was far worse than he appears to us.  I’ll explain that.  First of all, he insulted his father terribly by asking for his share of the inheritance.  Jews received the inheritance only after the father’s death.  So in effect, he was saying, “I wish you were dead; give me my inheritance now.”  And therefore, their relationship was ended.  He also had no respect for his father’s hard-earned money because he squandered it.  I think the old versions used to say he spent it on wine and loose women.  They have corrected that to say that he lived a life of dissipation. 

He insulted his religion and his culture, his tribe, and that really hurts the family, doesn’t it?  He went to a foreign land to live with pagans.  You know a Jew could not even speak to a non-Jew. That’s why it was so remarkable when Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman; he was breaking the tribal rule.  This fellow not only speaks to them, he lives with them, he cavorts with them, and he gets drunk with them.  He ends up taking a job feeding pigs.  Get that?  Jews don’t like pigs.  He was a servant to the pigs.  We’re talking about insulting his culture and his family.  I guess the bottom line is this young man was selfish.  He was thinking about his own pleasures and his own joy, as temporary as they turned out to be.

He returned to his father.  He didn’t even return to the father because he was sorry; he returned because he was afraid of starving to death.  That was his motive.  When he returned to his father, he didn’t expect forgiveness.  He had no right to it, none at all.  The oldest son was right in that respect. 

The Prodigal Son teaches us a few lessons.  The one thing I can say about him in a positive way was that at least he admitted he was sinning.  You know, sin hasn’t changed.  That stuff doesn’t change.  Those are constants of the human person.   Today a lot of people are doing these same things and are calling it not sin; it’s grace, it’s my choice; I make up my own rules.  At least he admitted he was sinning.  We also see from his experience that sin is its own punishment. God doesn’t punish us, not really.  We are punished from our own sins.  Last week Father Jay spoke of the seven deadly sins.  No one living those sins actively is happy.  Can you name someone who’s greedy and who’s happy?  Think of Scrooge, a miserable, tight-fisted type of person.  Go down every sin.  They lead to sickness and death.  The wages of sin is death, just as the result of virtue is happiness and peace.  He did come home and he confessed his sins.

The older son is also an interesting character.  He ‘s so self-righteous and angry.  He’s greedy and legalistic.  He didn’t love the father, either.  He served the father out of a sense of entitlement.  That’s not love.  In other words, “You owe me. I have dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s and I’ve been a good son; I’ve done everything right.  Therefore, you owe me.”  That’s not love, that’s business.  And then he resented his younger brother’s return and broke his father’s heart.  You parents know that.  When siblings are fighting, you’re not happy.  It really breaks a mom and dad’s heart when siblings don’t love each other.  My mother and my sister used to fight.  I know none of you mothers and daughters fight, but in my family we had this situation.  My mother, anytime she was angry with my sister, she would refer to her as “your sister.”  When they were on good terms, she was her daughter.  I used to defend my sister and then my mother would be angry with me too.  “You’re always taking her side.”   So in the last years before she died, I had a new strategy.  I’d take my mother’s side.  She’d criticize my sister and I’d say, “You know, Mom, you’re absolutely right.  I’m not going to talk to her again.”  “Well, by God, don’t do that.  She’s not that bad.”  “No, she’s really very good.  Lets’ talk about something more pleasant.”  It worked like a charm.  No, if your children are fighting, you’re not happy.

The older son wasn’t a good son.  He was filled with resentment.  One of the deadly sins, of course, is anger.  You know the experience of anger is not a sin.  It just comes all by itself.  But resentment is something that’s born in us.  It’s something that we cook inside ourselves.  Generally when you find someone who is resentful, you’ll find they’re resentful about everything.  They have a resentful look on their face. They just look angry.  They resent everything, and that’s their fault. They gave birth to that thing inside them that caused them to be resentful.  We need to be careful about this great sin of resentment, because it’s the sin the righteous fall into.  Let me quote from Henry Nouwen, many people’s favorite spiritual writer.  He writes, “Resentment is something that can settle in the heart and do a lot of damage.  So often people grow resentful and bitter as they grow older.  Resentment is precisely the pitfall of the faithful, obedient, hard-working people who do the right thing.”  Be careful of that.  I tell you, the Lord was a lot more pleased with the younger son who was a mess than he was with the older son who was filled with resentment.  The older son was a Pharisee.  He was the guy who did everything right and expected to be rewarded.  That’s not Christianity.  There’s a bit of the Pharisee in all of us. 

Finally, the star of the story, of course, is the loving father.  This should be called “the Parable of the Loving Father.”  Of course, it represents God the Father, but it teaches us this is how we are to love.  It is Jesus’ example; he cites this parable because he is criticized for forgiving someone. This is how we are to forgive.  Did you hear the loving father say “I told you so?”  No.  A few other things to notice:  The son had gone away and as he was coming home, the father spied him from a long way off.  The father, according to the parable, stood on a hilltop or something, every day, waiting form his son.  Not angry with him, just waiting for his son to come home.  What did he say when he ran out him?  Even before the son could say. “I have sinned before God and before you,” even before he could give the speech he had prepared, the father embraced him with his love.  That is how we are to forgive.  No “I told you so.”  No “you owe me.”  Just come home.  Let’s forget about it.  I love you.  That’s God’s mercy, and that’s the way we are to love as well.

I want to conclude by a reflection written by Walter Rangrin who is an Evangelical pastor, and is on a very famous radio show.  In a book entitled Measuring the Day, he has this story about his own boyhood.  He was a young man at the time, and he had sinned seriously and was expecting his father to beat him, to spank him, or to punish him.  He knew he deserved it.  This is what he wrote.  I would ask, especially the fathers here, to listen to this.

Slowly, my father arose from behind the desk.   I didn’t look at him.  Just as slowly he rounded the far side and came towards me.  Black suit, black hair, black spectacles, judgment cometh.  The multitudes are gone; there are two of us after all, only two.  I was prepared for the spanking.  The order of things would be righted by my punishment.  I lowered my head.  But I was altogether unprepared for what my father did.  I think I would not have cried if my father had beat me. But he knelt down at my side, and he took me in his arms and he hugged me.  Then I began to cry and I couldn’t stop crying.  Love killed me.  I hadn’t expected love.  I hadn’t expected the most undeserved thing, to be forgiven.  The fire of my father’s love, it melted me altogether.  It reduced me to a little mess, to a child.  Oh how pitifully I loved my father then.  How Godlike his love was for me.