4th Sunday of Lent, 2004
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
Deacon Lee Hunt (St. Monica)

Be Prodigal Like the Father

I can remember Fr. Petuskey saying that, “Families are messy.” I believe that is true, especially for families who are not reconciled. Think of our own families. What family does not know conflicting desires between parents and children; jealous rivalry among siblings? And getting older doesn’t always solve these problems.

I know some people like the “older son” in today’s Gospel reading. My wife ministered to a lady in her 80s who would not forgive her daughter until just before she died. My friend, Ken, no matter how hard he tried, could not get his children to reconcile with him. He recently died and I still wonder if his children forgave him.

I had a prodigal daughter who gave me permission to tell her story, if I included the good part. My wife and I moved here from NJ with three of our four children 16 years ago. One daughter was in high school and was very depressed at leaving her friends during her junior year. Soon, she returned secretly to NJ where we arranged for her to stay with her best friend’s family. Talk about stress!

And now for the good part: During her senior year she returned home and we quickly reconciled and bonded even stronger than before. Our daughter who had been lost was found. She went on to get her GED, bachelors and master degrees, taught in religious, public, and private schools, married and presented us with our first grandchild who I will baptize in the back of this church in April. What would have happened if my wife and I had not been like the Prodigal Father?

I say “Prodigal Father” because a dictionary definition of “prodigal” is “recklessly extravagant.” The younger son was extravagant in the way he spent his father’s money, but the father was extravagant in his mercy and forgiveness.

Jesus makes the point of how good the father is. It is the father who squanders love and reconciliation on the son. The father is the spendthrift who spares no cost or labor to celebrate the homecoming of his wayward son. In fact, it is the father who goes to both sons, not waiting for them to come to him.

And so God deals with us. While we are “still a long way off,” still covered with the mire of the pigpen, God rushes toward us with compassion, giving orders to prepare the feast before we can even get the words of remorse out of our mouths. Not even the worst imaginable offense is an irrevocable obstacle to the constant love of God.

This parable is so carefully constructed that it reveals the greatest challenge we Christians face: to believe that God’s love, forgiveness, acceptance, and welcome are so available and so…well, prodigal. We simply do not forgive each other in the way the parable teaches us. We hold grudges, we hang on to cynical views of weak human nature, and perhaps most tragically, we don’t trust God’s prodigal forgiveness and love extends to us in any personal way. We are like the older son in this parable.

Do we need forgiveness and mercy? Do we atone for what we have done and refused to do? With whom do we refuse to eat or celebrate? From whom do we separate ourselves? How do we hinder the coming of reconciliation and mercy to others in the world by our insensitivity, selfishness, sin, and ingratitude? Are we always with God and yet blind and unaware of what we should be doing for our brothers and sisters?

For a few years, I ministered to a man who had gone through RCIA, but would not join the Church. When I asked him why, he said that he was concerned that if he confessed his sins that he would sin again. I responded, “Welcome to the Catholic Church!” Join with the rest of us because we are the same.

God continues to forgive our sins and expects us to do the same to our sisters and brothers. In Chapter 5 of Matthew, we hear: “Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”

Soon we will say the Lord’s Prayer together, many of us holding hands. We will say, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We are to forgive first so that the Father will forgive us.

We can rely on mercy from God. But, if we accept God’s mercy, then we must in turn give that mercy unbounded to all we meet in our lives. Then we will be like the God the Father: very prodigal!