Saturday of Week 2 of Lent – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 15:1-3,11-32

The parable of the Prodigal Son is a marvellous revelation of God’s unending love and mercy for the repentant sinner. In the story, the son demands and receives his share of the inheritance from a loving father. Asking for his inheritance while his father was still alive was tantamount to saying he could not wait until his father had died.

He then goes off to a far country, far from his father. He is not only far away in distance, but also in thinking. He wastes the inheritance he has been given on pleasures and enjoyment of the most immoral kind. And in the end, he has nothing.

When a famine strikes the place he is living, he has nothing to eat and no money to buy food. He is forced (horror of horrors for a Jew) to feed pigs, and is so hungry he is ready even to eat the slops given to them. One can hardly imagine a lower level of abasement and poverty.

But then, he comes to his senses. He thinks of the home and the loving father he abandoned so stupidly—a home where the lowest servants and the slaves are better off than he is, and he decides he will try to go home. But after what he has done, he does not expect to be accepted back. He decides he will beg to be taken in as one of the lowest servants, and he prepares a carefully worded speech for his father.

Then he starts the journey back in fear and trepidation, knowing he deserves very severe treatment, if not outright rejection. He is afraid to hear his father say, “Go back to your pigs and your whores!”

But while still far away, his father sees him. Unknown to the son, his father has been anxiously waiting and hoping during all this time for him to return, but he never sent out to have him brought back. If the son wants to go his own way, the father will not stop him, and he will not force him to come back.

Full of compassion, the father rushes out to welcome his returning son and takes him in his arms. The son tries to make his speech of repentance, but it is totally ignored. Instead, his father gives orders for the best clothes to be brought out and a magnificent banquet to be laid on:

…for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!

It is a time for celebration.

The elder son, working in the fields (the Lord’s vineyard) comes back at the end of a hard day and hears the sounds of merrymaking. When he is told what is going on, he becomes extremely angry. After all, he has been a loyal, faithful, hard-working son and nothing even approaching this was ever done for him. Yet his brother, who was steeped in debauchery and wasted so much of his father’s wealth, is welcomed like a returning hero.

Because of this, the elder son refuses to go into his father’s house (surely some of the saddest words in this story). The father remonstrates, saying:

…you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But…this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.

We have to celebrate, says the father.

The story is a clear reply to the criticism of the scribes and Pharisees that Jesus was mixing and eating with sinners. They simply did not understand the mind of God as revealed in Jesus’ behaviour. How well do we understand?

The two clear lessons from today’s Gospel are:

• I can be absolutely sure of God’s mercy and forgiveness, provided I turn back to him in true sorrow;
• I need to have the same attitude of compassion with people who offend me. I must be ready to forgive and be reconciled. I cannot refuse to love someone that God loves.

There are three people in this story and we can identify with all of them:

• The son who went far from his Father and followed his own way into the most degrading behaviour.
• The son who thought he was good and observant, but deep down, did not have the mind of his Father at all. He kept the commandments and all the rules, but did not have a forgiving heart.
• The Father whose love never changes no matter what his children do, and is ready to accept them back every time without exception.

Which of these three most represents me? Which one would I want to be like? Many say they identify most with the elder son—which of course is the point of the story. They are the real sinners who shut their hearts against God’s compassionate love. The parable does not tell us what the elder son ultimately decides. What would we do?

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Saturday of Week 2 of Lent – First Reading

Commentary on Micah 7:14-15,18-20

Today’s Mass readings are about God’s great desire that the sinner repent and experience God’s love and tender mercy. The First Reading comes from the prophet Micah, a contemporary of both Hoseah and Isaiah.

The passage consists of a prayer which appears to be from the time after the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon (537 BC). At this time, the people were still few in number, possessed only a fragment of their former land, and were surrounded by hostile nations.

It is a plea for God to take care of his beleaguered people. But there is confidence because their God is quite unlike any other:

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over the transgression
of the remnant of his possession?

The passage reflects what Jesus tells us about God in today’s Gospel.

The people may at times deserve the anger of God, but it will never last, for God loves his people too much. In fact, it is difficult to conceive now of a God who responds in anger when his people sin. It is never he who distances himself from us; it is we who are unfaithful.

We can always be sure of his “faithfulness” and of his “steadfast love”, which he had promised so long ago and so many times. He had sworn to Abraham and Jacob that their descendants would be as numerous as the specks of dust of the earth and sand on the seashore, and he had promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. God will not go back on that promise.

And so, we too have confidence of complete forgiveness and reconciliation. This compassion of God for the sinner and his desire to take him back is graphically illustrated in the marvellous story of the Prodigal Son, the subject of today’s Gospel.

We too, whenever we are truly sorry and ready to change, can be absolutely sure of meeting the same compassion and forgiveness.

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