Today’s gospel tells the powerful story of the rich man and his two sons, one becomes the prodigal. It also gives us a powerful lesson on not only the mercy of God, but the importance of who we are.
The man has two sons, one faithful and one prodigal. The prodigal deciding that he is smarter than anyone else in the world decides to demand his inheritance and live as a free spirit. However, in his lack of wisdom, he forgets simple economics: what goes out, must be replaced in disciplined work. Without that formula, as is usually the case, the loose living leads to destitution and bankruptcy. However, by definition, people lost in loose living do not have the discipline to follow that formula. Notice Jesus adds an element about the economic forces that are beyond his control and this adds to his dilemma. His dream of having total control to live in a complete narcissistic cloud of self indulgence, leads to the truth of being destitute, dehumanized and hopeless.
Look carefully: he is living in a situation where he is eating less than the pigs and nobody cares. This is describes as one of the greatest forms of suffering anyone can experience, complete total alienation from the human community. He is alienated from his own community, the Jews, because he is living with gentiles, Jews do not raise pigs. He has no one to talk to, he cannot feed himself, no one is offering him food, no one is even talking to him and he can do nothing about it. The homeless will tell you that their greatest suffering is having no one to talk to them of being alone surrounded by people.
He has no recourse, but one: his dignity as a son of the Father. Had he not had even that, he would be in a hopeless situation. Claiming that dignity, he goes back to his father, humbled asking to be treated better than he was, but not as a son any more. This the humility of repentance, recognizing our errors, our sinfulness, the fruit of our actions and going before the father seeking not what we deserve, but some concession based on our dignity as the baptized. That is repentance. We cannot restore what we have broken, we deserve nothing, but we return aware of our error and begging not suffer the full eternal consequences of our actions.
As we see, the Father, goes beyond this and gives us full restoration as sons and daughters, none of which is what we deserve.
The devil shows up here. Many do not recognize him and others do not remember that there is even another character in the story except for the father and the two sons, but a friend pointed this out to me. There is a servant who stokes the fires and tells the older son that his brother has returned and there is a great party of celebration. That is the devil talking, building up the pride of the older son and leading him to work in the world of those who deserve recognition and those who do not.
This is the legalism of the law, this is the way of the pharisees and this is the way of those who miss the connection between the law and the dignity of Baptism. The older son is angry because he has followed the law and deserves to be treated with a party. He does not understand that the issue is not his faithfulness, it is the reality of those who walk down the path to sin and find themselves lost in its consequences.
The prodigal son was in a literally hopeless situation of nightmare proportions and had no hope about his future and his reality. His only recourse rested on his dignity as a son of the father. The other relied on his faithfulness to the role or even the law of the son and not on the dignity of who he is as son. The devil in the form of the servant stoked the fires.
No matter how much we may drift away from the Father, if we choose to return and repent of our ways, we will be restored to our position in the Kingdom of God, by virtue of our dignity we receive at baptism. This requires us to repent of our ways, to turn away from them and turn to the father. This is because of our dignity as children of God received at Baptism.
Meanwhile, the other son goes by what he deserves and is angered that the prodigal is welcomed back. The older son’s way is not the way of the Father, nor the way of the Church. The greatest danger of his position is just what Jesus teaches us: the measure that you measure will be measured back to you. If you use that measure upon others, you must use it on yourself. This would mean that if you sin, and I am sure you have, then you have no recourse and you have alienated yourself from the father and you can do nothing about it St. Paul warns that if we live by the law, then we are not saved. What saves us is God’s mercy and our response to it. Without God’s mercy, we have no hope, without our choosing his forgiveness we have no hope and the way to ensure we do not choose his forgiveness is to believe that we have to deserve it to receive it. It is ours when we repent because of our dignity received at Baptism and for no other reason. But we have to treat others similarly. If we are not merciful to others, we put ourselves under the law of merit and we cannot receive mercy either. This leads to despair.
We must turn from sin, but the saints teach us that we are always doing this. If we fall, we must repent and return to the journey to the Kingdom. We may be tempted to say we do not deserve forgiveness and to despair of God’s mercy, which in itself is a grave sin. We have God’s mercy because of our dignity as children of God, not because of our merits. Our actions are in response to our dignity given to us by God.
This is a day to celebrate what the Lord has done for us by giving us the dignity as Baptized Catholics that we have this honored position in the Kingdom of God, but it requires our vigilance in the fight against sin and our desire for the mercy of God when we fall. But we must treat others similarly.
God’s mercy is there for us because we are in great need of it. We cannot rely on our own abilities to be free from sin. We need God’s grace and we have to respond to it, then we have to live it.
If we live by the law we will be condemned by it without hope, if we live by our seeking to be Children of the Father in the dignity bestowed on us by the Father, we will seek his mercy, but will find it as he seeks to restore us to kingdom out of his love and mercy and our repentance.
God Bless you,
Fr. Robert J Carr
Fr. Carr is member of the Segundo Elo of the Canção Nova Community. He is the pastor of Holy Trinity Quincy, MAand is the editor of this blog. He is the author of several books, blogs and hundreds of videos all of which you may find on Youtube. You can follow him on twitter as @frbobcarr and on Google plus as+FrRobertCarr. Thoughts, comments on the homily? Let us know at Facebook