FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT
26-27 March 2022, St. Lambert Parish
Jos
5:9a, 10-12
2
Cor 5:17-21
Lk 15:1-3, 11-32
Praised be Jesus Christ!
Today from St. Luke’s Gospel, the famous chapter 15, which between
the introduction we just heard, “This fellow welcomes
sinners and eats with them.” and our passage today about the Prodigal
Son there are recounted Jesus’ parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, both
with invitations to rejoice and celebrate with the housewife or with the
shepherd for having found what was lost. Our parable too of the father’s joy at
recovering his runaway son tells us among other things of the feast (slaughter
the fatted calf, let there be music, and dancing…) with which the father
welcomed home his delinquent but obviously now repentant younger boy!
As
you could imagine, on this LAETARE Sunday rejoicing plays no small role in
the liturgy of the Church. The first reading also from the Old Testament recounts
another feast, that of the Children of Israel’s first Passover celebrated in
the Promised Land. The Chosen People had completed a long journey, a process of
repentance and purification. On the plains of Jericho, they marked the end of their
regime of manna in the desert with a celebration. There would be no more Exodus
fare but from now on real food replacing the bread from heaven which had nourished
the people during their forty years of wandering. For the first time after
Egypt God’s People celebrated by eating from the crops of the land promised to them
by God!
The message seems to be that God is ready and eager to
celebrate with us. As I see it, we have a double challenge facing us in the
Christian life, if we would celebrate in the Heavenly Father’s House. Thinking
of the parable in Luke’s Gospel, we are urged to face up to, to confess and
repent of that which is prodigal in our lives, of our sins, our ingratitude,
our unfaithfulness. God is ready to forgive and take us back. Moreover, Jesus
tells us that He wants all heaven to rejoice at our recovery. That is why sincere
and humble repentance, true conversion would be a good, typical Lenten program;
it can help put us where God is eager for us to be in this life, namely with our
hearts set on our heavenly home and on entering into the joy of God’s kingdom. Like
the prodigal son we need to turn toward home, to confess and repent, to change
our ways, and then be embraced by the father’s joy. In the words of the first
reading: “The Lord said to Joshua, ‘Today I have removed the reproach of
Egypt from you.’”
As I
say, there is a double challenge, in that, part two, we are called not only to
identify and own that reproach which falls upon our heads as well because of
where we have been in life. We need to move beyond sincere repentance and accept
full reintegration into the family circle both for ourselves and for others. Now
you might say that you cannot identify with either of those challenges, that you
don’t see yourself in need of rescue and recovery and you are not convinced of
the power of grace to restore you and other repentant sinners to the fullness
of life and grace. Rather, you see yourself in the person of the older son
reproaching the father for being slack with others. You see yourself like the
big brother who has always stayed home and worked hard in obedience to his
father. The older of the two sons accuses himself of nothing. Rather the elder
son is critical of his father and accuses him of ingratitude in the face of the
older boy’s hard work and dedication to the family project. Most of Jesus’
listeners could easily see in the older son that righteous man praised
throughout the Scriptures. That explains His listener’s criticism of Jesus “This
fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” which occasioned Him to teach
with these three parables. Jesus’ listeners and many today who call themselves
Christians or Catholics in good standing seem to identify with the older son’s
lack of comprehension for his father. They sympathize with this man’s lack of
approval for the father’s prodigality in welcoming the delinquent younger
brother back home after squandering family wealth.
On the level of parables, I guess all of this is easier to
sort out. We find no small measure of consolation and hope in the father’s
eager and total forgiveness of the younger boy, in response to his act of
contrition. “Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven
and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’” Nonetheless,
in our own lives and in the life of the world, it all shakes out as much more
complicated. Most likely that is because the sadness of our plight has not really
dawned on us, most likely because of our rebellious pride. We are still far
from home on foreign territory reduced to feeding the swine and maybe not yet
aware of the real food we are missing out on and perhaps less than appreciative
that despite our big or little rebellions we still enjoy the Father’s care and
can be returned to the fullness of joy in His company.
It is not seldom that you will hear people saying they have
given up on Church because of the failures of priests and bishops. Often it is
suffering in the life of a person or someone they love, which triggers this
response of walking away from our duty to give God due worship within the
community of His Church. People who take the part of the older brother in the
parable are as common today as they were in Jesus’ time. This sense of betrayal
which excludes us from the feast, stubbornly insists on our own righteousness.
The older brother mentality divorces us from celebrating with God’s, yes, holy
people; this stubborn unwillingness to accept guilt in ourselves and to forgive
others, regardless of whom they might have harmed or offended, is easy to
identify in a parable but not so much in real life. We need to challenge
ourselves to an honest and thorough examination of conscience. Beyond our own
repentance for sin, properly confessed or owned as our own, we need to hope
that others can convert as well. For over half a millennium Mother Church used
Lent for public sinners to do public penance. Publicly wicked people, notorious
sinners were publicly humiliated. When they took that humiliation upon
themselves freely during all of Lent, then on Holy Thursday, they were given
absolution from their sins and publicly reintegrated into the community of the
faithful. Such a public witness probably made it easier for the faithful to
rejoice with repentant sinners, but the dynamic is still the same as that of
the parable. People hesitate to forgive and tend to blame God rather than trust
in His judgement and power to save.
I
think our second reading’s passage from St. Paul’s 2nd Letter to the
Corinthians can be of help in negotiating the workings of God’s forgiveness far
exceeding our sincere repentance and the eager and unexpected invitation of God
in His Church to rejoice and celebrate heartily with every sinner who repents.
We’re
called to rejoice this Sunday, yes, because we are halfway through the penance
of Lent, but maybe more so out of love and respect for our Heavenly Father, Who
forgives and restores life, thus enabling us to enter into His joy.
“Whoever
is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new
things have come. And all of this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself
through Christ…”
Praised be Jesus Christ!
PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI
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