Luke 15:11-32
The themes of
exile and return are prominent throughout the entire narrative of the
Bible. Adam and Eve were cast out of
Paradise. The Hebrews were enslaved in
Egypt until Moses led them back to the Promised Land. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah went into
exile in Assyria and Babylon, respectively, with only Judah returning home. The Jews endured a kind of exile when the
Romans occupied their land and longed for restoration through a new King
David. Our Lord provided the true
restoration of a kingdom not of this world, leading all with faith in Him back
to Paradise through His Cross and glorious resurrection. The canon of the New Testament concludes with
the Revelation or Apocalypse, which portrays the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, the
joyful fulfillment of all things in Him.
As we continue preparing
for our Lenten journey, the Parable of the Prodigal Son reminds us that true
repentance is a matter of returning home from self-imposed exile. It shows us who God is and how we have all chosen
to turn away from a loving relationship with Him due to our insistence on
serving our own self-centered and foolish desires, no matter how miserable and
weak they have made us. The parable calls
us never to fall into despair, no matter how depraved we have become, because we
remain the beloved sons and daughters of a Father Who wants nothing more than
for us to return from exile and embrace our true relationship with Him.
The younger son had
done his best to reject his father completely, for he had treated him simply as
a source of money for funding a decadent way of life that gratified his
passions. He did not relate to his
father as a beloved person, but only as the source of his inheritance. That was
essentially the same as wishing that his father was dead; it was the very worst
insult that he could have given the old man.
The prodigal son rejected his identity as a beloved son so that he could
live as an isolated individual who was free to indulge his passions in any way
that he saw fit with no responsibilities toward anyone. Once he burned through the cash, however, he faced
the harsh realities of being a stranger in a strange land during a famine. He sunk so low that he envied the food of the
pigs he tended. The Jews considered pigs
unclean and this scene shows that he had repudiated not only his father, but
all the blessings promised to the children of Abraham.
In the midst of
his misery, the young man finally came to himself and realized that he would be
better off as a lowly servant in his father’s house, where there was bread to
spare, than in some Gentile’s pig pen starving to death. He recognized how he had broken his
relationship with his father and no longer had any claim to be his son. Reality had slapped him in the face to the
point that he gained a new level of spiritual clarity, for he understood the shameful
gravity of what he had done. Then he
began the long journey home in humility.
That is when the
young man got the greatest shock of his life.
In ways that contracted all the customs and sensibilities of that
culture, the father ran out to hug and kiss the son who had so gravely insulted
him. The old man must have scanned the
horizon every day in hope of his son’s return. Despite the son’s despicable behavior,
the father did not view or treat him according to what he deserved. He did not even consider receiving him as a
servant, but said, “‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a
ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it,
and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he
was lost, and is found.’” The party began, but the older son was offended by
the injustice of the celebration, as he claimed to have always obeyed his
father and was never given a party. This
fellow missed the point of the father’s joy, for “It was fitting to make merry
and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is
found.” He had returned from exile to
the Promised Land and been restored as a descendant of Abraham. It was simply obvious to the father that this
was a time to celebrate.
The parable
reminds us that our return from exile to the joy of our Lord’s Kingdom is not a
reward for good behavior. We have all
sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. (Rom. 3:23) Each of us is the
prodigal son, for like him we have chosen to repudiate our identity as the
children of God in order to live as anonymous, isolated individuals according
to our own desires. It does not matter
what we have put before God, for if we have put love for anything before Him then
we have rejected our vocation to know the great joy of becoming like our Lord
in holiness. The passing pleasures the prodigal son sought were base and
brought him into obvious misery, even as our first parents’ unrestrained desire
for the forbidden fruit resulted in their expulsion from Paradise into our
world of corruption. His behavior was
obviously shameful, but our habitual sins are equally dangerous, if not more so,
due to their subtlety in turning us away from our calling to share more fully
in the life of Christ. That is
especially the case if we distort the spiritual disciplines of Lent into
opportunities to become more like the older brother in slavery to vainglory and
self-righteous judgment by wanting a reward for our apparent virtues and
condemning our neighbors for their failings.
He refused to enter into the celebration of the return from exile of a beloved
child of God. He referred to the
prodigal as “this son of yours,” for he had become blind to his calling to love
him as a brother. We can easily do the
same thing to our neighbors, thus shutting ourselves out of the joy of the Kingdom
where, thanks be to God, none of us hopes to get what we deserve.
The father
restored the prodigal son by clothing him in a fine robe, shoes, and a
ring. The young man had surely been
half-naked in stinking, filthy rags during his journey home. Adam and Eve had stripped themselves naked of
the divine glory when they put gratifying their own desires before obedience to
God. In baptism, we receive the robe of
light they rejected as we put on Christ like a garment, but still we refuse to
live each day as those who have been restored to such great dignity as the
beloved children of God. The father had
the fatted calf slain for a great celebration.
Like the confused Gentile converts of Corinth whom St. Paul had to remind
about the holiness of their bodies, we must remember that “Christ, our Passover, was
sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old
leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the
unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (1 Cor. 5: 7-8) In the
banquet of the Eucharist, we already participate mystically in the Wedding
Feast of the Lamb, being nourished by His own Body and Blood. Yet we all fall short of our calling to live each
day in communion with Christ as members of His own Body, the Church. Like the prodigal son, we so often think,
speak, and act as isolated, anonymous individuals enslaved to the self-centered
desires that have taken our hearts captive.
No matter how appealing or noble we find the objects of our desires to be,
we obscure the distinctive beauty of our souls when we act more like bundles of
inflamed passion than as beloved children of our Father.
As we prepare to
follow our Lord back to Paradise through to His Cross and empty tomb, we must recognize
like the prodigal son that we have exiled ourselves and then begin the long
journey home. Like him, we must not
allow the fear of rejection to deter us.
Like the father in the parable, God is not a vengeful tyrant set on retribution. “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8) and constantly
reaches out to us, calling us to accept restoration as His sons and daughters. All
He asks is that we repent by reorienting the course of our lives toward the
blessedness of His Heavenly Kingdom. With
King David, we must pray, “Do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my
transgressions; according to Your mercy remember me, for Your goodness’ sake,
O Lord.” (Ps. 24) “A contrite and humble heart, O God, You will not despise.”
(Ps. 50) We must mindfully refuse to allow the hurt pride called shame keep us
from returning to our true home. Now is the time to leave behind the filth and
misery of the pig pen and to enter by grace into the joy of a heavenly banquet
that none of us deserves. Now is the
time to end our self-imposed exile and direct our steps to the Wedding Feast of
the Lamb, our true home.
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