FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT

[cappie]

LUKE 15:1-3, 11-32 KEY VERSE: “But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again” (v 32)

In today’s First Reading, God forgives “the reproach” of the generations who grumbled against Him after the Exodus. On the threshold of the promised land, Israel can with a clean heart celebrate the Passover

Reconciliation is also at the heart of the story Jesus tells in today’s Gospel. The story of the prodigal son is the story of Israel and of the human race. But it is also the story of every believer.

We believe that we should get what we deserve – what we have worked for and earned. We believe in fair play. If we work overtime when requested, we expect to be paid for those hours and paid at a higher rate than usual.

If we achieve the highest grades possible during our four years of high school, we expect to be recognized and honoured at graduation. We believe that we should get what we deserve. If that does not happen we get angry, upset, and complain that life is not fair.

The Prodigal Son is a story familiar to all of us. The parable emphasizes that God is not like that in how God loves us. God desires our return, which is one of the themes of Lent.

Perhaps you have decided Lent hasn’t worked out for you this year. There were too many distractions: projects at work, hot weather, stress, nothing offered at Church you were interested in – the list can be as long as you like. Maybe next year.

Or, maybe now? All it takes for the prodigal son is to turn around. Just one action changes everything. He has a speech rehearsed, but picture in your mind the father seeing his son from afar and running to meet him. Do you think he waited for the son’s speech? Of course not. He ran to him and embraced him. The time to talk came later. In one sequence from a ballet version of this story the son crawls up to his father, then the son climbs up onto him, and his father, who is wearing a voluptuous robe, embraces his son until he is completely enfolded in the robe. That is the vision that awaits us.

So, harmony restored and back in the fold, life for us can go on. But that is not why we have the story of the Prodigal Son today. The intention of this parable is more than just a restoration of relationships with a loving God.

The passage from Second Corinthians begins with the words:
“ For anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here. It is all God’s work. It was God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the work of handing on his reconciliation…” This business of being reconciled isn’t about us as much as it is about what we are commissioned to do.

We cannot do this without our relationship with God and each other, and that restoration gives us the energy and guidance to do the work for which we were baptized. As is often said, “You may be the best Christian someone has ever met.” And then, like the father in the parable, we wait patiently, prayerfully, for the return of those to whom we are sent.

Lent is not just about each of our journeys and us. It is also about to whom we are sent and how we minister to the other, the stranger, the friend, the family member who see no need for a relationship with God or the community of faith. It is about having the strength to give a cup of cold water to the least and the lost. It is about sorrowing over what we have done to creation and finding ways to help restore it. It is about sowing seeds of hope in the midst of darkness and chaos.

So far Lent may have been nothing to you. But today determine it is the time for you to approach the altar with repentance and faith that God meets you and will feed you with the body of Christ, the bread of heaven. Think of this moment as a time when God is reaching out in mercy. Then, having been fed the bread of life, walk out the door into God’s world prepared to be an ambassador for Christ.

This is a fitting theme for the Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis. 

[BarbTherese]

Thank you for sharing these short Sunday homilies, cappie - very much appreciated - not too long but with much to think about