PRODIGAL FATHER

During this Lenten season, we are called to rejoice because God’s love is extravagant,  steadfast and boundless. He desires to forgive and be totally reconciled with sinners. He is a prodigal Father because His love is abundant, excessive, wasteful and infinite. We are no match for God’s forgiveness. He is never outdone in generosity. His business is finding us that is why He rejoices at finding that which was lost. His love is greater than our betrayals and infidelities. He often uses adversity to bring us to our senses. We cause our own misery but God stands always to redeem us from our misery. When we sin, God does not stop loving us. It is we who stop loving Him. It is we who break our relationship with Him – always. His love is unmerited and undeserving because everything is pure gift and grace, free of charge. The parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:1-32), the focus is not the prodigal son but the father who is also prodigal and forgiving. He is the true inheritance of the two sons who are both lost. The father in the parable is God who is also our true inheritance. He is the summum bonum, the highest and supreme good, the absolute treasure. The younger son in the parable is wasteful, greedy and selfish. He breaks family ties and treats the father as if he is dead demanding for his inheritance. He spends his inheritance on a life of dissipation spending it wildly. Yet he comes  to his senses when he finds himself in dire need. He remembers that in his father’s house there is abundance of food and decides to go back to his father’s house. Our faith is based on remembering. “Do this in memory of me!”  Remembering truthfully is the road to reconciliation and new beginnings. It is the path to new life. The parable of the prodigal son illustrates the heart of the father which is also the heart of God full of compassion ready to accept and restore us to our original integrity: created in the likeness and image of God. The older son instead chooses to be in the outside of the father’s love. He views his brother as a rival rather than a family. He reveals a hardened heart full of envy, resentment and bitterness. During this Lenten season, we are called to let go of rivalry, learn to trust, be grateful and share in the common joy. God wants us to be totally reconciled with Him and conduits of His grace into the world.