Coming to our senses

Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Our lengthy passage provides us with three parables of lost-and-found scenarios. All three paint an unforgettable picture of the overflowing love and forgiveness of God. It opens with the one lost sheep, for which the owner scales hills and valleys, ravines and outcrops, until he reconnects it to the other ninety-nine. The passage continues with one lost coin for which the woman of the house does a thorough cleaning to find it. And our trilogy concludes with the story of the Prodigal Son. Perhaps our familiarity with the Parable of the Prodigal Son dulls our perception of just how radical this father’s love is.

Today, I would like to pay attention to the third and longest of the three parables. Its most common name is the Prodigal Son, but I would prefer to give it a title which follows the pattern of the earlier two stories. If the first two stories speak of a lost sheep and a lost coin, what we have here is a lost son. But the younger son wasn’t the only one lost. The ending of the story shows that his elder brother, who seems to have fulfilled his filial duties to their father, is equally lost, but with a big difference. There is no turning point in the elder son’s story.

I’m going to spare you another paraphrasing of an already lengthy but vividly told story with its many twists and turns. I would just wish to turn to the turning point in the story of the younger son, the wastrel who abandoned his duties at home, cursed his father to an early death, and lived a life of hedonistic excesses and debauchery. St Luke tells us that after having experienced a radical reversal in his fortunes and at the critical point when he had lost everything - his friends, his wealth and his dignity - “he came to his senses.” This is the moment of awareness, the long-awaited regret, the needed sorrow for his mistakes. It is matched by an overwhelming realisation of what he had lost - his father’s immeasurable benevolence shown even to lowly servants. He begins the long track home.

It is this point in the third parable which makes it unique among the set of three. I don’t think that the lost sheep in the first parable nor the inanimate and non-sentient coin in the second, could ever come to their senses. Only man is capable of doing this because only man possesses the freedom of intellect and will need to repent of his ways.

But let’s not be under the impression that “coming to his senses” meant that he had fully acknowledged his culpability and was now truly repentant. His reasoning was still quite self-serving: “How many of my father’s paid servants have more food than they want, and here am I dying of hunger!” Yes, there was an acknowledgment that he had made a miscalculated move. He thought he would be better off on his own without his father but now realises that even his father’s servants have it better than him. But this was short of a contrition for his past faults. Hidden within this selfish and self-centred logic, is also the uneasy acknowledgment of his father’s generosity - that the servants under his father enjoy a lifestyle better than they could ever deserve and would ever need. But such acknowledgment was the first step to his repentance.

We are then presented with another amazing fact that the father in this story, whom every reader now understands, refers to God the Heavenly Father. “Nowhere else,” remarked the theologian Hans von Balthasar, “does Jesus portray the Father in heaven more vitally, more plainly.” This father, or God whom he represents, has never given up hope on his wayward and ungrateful son. The son may have turned his back on his father, he may have wished his father dead, he may have squandered his inheritance which the father had given him, but now returns to a father who has never given up or written off or turned his back on his son.

In Rublev’s icon of the Hospitality of Abraham, or more commonly known as the Icon of the Most Holy Trinity, the symbol in the backdrop which identifies one of the three nondescript angelic figures as a representation of God the Father (most often identified as the figure on the left), is a house with a tower and a large window. From this tower, it is said, the father of the Lost Son would keep vigil, look out throughout the day and survey the horizon so as to catch the first sign of his son’s return. As much as we are reminded to keep vigilant and stay awake for the Lord’s return, know this to be true: God never lets His guard down, God is always watching for our return.

And so, we have this poignantly beautiful description of how the reconciliation of the father and the son takes place: “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him tenderly.” The father meets the son more than halfway, embraces him in love, even before the son was given an opportunity to utter his first words of apology. God’s “I love you” always precedes our pitiful and often half-hearted “I’m sorry.” “When you are still far away, he sees you and runs to you,” wrote St. Ambrose, “He sees in your heart. He runs, perhaps someone may hinder, and He embraces you. His foreknowledge is in the running, His mercy in the embrace and the disposition of fatherly love.” God offers life and love to every wayward soul; He runs to embrace the returning sinner.

How is the reconciliation sealed? One would imagine that the son is expected to pay back what he owed his father (with interests thrown in) or, work to pay off the debt and to prove his trustworthiness after this massive loss in confidence. But the father’s love goes beyond what we could ever imagine. Instead of demanding for recompense, the father lavishly pours out more gifts on this son: “Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the calf we have been fattening, and kill it; we are going to have a feast, a celebration…”

What do we see in these 5 gifts? All these point to the Son. Who is this son? Definitely not the lost son who had sinned against the father and now returns in shame. Neither do these belong to the older son, who at the end of the parable has yet to “come to his senses,” which makes his younger brother better than him. You can’t earn these gifts. No, these gifts are the birthright of neither of these two sons but they belong to the One who is telling this story. It is Jesus Christ, whose garments are stripped from His body, who now confer the garment of righteousness upon those who have been baptised in His name and who now share in His death and resurrection. It is Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom, who now places the ring upon the finger of His Bride, the Church, whom He has washed clean with His blood shed on the cross. It is Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life, who now invites us to walk in His shoes, His sandals. And it is Jesus Christ, the unblemished Paschal Lamb, the fatted calf, who offers His life as a sacrifice on the cross and now feeds us with His Body and Blood in the endless feast of the Eucharist.

Yes, we all need to come to our senses. We all need to recognise that life can never be good apart from God. We all need to acknowledge that God owes us nothing, whether by virtue of our birthright, as in the case of the younger son, or by earning it like the older son. God’s riches and our inheritance of Eternal Life can never be earned nor is it something we are entitled to. Because He loves us, God has lavishly poured out upon us His most precious treasure of all. As St John so beautifully puts it: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)