Preparatory Prayer: Once more I am here in your presence, Lord, to continue this conversation with you, to continue opening my heart to your light and guidance. I want to open my life to the fruit that you want to give me here, so that what I will extract from my prayer what you want me to receive, and not what I have been seeking for myself.  

So, I renew my faith in your presence. I know you are here before me in the Eucharist in all that you are, body and blood, soul and divinity, true God and true man. I believe that you speak to me through the words of your Scripture. I believe that you speak to me in the depth of my heart through the presence and the lights of the Holy Spirit.  

This gives me confidence and trust, because I know I am not here to do what I want, but to do what you want. And I know that the fruit of this meditation is not going to depend so much on how holy I think I am now, as on the grace that you will give me through the instruments that you will use.  

So, I come to you with confidence and hope, and especially desiring to have my love renewed, so that I can put you at the center of my life. I will use this great gift that you gave me, the ability to love. I will use it well. I will use it to love and to seek only those things that are good, and only those things that are helpful to myself and to my neighbor. I want you to purify my love so I will not love in a worldly way, that I will love in a Christian way.  

I realize in your presence that I am just your creature and powerless, all my desires to do good would come to nothing if it weren't for you. So, I thank you for your grace. I thank you for this opportunity. I thank you for your patience and for re-visiting me so often.  

Once more in this meditation, I will take hold of Mary's hand and I will let her be my guide, I will let her take my efforts of prayer and improve them and present them to you as something worthy of you . So, Mary, I entrust to you especially the fruits of this meditation. 

 

1. A Contemplation 

In the last meditation, we explored this great gift of life and why we so often feel ourselves divided. We've seen the gift that God has given us in our freedom and in our capacity to love, something that makes us so different from everything else in creation. And now we are going to have a sincere conversation with Christ about what we have actually done with the great gift of freedom that he has given us.  

We are going to use a parable that Jesus himself used, a parable which speaks to us particularly about God's mercy, but which also shows us God's gifts in general. It's a very familiar one, from the 15th chapter of Luke. 

"A man had two sons. The younger son said to his father, 'Father, let me have the share of the estate that would come to me.' So the father divided the property between them, and a few days later the younger son got together everything he had and left for a distant country where he squandered his money on a life of debauchery. When he had spent it all, that country experienced a severe famine and he began to feel the pinch so he hired himself out to one of the local inhabitants who put him on his farm to feed his pigs. And he would have willingly have filled his stomach with the husks that the pigs were feeding on, but no one offered him anything. And then he came to his senses and said, 'How many of my father's paid servants have more food than they want and here am I dying of hunger. I will leave this place and go to my father and say, "Father, I have sinned against you and against heaven. I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants."' And so he left that place and went back to his father. 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 boy said, 'Father, I have sinned against you and against Heaven, I no longer deserve to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Quick, bring out the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his fingers and sandals on his feet; bring the calf we've been fattening and kill it. We are going to have a celebration because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and is found.' And they began to celebrate. Now the elder son was out in the fields and was on his way back. As he drew near the house he could hear music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what this was all about. 'Your brother has come,' replied the servant, 'and your father has killed the calf that we have fattened because he has gotten him back safe and sound.' And the brother was angry and refused to go in. And his father had to come out and plead with him. But he answered to his father, 'Look, all these years I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed your orders, and yet you never so much as offered a kid goat to celebrate with my friends. This son of yours who comes back after having swallowed up your property, he and his women, you kill the calf that we have been fattening.' His father said, 'My son, you are always with me and all that I have is yours. But it is only right that we should celebrate and rejoice because your brother here was dead and has come back to life, was dead and now is found.'" 

Here our Lord paints a wonderful picture . Very easy to follow and very easy to see, we are going to take it slowly to look at some of the details. We'll use this parable as something that the Lord is telling us about ourselves. He told it to show that God is merciful, but in the process of showing us how merciful God is, he also shows us what we ourselves are like.  

 

2. The Younger Son 

This man had two sons. The sad thing is that both sons let down their father. In very different ways, granted, but both of them caused their father sorrow. The younger son is the one we are most used to hearing about, the prodigal son, as he is called. Let's have a look at the details and give God the opportunity to speak to our souls. "It was the younger son who said to his father, 'Father, let me have the share of the estate that would come to me.' And the father divided the property."  

There are two amazing things here. One is what the young man had the gall to ask his father, and the second is that the fact that the father gave it to him. Why do I say that the son had the gall to ask this of his father? Just look at what he says. The father was prosperous, the father had the farm, the father had servants, so things were going pretty well for this father of his. And the son says to him, "Let me have the share of the estate that would come to me." Notice that the younger son is really saying to his father, "Father, yes you've got money, you've got a nice big farm and there is equity here, you've got money in the bank, there is lots of capital, it's all worth a lot of money, and when you die I know that you are going to give half to me and half to my brother." But he says, "You know what, father, I really can't wait that long. I really don't want to wait for years until you die. So why don't we just divide the property now." He's almost saying, "Father, let's act like your dead, let's divide the property. Give me the part of the property I would have if you were to die." Now under normal circumstances, that's not a proposition to gladden a father's heart. The son has practically told him, "Dad, look you're hanging around too long. You're in my way."  

And do you know what the father does instead of kicking him out then and there to work and get some sense? The father divides the property. Incredible - that the father gives his son what he asks for... What does the son do with it? A few days later the son got together everything he had and left for a distant country where he squandered the money on a life of debauchery. So the reason that the kid wanted the inheritance, the father's money, was not to continue his work, not to take responsibility himself and build up his father's business. He just takes it all for himself, goes to a distant country where he wouldn't have his father looking over his shoulder, and in that distant country he squandered his money. Jesus here describes what sin is, we takes God's gifts and use them for ourselves, the way we want; we don't want him looking over our shoulder. When he had spent it all, the country experienced a severe famine. So we have this young man just thinking of himself, totally self-centered, who basically took the money out of his father's pocket, went off and wasted it, and when he had spent it all, the country experienced a severe famine.  

This young man without any money began to feel the pinch. He had plenty of friends when he had money, when he had been able to stand a round of drinks, and suddenly he finds that he doesn't have any friends. So he hired himself out to one of the local inhabitants who put him on his farm to feed his pigs. What a humiliation. From king of the world with his saddlebags full of money as he left his father's farm, he is now tending pigs. This has certainly not been in his plans. Nor do we plan the consequences of sin when we give into it. It promises us much, but it really robs us of any dignity we had, it destroys us. And it is even worse than that: he was so hungry that he wanted to eat the slops that the pigs were eating. Even worse still, no one would offer him anything. The owner of the farm was telling him, "Hey kid, I'm just using you. Really you are not worth more to me than my pigs. If I have a choice of feeding my pigs and feeding you, I'm going to feed my pigs." This was the state that this young man was reduced to after all his plans: no one offered him anything and he wasn't even worth as much as the pigs he was tending. That is why God's heart is moved with pity when he sees us follow the empty promises of temptation and sin.  

And now we come to two tremendous steps in this parable as Jesus begins to tell us about getting away from the power of sin. The first key phrase is that "he came to his senses." So often when we are off on the wrong track, it is because we are not in our senses, we are not thinking straight, we don't have our priorities straight, we can't tell what are the important things. He came to his senses, he began to look at things objectively, not through the empty promises of temptation, and he said, "How many of my father's paid servants have more food than they want and I'm dying of hunger here. I will leave this place and I will say to my father, 'Father I have sinned against heaven and against you, I no longer deserve to be called one of your sons. Treat me as one of your servants." So when this kid come to his senses, look at the very basic thing that he says, something that's a real lesson for us: he says, "I am worse off here than if I were a servant in my father's house." When he thinks that, he comes to his senses. Perhaps he is still self-centered in his thinking, right? But there is a change, he is back to reality. And the reality is that the father he ran away from loves even his servants more than his own false friends loved him.  

I can imagine him there in the pigsty, the animals grunting and squealing to get at the food. I don't know if you have ever had to look after pigs. When I started off in the seminary, we had a farm and one of my first jobs was looking after the pigs. I don't know if something was being hinted at there to me, but I know one thing: when you pour the food in the through and they move in you don't want to get in their way. Their jaws are pretty strong. And these pigs were hungry, so you can imagnie the scene: him almost stampeded out of the way, unable to get at the cabbages and lettuces and bits of potato, maybe risking a hand trying to snatch the cornhusks, and he said, "The servants of my father's house are better off than this. I'll go back and I'll say to my father, 'I have sinned against heaven and against earth but let me in as your servant.'" So it gives the impression that at the beginning of his conversion he is saying, "how can I fix this? How can I get my father to let me back in? Well to get back I'll have to admit that I did something wrong: I have sinned against heaven and against you but really matters is I want to eat."  

That's the beginning. Now let's look at the next step, the real key: he left the place and went back to his father. It is relatively easy to come to our senses and see that things are bad, but you know it takes a special type of person to actually get up, leave and come back to his father. What is said here so simply of the journey, that he went back to his father, has to have been much more dramatic. Just put yourself in the position of this young man. Now we have seen that he is unbearably self-centered and rebellous from the beginning to ask for the money and take off. We see later on that there is no love lost between him and the older brother, probably a little bit more there than sibling rivalry; probably the older brother had many a complaint about him. You can imagine how he must have treated his father, how he must have treated his older brother, how he must have treated the servants. So as he is actually walking back, what sounded like a good idea in the pigsty probably begins to become more of a problem, less inviting with every step he takes. He realizes that he's going to have to face his father, stand in front of him. "I have this little speech rehearsed, but I mean, how can I do this? What's my father going to say to me, what is my father going to do? What's big brother going to do? And if he accepts my offer and sends me to work with the laborers what am I going to do living in the bunkhouse with the hired hands? The ones that I've insulted and pushed around. And here am I no longer master of the house or son of the master, just one of them." So I think that with every step that he took on his way back it got a little more difficult and he had to be firmer in his decision and he had to say to himself, "Do I really want to do this? Or not?" And all the while there was a change taking place in him that we'll see a little later on.  

So then Jesus shifts the scene and we see the father. "While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity." While he was still a long off. It doesn't explain here why the father, who was an older man, spotted him before anybody else. It doesn't explain why the father at a long distance was able to tell and to be moved with pity at the sight of that young man. Let's imagine the sheer dejection with which that young man was dragging himself home. You know when someone is walking towards you a long distance away, you can't quite make out who they are but you can tell if they are bouncing along or dragging themselves. So while he was still a long way off, the father was moved with pity. He wasn't close enough to see the rags he was wearing, he wasn't close enough for the father to see that he didn't have any sandals on his feet, he wasn't close enough for the father to get the smell of the pigsty, but he was still moved with pity because he must have seen a broken man coming back to him, a sad man, a man who was his son.  

"The father ran up to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him tenderly." And here is where we see the change in this young man. Just see for yourself?if he were still self-centered, if he hadn't changed, if he was just coming back to get a good meal and to have an easier life than in the pigsty, and suddenly his father's reaction is to run up to him, embrace and kiss him, he would have said "Whew, I'm saved. I don't have to give this little speech anymore. I don't have to become one of the laborers. My father is as dumb as ever, he gave me the money a few years ago and now he's accepted me back without me even saying I'm sorry. What a break!" If he hadn't had changed, right? But even though his father has run up and kissed him, saying for all practical purposes "the door is open, I'm glad to have you back," this son has been thinking so much about it on the way back home and has repeated his little speech to himself so often that by the time he meets his father, he has actually changed his attitude. He is not coming back just because he is hungry, just because the pigs have more to eat than the servants in his father's house. He is now coming back to ask his father for forgiveness. He now really believes that he does not deserve to be called his father's son. So from that first beginning, from that very first self-centered change, we have a man that has changed on the inside and is no longer self-centered. He is no longer just thinking of himself. No longer looking out for Number One. "Father, I have sinned against you." He has changed on the inside. We sometimes wonder why it is so difficult to change, to shake off bad habits, why the journey from our resolutions to actual change in our lives is so long. It has to be long for it to be fruitful. It has to be long so we can mature from our initial self-centered desire for something better into humble people who can appreciate God's forgiveness, and respond with new love.  

The father doesn't give him a chance to finish. We know that he had rehearsed "Father, I no longer deserve to be called your son, let me be one of your hired servants." He only got as far as "Father, I no longer deserve to be called your son," and his father said to the servants, "Quick! 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 are going to have a feast in celebration." And then the son discovers, "I never realized he loved me so." He discovers how much his father loves him. And he discovers that when his father gave him half of the estate, he had given it to him with hope, with hope that he would do something good with it. And they went in and began to celebrate. The father does not dwell on the son's humiliation. Jesus is describing his Father's love and forgiveness.  

After this, it is easy to imagine what was like with his father, how he treated the servants, how he was always aware "I don't deserve to be called his son, I didn't behave like a son. And yet he has brought me back as his son." If the father needed anything, as the father got old and infirm, you can imagine who was the first one to rush in and see what he needed. The son no longer thought about himself. 

 

3. Another Ungrateful Son 

That's one son. One son who didn't realize how much his father loved him, who took the gifts his father had given him and used them wrongly, who came back to his senses and was gradually transformed and was able to be forgiven by his father. How about the other son? We are used to thinking in our mind that one was good and the other, right?  

But Jesus wants to tell his listeners that this other son also had a few things to improve upon, because some of them were like him. "The elder son was out in the fields, and on his way back as he drew nearer the house, he could hear the music and the dancing and he called one of the servants and asked him what it was all about. This servant told him, 'Your father has killed the calf, your brother has come back.'" His reaction was not the reaction of the father. His father had run forward overjoyed, embraced and kissed his son, even though it was he who had been wronged. Now this older son was angry and wouldn't go in and his father had to go out to speak with him. Look at the bitterness in this young man's heart as he says to his father, "Look, all these years I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed your orders and you never gave me even a kid goat to celebrate with my friends." You've seen kid goats, they're small animals. Your son comes back after spending all his money on the loose women he's been associating with and you kill the fattened calf, the big fattened calf. What justice is there in this?  

What this shows us is that this older son, even though he didn't go off and do the terrible things that his brother had, was nevertheles just thinking of himself. He was cut of the same cloth as the younger brother, just thinking of himself. It must have been very hard for the father to hear that accusation from the son who was acted as if he loved him, but did not. The son who begrudged the pardon that the father had given to the one who had mistreated him. And you can almost hear the father saying to him, "Where have you been? I mean, what have you been thinking all these years? Don't you know me, don't you understand me, don't you trust me?" He says, "You are with me always, and all I have is yours. You know that the part of the property that belonged to your brother was given to him many years back, so everything else I have is yours. Do you not realize that? Do you not realize the love that I have for you? That everything that I have is yours. Are you looking around for me to prove my love in some other way? And all of this is festering inside of you so that when your brother comes back, you can't open your arms to your brother." You can hear the sadness in the father's voice as he is telling the one who seemed like he was doing everything right, "Son, you still haven't understood how much I love you. Can't you see how much I love you? Everything I made was for you. It was only right that we should celebrate and rejoice because your brother here was lost and is found." It can happen that a person might not have strayed much from the path. But that is not enough. We can be living in the same house as him, to all appearances doing what he wants, but without ever really understanding him, without becoming like him, without learning to love. We might be 'in his house' but feeling like slaves. That too disappoints the Father. When our relationship with him is not love, when we can't pardon, when we don't trust him, when he calls us and we begin to calculate if we are or are not going to be as generous as he is.  

So here we have two ways in which we take the gifts God has given us and not quite use them as God wants. We can take them like the younger son, taking our freedom and misusing it, satisfying all lusts it, committing terrible sins... or we can be like the older son. Maybe our sins aren't as extravagant, but our heart of hearts - we've kept that for ourselves, just thinking of ourselves. Nothing huge against God, but playing things a little close to the edge: how far can I go without doing anything actually bad? Or really bad? And we start measuring out how much I will give God. We haven't understood that everything that God has given us is for us , and God loves us. 

Sometimes we can be very judgmental towards others, feeling ourselves better than others. It would almost seem that we would be disappointed if others were converted. We all have things that we have done that we know are wrong: the just man falls seven times a day. And when St. Peter, remember, he asked Christ saying, "Lord, how often should I forgive my brother? Would I have to forgive him seven times?" Jesus said we have to be merciful and forgive others, forgiving seventy times seven times. Why should we forgive seventy times seven? Because our own sins are probably that many. If we want God to forgive us our faults, we should forgive the faults of others. So he says to Peter, seventy times seven. Don't put any limits on your forgiveness unless you want God not to forgive you. He is telling us that we are all sinners. We have all taken this freedom that God has given us, the ability to choose, and with it we have chosen the wrong things. We have all had moments of conversion, we have all been good for a while. And we may have all been self-centered in this goodness, just looking out for ourselves, not really wanting to be generous with God, not really wanting to give God everything that he wants, everything that he deserves. We can be angry, we can be judgmental, we can refuse to go out and help the person who needs help. All the Pharisees looked down on Jesus when he associated with the tax collectors and with Mary Magdalene: "If this man were a prophet, he would not let that women touch him." What would Simon the Pharisee say? Jesus had to tell him the story of the two debtors, that one owed $500,000 and the other owed $50 and who will love more the man who pardoned the two debts.  

In this parable here, who is going to love the father more? The young son who was pardoned all those things, or the older son who thought that there was nothing that had to be pardoned but still was looking out for himself?  

 

4. Conclusion 

Take this parable, this story that Jesus tells us, this explanation he makes to us of his hopes, his attitudes, God the Father's attitude, God's love towards us, the possible use of the gifts that he has given us, and how very often when we think we are good, we are still just looking for ourselves. The invitation, of course, that he makes to both of his sons is to see how much he has loved us. And to see how we can love him back, what use we make of the gift that he has given us.  

Realize that, in the sacrament of confession, what we have is the father who comes out to seek us and is waiting to hear us say, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you," so that he can pour all his graces all upon us and put the robe on us and the ring and have the celebration, because we were lost and are found. We have to come back and we have to express that to him.  

See the things that you've done, the things that you have omitted, the love that you have not had for God, and say to God, "Lord, I am not worthy to be called your son. Place those before him in the sacraments to receive sacramentally once again his forgiveness, and especially those graces we need to change and make better use of everything that he has given us. 

 

Questionnaire: 

To help you to examine your life, in the light of the inspirations God just gave you in these moments you shared with him. 

1. Does my use of my freedom reflect my love for God? 

2. Which son am I most like? Why? 

3. How much of each son do I see in my life?  

4. Do I love God yet as he deserves to be loved? 

5. Have I thanked him enough?  

6. What is my attitude towards the sacrament of confession?