From the Sunday Note, with additional thoughts:
Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus,
but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying,
“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So to them Jesus addressed this parable:
…
“A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father,
‘Father give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’
So the father divided the property between them.
After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings
and set off to a distant country
where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.
When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country,
and he found himself in dire need. So he hired himself out
to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine.
And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed,
but nobody gave him any.
Coming to his senses he thought, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers
have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger.
I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him,
“Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
I no longer deserve to be called your son;
treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.”’
So he got up and went back to his father.
While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him,
and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.
His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you;
I no longer deserve to be called your son.’
But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him;
put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it.
Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead,
and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’
Then the celebration began.
Now the older son had been out in the field and, on his way back,
as he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing.
He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean.
The servant said to him, ‘Your brother has returned
and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf
because he has him back safe and sound.’
He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house,
his father came out and pleaded with him.
He said to his father in reply, ‘Look, all these years I served you
and not once did I disobey your orders;
yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.
But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes,
for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’
He said to him,
‘My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours.
But now we must celebrate and rejoice,
because your brother was dead and has come to life again;
he was lost and has been found.’”
Sunday’s Gospel, Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
As God sees the world, there are two kinds of sinners: those who are outside His house and those who are inside.
The outsiders, like the younger son, are those who live thoughtlessly and heedlessly, wasting the gifts (life itself, various capabilities) He has given them, trying to feast and thrive on whatever the world presents them with year-by-year. Experience, sometimes long, hard experience, can send them back on a search for their heavenly Father, with hearts ready for repentance and service.
The insiders have always been in the house or have found it a while ago, yet as Jesus shows in the parable, they are sinners nonetheless. And what are their sins? Note the complaints of the elder brother in the parable. Resentment towards his Father for welcoming back the prodigal. Suspicion that the prodigal has been enjoying sexual fleshpots while he was away. (The insider charges this, though there is nothing in the earlier description of how the younger man wasted his inheritance that points particularly to sexual sins. Is there a note of jealousy there?) Anger that the returned one has not paid for his sinfulness with lowered status—the insider even refuses to call him “brother” but refers to him as “your son” to his Father. “Why a feast for him and nothing but a goat for me, he complains. He squandered your gifts, and your treat him like royalty when he crawls back!”
The sinner inside the house sins by not becoming like his own Father. We do not see a daily commitment to hope and pray and be on the lookout for the outsider to return. We do not see rejoicing when the humbled sinner repents and comes back. We do not see the insider feasting with joy in own relationship with his Father, even though all the Father has, including a fattened calf, is available to him as heir. The sinner inside has to be reminded that the one he scornfully refers to as “your son” is (thereby, and actually) “your brother.” The older brother is inside the house, yes, but a deadly, bony carapace has grown over his heart.
Jesus directly confronts this alienation from his Father from both groups. The outsiders (anyone who has not effectively heard the good news of the Father’s love for them) are encouraged and exhorted to live by the highest moral standards and to care for one another without exception. They are called to holiness in all areas of life. Those who are insiders (as the lawyers and Pharisees considered themselves to be then, but now applicable to us as members of the Church) insiders, we insist, are called to live up to the standards Jesus presents, and to do so with welcoming, rejoicing hearts that reach out to prodigal outsiders as Jesus did. We must reach out with an unlimited concern for them, even to the point of being willing to suffer and die for them.
It is no small thing to fight sinful desires and give up sinful practices to come inside. So, insiders must, like Jesus, invite them, encourage them, and be willing to put up with bad failures in practice among those attempting to enter, as we know Jesus did at least three times with Peter. In fact, he tells Peter, we must be willing to forgive them when they ask and let them try again at least 77 times. Jesus knows that even for insiders, faith flickers.
For further reflection:
All of this points up our need to be patient in evangelizing. The faith is a tremendous treasure to us believing, practicing Catholics, but what is obvious, right, true, and life-giving to you and me is a long, long way from what our culture has presented to most people as they grew up without religion or perhaps with religion badly practiced. If we want such people to walk with us to the altar of God, they have to get used to walking with us at all, first. They need help, support, friendship, a building up of trust–and those things rarely come overnight. Give support and comfort as best you can, pray for them, and be patient, patient, patient. When we hear about or read about peoples’ journeys into the Church, we see it is often a pilgrimage of years. Be on fire for the Lord–without scorching tender souls.