We all need to come to our senses

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. Today, I would like to pay attention to the third and longest of the three parables.

Sep 10, 2022

The Return of the Prodigal Son (1773) by Pompeo Batoni.


Reflecting on our Sunday Readings with Fr Michael Chua

24th Sunday of Ordinary Time (C)
Readings: Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Gospel: Luke 15:1-32

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. Today, I would like to pay attention to the third and longest of the three parables.

Without needing to paraphrase the story, it is good to just focus on the turning point in the story of the younger son. St Luke tells us that after having experienced a radical reversal in his fortunes and when he had lost everything - his friends, his wealth and his dignity — “he came to his senses.” The moment of regret was brought on by an overwhelming realisation of what he had lost — his father’s immeasurable benevolence, shown even to lowly servants. He begins the long trek home.

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.

Our attention now turns to the 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 nor turned his back on his son.

And so, we have this poignant 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.”

How is the reconciliation sealed? One would imagine that the son is expected to pay back what he owed his father or is required to 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 five gifts? In these five gifts, we see our Lord inserting Himself into the tale. It is Jesus Christ, whose garments are stripped from His body, who now confers 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 birth right, 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)

(Fr Michael Chua is the parish priest of the Church of the Holy Family, Kajang.)

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