SUNDAY ALIVE - Applying the Sunday Readings to everyday life

14th March 2010 - Fourth Sunday in Lent (C)

Deep down, we need to be loved. We need to feel that there is someone who truly understands us, values us and cares for us. Yet for many people there is a problem. We are so burdened with feelings of shame, of guilt, of our inability to overcome our failings, that we cannot believe that there is anyone who could love us in that way. We cannot believe, in our hearts, that someone could forgive us for all that has gone wrong in our lives.

Jesus spent much of his ministry in the company of sinners and outcasts. He wanted to convey to them the truth that God loves them and longs for them to turn to him for forgiveness. And he told this parable to illustrate the amazing depth of the Father's love and compassion. It's a parable that, if read with open hearts and minds, can have a deep and lasting effect on our lives. A psychiatrist was once asked whether he read the Bible. 'I not only read it but study it,' he said. If people would only absorb its message, many of us psychiatrists could close our offices and go fishing. If many patients plagued by guilty feelings took to heart the parable of the prodigal son, they could be healed overnight.'

The message Jesus brings is that the mercy of God is overwhelming. It is beyond any love that we can conceive. It can transform lives. It changes the prodigal son from a fearful beggar, starving and excluded, into a beloved son who can join the feast inside his father's house. He was outside, but he is enabled to come in. But the only way in is through acceptance of God's mercy. The elder son, proud of his own loyalty and convinced that he is in the right, is scandalised and unable to accept God's mercy. In his pride he excludes himself from the feast and is left on the outside.

The father's joy expresses at a human level God's delight in repentance. The arms of God are thrown wide to invite back the sinner. He calls each of us, however unworthy we may feel, to return to our Father's house and receive his loving embrace.

'Just find a moment to take in that verse in Luke 15 where the father embraces the son.
You are that son, you are that first choice. Rejoice in that'
(Cardinal Basil Hume)