With arms always open

For not a few people, God is anything but someone who is capable of bringing joy to their lives.  Thinking of him brings them back bad memories: awakened within them is the idea of a threatening and demanding being who makes life more disgusting, uncomfortable and dangerous.

Little by Little they have done without him.  Faith has remained “repressed”  inside them.  Today they do not know if they believe or do not believe.  They are left without ways towards God.  Some still remember “the parable of the prodigal son,” but they have not listen to it in their hearts.

This parable’s real hero is the father.  He repeats twice the same shout of joy: “This son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.”  This shout reveals what is there in the father’ heart.

This father is not concerned about his honor, his interests  or the treatment he gets from his children.  He does not at all use a moral language.  He only thinks of his son’s life: that he does not stay destroyed, that he does not remain dead, that he does not live like someone lost, not knowing life’s joy.

The account describes with every detail the father’s surprising meeting with the son who left home.  While still a long way off,  the father  “caught sight of him” coming, hungry and humiliated, and he was “filled with compassion” to the very depths of his being.  This kind look, full of goodness and compassion, is what saves us.  Only God looks at us this way.

Right away, “he ran to his son.”  It is not the son who returns home.  It is the father who goes out running and looks for embrace with more ardor than the son himself. “He embraced him and kissed him.”  God is always like that, running with open arms towards those who come back to him.

The Son begins his confession: he has long prepared it within himself.  The father interrupts him in order to spare him further humiliation.  He does not impose on him any punishment, he does not demand of him any ritual of expiation;  he does not put any condition that he has to meet in order to be welcomed home.  Only God welcomes and protects sinner in this manner.

The father thinks only of the dignity of his son.  One must act quickly.  He asks that they bring him the best clothes, the son’s ring and the sandals needed to enter the house.  He will be so received in a banquet in his honor.  The son has to know, together with his father, a dignified and happy life he has not enjoyed away from him.

One who hears this parable from the outside will not understand anything.  He will go through life without God.  The one who listens to it from within his heart will perhaps cry for joy and gratefulness.  He will feel for the first time that in life’s ultimate mystery there is Someone who welcomes us and forgives us because he only wants our happiness.

José Antonio Pagola

March 10, 2013
4 Lent (C)
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32