Micah 7:14-15, 18-20
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
Madeleine L'Engle has written:
“We are so familiar with the parable of the prodigal son that we forget part of the message, and that is the response of the elder brother. As I read and reread scripture it seems evident that God is far more loving than we are, and far more forgiving.
“We do not want God to forgive our enemies, but scripture teaches us that all God wants is for us to repent, to say, 'I'm sorry, father.
'Forgive me,' as the prodigal son does when he comes to himself and recognizes the extent of his folly and wrongdoing. And the father rejoices in his return.
“Then there's the elder brother. We don't like to recognize ourselves in the elder brother who goes off and sulks because the father, so delighted at the return of the younger brother, prepares a great feast. Punishment? A party!
"Because the younger brother has learned the less he has, in a sense, already punished himself. But, like the elder brother, we're apt to think the father much too lenient.”
Dorothy Day has written:
“God is on the side even of the unworthy poor, as we know from the story of Jesus told of his Father and the prodigal son. Charles Peguy, in God Speaks, has explained it perfectly. Readers may object that the prodigal son returned penitent to his father's house.
“But who knows, he might have gone out and squandered money on the next Saturday night; he might have refused to help with the farm work and asked to be sent to finish his education instead, thereby further incurring his brother's righteous wrath, and the war between the worker and the intellectual, or the conservative and the radical, would be on.
“Jesus has another answer to that one: to forgive one's brother seventy times seven. There are always answers, although they are not always calculated to soothe.”
Francis Martin writes:
“The father not only had compassion, running out to meet his son and embracing him; he not only restored the boy to his former dignity, giving him a robe, a ring, and sandals; but he was so full of joy that he declared a feast.
“The father had never renounced the truth of his relationship to the son, and he acted on it. This is mercy, a movement of love based on the truth and the profound justice contained in the relationship.
“Mercy looks to the person; pity looks to the need. God has mercy and never parts from it: he is loyal to the relationship he has established with us in Christ. His heart beats faster when he sees us returning to him.
“The older son, who never left home but who had not had such a banquet in his honor, often elicits from us sympathy and a sense of identification. Perhaps we, too, serve God and 'never once disobey,' but more to secure our own safety than out of love for God.
“We would rather be 'safe,' based on our performance, than free, based on God's love. Such a freedom frightens us. May this parable move us into that realm of freedom. Let us obey and trust in a movement of love based on the truth of who God is and of his relationship to us.”
Posted by John
at 12:01 AM CST
