Gospel
Reflection
Fourth Sunday of Lent
30 March 2025, Church Year C
Luke
15:1-3, 11-32
The
Lost Son
By Fr.
Jack Peterson
Home Page
To Sunday
Gospel Reflections Index
Our glorious
savior
Leapt down from heaven and took on the fullness of our human
condition for a
variety of reasons: to redeem us from our sins, to manifest the
love of God, to
restore us to a life of grace to offer us hope in the goodness
of God and the
promise of heaven, to proclaim and model the gospel way of life
and to reveal
the face of God the Father.
Today’s
famous
parable of the lost son is one of the most spectacular moments
where Jesus
carries out the blessing of revealing the goodness of his Father
to us. It is no
surprise that Jesus handcrafts a
parable to do so. It
is no surprise that
some of the realities that Jesus explains seem at first glance
to be too good
to be true.
The
well-known story
begins with a shocking gift.
The father
divides his estate in two and gives one portion to the younger
son who from our
common perspective, is clearly not in a good place to receive
such a gift. The
degree of generosity of the father is
hard to comprehend and seems, on one level, to be unreasonable.
Perhaps
Jesus is
trying to help us realize that our heavenly father is generous
beyond
comprehension with all of us, all the time.
His gift of life, of creation, love, free will, family,
children, friends,
springtime and the Washington Capitals demonstrate the father’s
most generous
heart.
Jesus also
wants to
help us grasp how the father’s generous heart leads him to
extend a level of
mercy that is also hard for us to comprehend.
Thios young son proceeds to take the father’s
hard-to-comprehend,
generous gift and quickly squanders it on a life of dissipation,
that is, excessive
indulgence and lack of self-control, which led predictably to
moral and
spiritual decay.
The hard
times that
follow lead him to crawl back to his father and ask to be
accepted simply as a
hired hand so that he can have food to eat.
The father hardly listens to the son’s plea and
reinstates him as a son
with as ring, fine clothes and as bounteous banquet.
Jesus adds a
detail
that should not be passed over.
The
father runs to greet the prodigal son.
Older men did not run in that society.
It was not dignified.
However,
the father’s joy at seeing his son again led him to set aside
this cultural
norm, run to his son and offer him a warm embrace and a kiss.
Finally,
Jesus reveals
the father as one who is actively patient.
Jesus recounts that, “while he was still a long way off,
his caught
sight of him, and was filled with compassion.”
This
suggests that
the father went to the edge of his property or to the highest
point on his
estate looking and hoping for his return.
No force or coercion was involved . . . simply a patient
active longing.
Then, later
in the
story, when the older son refuses to come and join the banquet,
the father goes out
again, this time to plead
with his eldest. He
lovingly, patiently
and gently beseeches that he set aside his focus on self in
order to rejoice,
“Because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he
was lost and has
been found.” The
father is wonderfully
patient with both of his sons.
Jesus
provides us
with another penetrating parable, a meticulously handcrafted
story filled with
details that enable him to reveal the face of our Heavenly
Father, a glorious
and heart-warming image of the one who is generous beyond
comprehension, merciful
beyond human reasoning and patient beyond expectation. Why would a person not
want to be an adopted
son or daughter of this father and a disciple of Christ?