30 March 2025 - 4th Sunday of Lent "C"
Jos 5:10-12; 2 Cor 5:17-21; Lk 15:1-3. 11-32
Homily
Once again, Jesus finds Himself caught between two groups of people. On the one hand, there were the tax collectors and sinners who came to listen to Him and whose hearts were often touched by His attitude as much as by His words; on the other hand, there were the Pharisees and scribes, who did not approve of His attitude at all. They accused Him not only of welcoming unbelievers, but even of eating with them.
The parable Jesus tells them has three main characters, a father and his two sons. The central character is not the minor son, the one we often call the prodigal son. Rather, the main character is the father. The minor son, who asks for his share of the inheritance and goes off to squander it, represents the publicans and sinners who come to listen to Jesus, and who are often converted by his contact, and with whom Jesus does not disdain to have a meal. Finally, there is the eldest son, who refuses to share in the father's joy and to sit at table with his converted sinner brother. He represents the Pharisees and the scribes.
When we read a parable, we immediately tend to look for the moral teaching it wants to give us. In reality, the primary aim of the parable is to teach us who God is. So the first thing for us to do when we hear this parable is to compare the image we have of God with the one Jesus gives us of his Father. And let's not dwell on whether we are the prodigal son or the eldest son who wisely stayed at home
More than once we have experienced God's mercy when we returned to Him after each of our escapades. But haven't we also often been scandalised by the way God welcomes those we consider to be "sinners"?
Let's take a closer look at what this parable tells us about each of the two sons. The prodigal son is an adult son, but he never stops thinking of his father as such. When he wants to leave, he says to him: "Father, give me my share of the inheritance". After going to waste his inheritance in a country far from the Father, where there was neither justice nor goodness, and after becoming a slave in a foreign land, he decided to return to his father. Even though he no longer feels worthy to be called a son, he continues to say "father": "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you."
As for the eldest son, at no point does he use the word "father"; he doesn't even think of himself as a son, but as a servant: "I have served you for so many years without ever disobeying your orders." Since he was not really a son, he could not understand a father's attitude. For him, the only response to sin is punishment, the only response to flight is the denial of any possibility of return.
Even if humanity has always known violence, it seems that today it has entered into a madder-than-ever race to respond to violence with greater violence, based on all kinds of ideologies, often religious. Only the revelation of the Father of Jesus Christ, prodigal in mercy, can help our poor humanity to break this diabolical cycle of violence. Let us be the messengers of this revelation by incarnating it in our everyday lives.
Armand Veilleux