4th Sunday Lent Yr C (Gospel: Lk 15:1-3, 11-32) The Prodigal Son

 

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

How do we talk about God? In one sense it is impossible, because God is completely beyond our understanding and yet we have to try. St. Thomas Aquinas (13^th C.) was a great genius and wrote one of the greatest works of theology called the Summa Theologica, which is still used today. Towards the end of his life, he had a vision of God, or heaven, and after that he stopped writing and referring to his own work he said, ‘It’s all straw,’ we don’t know anything!’ St Paul says he was taken up to the third heaven and ‘heard words not to be spoken, that no one can utter (2 Cor 12:4). In other words, it was beyond human understanding and not even possible to put into words. This is one of the reasons why Jesus spoke in parables, to try and give us some idea of what God is like. Today’s parable of the Prodigal Son is a particularly beautiful one. The beautiful thing about parables is that they invite you to think about them to understand what God is saying. It is a reminder that God respects our free will and our intelligence. He doesn’t force us to believe, or to do anything.

 

This story could also be called ‘The parable of the forgiving Father.’ We usually tend to focus on the rebellious son. In asking for his inheritance, the son was basically telling his father that he wished he were already dead and so he wanted his inheritance now. Having insulted his father in the greatest way possible, he leaves with his inheritance, but soon discovers that it doesn’t bring him the happiness he had hoped for. In the end, when he has lost everything, he comes back to ask forgiveness. Jesus says an interesting thing: ‘When he came to his senses.’ He is telling us that we are only complete when we are in God. Only God can fulfil us. The son realized he could come back. All the wealth he had led to nothing. Earthly things won’t bring us happiness. Only God can do that.

 

The son focuses on all he has done wrong, all the sin, the insults to his family and he prepares his speech of apology. The father looks beyond the sin and delights in his return, because he just loves his son. He does not condemn him, he does not ask for an apology, he doesn’t do anything that you would expect him to do. He just celebrates and loves his son. Maybe it should be called ‘The parable of the foolish Father.’ You know how people are, if we have been greatly offended, or betrayed by someone, we may forgive them if they ask for forgiveness, but it is often with caution, because we feel that we cannot trust them, or they need a time of making up for what they have done. In the parable, the Father does none of this.

The robe he gives his son is a symbol of honor. The ring is the symbol of power, the equivalent of being given the power of attorney. The sandals meant he was one of the family. Slaves did not have shoes. He was completely restoring his place in the family, as if nothing had happened. It also says that the father ran to meet his son. In that culture it would have been considered shameful for a father to run in that way, because it would mean that he would have to lift up his robe and expose his legs. The father didn’t care. In that culture it was also possible for a community to disown anyone who had rejected his family in that way. They would have come out and met him outside the town before he entered. But the father ran to get to his son before that could happen. The father humbles himself, out of his love for his son.

 

When I think of myself before God, I tend to do as the younger son did. I usually think only of the sins I have committed and my failings, my inadequacies, rather than my strengths. But from the parable I realise that God’s approach to me is very different. God is not interested in my sin, or my weakness, or what I could have done better. God is interested in me as a person, and He rejoices and celebrates every time I come back to him, especially if I have drifted away from him. God rejoices in the child before him, like you would with a young child. You don’t focus on what a small child has done wrong, you just see the child that you love and delight in that child.

 

Then there is the older brother. Maybe we are more like the older brother. We probably haven’t done anything too outrageous; we may even have been quite faithful to our duties throughout our life. But we may well despise those who have apparently walked away from God and especially those who obviously do what is wrong and get away with it. Think of someone you may have read about in the news who has done terrible wrong. Would you be happy to know that God completely forgives them if they repent, or would you resent it? Maybe we would rather see them punished. It is easy to resent the fact that God loves them. This is exactly what the Pharisees were doing. They said, ‘Why is this prophet hanging around with those people. They are sinners, they do everything wrong.’ This was what the older brother did. He resented the Father’s forgiveness, but the Father also loved him, forgave him and reached out to him. 

 

Through the parable, Jesus is showing us that God does not act as we do and that is a hard thing to grasp, because we have probably never experienced that kind of unconditional love from another human being. Think of Jesus dying on the cross, in unimaginable pain. In that pain He prayed for the people who were torturing him, that the Father would forgive him. He promised paradise to the good thief who asked Jesus to remember him.

 

God is not interested in what we have done wrong. His desire is just that we are reconciled to him, so that we can enjoy all that He has done for us and all that He has created for us. His design for us is that we find happiness. We have been created for happiness, which we will hopefully experience some of in this life, but only completely in the next. That is also why in the second reading the Apostles are at pains to point out that we have already been reconciled to God, through the death and resurrection of Jesus. There is nothing we can do that God hasn’t already forgiven, so long as we turn to God and ask for that forgiveness. That is why we talk about forgiveness and repentance so much, especially during Lent, because this is what God asks us to do. God’s forgiveness awaits us, but we must repent and ask for it. ‘Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed’ (James 5:16). In the parable the father didn’t go after the son. He waited for him and hoped he would return, but the son had to choose to return and ask forgives. The Lord is constantly calling us to repent and ask for forgiveness, so that we can be healed of the damage we have done to ourselves through our own sin. We must confess our sins. God has given us the beautiful gift of confession, where we can experience his forgiveness and his healing, but we must choose to use it.

 

"What we are appealing to you before God is: be reconciled to God."

 

3rd Sunday of Lent Yr C (Gospel: Luke 13:1-9) Producing fruit

 

The United States has always been known as ‘the land of opportunity’ and hopefully it will continue to be that way for many people. So many of our ancestors came here with almost nothing and through hard work and many sacrifices were able to make a decent living and it continues today. Having come here from Ireland twelve years ago, that is one thing that has often struck me, that is, the opportunities that are here for people. Ireland is no longer a poor country, but there wouldn’t be half the opportunities to do things that there are here. It is one of the great blessings of this country.

 

A recent example is a friend of mine I came to know here, Xavier, from Mexico. We go motorcycle riding together sometimes. He came here from Mexico in 1983, with $200 in his pocket and no English. He started mowing lawns, learnt English, eventually put himself through college and became an IT specialist. He became a citizen and was able to put his own two children through college. I admire his hard work and determination. It is inspiring to see what can happen here.

 

When you grow up in this kind of culture where there are so many opportunities to do well, one of the dangers is that we only begin to see our time here as a time to gain as much as possible for ourselves. The Lord reminds us that there is more to it than that. It is good to strive to achieve and be successful, to use the gifts God has given us, but success is not just about personal gain. The parable of the fig tree addresses issue.

 

The fig tree was something special to the Jewish people. It normally took three years for a fig tree to mature before it would bear fruit. The point of the parable is that this tree was only taking and not giving. It was taking sustenance from the ground but giving nothing in return: no fruit. In this parable it is given another chance: ‘Give it one more year and then you can cut it down.’ But there is a final chance. Jesus was always very definite about this. We have choices and they have consequences. God is infinitely merciful, but God is also perfectly just. God won’t be made a fool of. 

 

Jesus teaches us that we cannot be only taking and not giving back. We have inherited a great deal and been given a great deal. We have been loved and raised by our families, however imperfect they might have been, but the fact is we wouldn’t be here without them and without a lot of sacrifices on their part. We have also inherited a very rich Christian tradition, which God has made known to us. It has been passed on to us and many people have suffered for it and even given their lives for it. Now it is our turn to nurture it and pass it on to the next generation as best we can, not just to take what suits us and forget about everyone else. All of us are called to make sacrifices for those who come after us and for those around us, just as those who have gone before us did for us. When we die, we want to come before God with good deeds to show for our time on earth.

 

God teaches us what He expects of us. We are his creation and live in his world. Everything we have is from him and He demands that we use all the gifts we have to better the world, his world and not just take for ourselves. If we follow the path that God points out to us, it will lead us to life and to happiness, beginning in this life and fulfilled in the next. We are given much, but like the fig tree, we are also expected to give back. There is no end of ways that we can give back, but what is important is that we do. 

 

Let me share with you part of the testimony of a man called Dale Recinella. Dale was a very successful attorney based in Miami. He was also a devout Catholic. In 1984 he changed law firms and his workload increased greatly. The focus on his faith became more difficult, because of the demands of his work. However, he was able to provide a very nice life-style for himself and his family.

 

In 1986 he handed over the deposit for the construction of their new dream-home in Tallahassee. That evening he and his wife went out to dinner to celebrate, but first they went to mass. During the mass they heard the Gospel of the rich young man, who asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life (Mark 10:17-25). You know the story, Jesus tells him to keep the commandments. He says that he already does this, so what else should he do. Jesus says, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go sell what you have, give the money to the poor and come follow me.’ But the young man went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth. And Jesus went on to say, ‘How hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’

 

When Dale and Susan heard this, it struck them in a different way. During dinner, they spoke about it and Dale said to his wife, ‘Do you think He meant it?’ Susan said she didn’t know, but ‘nobody really takes that literally.’ They decided to pray about it and ask the Lord to speak to them.

 

Six months later Dale woke up screaming in the middle of the night from a nightmare. Susan pressed him to tell her what had happened. He explained that in the dream he had suddenly found himself outside their house raking leaves with their kids. Suddenly he heard this voice of indescribable beauty which seemed to be coming from the setting sun. He wanted to follow it. Everything in him knew he had to follow it. His whole being desired it in every way, but as he tried to go towards it he could not. Something was holding him back and when he looked down he saw a massive chain attached to his leg and to the house. He did everything he could to break the chain, but he could not. He tried breaking off his leg, pulling the whole wall, but to no avail. The voice was starting to fade and he was getting more and more desperate to follow it, because he knew he could not lose it, until eventually the voice was gone and he was left alone in the dark. This was when he woke up screaming. They realized that God was speaking to them and that they had choices to make.

 

Eighteen months later, Dale and his wife Susan were out eating and he had a raw oyster. As soon as he took the first bite, he knew something was wrong. Shortly after he found himself in hospital and the doctor telling him that he had 10 to 12 hours to live. He had eaten a deadly flesh-eating bacteria called vibrio fulnificus, which can cause death even with contact on the outside of the body. He had eaten it. Then he heard the dreaded words the doctor said to him. ‘Dale you need to put your affairs in order.’ He began to slip into unconsciousness with his wife holding his hand, but after he went unconscious, Jesus visited him again. This time he found himself in a room and Jesus was in front of him in all his radiant beauty, but Jesus was looking at him with eyes of sorrow and the question Jesus asked him was, ‘Dale, what have you done with all my gifts?’ Jesus showed him all the gifts he had blessed him with, his intelligence, upbringing, education, personality and all the things that had helped to bring him worldly success. Immediately he began to defend himself saying that he had worked hard to provide a good life-style for his family. They were safe, lived in a good neighborhood. His kids went to the best schools and their future was well provided for. But he realized as he was saying this, that everything he was talking about was for himself. Everything he had gained was only focused on himself and his family. And finally Jesus said, ‘But what about all my people who are suffering?’ He knew that he had no answer for this, only the shame of seeing his own neglect of everyone but himself.

 

He woke up early the next morning to the doctors astonishment. They had no explanation for it and said that what had happened was inexplicable. He knew that Jesus had given him another chance. From then on he completely changed his life-style. They began to live a much simpler life and he ended up working in a prison ministry, helping those on death row.

 

Why did all this happen to him? Not just to speak to him, but also to speak to us. Our world tells us that we need only look out for ourselves. If we have enough left over when we are completely satisfied, then we can also reach out to others. But that is not what the Gospel teaches us. The Lord teaches us that our gifts and talents are not just for ourselves, but also for the people around us. When we have been blessed with gifts and opportunities, they are not just for ourselves, but also to help others.

 

We have been placed in the exact place we find ourselves, at this exact time in history, because God wants us here. God has blessed us with different gifts and talents. You could say that we have been entrusted with different gifts and talents, but they are not just for ourselves. Thank God if you can enjoy a comfortable life-style, but remember who gave it to you and remember that we have a God-given responsibility to use those gifts properly. What we have here on earth is only for a very short time. When we come before the Lord, we want to be able to show him what we did with his gifts, as he expected of us.

Our time on earth is not everything, it is only the preparation for what is to come. It is a short time, perhaps much shorter that we expect. When this life is complete, we will come before the Lord and hopefully be able to show him how we made use of what God entrusted to us. If we see everything we have as being entrusted to us, as opposed to just being ‘mine,’ it will help us make good use of it and not just focus on ourselves.

“For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree, but have found none. So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?”

He said to him in reply, “Sir, leave it for this year also and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it. It may bear fruit in the future. If not you can cut it down.”

2nd Sunday of Lent, Year C (Gospel: Luke 9:28b-36) 'This is My Son the Beloved; Listen to Him'

 

No doubt you are familiar with the term ‘Jekyll and Hyde,’ which refers to someone with two completely different personalities. It is from the book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson, set in 19^th century London.

 

Dr. Henry Jekyll is a well-respected scientist in London. He is fascinated by the goodness and evil that is possible in each person. He is also tired of always being treated as such a good and respected person in society. He manages to create a potion which completely changes his personality into someone very sinister, Mr. Hyde, who then goes out at night committing terrible acts of violence and murder.

 

The first time, after the potion wears off, he is horrified at what he has done, but then he wants another taste of it and tries it again. As time goes on he needs more of the potion to have the same effect, but he also wants more and more of it. In the end he reaches a point of no return, where he completely becomes the evil character Edward Hyde. He has now been transformed into someone consumed with evil. Finally, realizing what has happened he takes his own life.

 

The story is a good analogy of what can happen to each of us depending on the choices we make. One thing it reminds me of is the tendency to hate, that is in all of us. We are not born full of hatred. It is something we choose and sometimes are taught.

 

A priest friend of mind from Northen Ireland, was telling me that during what were known as ‘the troubles,’ where there was so much hatred and violence between Catholics and Protestants, there were also many good people who wanted to end the violence and to build bridges between the two sides. He told me that he was invited one time to speak to the children in a Protestant elementary school. To my astonishment he also told me that the first thing he had to do when he went into the younger children, was to take off his shoes and socks and show them that he didn’t have hooved feet. Their parents had taught them that priests were the devil and that they had hooved feet. They were breeding hatred into these children from their earliest years. So sad.

 

Hatred is something that our society is seeing a lot of at this time. People are full of hatred for other groups of people, sometimes immigrants, for one political party or the other, for one president or the other, for one pope or another. It amazes me how many times in confession people have told me that they hate one group or another. But hatred is something we choose to do. Like the potion that changed Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, the more we hate, the more we are filled with hatred and it begins to flow into other parts of our life as well.

No group is worth hating. We may be angry with them, or disagree with them and sometimes need to condemn people for wrong doing, but we always choose to hate or not to hate.

 

When you hear about some of the horrors that drug cartels, or organized crime are engaged in, it would make you wonder how individuals can do such terrible evil to other human beings, not just killing, but torturing as well. They don’t start out that way, but they get involved in crime and gradually keep choosing to do more and more, until they are no longer affected by it. It takes them over and they end up doing things that no human being was ever meant to do. We choose to hate or not to hate, to commit crime or not to commit crime. Even if it only seems like minor things like political parties, we can still choose to hate or not to hate. We can dislike and even be angry with injustices that happen, but without hating.

 

What we fill our minds with is also going to determine how we think. If we are taught to hate a person, or group of people, from an early age, then it is only going to get worse as we get older, unless we choose to stop hating.

 

In this strange and terrifying event that we read about in the Gospel, the transfiguration, there is one line in it that always strikes me, where God the Father says, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.’ ‘Listen to him.’ Listen to Jesus, to what He teaches. Fill your mind with his teaching, not the teaching of the world, which is usually the complete opposite.

 

I remember someone telling me about their father, who was now a widower, and spent most of the day with the TV on listening to nothing but the news and getting more and more angry and anxious every day, with all that is going on. As you know, there is no news like bad news. Bad news is what sells. It is what gets us to watch more, or listen to more and much of what we are told often isn’t true. If I continually fill my mind with the thinking of the world, I am probably going to become anxious, angry and filled with hatred. That is why it is so important that we keep listening to the things of God, all that is written in the Scriptures.

 

In the second reading, St. Paul refers to those who are not living as Christ calls us to and he says, ‘Their minds are filled with earthly things,’ and so they have turned in on themselves. He goes on to say, ‘But our citizenship is in heaven.’ If we remember our destiny and that we only have a limited time in this world and that ultimately all things will be subject to Christ, in other words, that there will be perfect justice, that can change our outlook considerably. We see a bigger picture. If I’m only focused on that bad things that are going on right now and forget the bigger picture, it will also color the way I see everything in the world.

 

Many people have said to me, ‘I am so worried about what I see happening in our country,’ that is before and since the election. Why are you worrying about what is going to happen in the country? What is important is that I play my part to make it a better country and a better world and then let it go. What will happen will happen.

 

In St. Matthew’s Gospel (Matt 6:25 ff.), Jesus says,

‘Why do you worry about tomorrow. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

The Father knows what you need, even before you ask him.

Seek first the kingdom of God and all these other things will be given you as well.’

 

I need to focus on today and what I can do today. Remember that our destiny is not this world, but heaven. Whatever happens around us, happens. If we focus on what God teaches us, then our mindset will be different and we ill influence the world in a better way, but that is something that we must choose to do.

 

I want to finish with this inspiring letter by a French journalist after the terrorist attack on a concert in Paris, in 2015.

On Friday, November 13, 2015, in Paris, gunmen broke into a concert hall and shot 129 dead.

A journalist by the name of Antoine Leiris, posted this letter entitled, “You Will Not Have My Hatred,” to Facebook, less than three days after his 35-year-old wife of 12 years, Helen Muyal-Leiris, was killed. She was one of 129 individuals killed during the series of attacks in Paris that Friday night.

Friday night, you took an exceptional life—the love of my life, the mother of my son—but you will not have my hatred. I don't know who you are and I don't want to know, you are dead souls. If this God, for whom you kill blindly, made us in his image, every bullet in the body of my wife would have been one more wound in His heart.

So, no, I will not grant you the gift of my hatred. You're asking for it, but responding to hatred with anger is falling victim to the same ignorance that has made you what you are. You want me to be scared, to view my countrymen with mistrust, to sacrifice my liberty for my security. You lost.

I saw her this morning, finally, after nights and days of waiting. She was just as beautiful as when she left on Friday night, just as beautiful as when I fell hopelessly in love over 12 years ago. Of course I am devastated by this pain, I give you this little victory, but the pain will be short-lived. I know that she will be with us every day and that we will find ourselves again in this paradise of free love to which you have no access.

We are just two, my son and me, but we are stronger than all the armies in the world. I don't have any more time to devote to you, I have to join Melvil who is waking up from his nap. He is barely 17-months-old. He will eat his meals as usual, and then we are going to play as usual, and for his whole life this little boy will threaten you by being happy and free. Because no, you will not have his hatred either.

‘This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.’

 

8th Sunday Year C (Gospel: Luke 6:39-45) ‘Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye?’

 

A woman once brought her son to visit the famous Mahatma Gandhi, in India, who was revered as a wise and holy man. She asked him to tell her son to give up candy, as he was totally addicted to it. Gandhi told her to come back in three weeks. So she returned three weeks later. Then Gandhi said to her son, ‘You should give up all this candy, it is going to damage your health!’ The woman was puzzled and asked him why he hadn’t said that three weeks before. He told her that he was also addicted to candy, and so he had to give it up himself before he could tell her son to do it.

 

‘Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven.’ (Matt 6:37)

 

That has to be understood correctly. It is normal to judge a person’s actions. If someone murders another, it is morally wrong. If someone abuses another person, sexually, or in any other way, it is morally wrong and we can judge such actions as right or wrong and we should be accountable for our actions. The judgement God tells us not to make is the judgement of the heart. We cannot judge the heart of the person who did something like that, because only God can judge the heart. We don’t know what causes someone to act the way they do. I suspect that if we could see what goes on in the heart of each other, we would be a lot more merciful with one another.

 

When I was in the seminary I visited a man in prison over two years. We actually visited them in their cells. He had committed a very brutal murder, which was a chance meeting and a provoked attack. 30 seconds either way and he would never have met the person. He actually turned himself in, as he couldn’t live with what had happened. The media called him a monster and a cold blooded killer, etc. Visiting him in prison showed me a man who was deeply remorseful for what had happened. He prayed for the woman he had killed and her family. He wasn’t a monster. He was a person who had made a terrible mistake.

I remember watching an episode of First 48, where they follow real murder cases and how the police try and solve them. One such murder was committed by a man who had been introduced to crime by his father at the age of 6. He would bring his son to drug deals with him, at the age of 6. One of the detectives who had caught him acknowledged that he never had a chance. Even she could see the tragedy of his background which resolved in him getting more and more involved in crime and not surprisingly eventually in a murder.

 

The greatest knowledge we can gain, is self-knowledge. The more we are able to look at ourselves honestly, the less likely we are to be over-critical of others. If we are honest with ourselves, none of us are in a position to judge the heart of anyone else and yet we do it all the time. It is hard for us to distinguish between the actions of another and their heart. We tend to judge the person rather than their actions. If you turn it around, how would you feel if people only judged you as a person, rather than by your actions. You know the way we do things and then are frustrated with ourselves, because we know we can do better, but our own weakness pulls us down.

 

In one of the parishes where I worked, an elderly lady went into a room for a meeting. In that room a carpenter was doing some work. She lost her temper with him and threatened to throw out his tools etc. Her reaction was completely out of proportion to what was going on. As it happened I turned up a few minutes later, although it had nothing to do with what had just happened, but I realized she felt I was judging her. I knew that because the next time she came to me for Communion she had her head down; she wouldn’t look at me in the face. I felt the Lord saying to me, ‘You see the shame this woman feels because of her own weakness. Perhaps this is a temper she cannot control and it causes her great humiliation.’ It would be easy to write her off as a cantankerous old woman, without giving any consideration to the fact that maybe this is a weakness that she doesn’t have much control over and that causes her much grief. We cannot judge the heart.

 

St. Thomas Aquinas says that the only thing we can really take credit for, are our sins. Maybe that seems a bit extreme, but think about it. Everything we have comes from God: our gifts, talents, opportunities, health, ability, intelligence, chance for education etc. To recognize that also helps to bring humility.

Humility is not pretending you are stupid when you know you aren’t, rather knowing what we are like before God. In other words, humility is truth. We are small and we are sinners, but that’s ok, because the Lord loves us as we are. The more aware of this we are, the less likely we are to only see what is wrong with the people around us. Unconsciously we tend to think that if we could sort out the people around us, the world would be a better place. But what the Lord tells us is to focus on ourselves and then the world will start to become a better place.

 

When I am in traffic and someone cuts me off, or does something that scares me, I usually react like most of people and get angry with the person, calling them all kinds of words that aren’t in the bible. But then I try to stop myself and ask myself if I have ever done anything similar? because of course I have. That usually gets me to calm down. The truth is that they are not the idiot that I just called them. They are someone who made an error in judgement. We all do it, all the time. If we didn’t, there wouldn’t be any crashes on the road. The Sheriff’s department in Lee County have actually set up a taskforce to deal with road-rage, because it has gotten so bad. The rage within people has little to do with the traffic and incidents on the road. It is just a rage that people have within them, which is triggered by some traffic incident. If people were prepared to look at their own mistakes a bit more, there would probably be a lot less road rage, because we would realize that we are no better than most other people on the road. If I can only see the fault of the other, then I am less likely to be tolerant. IF I can acknowledge my own weakness, it will probably make me slower to condemn.

 

‘Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? Remove the wooden beam from your eye first… Then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.’