How do we
talk about God? It is extremely difficult for us, if not
impossible, because God is completely beyond our understanding.
St. Thomas Aquinas was a great genius and wrote one of the greatest
works of theology called the Summa Theologica. Towards
the end of his life he had a vision of God or heaven, and after that
he stopped writing and he said ‘It’s all straw!’ We haven’t a
clue!’ 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.
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 share of the inheritance the younger son was basically wishing his father dead to his face. He was saying, ‘I cannot wait for you to die, so give me my inheritance now.’ It was really the greatest insult he could give. Having turned his back on his family and made a fool of himself, he eventually comes back
in hard times to ask forgiveness. Now the son is looking at all
he has done wrong, all the sin, all the insults to his family and shame of it. But the father looks right beyond the sin and just sees and 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 child. Maybe it should be called ‘The
parable of the foolish Father’.
This teaches
me something about God in a very practical way. 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
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. He
is interested in me as a person, and He rejoices and delights in us, just as you would in a young child. You don’t focus on what a small child has done wrong, you just see
the child that you love. God celebrates even more every
time we come back to him, especially if we have drifted away from him.
Then there is
also the older brother. In many ways I think most of us are
probably more like the older brother than the younger. We
probably haven’t done anything too outrageous; we may even have
been quite faithful to our duties all through our life. But we
may well despise those who have apparently walked away from God, and
especially those who obviously do what is wrong. It is easy for
us to resent the fact that God loves them. This is exactly what
the Pharisees (who were the religious people of the time) were
doing. They said, ‘Why is this prophet hanging around with
those people. They are disgusting, they do everything
wrong and they know it.’
However,
through the parable Jesus is showing us that that is not how God sees
things. God does not act as we do. It may be
understandable from our point of view, but we are in no position to
judge the heart of another person. We can judge their actions
as right or wrong, but we cannot judge their heart. Only God
knows what causes another person to act as they do. 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.
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. This is the mercy of God that we trust
in. 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.
What
we are appealing to you before God is: be reconciled to God.
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