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 rubbish, 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
inheritance, the son was basically telling his father that he wished
he was already dead and so he wanted his inheritance now. Having
insulted his father in the greatest way possible, he eventually comes
back in hard times 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, or coming towards God. The son
realized he could come back.
Now the son is
focusing on all he has done wrong, all the sin, all the insults to
his family. The father looks beyond the sin and 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’. 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.
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 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 toddler. You don’t focus on
what a small child has done wrong, you just see the child that you
love.
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 and get away with it. Think of someone
you may have read about in the papers 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 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.’ 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 that is not how God sees us.
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.
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.
What we are appealing to you before God is: be
reconciled to God.
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