Good afternoon. Growing up, my parents worked hard to provide for our essential needs - roof over our heads, food on the table, and a car to get us where we needed to go. When I was in middle school and high school, I remember wanting more than what my parents could provide for us. I remember being envious of some of my fellow classmates who skipped school so they could wait in line to get the latest pair of Air Jordan sneakers. As I got older, the “toys” that I wanted got more expensive. The more I had, the more I wanted until, one day, as I sat in Adoration before our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament, I thought to myself: “Is this all there is to life? To chase after the next big thing that advertisers and marketers get paid millions of dollars to tell me that I must have it for my life to be enjoyable?”
My sisters and brothers in Christ, this is what the world has to offer us - power, wealth, and unholy relationships so that we can possess. . . stuff. . . stuff that can all be gone in an instant. All of these things are “fleeting” as we hear in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “[Vanity] of vanities! All things are vanity!. . . I have seen all things that are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a chase after wind” (1:2, 14). God created us for more than the “stuff” that we possess. The Baltimore Catechism states that God created us “to know, love, and serve [Him]” (126). Saint Paul reminds us that it is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who “is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). He tells us to “look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18), because “[the] last word, when all is heard: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this concerns all humankind; because God will bring to judgment every work, with all its hidden qualities, whether good or bad” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).
The young son, in today’s Gospel parable of the prodigal son, desired what the world seemingly had to offer him: power and wealth. These worldly desires caused him not only to leave his father and “set off to a distant country”, but he did so in the most prideful manner imaginable, demanding his father: “give me the share of your estate that should come to me.” In reality, though, this was what the world had to offer the young son: “a life of dissipation” in which he “freely spent everything” he had and “squandered his inheritance.” In the end, he had nothing to show for it, and, as the world was quick to take from him everything he had, it was just as quick to abandon him when “he found himself in dire need.” We hear that “he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any.” The world stripped him of the power that he thought he had because of his wealth. The world stripped him of his most basic need in life - food. . . he was “dying from hunger.” Most of all, the world stripped him of his identity as a beloved son of his father when he had to hire himself out and was sent to a “farm to tend the swine.”
In the plight of the young son, we see a heartbreaking situation that is all too familiar to so many of us here who have family members who have stopped practicing their Catholic faith, left the Catholic Church, and perhaps even turned their backs on God. Our hearts ache for them because, in the Eucharistic celebration of the holy sacrifice of the Mass, we come to the Altar of the Lord and “have more than enough food to eat, but here [are they], dying from hunger.” They are dying from hunger because they have chosen to separate themselves from our Eucharistic Lord whose “flesh is true food, and. .. blood is true drink,” and who says to us: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me” (John 6:55-57). Fortunately, for our sake, there is always hope because our God is loving, merciful, and forgiving to those who come to their senses and want to be reconciled to Him through our Lord Jesus Christ, who “for our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”
The young son, in a moment of lucidity, perhaps as a result of the involuntary fast that he was on, came to his senses and desired to be reconciled with his father. With the humility of a person who had been stripped of everything, even his dignity, he did not blame his father for allowing all these things to happen to him. Rather, he repented and said to his father: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.“ The young son understood in his heart that his father respected his freewill to pursue his own course in life, even if it was not what his father would have wanted or had planned for his life. That, my sisters and brothers in Christ, takes a contrite and humble heart and courage to accept the consequences of our own choices and actions and not blame God. Moreover, the young son’s words and actions before he “set off for a distant country” undoubtedly hurt his father deeply because he desired things of this world more than his relationship with his father. However, rather than lord it over his son and say: “I told you so,” his father patiently waited for him to come to his senses and return home. From his generous heart and filled with compassion for his son, who “was dead, and has come to life again. . . was lost and has been found,” the father embraced his son and kissed him, and restored his dignity as his beloved son.
When the young son’s humble and contrite heart was met by the father’s generous and compassionate heart, this made reconciliation possible between father and son. It is the same with us when it comes to rebuilding our relationship with God or helping others rebuild their relationship with God. Pope Francis once said that the “church is a mother with an open heart. She knows how to welcome and accept, especially those in need of greater care, those in greater difficulty. How much pain can be soothed, how much despair can be allayed in a place where we feel at home" (July 13, 2015). We are the many parts of the One Body of Christ, the Church, called to “welcome and accept, especially those in need of greater care” and make them “feel at home” in our midst.
The question for us then is: how can we - through giving of ourselves generously out of love of God and love of our neighbor - become an instrument of reconciliation for someone we know and love to rebuild their relationship with God? Well, perhaps we can find the answer together as a parish family by attending the English Lenten Mission, being given by Tom Corcoran (co-author of “Rebuilt” and “Rebuilt Faith”). The Lenten Mission starts tonight, March 30th, at 6:30 PM in the church, continuing on March 31st, and ending on April 1st. Moreover, the Lenten Mission is a great opportunity for those of us already going to church to grow deeper in our faith, as well as for those who do not like going to church so invite those you know who are not going to church to join us for the Lenten Mission.
My sisters and brothers in Christ, may our practice of the Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving lead us to repentance for the times that we, like the young son in the parable of the prodigal son, desire things of this world more than our relationship with God, our Father. Through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and with humble and contrite hearts, may we be reconciled to our Father in heaven, rebuild our relationship with God, and help others to do the same in their relationship with Him. Amen.
