Saturday of the Second Week of Lent
In today’s Gospel, Jesus teaches us about God’s forgiveness. The Parable of the Prodigal Son we read today is one of a series of a few parables that illustrate the mercy of God. The first parable Jesus starts with is the Parable of the Lost Sheep in which the shepherd leaves his flock of 99 sheep to find the one sheep that strayed away. The one after that is the Parable of the Lost Coin. A widow loses one coin and carefully searches her whole house for it. Then comes the parable in today’s Gospel. In all these stories, there is rejoicing when the lost is found.
What do these parables tell us about God? The one about the prodigal son seems the most egregious compared to the previous two. It’s one thing to lose a sheep or coin but another for a son/child to walk away from the family by demanding to receive his inheritance in advance before the parent dies. The relationship between the father and son is broken. However, when the son returns remorseful, it does not even take a second for the father to welcome his son back. God is like that with us. There is nothing we can do to make God not love us. We might wander away, but when we come back to God, God rejoices in our return and the restored relationship. This Gospel passage encourages us to remember those times in our lives and to reflect on them.
Often reflections on this parable focus on the prodigal son, but what about the other son? As there are plenty of people who strayed from God, there are plenty of people who have not. For those people, do we rejoice too when someone returns to God or are we bitter that more attention is on those who have done bad things? Do we expect a reward for being good and for staying by God? The father’s response to the elder son indicates that as children of God, we share in what God has, which is given to us not earned. Ironically, the jealousy and judgment of the elder son weakens his relationship with his father and brother. His reaction can help us reflect on our own behavior and attitudes.
These parables can seem absurd. No shepherd in their right mind would leave 99 sheep to get eaten by predators or get hurt in order to find one that wandered off. It might be better to let that one go especially if it has a disposition to stray from the group. If one loses a coin, why waste time looking for it since it is small and difficult to find. It would be better to let that go and do something else or find it when least expecting it. Even with the prodigal son, it takes time and patience to repair a broken relationship and it is tempting to give up on it. However, that is not how God is with us. God loves us so much that God will go to extreme lengths for us (like suffer and die on a cross). Not only do these parables teach us about God’s love for us but also call us to love as God does and to love who God loves.
—Sr. Emily Sandoval, FMI