The Prodigal Father

Most of us are familiar with the parable of the Prodigal Son. I was introduced to it in a new way through the book Death on a Friday Afternoon. It struck me deep, and that at the risk of understatement quite frankly.

We know that the father saw the returning, humbled, repentant son and ran out to greet him while he was still far off. But did the father just happen to see the young man returning that day? Did he notice him as he passed an open window or while he toiled in his fields? No; he didn't stumble upon his son's return. He spent day after day standing on the portico of his home, scanning the horizon for the lad's return, hoping, wishing, pining for his son's safe and soon coming back home. It wasn't an accident. The father actively sought his progeny. 

Then he ran - ran - out to greet him. Dad didn't sit on a throne and demand the son slink all the way back to him, prostrate and ashamed (although the boy was surely properly ashamed) and beg for forgiveness (although the young man, properly as well, expected he should do that). The father saw his son, perhaps as a spot on the horizon which gradually took human, family form, and, recognizing him after all that time, ran out to him.

So God the Father will do for us. He won't demand you inch forward and beg. When he sees your repentance, He will run to you in welcome. Such is His love for us. He will look past all the terrible things we've done and throw His arms around us. We will have been found by the One who constantly scans the horizon for all of His lost sheep.

To Forgive, and to Seek Forgiveness

For Catholics, today's Gospel reading is the famous one about the Prodigal Son. If you think like me, most folks appear to concentrate on the obstinacy of the elder son in the story without much consideration of the actions of the errant sibling.

That's not all bad. There is a great lesson in forgiveness there, as the older son needed to accept and forgive his brother. It strikes me though that few people care to delve all that far into the importance of what the actual Prodigal did. And that was precisely that he admitted he was wrong and sought forgiveness.

The implications of that are strong and warrant attention. Would his father have been forgiving if the son had not sought forgiveness? Notice I am not speaking here about dad's willingness to forgive; we can safely assume he strongly wished to do that. But did he go to his youngest son and say he forgave him while the lad was actively involved in his debauchery? No. Did he go and forgive his son while the boy was still living his life of choice, even in tending pigs? No. Yet when the child came to his senses and accepted he had sinned, and came to beg forgiveness, his father forgave immediately. Quite literally on the spot in fact.

So it strikes me that part of the lesson is that God is willing to forgive, indeed will very readily forgive, if we ask. Yet if we consciously live in ways contrary to God's will, we will not seek forgiveness. In our arrogance and self importance, in the false knowledge that we are somehow right, we will not ask. Consequently, it seems, we should not then expect it.

There will be greater rejoicing, we are taught, over one repentant sinner entering Heaven than over a hundred of the righteous crossing through the Pearly Gates. That is very much to be expected. But notice that that former sinner, that now Glorious Soul, earned his glory through his humility. He earned his glory by recognizing he was not God.