Father’s House

Father’s House

Have you ever wondered why, for many believers (perhaps sometimes for us), faith and spiritual life are often difficult, grim; something that, instead of giving them freedom, attaches them to the slave iron ball? Maybe it is precisely because we did not accept the idea that God might be happy about us. As often as we look at ourselves, we find reasons for his dissatisfaction rather than a happy smile! We are too accustomed to the principle that the rate of reward depends on the amount of merit. And since there are not so many merits, we feel that we are not worthy of any deeper interest in us. But the reasons for true love cannot be explained solely by merit. According to Romans (Rom. 9, 15-16), God’s love for us does not depend on whether we want it or what we do for it, but on God who has loved us before the creation of the world. He does not give us his love because we are worthy of her, but because we are his children. This also explains his attitude to the mistakes we make in life.

Religious writer Alessandro Pronzato thinks about how he might have made a parable of a prodigal son if he hadn’t had Luke’s model. He admits that he would probably not describe the son’s adventure as it was in the Gospel. The younger brother’s “reveling life” would be a little wider and would certainly present his older brother in a more favorable light. But he would most disagree with the Gospel text in capturing his father’s attitude to the return of the prodigal son. He would put proper discipline in his mouth to “comb” his unworthy son until his hair stood up: “You are shaming our whole family! What a dishonor for our house! You’ve poisoned me with years of old age … Just think what people will say now. Look at your brother how he works, how faithful and obedient he is. What can you dress up with him! And now that you don’t even have a penny, when your friends kicked you out, you’re pretty-beautifully returning to a mission you recently spit … You have to prove that you deserve a place in our house. You have to regain my trust. I accept you for the exam. I will keep you in mind so that a rotten apple does not infect healthy apples. ”

If the Lord were to correct this compositional task, Alessandro Pronzato continues, surely he would glance at it, took the red pencil, cut it all down, and wrote under it: “When he was far away, his father saw him and felt sorry for him. He ran up to him, tossed around his neck and kissed him … ” Sometimes we imagine the Father’s house as a first-class facility. Inscriptions everywhere: Don’t touch! Not to enter! Clean your shoes! Forbidden this, illegal … French writer Georges Bernanos says, however, that the Father’s House “must be a family house, where there is always a little mess where chairs sometimes lack legs, tables are inked, and the cups of the doctor themselves empty in the chamber. ” The heart of this house is the Father’s heart, and we are responsible for the atmosphere and air that breathes here. We can make it a masterpiece. Or hell.