The Lost Son Lk 15,11.32

Since the Father’s love for his son is highly significant, he can forgive him when he shows the will to correct everything he has messed up by his actions. It is precisely the same a million times over in the relationship between God and man, who loves him immensely, which he has already proven countless times. It is a pity that man is blind, deaf, and inattentive to the perfect God, and even in this case, Christ’s statement applies: So even in heaven there will be greater joy over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who do not need repentance ( Luke 15:7).

God is a benevolent Father, which is the main lesson of the parable. We first see how the Father in the parable respects human freedom, even if the son abuses it, and then waits for his return. When he returns, he restores his filial dignity, gives him a ring, the best clothes and shoes, and seems to like him even more. A cold silence or a word that would humiliate and punish the son does not come from the Father. He does not set any time for the test, as the son probably expected when he tells him: Take me as one of your day laborers. That’s how God is to convert sinners! Let’s turn away from sin and return to the Father. The essential element of conversion is God’s goodness, and only then does man’s cooperation consist of recognizing one’s guilt and the willingness to return.

God also wants to use a parable to say that even a Christian must be merciful. He wants a person to understand his merciful action, accept it as his own, rejoice in the conversion of the wandering ones, and be willing to behave in a friendly manner towards them. A person is instead a harsh and ruthless judge of the faults of others, which is pointed out by the second part of the parable. Although the older son was his Father’s devoted and diligent helper, he was more distant from God’s mindset than his prodigal brother. The older son was a person “without a heart”; for him, the younger brother was “paid,” and he was not worth addressing or forgiving (Lk 15:1-2; Mk 2:15-17). The Gospel does not want to influence a person’s free decision and, therefore, leaves the question of whether the older brother obeyed his Father’s warning unanswered. But no one can doubt that the elder son, in the case of stubbornness, was more profligate than the younger. Public opinion can make it very difficult for people who have slipped into guilt or suspicion of guilt to return to society, not to mention released prisoners.

How do I treat people with a sinister past? I say unchristian: Let’s look at him?! He did not want to know about God for years, and now he has come to the cross. When they go to communion, I have nothing to look for in front of the altar! Our presumption can very quickly exclude us from the kingdom of God because if the Spirit says that we are all sinners (Romans 3:23), then we should not presumptuously claim with the elder son that we have never transgressed the Father’s commandments (Luke 15:29). God wants to forgive. Still, we often want to block the flow of God’s love by playing the guardians of morality. We prefer to thunder or condemn sinners, the ungodly, and the evil world rather than do good. For a person to be able to follow the path of God’s order again, he needs, in addition to God’s forgiveness, human understanding, and acceptance into brotherhood. In the “elder brothers” community, a weaker and wounded Christian should know God’s benevolent love, which opens the door to a better future. The words: All that is mine is yours… refer not only to material possessions but also to participation in a benevolent fatherly relationship with others.

God patiently waits for man’s conversion, and at the same time, he does not prevent him from going astray, where he quickly learns what an ungodly life tastes like and what perspectives of hopelessness open up for him. Individuals, but also entire nations, testify to this in history. Returnees from a sinful world are usually more faithful than those who have never seriously left God’s ways. The path of sin is often the path to tremendous gratitude for God’s sonship, and wandering is often the felix culpa – the happy fault of the path to God. However, this fact is not an excuse for sin but a celebration of God’s grace. The presumptuous justification of the older son was primarily the Lord’s warning to Israel, who believed they were guaranteed salvation and thus ignored his message. At the same time, it is also a condemnation of our similar attitudes because none of us has a reason to consider ourselves better than others, to curse the ungodly and the immoral, and to call down God’s punishments on them.

Sin always leads to a dead end, as the younger son must have seen. The only way out of it is conversion, the sacrament of reconciliation with all five parts as we see them in the prodigal son: examination of conscience, remorse and good resolution (Lk 15:17-19), confession and the will to satisfaction (Lk 15:21). We also see in history that abandoning God’s ways and leaning towards power, mammon, and sexuality led to a dead end of wars, selfishness, and the destruction of health. In any place we open the Scriptures, we will encounter joy in every description of the return of prodigal sons and daughters, which Jesus himself testifies to when he talks about the joy that God’s angels have over one sinner who repents (Lk, 15, 10).