Homily: 4th Sunday of Lent—Cycle C
Friends,
today, as we celebrate Laetare Sunday,
the Church calls us to rejoice
in the midst of Lent. The word Laetare
means "rejoice" and this Sunday serves as a moment of refreshment on
our Lenten journey toward Easter. The
Church anticipates that the penances that we have undertaken are beginning to
bear fruit in us and so invites us to celebrate—just a little—here at this
midway point so as to encourage us to persevere in the good work that we have
begun. The readings today help us both
to celebrate and persevere as they beautifully highlight the theme of reconciliation and God’s boundless mercy,
a theme that represents the motivation for all of our efforts during Lent.
In
the Gospel, Jesus gives us one of the most profound stories ever told—the Parable of the Prodigal Son. We all know the story well: a young man,
seeking freedom, demands his inheritance, squanders it on reckless living, and
finds himself destitute. When he finally
"comes to his senses,"
he decides to return home, expecting only servanthood but receiving instead the embrace of a loving father. This parable is so profound, because it
eloquently illustrates a core experience of humanity. All of us here, I’m sure, have either been
the prodigal son (at some point in our lives) or have watched someone very
close to us do exactly as the prodigal son did.
In many ways, you could call this a “Parable of the Fall”, for in it we
see the core sin that separates us from God and each other: that is, the
presumption that I myself know what’s best for me and so I must go and take it
for myself. Just as Eve was fooled into
believing that she could be the final judge of what was good for her to pursue,
so did the younger son falsely believe that he knew what the best, most
fulfilling life would be.
What
this parable adds to that story is a distinct sense of hope. The story of the Fall ends with Adam and Eve
expelled from the garden into a life of toil, suffering, and contention with
one another with only a faint glimpse of a promise for future redemption. The Gospel parable gives us a glimpse of what
this redemption looks like. In fact, this
parable reveals the very heart of God (the same God, by the way, who expelled
Adam and Eve from the Garden). In this
parable, Jesus shows us that God is not
a harsh judge waiting to punish; but rather a loving Father who runs to embrace
His children when they turn back to Him.
The fact that we don’t “hear” of this Father (at least, not in such
tender, human terms) until Jesus is due perhaps to the fact that this wouldn’t
be possible until the promise made to our first parents in the garden was about
to be fulfilled. In other words, God
wouldn’t reveal his heart in this way until it was possible to achieve the
reconciliation it desired in Christ. None
of this changes the fact that the God who made the promise in the garden is now
revealed to us as the loving Father who runs to embrace us when we turn back to
him. What a reason to rejoice, no?!?!
The
sacrament of Confession is the
place where we experience the heart of the Father personally. Just think, if the Prodigal Son had stayed in
the far country, ashamed of his mistakes, he would never have known the joy of
his father’s forgiveness. In the same
way, if we remain distant from God, burdened by sin, we miss the opportunity to
be embraced by His mercy. This could be
part of the reason why St. Paul, in the second reading, reminds us that,
through Christ, we are made into a new
creation and so calls us to be ambassadors
of reconciliation.
We
are not like Adam and Eve, who had to remain far from God because the “child
who would crush the serpent’s head” had not yet come. Rather, we, through baptism into Christ the
Redeemer, are a new creation: one
that can approach God for
reconciliation, even if we have (for whatever reason) turned our back on our
Father and squandered our inheritance. We
do not celebrate Lent in order to make ourselves feel bad about ourselves. No. We
celebrate Lent in order to force ourselves to stop the ordinary, day-to-day
routine in order to look at where we are and see how far away from God we may
have strayed. Then, with the humble
courage of the Prodigal Son, we set ourselves to turn back from the way on
which we’ve strayed and to reconcile with the Father, through Jesus.
Every
Lent, this one included, is the special season in which God invites us to return to Him with trust. He does not condemn us, but restores us, just
as the father in the parable restores his son. The Church, through the priest, offers us this
same loving welcome in Confession.
Having received this loving welcome, as St. Paul instructed the
Corinthians, we are then called to be ambassadors of this reconciliation to
those around us who are either resistant or ignorant of the invitation to
return to the Father’s embrace. ///
The
story of the Prodigal Son is not just about one lost son, however. It is also about the elder son, who, though faithful in duty, harbored resentment that
the younger son was received and reconciled (celebrated, even!) by his father. This
was the sin of the Pharisees and the scribes, who prompted Jesus to tell this
parable by complaining that Jesus readily welcomed publicly known sinners (like
tax collectors) among his disciples. This older son, although he remained closed to
his father physically and was dutiful in obeying him, nonetheless was not close
to his father’s heart, for he did not feel the sadness his father felt when his
younger son turned his back on him, nor did he feel the joy his father felt
when this same son returned to him. This
reminds us that, in accepting God's mercy for ourselves, we must also allow our
hearts to be close to his and so to love as he loves. Only then will we be able to extend his love
and mercy to others, regardless of how far they have been away from God.
My
friends, true joy comes when we celebrate the homecoming of every lost soul.
If we sense a lack of joy in our lives, I would guess that there we are
likely harboring resentment in our hearts towards reconciled sinners or pride
in our own apparent faithfulness (pride that leads us to believe that we do not
need reconciliation). If we find these
things, let us humble ourselves, as the Prodigal Son did, and run to the Father
and seek his help and forgiveness.
And so, my friends, as we continue our Lenten journey, let
us renew our commitment to the purpose of this holy season and ask ourselves:
1) If I find myself distant from God because of sin, do I trust in his mercy and quickly to return to Him? 2) When I see God work powerfully in the
lives of others (especially those whom I dislike for some reason or who,
perhaps have hurt me), do I truly rejoice when they are forgiven and restored? 3) Having received God’s loving mercy, have I
embraced the call to be an ambassador of reconciliation, inviting others who
are far from God to return to him so as to receive his mercy? If our answer to any of these questions is “no”,
then we still have work to do this Lent 😊. Let us not
be afraid to “rejoice”, however, knowing that, through our renewed commitment and
our Lenten penances, we will open ourselves more profoundly to the loving
embrace of our Father. ///
In
the first reading, it is described how the ancient Israelites, after passing
into the Promised Land by crossing through the Jordan River, celebrated the
Passover and then “ate from the produce of the land”; and, when they did so,
that the manna stopped. That last part
was a sign that they were finally home as they enjoyed no longer the “food for
the journey”, but rather the fruits of a land that was theirs. This was a sign that God had received them
fully into his embrace. This Laetare Sunday, we rejoice, like them, because God is always ready to welcome us home,
and because this Eucharist, our “food for the journey”, is a foretaste of the
rich fullness of God’s goodness that awaits us in heaven. Therefore, let us give thanks, even as we
rejoice, that here and now we can “Taste
and see the goodness of the Lord” that we will one day enjoy in its fullness in
heaven.
Given at St. Augustine Parish:
Rensselaer, IN – March 29th and 30th, 2025
Given at Sacred Heart Parish:
Remington, IN – March 30th, 2025
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