In last Sunday’s gospel, Jesus laid down, in very clear and direct terms, the conditions of discipleship. The gospel for this Sunday answers the questions: What happens then if one does not fulfill the demands of discipleship? How does God deal with disobedience, hardness of heart and stubbornness? In answering these questions, Jesus gives us the parable of the lost coin and the parable of the prodigal Son. Let us focus on the latter by examining the main characters of the story.
Younger Son: ungrateful, disobedient, irresponsible, no regard to family traditions, self-absorbed and self-centered. He squandered everything that his father gave to him. He realized that he was in a deep, deep hole when he was already eating the “pods of the swine.” Then he came to his senses (the first step to conversion) and decided to return to his Father’s home. He originally just wanted to be one of his Father’s hired servants because he was embarrassed about what he did. But he was received anew, and his original dignity was restored.
Older Son: dutiful, responsible, workaholic, resentful and never felt like a real “son” to his Father or a “brother” to his younger sibling. He never left his father physically, but his heart left home way before his younger brother did. He was distant and never found the joy in working on his father’s estate.
Father: loving, compassionate, forgiving, patient. He waited patiently for both of them to “come home.” He offered both his sons equal rights to his household, but they had to reclaim it themselves.
It is easy to identify to the younger son as we battle with disobedience and sin (leaving our identity and home behind), but I wonder how often we are actually the older son. We might not have physically left our “father’s home” but, at the same time, not experiencing the joy of being part of the household of God, just doing or fulfilling things out of obligation. Therefore, there is the tendency to compare whether one is getting more or less than the other members of the household. If you are that “older son”, the Father is inviting you to truly “enter” and “celebrate” with the rest of the household. Are you going to enter the household, or are you going to remain outside the Father’s house? Your answer to the Father’s invitation is your ending to the story of the parable as it doesn’t give us a clue as to what the older son did.
In the final analysis, we are not just invited to identify with the younger or older sons, but also with the Father. We are called to be dispensers of God’s mercy and love to those “younger and older sons” that we have in our lives so that in the end we truly create a family where forgiveness, compassion and love reign. – Fr. Cary