As we continue on this Lenten pilgrimage, we are given the assurance of God’s love for us. The Gospel, taken from Luke 15, is unique for an insight into our response of gratitude and conversion. There are three parables in this chapter and each one deals with a state of being lost. The first is the lost sheep, the second the lost coin and the final narrative is the Prodigal Son. There is a context for them. Jesus was criticised for the welcome He gave to sinners who should have been ostracised. He consorted with sinners and prostitutes. Given our dislike or distaste for “censoriousness”, we would be forgiven if we were to “condemn” His critics as “intolerant bigots”. But were they entirely wrong? Given their cultural and religious emphases on ritual purity—which Christ Himself submitted to—they were unable to reconcile Christ’s compassion with their long-held conviction that sinners should be segregated in order to prevent ritual contamination. In a manner of speaking, their reactions were deeply conditioned by their cultural and religious framework.
In this narrative of the Prodigal Son, there are three main characters. We would be mistaken if we thought this to be a story of two brothers, one elder and the other younger and their father. It is really a narrative of two sons, not two brothers. The Son of the Father and the son of the father. St Paul mentioned Christ in the 2nd Reading, and for him, Christ is definitely different from the son in the Gospel.
What lessons can we draw from these two sons? Jesus and the Prodigal Son.
Laetare Sunday exudes a spirit of joyful lightness because Jesus presents the Father’s mercy way beyond what a religious Jew could ever imagine. To fathom God the Father’s love, consider the numerous sins of the younger son in the parable. The older brother should inherit the rights to the father’s property. Yet the father did not think twice when dividing his wealth between the sons. Furthermore, in asking for his share of his inheritance from a living father, the son has effectively wished the death of the older man. Despite these sins and a string of “faux pas”, the father unconditionally embraced the son who was lost. He not only received him back but in running out to meet the boy, the father shielded his son from the disapproving condemnation of the neighbours. More than that, killing the fatted calf meant that the disapproving neighbours would subsequently be invited to this festival of forgiveness.
In narrating this parable, Jesus places the state of being lost within the context of God’s unrelenting search for His sons and daughters. God’s persistent search for us should draw our attention to how easy it is for us to wander away and be lost. Note that it is not just the younger son who was lost. The elder brother who stayed closed to the father was lost too. The point here is that God may be forgiving but sadly, concupiscence, the effect of original sin, has left us with a proclivity for perdition.
How do we reconcile a God who desires us even when we are inclined to stray from Him? It requires that even as we take comfort in the immensity of God’s love and the sacrifice of His Son to redeem us, it also suggests that we be sensitive to sin. In other word, we should be mindful or conscious of sin because it takes us away from God. No matter how small a sin is, it is significant in the struggle for the salvation of souls.
The parable is not a one-way street movement of God’s love for us. The reply to God’s profound love is conversion. What muddles this penitential journey is that we yearn for a God who is loving and compassionate. In fact, we have come to expect unconditional love. When translated, it can be indulgent because God is not allowed to make demands of us. The idea of a gentle and tolerant God might just be an idol we have fashioned like the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai.
At the heart of our conversion journey, we must appreciate that God’s mercy is justice. One cannot do without the other. In this parable, it is clear that God’s justice is merciful because it goes beyond what is exact. The confusion arises because our concept of justice is possibly closer to the idea of revenge. In fact, we even project unto God that He demands His pound of flesh. The manner we think of justice corresponds to the concept of just dessert meaning that one should get what one deserves. “Padan muka” (serves you right) as the locals say it. Like “lex talionis”, our justice is simply a case of tit for tat. To illustrate God’s mercy and justice, we use the example of a debt. Returning a person what he or she is owed is justice. It is akin to giving back $1000 for $1000 borrowed. But what is to stop the debtor from compensating more than $1000?
According to St. Thomas Aquinas “God acts mercifully, not indeed by going against his justice, but by doing something more than justice; thus a man who pays another two hundred pieces of money, though owing him only one hundred, does nothing against justice, but acts liberally or mercifully”.
What makes it difficult to appreciate that God’s mercy is justice is our inability to differentiate between judgement and punishment. There is no doubt that we are afraid of judgement because we fear the punishment that comes with it. For example, “You watch out” definitely carries with it a retaliatory or a punitive connotation. Like Karma, something bad is about to happen.
When we associate the faculty of judgement with censoriousness or a forbidding disapproval, then the act of judging which is an existential exercise will be interpreted as being judgemental. To be judgemental is merely possessing a conceited or self-important attitude. The act of judging is not an attitude. For example, you would surely judge the safety of crossing a road before stepping off the kerb. That is not judgemental.
In God, judgement and punishment are separated by mercy. When God delays punishing us, we catch a glimpse of His mercy because we are given the chance to recognise the error of our ways, to repent, and to make lasting changes. In God, mercy and justice are compatible because He reveals His judgment first whilst delaying His punishment. Judgement is not the same as punishment. To understand how this works, look at sin as the process of dehumanisation. Forget about “this sin” or “that sin”. Rather think in terms of "development" (or regression). If God is the source of our being, the instant we leave Him is the moment where the process of dehumanisation begins. In the parable, the entire excursion of the son was dehumanising and the symbol of the depth of his depravity was the reduction to eating food fit only for pigs.
Yet the father did not calculate the cost of embracing the son’s return. It is not because God does not care for justice. In the parable, Jesus did not mention about any punishment due to the returning son. Neither did Jesus remove the Penitent Thief, Dismas, from the cross. By the very fact that Dismas, who had been forgiven and promised heaven, still hung on the cross meant that he was paying the price of his sins. In other words, God’s merciful judgement gives us plenty of opportunities to reform or rehumanise our life.
In the middle of our Lenten campaign, we get a parable of God’s boundless love for us. Thus we are joyful. But more than the idea of joy is the notion of blessing that comes with it. God’s blessing is that He gives us time to make changes in our lives and if we have Him in mind, no matter how hideous our sins, His mercy will meet us there. Whatever purification we may have to undergo now or in the future will be nothing not because it is not painful but because we will be so taken up by His love that we will readily endure whatever purgatory in order that we can return and be with Him. Love begets gratitude and conversion.
