Homily for Saturday
2d Week of Lent
March 11, 2023
Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32
Provincial House, New Rochelle
“His father came out and pleaded with him” (Luke 15: 28).
The Word of God in the Scriptures and in the liturgy affirms again and again that our God is compassionate and forgiving, and no one else is quite like him.
Luke’s 15th chapter is devoted to this theme. Jesus tells 3 parables: the lost sheep, the lost drachma, and the
most touching, the lost son.
Most of the times we read these, we may be drawn to the
image of the shepherd’s, the woman’s, or the father’s joy or to the tenderness
shown toward the errant sheep, the errant son.
A different insight may come from this:
“His father came out and pleaded with him” – the happy father begging
the elder son. He invites this son to do
as he has done, to forgive his younger brother and receive him back into the
family.
Our Father calls us to share in his loving, compassionate,
and divine nature by forgiving our wandering brothers and sisters. Unless we learn that, we remain outside while
the festivities of heavenly joy go on inside.
We’re invited to forgive. We’re
invited to be God-like. The invitation
privileges us. And God, in a sense,
needs us to accept. It sounds strange to
say he can’t be fully happy until we accept, until we come into the banquet
hall and are reconciled to our brother or sister, until we let a divine spark
catch fire in our souls and warm us with love, compassion, and understanding.
Another way of viewing the scene is that we might fault the
older brother for being jealous. He
thinks his little brother got a good deal, and he got nothing. We’re cautioned not to be envious of someone
else’s success, talent, or happiness—which is a too-common human inclination. God calls for us to rejoice with the joyful,
as the woman who lost a drachma wants her friends and neighbors to share her
joy (15:9), and as Jesus says twice, the angels in heaven rejoice when a sinner
repents (15:7,10).
Our Constitutions (art. 51) remind us to share one another’s
joys, and in truth we do, thanks be to God.
I have the privilege on those occasions when I invite the confreres to
recall their experience with a recently deceased brother, as I just did for
Paul Chuong, to hear from them or others about the wonderful things our
deceased brother did and the person he was.
Thanks be to God!
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