Three and a half weeks into this forty-day journey through Lent, we may have lost our way. Perhaps we have returned to our normal habits, tiring under the disciplines of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. Perhaps we’ve slipped and found ourselves rationalizing our failures. The story of the prodigal son, which we heard today, reminds us that no matter what we have done or failed to do, God stands always ready to welcome us back.
The prodigal son is starving just the same as the Chosen People in the desert. He is willing to eat poorly as one of his father’s hired workers. Instead, his father spends his own wealth (for he’d already given his son half his legacy) to provide a feast for him, a banquet of reconciliation. The prodigal son sinned in every way possible, spurning his father and living a dissolute life. Yet the father welcomes him back with open arms. We recall this feast when we approach the Eucharistic table as sinners on Sunday, which itself foreshadows the banquet of reconciliation we are promised when we at last are united with God. On this Laetare Sunday (a time to rejoice already in anticipation of Easter) no matter how far we have strayed, rejoice, for we are never too far gone to return to God.
Love, Peace, Joy,
Fr. Bob
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