Gospel Reflection
Fourth Sunday of Lent
30 March 2025, Church Year C

Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

The Lost Son
By Fr. Jack Peterson

Reprinted by permission of "The Arlington Catholic Herald"

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Our glorious savior Leapt down from heaven and took on the fullness of our human condition for a variety of reasons: to redeem us from our sins, to manifest the love of God, to restore us to a life of grace to offer us hope in the goodness of God and the promise of heaven, to proclaim and model the gospel way of life and to reveal the face of God the Father. 

Today’s famous parable of the lost son is one of the most spectacular moments where Jesus carries out the blessing of revealing the goodness of his Father to us.  It is no surprise that Jesus handcrafts a parable to do so.  It is no surprise that some of the realities that Jesus explains seem at first glance to be too good to be true.

The well-known story begins with a shocking gift.  The father divides his estate in two and gives one portion to the younger son who from our common perspective, is clearly not in a good place to receive such a gift.  The degree of generosity of the father is hard to comprehend and seems, on one level, to be unreasonable.

Perhaps Jesus is trying to help us realize that our heavenly father is generous beyond comprehension with all of us, all the time.  His gift of life, of creation, love, free will, family, children, friends, springtime and the Washington Capitals demonstrate the father’s most generous heart.

Jesus also wants to help us grasp how the father’s generous heart leads him to extend a level of mercy that is also hard for us to comprehend.  Thios young son proceeds to take the father’s hard-to-comprehend, generous gift and quickly squanders it on a life of dissipation, that is, excessive indulgence and lack of self-control, which led predictably to moral and spiritual decay.

The hard times that follow lead him to crawl back to his father and ask to be accepted simply as a hired hand so that he can have food to eat.  The father hardly listens to the son’s plea and reinstates him as a son with as ring, fine clothes and as bounteous banquet.

Jesus adds a detail that should not be passed over.  The father runs to greet the prodigal son.  Older men did not run in that society.  It was not dignified.  However, the father’s joy at seeing his son again led him to set aside this cultural norm, run to his son and offer him a warm embrace and a kiss.

Finally, Jesus reveals the father as one who is actively patient.  Jesus recounts that, “while he was still a long way off, his caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion.”

This suggests that the father went to the edge of his property or to the highest point on his estate looking and hoping for his return.  No force or coercion was involved . . . simply a patient active longing.

Then, later in the story, when the older son refuses to come and join the banquet,  the father goes out again, this time to plead with his eldest.  He lovingly, patiently and gently beseeches that he set aside his focus on self in order to rejoice, “Because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.”  The father is wonderfully patient with both of his sons.

Jesus provides us with another penetrating parable, a meticulously handcrafted story filled with details that enable him to reveal the face of our Heavenly Father, a glorious and heart-warming image of the one who is generous beyond comprehension, merciful beyond human reasoning and patient beyond expectation.  Why would a person not want to be an adopted son or daughter of this father and a disciple of Christ?


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