One
Sunday morning I divided the congregation at a barrio mass into small
groups. I asked them to discuss the Gospel, the one we have today,
the story of the defiant son and the prodigal Father. After some time
an old man raised his hand asking to speak. "How come, Father,"
he asked, "that Jesus Christ allowed a bad story like this into
the Gospel? Isn't it clear that the father should not have forgiven
his son? This story is a very bad example to be giving our children.
Do you think that we could ask the Holy Father to have it erased?"
The
story does turn many common assumptions upside down. The father in
the story is, of course, our heavenly Father but he acts very differently
to the fathers that we have experienced. We are often made to buy
the love we get. As children we are told that if we behave well we
will get gifts and opportunities. If we behave badly we will be punished.
But here is the story of a father who is total unchangeable love.
His attitude to his sons is at all times 100% love. So, even though
his younger son leaves him and squanders his inheritance in a life
of debauchery, the father can do nothing except to accept him back
lovingly on his return. What a surprising father! What a loving God!
What a challenge to our conventional way of looking at things. The
story teaches us that we are loved for who we are, and not just for
the way in which we behave.
But
there are more shocks for us in the story! The father has two sons,
a reckless rascal and a dutiful deferential one. The anti hero or
contrabida of the story is not the bad boy but the good one. The younger
son asks for his share of the inheritance which he converts into cash.
He leaves and all goes well for him as he squanders it. Then, money-less
he also becomes friend-less. He is reduced to the greatest indignity
possible for a Jew - attending pigs, unclean animals. There he "comes
to his senses." It is in our senses that our deepest memories
are stored. He knows that he must go back to his father. He prepares
a speech of apology and a petition for his reinstatement in the household
as a mere servant. Events were to show that he had totally underestimated
his father who would not only embrace him in forgiveness but also
declare a banquet to celebrate his return.
The
older son also underestimated his father. This dutiful one is shocked
at his fathers easy pardon for the erring brother. He feels outraged
that there is a banquet for the sinner while he, who in his own eyes
was so good, had never been given even a kid goat with which to celebrate.
He is deaf to his father's assurance that "all that I have is
yours" and continues to sulk at his liberality towards the worthless
brother.
The story leaves us with the message that there are two kinds of bad
people. The bad bads are those who have fallen through human weakness
and who eventually come to admit it and repent. The good bads are
those who hold themselves up as paragons of virtue and who self-righteously
reject the lesser mortals who are tainted by human weakness. Another
shock! The Lord is much more partial towards the bad bads than he
is towards the good bads. The people who get the worst press in the
Gospels are the Pharisees who looked down on, and set themselves apart
from sinners.
Inside
each of us there is a bad bad and a good bad. When we sit still in
meditation we are being present to this reality and to the reality
of a Heavenly Father whose love is so great that we really find it
hard to take.
