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Chapter 2

Awareness, Repentance, and Reconciliation

Prayerfully read Luke 15:11–32

During his public ministry, Jesus taught in parables. Parables are stories that engage interest and teach lessons through the details, images, and trends of daily life within a culture. Among Jesus’ many parables, the parable of the prodigal son stands out as a paradigm of conversion. We might also call it the parable of the loving father, or the parable of two sons. Even though it is a story and not an encounter with Jesus during his public ministry, it is still good to consider because it provides us with deep insights into important aspects of conversion.

We know and love this story so well, probably because we all see a little bit of ourselves in each of the characters. Each of us has been like the younger son, saying hurtful things and squandering the inheritance we receive from our families and our Church. Each of us has probably been like the older son, refusing to enter into a relationship with someone because we wanted them to receive “justice,” not mercy. Each of us has many opportunities to be like the loving father, waiting eagerly for reconciliation with a family member or friend despite the deep hurt they have caused us. In each of these scenarios, there is a lesson for us as we seek to enter more deeply into a life of ongoing conversion.

A troubled history

Parables have many layers of meaning. Here, the first layer of meaning is God’s plan for his whole kingdom. In this story, Jesus provides an allegorical account of Israel’s sordid history. A man has two sons, one of whom demands his inheritance and leaves home for “a far country” (Lk 15:11–13). Jesus intends to teach his audience about the ways that Israel has rejected the Father’s perfect plan over the centuries. Jesus tells the parable so that we, too, can remember the Father’s great blessings and so that we will not leave for “a far country” in our modern age.

After the reigns of King David and King Solomon, the high point of Israel’s history, around the eighth century BC, the kingdom split into two because of a feud between Solomon’s sons. The descendants of the ten northern tribes became the kingdom of Israel, while the descendants of the two southern tribes became the kingdom of Judah. After more than 200 years of civil and social strife, and ignoring messages from prophets, both kingdoms were exiled to the “far countries” of Assyria and Babylon. While they were exiled in Assyria, the descendants of the ten northern tribes of Israel began to worship idols and abandoned the one true God.⁴

After the period of exile, only the southern kingdom of Judah returned to the promised land. The ten northern tribes assimilated into the cultures of the surrounding nations. Like the younger son in the parable, they squandered their inheritance from the Lord by rejecting his perfect plan for them.

In the parable, the older son is bitter about the father’s mercy toward the younger son. This is a bit like the way the descendants of the kingdom of Judah felt toward the descendants of the kingdom of Israel. By the time of Christ, the Samaritans were the remnant of those tribes. After several centuries of life and culture divorced from covenant relationship with God, the Samaritans were a sort of religious half-breed.⁵ They wanted to mix the worship of the one true God with the beliefs and rituals of the surrounding pagan nations. This caused the Jews to view them as traitors to the covenant. Elsewhere in the Gospels, we read that “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans” (Jn 4:9). By interacting with Samaritans and sinners, Jesus wants to show that God wants his lost tribes restored to full relationship and status in his kingdom.

This is where the parable of the prodigal son comes into play. God has a plan for his new people, the Church, too. Yet many of us have rejected his will and strayed from his divine plan, sometimes causing others to stray too. Because of this, we are always in need of conversion, as has been true of God’s people in every age of salvation history. The only way for the whole people of God to be fully in right relationship with him is for each of us to return to him day after day, season after season. We can find inspiration for that conversion when we read parables such as this. In fact, that’s why Jesus told these parables: so we can constantly find inspiration to begin anew, despite our selfish ways. We realize too that the conversion of the whole Church happens only when each individual — you and I — convert more fully to the Lord’s plan.

Seeing myself in the son

I mentioned that the first layer of meaning in the parable was historical. The parables can also be read morally (how they teach us to act) and anagogically (how they teach us about eschatological realities, the things that will come about at the end of history). The remainder of our discussion of this parable will focus primarily on the moral sense.

From the very beginning of the parable, we sense that something is amiss in the dynamics of this family. An inheritance only passes from father to son when the father dies. So when the younger son demands his inheritance, what he means is, “Father, you are dead to me.”

This raises a number of questions for us. First, have I ever treated my father (or any person of importance in my life) the way the son treats his father in this story? If I had a son who treated me this way, how would I react? Would I be very hurt? Would I react as any rational human being might and reject the demand? At certain points in my life, my relationship with my father was incredibly strained. Both of us said and did hurtful things. At one point, we didn’t speak for many months while I went on living with my self-righteous attitude. Only now, as a father of sons myself, can I imagine the anguish and pain I caused my father.

Yet, the loving father in the parable simply “divided his living” between the sons (Lk 15:12). One note about biblical translation is interesting here. The word translated as “living” is the Greek word bios. That is also the Greek word for life — human life.⁶ The use of this word in the parable implies that what is divided is more than simply an income or a trust fund. The father’s very life is torn in two. Half of his heart has been taken from him. Or more accurately, he gives away half of his heart to the younger son.

Just think about the love our heavenly Father has for each of us. How many times, out of pride or greed or lust or anger, have we acted in ways that tore his fatherly heart in two? Jesus Christ, upon his crucifixion, had his very heart pierced, and blood and water flowed out. One of the greatest, most popular devotions that we have in the Church today is the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in which we come to know his pierced heart more fully, even sharing in Jesus’ suffering. When we enter into the heart of Jesus and the love of our heavenly Father, we can recognize the ways that we have chosen ourselves over God’s more perfect plan, and that awareness enables us to change.

A far country

The younger son gathers his belongings and begins his journey into a “far country,” where he “squandered his property in loose living” (Lk 15:13). This “far country” is not simply geographical. It is emotional and spiritual as well. Because of his hardness of heart, this son moves away from his loving father emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. He squanders everything because he doesn’t recognize that it has been a gift from his father.

How many of us have acted in this way throughout our lives? Because of the sinfulness that dwells in us, it is easy for us to take off for that far country, away from our heavenly Father, and to squander the gifts that he has granted to us, because we are seeking pleasure or power or both.

After squandering his inheritance, the son “began to be in want” because of a great famine (Lk 15:14). What have we done in our lives that has left us hungry for better things, hungry for the solid things that God provides instead of what the world provides? Have we found ourselves trying to fill our deep spiritual hunger with the wrong things?

One of the most poignant passages of the whole parable comes next: “So he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country” (Lk 15:15). This young man left his father’s house and became a resident of a far country. What “far country” now claims our allegiance? To what “far countries” have we wandered at other points in our life, and what was the result? During my college years, I “joined myself” to a fraternity. After living that lifestyle with gusto, I found myself in an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual famine. I had squandered the great gift that my heavenly Father had given me.

In the parable, the citizens of the far country clearly do not treat the young man well. He is sent to feed the swine. For a Jewish person hearing this parable, this detail would have been startling, because swine symbolized everything that was unclean for Jews. While the young man feeds the swine, he is so hungry that he would eat the pigs’ food if he could. He has fallen as far as possible from right relationship with his father into all that is unclean and degrading.

Although he is hungry and would eat anything, “no one gave him anything” (Lk 15:16). He has been abandoned by the citizens of this far country. He has no community; he is lonely. The fact that loneliness and isolation are prevalent here only exacerbates the problem of famine that the country faces. Physical want and need, as well as feeling alone, always seem to make moral depravity more acute. This is true in our own situation too. Things feel worse when we are hungry or tired or, especially, when we are lonely. Isolation takes away our hope, which is forged and strengthened by communal relationships.

Note the contrast between the father of the parable, who gave a large inheritance even though his son disowned him, and the citizens of the far country who now give him nothing even though he has “joined himself” to them. The father in this parable gives us a glimpse into the way our heavenly Father loves us. He showers good gifts upon us, even when we don’t return his love. On the other hand, the citizens of the world have nothing substantial to offer us, and they will exploit everything we have.

Up from the bottom

Only when he hits rock bottom does conversion begin for this young man. In the next verse, we read that “he came to himself” (Lk 15:17). This is a moment of metanoia, a turning of the mind. He comes face to face with himself.⁷ He must recognize, in his mind first and then in his heart, that he has had a terrible attitude and acted in ways that have harmed him and his closest relations. Without this moment, the son cannot acknowledge the wrong that he has committed.

For every person, there is at least one significant moment when he realizes that he has sinned and strayed far from the heavenly Father’s plan for his life. Yet, in the life of ongoing conversion, our understanding of this reality deepens over time because the grace of God brings us face to face with ourselves time and time again.

In the same verse, the son thinks to himself, “How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger!” (Lk 15:17). He decides that it is better for him to return to his father’s house, even as a slave, than to remain in this far country. In the house of a loving father, even a slave is a son. That is why this young man is willing to say, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants” (Lk 15:18–19).

At this point, the son decides to rise and go to his father. He is no longer just thinking about it. He has decided to act, as each of us must decide and act. In the ongoing way of conversion, we must continually decide how we will return to the love of the heavenly Father, and we must carry out those decisions with courage and conviction.

The suffering love of the father

While the son treks back to his father’s house, his father sees him coming, and the parable tells us he “had compassion” (Lk 15:20). The father has been suffering too because of this strained relationship. More than that, he has been watching for his estranged son. We can imagine the father gazing out the window, just waiting for his beloved son to return. The father’s suffering shows us that there is no way to have compassion unless we too have suffered. The word compassion means “to suffer with.” It is sad, but beautiful: The father and the son have been suffering together, from different sides, throughout this estrangement. That is precisely why the father “ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Lk 15:20). The father waited, not with pride, but with a longing to have a restored relationship with his son, at any cost.

“Father,” says the son, “I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (Lk 15:21). The son knows that he cannot simply ignore his wrongdoing. He has to face it and admit it. For us as members of the Church, this happens in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This sacrament is crucial for the ongoing process of conversion. Naming our sins in the sacrament, and bringing them back as often as necessary, allows us to submit them to God’s grace and allows us to continue to grow.

Before I was received fully into the Catholic Church, I never named a specific sin against God; I only asked generically for forgiveness. I have realized, over the years, that naming specific sins brings a necessary level of accountability for cutting out those habits from my life. When I confess specific sins, even if they are small, I begin searching my conscience for more serious sins so I can get those out too.

The best news of all for the son in the parable is that his father does not want him back in any diminished capacity. He wants his son in a fully restored, right relationship, complete with robe, ring, sandals, and a great banquet (Lk 15:22–23). The celebration can commence because a son has returned to life. This is true of our relationship with the heavenly Father too. He longs for us to be restored, no matter how we may have rejected his loving plan. We are worth being restored to our place in his plan as royal heirs. There is much rejoicing in heaven every time we turn back from our sinful ways, our egotistical trip into the far country of sin.

Generosity, not jealousy

The story doesn’t end with the festival, however. The elder son is jealous of the father’s mercy and generosity. He wants to know why he has not received a fattened calf and a festival, since he has always done his duty to the father. It even seems that the elder son wants nothing to do with the celebration for his younger brother. He does not want to participate in the joyful moment.

There is ample opportunity for personal reflection here, especially for those of us who have committed our lives to Christ and his Church. Have we ever been angry about God’s mercy toward others, thinking they didn’t deserve it? Are we holding a grudge against someone who has left our side and chosen to squander good things? The heavenly Father’s mercy goes far beyond our faulty human reason. Instead, it is based on sheer, undying love.

I find that I often react like the older son. I want to place conditions on God’s mercy. I think particularly of people who have harmed me unjustly, or broken relationship with me like the younger son did with the father in the parable. I want justice. I want those people to apologize for their wrongdoing. Yet mercy is far greater than justice. God’s mercy is infinite, and I am called to imitate him.

The parable does not tell us whether the older son chooses to enter into the celebration or if he chooses to remain outside. His father invites him in, and that is all we know. Here we see how Scripture is “living and active” (Heb 4:12). It invites us into the mystery as a participant. We do not know what the older son chooses because, in the life of grace, we are the older son, and we still have to choose how to react when the Lord calls us to exercise a joyful mercy. The parable doesn’t have a clear ending because we are the ending, and we have to make a choice. Will we choose to imitate the Lord’s generous mercy?

Questions for Deeper Understanding and Reflection

1. Why do you think this parable is so central to Christian spirituality? Why is it so beloved by many?

2. Which title of the parable most resonates with you: the parable of the prodigal son, the parable of the loving father, or the parable of the two sons? Why?

3. Have you ever treated someone close to you as the younger son treated his father? Have you ever strained or ended relationships out of pride or any other serious sin? What happened, and where does that relationship stand now?

4. Have you ever found yourself in a “far country,” away from God and the Church? What caused you to realize this? How did you react once you realized it?

5. What does the unconditional love and mercy of the heavenly Father mean to you? How would you express it to others?

6. Do you find that there is some of the older son’s tendency in you too? Why or why not?