TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR "C"

Cycle “C” : Exodus 32, 7 – 11, 13-14

Luke 15, 1 – 31

The story that I’m going to tell you is from the Jewish tradition. It’s about the young lad Abram, who lived with his father Terah in the city of Haran (present day Turkey). By profession his father Terah was a maker of fine clay statues. These statues were in constant demand; people bought them, set them up in their houses and prostrated themselves before them, invoking their blessing and protection. Young Abram helped his father in the shop and would ask questions, “Father, why do they worship lumps of clay, things that we make and that can break if dropped ?” His father ignored him, told him to be quiet and help sell the images.

Abram would greet the people when they came into the shop and he would ask questions of those who bought the idols. One day an old man came in and pointed to an idol he would buy. Abram asked him how old he was. Startled, the man replied, “Sixty-five.” And Abram then asked, “Why are you buying an idol that is only two days old when you already are much older and wiser than what we have just made ?” The man left without buying and Abram was cuffed for the loss of a sale.

Another came, a woman frantic and frightened. Her house had been broken into and she had been robbed. She wanted the biggest idol she could find for protection. Abram said, “Why don’t you steal an idol ?” It’s as easy as stealing anything else.” He picked up one and brought it to her, She too left without buying. Another cuff for a lost sale.

One night Abram couldn’t sleep. He walked in the desert enchanted by the thousands of stars in the night sky. They calmed him. They were surer than any idol that he helped his father to make. He worshiped the stars, but then he noticed the moon. It was stronger and brighter and he thought about worshipping the moon. But the sun son rose over the sand and pushed back the edges of the night. The power of the sun was stronger; he would worship the sun. Sometimes he thought he would worship the clouds, the rain the wind. One day he thought, “I do not see what makes the sun to rise, or the moon to wane, or the wind to blow, although I hear it. There must be something behind all of these things that I cannot see. That is what I shall worship.” After that night of insight, he crept into his father’s shop, picked up a huge hammer and smashed all the idols.

In the morning his father was furious and asked what could have happened. Abram said, “It must have been the idols. Maybe they had a fight. Look, that big one over there has a huge hammer beside him.” As he spoke, he smiled, and his father was enraged, screaming, “Idols can’t quarrel. They can’t even talk!” Abram looked at his father and agreed, adding, “Then, why worship them ? They are dumb, mute, and without any power. They are certainly not gods. How can they be ?”

Abram’s father was silent and Abram told him of his discovery, and of the One behind the stars, the moon the sun, the winds and the desert, greater than anything made, invisible but present here nonetheless. This god was the only god that Abram and his family would worship. This one spoke: in winds, in thunder, in all seasons, in the heart.

And when we meet Abram in Genesis 12, we are told, “Yahweh said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your family and your father’s house, for the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation,....and you will be a blessing.” Abram became Abraham, our father in faith. He gave up idols to worship the true God.

In the first reading, however, we heard how when Moses was up on the mountain speaking to God, the Israelites turned back to idols. They felt more comfortable with a god they could see and touch, rather than the invisible God preached by Moses.

It is easy to condemn the Israelites for all this, and maybe we feel superior. After all, we believe in God without having seen the Red Sea parted, and we do not worship images of gods we have made. Yet there are more subtle forms of idolatry to which all of us are prone. The key question we have to ask is what comes first in our lives. There are many things that we put before God, many things to which we devote our time and enthusiasm. Our idols can take the form of family, career, sports or pastimes  -  in the complex modern world there are a great variety of diversions and messages calling for our attention. These things may be fine in themselves, but we must always put God first and see how these things fit into the divine pattern of our life. In our prayer we can examine ourselves to see what our idols are and how we can deal with them. We should not be discouraged when we see our idolatry  -  it is good that we recognise it, and we know that God is always merciful and faithful. He did not reject the Israelites, and he will not reject us if we turn to him in repentance. He renewed his covenant with them, and declared that he was a compassionate and forgiving God. His covenant is not with the perfect, but with a people who need his mercy; and even though we don’t deserve it, still he is merciful. God will always be with us.

The story of the Prodigal Son in today’s Gospel is another emphasis on God’s forgiveness. The father is depicted as waiting in hope for the return of his son. While he is still a long way off, he sees him and is moved to pity. He runs to the boy, clasps him in his arms and kisses him tenderly. As you may have guessed, the son is not returning for the most noble of motives. But that does not affect the great welcome that the father gives him. The father is overjoyed to have him back even if his return was prompted by self-interest. The return holds promise. It is a beginning and there is hope as to where it will lead.

God is on the lookout for all his children; but we, his fellow-workers, must do what lies to hand. You could spend a lifetime planning the salvation of the world and take no practical steps at all.

We can only join God in finding lost coins and straying sheep if we keep our enthusiasm, if we live with delight. We can only do that if we recognise when we too are lost, repent and let God bring us back to the party.

PRAYER: Lord God, we ask your forgiveness for the ways in which we idolize things other than you. Grant us the wisdom to see our idols, and the grace to overcome them, so that we may we able to do your will in the world more fully.

Grant us the joy of repentance that comes from the awareness of your loving forgiveness in any circumstance. Keep this awareness alive in us. Amen

TWENTYFOURTH SUNDAY OF YEAR “C”

Lk 1, 1 – 31: The Prodigal Son

I must be crazy thinking of giving a homily on the story of the prodigal son. Because Jesus says it all here – his entire message – of the loving father: the forgiveness of sin and the joy of reconcilement, the humanity of error and the divinity of forgiveness. Not only that, but he says it so well. In this perfect short story we sympathise with all three characters – the man and his two sons. We feel the pain of the father who had provided a good and comfortable home and had loved his sons. But came that devastating line: “Father, let me have the share of the estate that would come to me.” The rest of that sentence must have chilled his old heart, unspoken though it was: “the estate that would come to me when you are dead.” Later in the story we can feel the sense of failure and stupidity of the reckless youth who let it all slip away so quickly – easy come, easy go – and then reality hit him like a low blow. And at the end we surely feel the resentment of the elder son – hard working, dutiful, no parties, no women, no bright and distant lights for him – resentment and perhaps a natural hint of jealousy.

Did you notice in the story the total absence of the mother? Presumably she was dead. “A man had two sons.” He raised them alone. The house was solid and comfortable but shadowed by the absence of the mother. Was that why the father did not resist the son’s demands but gave him his share and let him go? Was he used to letting go of those he loved? Was that why the elder son had grown so serious and dour? Was that why the younger son needed to kick the traces and get away? It happens in the best of families. It could be any family, anywhere, any time. Perhaps this is what happens when the same pain affects a family in different ways and we turn away thinking we leave the pain behind. We don’t. We only leave behind those who know our pain and understand it. Perhaps that was it.

But it doesn’t matter why he wanted to go. Jesus makes it clear that it doesn’t even matter what he did when he went away – him and his women. It mattered only that he came back; that the father had enough love to overwhelm him in welcome, and more besides to coax the wounded pride of the elder fellow too.

This is a Gospel story that is intended to go straight to the heart, to the hearts of fathers and mothers whose prodigal sons and daughters have taken their share of nothing and have gone to the distant lights, but have never come home – the hearts that ache to throw their arms around a child who has gone and made of mess of things and who doesn’t believe enough in love to come home.  This story is intended to bypass our rational filter and go straight o the heart, knifing our lack of forgiveness, melting our shame and disgrace, sweetening our bitterness and resentment, and thereby transforming our solemn works of duty into lively works of love. It’s good to remember this story and realise that it’s not all about sin; it’s all about love, about the forgiveness of sin. That’s what God is for. He is for giving.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, we are led away from you in many ways. Show us how both the sons in this parable are within us. Open our eyes to your forgiving love. Give us the assurance of your welcome and prompt us to turn our hearts back to you. Amen

St. Thomas’ Church, Calcutta,

Sunday, 15^th. September 2013.

PRODIGAL SON

The son who has gone off from his father and lived a life of sin eventually realized that he was in fact sinning his life away. It had gotten to the point that he was living with the pigs! His life had become no better than a pigsty. Once it had gotten that bad and he had nowhere else to turn — and perhaps had no worse sin he could commit — he realized how far he had fallen. He remembered the goodness of his father, of his father’s love, and of his father’s house. And so, full of disgust for his sinful ways, he says “I will rise and go to my father.” In essence, he went on to say “I will return to him whom I have rejected and ask his forgiveness for my sins. He may not treat me the same, but I cannot go on like this.” To his joyful surprise, his father does treat him the same, and even better. For now he treats him not only like his beloved son, but as his beloved son who has returned to life again in the father’s house. How could there not be a feast?! By asking forgiveness, his son was basically asking to be brought back from the land of death! And by forgiving him, the father granted such a radical request.

So where do you find yourself? Do you rejoice like an angel when someone asks forgiveness, or bitterly hold a grudge? As for yourself, do you stay outside the father’s house, or come back to him asking forgiveness? You of course do not have to answer out loud now, but I would like you to answer well and soon. There are two ways to do so. One is to pray psalm 51, which we heard part of just a moment ago. If you truly believe that Jesus died for sinners, and that you are a sinner like the rest of us, pray that psalm which asks for forgiveness, but also pray it like one who knows God is willing to forgive—He sent His Son to die for sinners, so you can rest assured that He will forgive! For “[b]y going so far as to give up his own Son for us, God reveals that he is ‘rich in mercy’” (CCC 211).

The second way is even more important. If you believe that Jesus came to die for sinners, you admit that you are a sinner, and because of that you must go to confession. By going to confession, we act like the younger brother in the Gospel who recognized his sinfulness and his need for help. None of us can help ourselves out of sin. We can’t pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. It is absolutely impossible, my friends. Whenever we try we end up rolling around in the muck with the pigs. If, however, we are humble enough to say like that younger brother that “we have sinned against heaven” and that we must “rise and go to the Father,” then not only will we be taken out of the pigsty, but we will also be forgiven by the priest who gives forgiveness in the Name of God, and then all of heaven will rejoice to see us return. For each time we go to confession, we return to the house of our Father in heaven. We tell Him we have sinned against Him, and in return, if we are truly sorry, He looks at us with love and tells us that “now we must celebrate and rejoice, because [you were] dead and [have] come to life again; [you were] lost and [have] been found.”

However, this infinite love of God for us sinners, which is the heart of the Gospel, can be refused. It’s what the elder son does of the parable. He doesn’t understand love at that moment and has in mind more of a boss than a father. It’s a risk for us also: to believe in a more rigorous than merciful god, a god that defeats evil with power rather than forgiveness. It’s not so, God saves with love, not with force, proposing Himself, not imposing Himself. However, the elder son, who doesn’t accept the father’s mercy, closes himself, makes a worse mistake: he presumes himself just, he presumes himself betrayed and judges everything on the basis of his thought of justice. So he gets angry with his brother and rebukes his father: “You have killed the fatted calf when this son of yours came” (Cf. v. 30. This son of yours: he doesn’t call him my brother but your son. He feels himself the only son. We are also mistaken when we believe ourselves to be just when we think that the others are the evil ones. Let us not believe ourselves good, because on our own, without the help of God who is good, we are unable to overcome evil. Today, don’t forget to take the Bible and to read the three parables of Luke, chapter 15. It will do you good; it will be healthy for you.

How is evil defeated? It is defeated by receiving God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness of brothers. This happens every time we go to Confession: we receive the love of God there, which overcomes our sin: it isn’t any longer; God forgets it. When God forgives, He loses His memory, He forgets our sins, He forgets. God is so good with us! Not like us who, after having said: “it doesn’t matter,” at the first occasion we remember with interest the wrongs suffered. No, God cancels evil; He makes us new inside and thus makes joy be reborn in us, not sadness, not darkness in the heart, not suspicion but joy.

Brothers and sisters, courage, with God no sin has the last word. May Our Lady, who unties the knots of life free us from the pretension of believing we are just and make us feel the need to go to the Lord, who waits for us always to embrace us, to forgive us. (Pope Francis)