(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Mass-Blog-for-the-Fourth-Sunday-of-Lent-2025.mp3)
On the fourth Sunday of Lent we celebrate reconciliation. This word has a couple different meanings, but in Sunday’s readings those differences are reconciled. The first: “to restore friendly relations; to coexist in harmony; to make peace.” The other is from Accounting 101: “to make one account consistent with another, especially by allowing for transactions begun but not yet completed.”
Humanity’s complete relationship with God began at our creation. We’re taught that we broke it off by abandoning both our Father and His teachings. Straying from Eden’s path made us slaves to an insatiable desire for Godlike power.
In his mercy, God has always sent ambassadors to help bridge the gap we’ve dug between Him and us. Sunday’s first reading (Jos 5:9a, 10-12) takes place after God saves the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt. During the 40-year desert journey out of Egypt they were sustained by manna from heaven. Nothing else on the no-man’s land they traveled could sustain them. God’s ambassadors—first Moses, then Joshua—led them out of slavery to a land “flowing with milk and honey.” God shed his grace on them in prodigal fashion.
“On that same day after the Passover, on which they ate of the produce of the land, the manna ceased. No longer was there manna for the Israelites, who that year ate of the yield of the land of Canaan.”
But even after inheriting such a fruitful land, humanity continued to stray from reconciliation. Continuing His prodigal generosity, our Father lavished on us yet another opportunity, delivered by His Son and his apostles. This time it was all or nothing, as Paul explains in Sunday’s letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor 5:17-21):
God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
Jesus brought both the human and business definitions of reconciliation to life in his story of the Prodigal Son from Sunday’s gospel reading (Lk 15:1-3, 11-32). Fittingly, the original audience for this story was made up largely of tax collectors. However, all of humanity plays the title role in this tale. Our character is called prodigal because, like the formerly enslaved Israelites and the generations that followed them, he recklessly squandered the inheritance he demanded from his father.
Like the word reconcile, the word prodigal has two definitions, both of which apply to this Sunday’s readings: to spend recklessly and to give generously. The Prodigal Son’s father was extravagantly generous with the celebration he ordered when this reckless boy came back to reconcile with him. Even though this child had abandoned his father, the father never lost his longing to restore their loving relationship. All this son had to do was ask.
Jesus knew abandonment thanks to his apostles’ neglect and fear during his passion and death. Like the Prodigal father, Jesus reconciled with them, and is eager to complete any unfinished business with us. All we have to do is ask and we will receive. Prodigiously.
–Tom Andel
I’ve given consideration to the story of the Prodigal Son through my own eyes, and I had to admit I don’t think I would have responded the way the magnanimous father did in the parable. I would have been pissed, hurt, infuriated with my son in a similar circumstance. I have friends who would have excommunicated their son for having the temerity to disagree with or disobey their father.
I would submit that I would have missed the point of this famous gospel story, and the lesson being taught. God, the ultimate father is a loving and forgiving father. No matter how ignorant, reckless, and sinful his children can be, he is always willing to forgive and take them back. Perhaps not without consequence, for he will make us account for and repair the wrong done, but forgive nonetheless.
There is a lesson in fatherhood in the parable that most of us dads overlook, perhaps by the way we were fathered by our own dads. We probably didn’t give our dads any consideration for how our grandfathers fathered them. Just as God always gives us the benefit of the doubt, perhaps we should give the same to our dads (here or gone before us), or our kids who we still have the chance to mentor God’s way.
If we’re given the opportunity to play both roles in our lives–son AND father–we’ve been blessed to be admitted into the greatest workshop there is. One that teaches us to build and apply empathy. What a great idea to read this parable in a new way, Thomas. By considering how the Prodigal Son’s Grandfather treated this Father, we can imagine how that contributed to the longing in this Father’s heart for what he might not have had–a legacy of love he could pass down through generations. If he didn’t inherit it, imagine him praying for the strength to produce it within himself and hand it down for the sake of future generations. Remember the song, “Let There Be Peace on Earth and Let it Begin with Me?” Making peace and passing it on is perpetual and prodigal adoration. It often begins in a family workshop.