26th Sunday Ordinary Time

26 ^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

I have never been a great fan of the Prodigal Son’s father. Surely he must have seen from early on that his youngest son was not pulling his weight around the house. Surely he could have had an intervention sooner. What a terrible embarrassment that his younger son asked for his inheritance so quickly. Did he wish that his father was dead so soon? I wonder if this is the same father spoken of in today’s gospel reading. He asked his first son for help. He said no but then he changed his mind later. He asked his second son for help. He said yes but then he changed his mind later also. I think back to my childhood. Every Saturday in our house Dad would give out instructions for the day. Some of us were told to help out in the store stacking shelves, delivering groceries to people’s houses, serving customers behind the counter. Others of us were to go and help Dad in the garden or drive to the wholesale suppliers with Dad to buy for the store. Others of us were to clean the house and make lunch for the rest. If any one of us said no we knew the consequences very quickly. It hurt. What kind of spoiled brats is this father rearing? It is nice to teach your children to have their own opinions about things but they don’t get to absolve themselves when it comes to doing chores around the house. Jesus teaches the message that the ones who should know better, the ones who know God, are turning their backs on God while the one who have lost their way are find redemption when they discover God again and it is a delightful surprise to them. We are happy for our children when they come back to discover God in the new way after they have tasted worldly values and found them to be lacking. Do our rebellious children consider that the Lord’s way is not fair? Someone raised with virtue turns from God and we are sad about that. We hope that they discover God again. For some of us we have to taste wickedness and sin and therefore find the wisdom to know the difference. The glamor of life is not all its cracked up to be. Once the sheen wears off the reality can become shocking to us. It is the story of our lives. We are reared in a Christian home with Christian values. We kick against them in our youth and we go in search of something greater. We want adventure and excitement. After years of searching for this Holy Grail we discover that the values we rejected from our youth were actually the ones that will sustain us to the end. We are all prodigal sons and daughter trying to find our way back home.
With love, Fr. Pat