Saturday of the Second Week of Lent
Who is there like you, the God who removes guilt and pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance; Who does not persist in anger forever, but delights rather in clemency, And will again have compassion on us, treading underfoot our guilt? You will cast into the depths of the sea all our sins. Micah 7: 18-19
“My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.” Luke 15:31-32
Piety
Let us pray: God, your supernatural compassion revealed to us through your son Jesus Christ, constitutes the basis and source of our compassion. As followers of Christ, help us to understand the call to radical compassion. Through our prayer and action, help us to make such compassion manifest in our lives and relationships with God and with our sisters and brothers. Deepen our awareness of the presence of a compassionate God in the midst of an incompassionate world and make us truly thankful for His mercy. Amen.
Study
http://www.usccb.org/nab/022308.shtml
“While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him.”
How long do you think it took before the pride of the prodigal son took over? He wanted his inheritance and he got his way. He took the money and ran never looking back.
How long do you think he eyed his father’s wealth with envy, greed and lust in his heart? How long did he plan his “escape” from life in the shadow of his older brother before finally getting up the nerve, the gumption to confront his father for the money?
How long do you think it took for him to spend all the money? This was his entire inheritance. This was likely about half of his father’s property – after all we don’t know of any other siblings. So the purse must have been pretty full.
How long do you think this son pursued a “life of dissipation?” Not a week of dissipation. Not a month of dissipation. Not even a year of intemperate living and excessive drinking. St. Luke tells us that he was engaged in a “life” of dissipation.
While not an entire lifetime, clearly this took some time to blow through all that money, slowly losing steam as he had less and less and less but never once turning back as the balance in his checkbook waned until it was gone.
Alone, destitute and far from home, how long do you think it took to find a job feeding pigs? His friends, who flocked around him when he was the life of the party, were long gone. They only wanted him for his money…the same way the son treated the father. No longer a meal ticket, the so-called friends vanished until eventually, the son landed a job.
Too stubborn still to admit he was wrong, how long do you think he spent feeding the swine until he finally thought about going back home?
How many years of anguish and separation did this family endure? Ten years? Twenty years? Thirty? If he left home at age 17, how long before he came back with one shoe off and one shoe on? The classic painting by Rembrandt van Rijn that inspired Henri Nouwen’s spiritual meditation depicts the father as an old man, bent over and frail. Perhaps he was 60 or 70 years old by the time of the “return.” The older brother standing nearby is also mature in his years…perhaps into his forties. So, it is easy for me (influenced by Rembrandt) to conclude that the son was gone at least 20 years of more.
After all that time, he finally decided to swallow his pride and return home. What does he even think he will find when he returns? He only hopes for a job as a day laborer. No longer will he have to hang out at the 7-11 until the contractors come with an opportunity to be exploited and maybe earn a fair wage for a fair day of work. No longer does he have to head to the hiring hall in Herndon hoping for work to pay the bills and put food on the table.
What does he find?
“While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him.”
After all this time, the father was still on the lookout. Like a shepherd who lost one of his sheep. Like the poor widow who lost a coin. Like, quite simply, a father who lost a son.
“While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him.”
After twenty or thirty years, the father still kept a lookout every day for the son who rejected him and everything he stood for. After twenty or thirty years, all that the father needed to see was he son make a turn back toward him.
“While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him.”
The father had no pride to swallow. He only had love, compassionate love. He didn’t get the news reports from the hands in the field and wait in the house for the son. He didn’t wait at the gate for his son’s return. He ran out to meet him. He ran out filled with compassion that never dissipated after all those years. He ran our filled with excessive love, intemperate love, and welcomed home he son who was lost.
“While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him.”
Action
Compassion is more than just sympathy and understanding to those around us in need. True compassion in Christian life asks us to “suffer with” those who are hurt. The father suffered with his sons and was ready any day for them to return to him from the distant perspectives that they adopted.
Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless.[1]
Jesus asks us to “Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate.” (Luke 6:36)
Who are you walking with during this Lenten season? Walk with someone and share their pain and sorrow.
What are you dissipating? Allow your negative emotions and tendencies to dissipate like the prodigal son spent his earthly inheritance. Only when freed from this burden, can you truly erase the mistakes in your life.
[1] Nouwen, Henri, J. M., Donald P. McNeill, and Douglas A. Morrison. Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life.
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