March 14, 2010
Fourth Sunday of Lent
By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ
While the Israelites were encamped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, they celebrated the Passover on the evening of the fourteenth of the month. On the day after the Passover they ate of the produce of the land in the form of unleavened cakes and parched grain. 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. Joshua 5:10-12
So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come. 2 Corinthians 5:17
“He said to him, ‘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
The embrace of Christ from the cross covers all the sinfulness we bring him if we but ask. It is the love of God fully expressed in a human act of love. God so loves the world that he gives us his only begotten Son as the revelation of his love for us. On the cross of Christ we see the mystery of divine love reaching out and always ready to be our forgiveness. He died once and forever that we may have sonship with the Father in the Father’s love for Christ. His dying on the cross fully expresses the mystery of God’s love for his creation. I see a parent’s love of their children in every parental act. God’s love for us is the sharing of his son with us. God gives us the perfect gift. God does not force his love on us. His love makes us free because love can never be forced. He does not overpower us with his love because he gives us the freedom to accept Christ. How much my heart desires to be one with Christ is the measure of my potential to love. Because God first loved us, we are able to love him back in His Son. Our piety is seen in the Christness of our lives.
Study
Christ welcomes sinners and he eats with them. We study how we can be zealous like Christ in our outreach for the world so terribly in need of God’s love. He was with sinners in order to help them. We need to look at our motives in our friendships. If someone is not following Christ and leading me astray, Christ would not want me to stay around. The story of the Prodigal Son is really the story of the prodigal father who is forever waiting for the son to freely return. God gives us the gift of his love so that we would recognize that our real happiness is to be with him. We ought to choose for ourselves to stay with Christ. We study our motivations. Justice is the duty that we owe. God’s love is the gift that is waiting for us. We come home to God’s love for us in his Church. We would never want the Father without our awareness that he first loved us. His love for us is a unique love that takes us as we are. The Father in the Prodigal story was waiting for the son. It seems that the Father never took his eyes off the road his son would return by. We return to the father because he loves us. We stay with the Father because like the elder son we recognize the Father’s love. We should never forget that the love is always there waiting for us to accept it. We need but ask.
Action
The decision to turn our lives back to God is made in the realization of all that is missing. Peace, happiness and security are the essentials of a good home. That is what family offers us. Belonging takes away loneliness. People who want us for ourselves and not for what we can give them make for good friends. Family is a blood relationship. It is a love that belongs to the fiber of our being. We are called by the Father’s love to share our lives with each other as members of God’s family. How we look out for each other without being asked is the beauty of true love and a true family of God. We need to be forever going home. There is never a day that God is not calling us. The road home needs the firm steps of a vision of God waiting for us. God is willing to share the best of his life with us. He offers us his son. Every prayer, word and deed needs the vision of the son to bring us to our true home. It is Christ who takes our prayers to the Father and it is in Christ that we are heard by God as his sons and daughters. It is in dying with Christ that we rise to our destiny of loving God forever. We love our world even as Christ did in all the ways we carry our crosses for the sake of each other. It is in our dying that Christ restores our world today. It is the greatest joy humanly possible to give our lives by our sufferings for the sake of each other. It is thus we become the Mystical Body of Christ. We thus become his embrace of what is wrong with our world and can remake it in his love.
