Scott Hahn with David Scott
The episode in today’s First Reading has been called “Israel’s original sin.” Freed from bondage, born as a people of God in the covenant at Sinai, Israel turned aside from His ways, fell to worshipping a golden calf.
Moses implores God’s mercy, as Jesus will later intercede for the whole human race, as He still pleads for sinners at God’s right hand and through the ministry of the Church.
Israel’s sin is the sin of the world. It is your sin and mine. Ransomed from death and made His children in Baptism, we fall prey to the idols of this world. We remain a “stiff-necked people,” resisting His will for us like an ox refuses the plowman’s yoke (see Jeremiah 7:26).
Like Israel, in our sin we push God away, reject our divine sonship. Once He called us “my people” (seeExodus 3:10; 6:7). But our sin makes us “no people,” people He should, in justice, disown (seeDeuteronomy 32:21; 1 Peter 2:10).
Yet in His mercy, He is faithful to the covenant He swore by His own self in Jesus. In Jesus, God comes to Israel and to each of us—as a shepherd to seek the lost (see Ezekiel 34:11-16), to carry us back to the heavenly feast, the perpetual heritage promised long ago to Abraham’s children.
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” Paul cries in today’s Epistle. These are the happiest words the world has ever known. Because of Jesus, as Paul himself can testify, even the blasphemer and persecutor can seek His mercy.
As the sinners do in today’s Gospel, we draw near to listen to Him. In this Eucharist, we bring Him the acceptable sacrifice we sing of in today’s Psalm—our hearts, humbled and contrite.
In the company of His angels and saints, we rejoice that He has wiped out our offense, celebrate with Him—that we have turned from the evil way that we might live (see Ezekiel 18:23).
St. Peter Chrysologus
from Sermon 5 on the Prodigal Son (PL 52,197)
The son returned to his father’s house and cried out: «Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son. Treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers»… But the father ran to him, and ran from a long way off. «While we were still sinners, Christ died for us» (Rom 5,8).
The father ran… in the person of the Son when he descended from heaven through him and came to earth. «The Father who sent me is with me,» he says in the Gospel (cf. Jn 16,32). He flung his arms round him: he flung himself even on us when, in Christ, his whole divinity came down from heaven and made its home in our flesh. And he embraced him. When? When «mercy and faithfulness have met; justice and peace have embraced» (Ps 85[84],11).
He made them give him the finest robe: that which Adam lost – the eternal glory of our immortality. He bestowed on him a ring for his finger: the ring of honor, his title of liberty, the special seal of the spirit, the sign of faith, the firstfruits of the heavenly wedding feast.
Hear the apostle Paul: «I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ» (2Cor 11,2). And he made them put sandals on his feet that our feet might be shod when we preach the good news of the Gospel, so that «the feet of those who bring glad tidings of peace» (Is 52,7; Rom 10,15) might be blessed.
And he had the fattened calf slaughtered… The calf is slaughtered at the father’s orders since Christ, God and Son of God, could not be put to death apart from the Father’s will. Listen again to the apostle Paul: «He did not spare his own Son but delivered him up for us all» (Rom 8,32).
Pope Benedict XVI
from Angelus Address, September 12, 2010
In today’s Gospel chapter 15 of St Luke Jesus recounts the three “parables of mercy”. When he speaks of “the shepherd who goes after the lost sheep, of the woman who looks for the lost coin, of the father who goes to meet and embrace his prodigal son, these are no mere words: they constitute an explanation of his very being and activity” (Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, n. 12). In fact, the shepherd who finds the stray sheep is the Lord himself who lays upon his shoulders, with the Cross, sinful humanity, in order to redeem it.
The prodigal son, then, in the third parable, is a young man who having obtained his inheritance from his father “took his journey into a far country, and there, he squandered his property in loose living” (Lk 15: 13). Reduced to a penniless state he was obliged to work as a servant, even accepting to satisfy his hunger with food intended for animals.
Then, the Gospel says, “He came to himself” (Lk 15: 17). “The speech he prepares for his homecoming reveals to us the full extent of the inner pilgrimage he is now making… leading “home’… to himself and to the father”. (Benedict XVI Jesus of Nazareth, Doubleday, 2007, Chapter 7, p. 205). “I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants'” (Lk 15: 18-19).
St Augustine wrote: “The Word himself calls you to return, and with him is a place of unperturbed rest, where love is not forsaken unless it first forsakes. “While he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Lk 15: 20) and, full of joy, had a feast prepared.
Dear friends, how is it possible not to open our hearts to the certainty that in spite of being sinners we are loved by God? He never tires of coming to meet us, he is always the first to set out on the path that separates us from him. The Book of Exodus shows us how Moses, with confident and daring pleas, succeeded, so to speak, in moving God from the throne of judgement to the throne of mercy (cf. 32: 7-11).
Penitence is the measure of faith and through it one returns to the Truth. The Apostle Paul writes: “I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Tm 1: 13). Returning to the parable of the son who goes “home”, we note that when the elder brother appears, indignant at the festive welcome given to his brother, it is again the father who reaches out to him and begs him: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours” (Lk 15: 31).
Only the faith can transform selfishness into joy and renew true relationships with our neighbour and with God. “It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (Lk 15: 32).
