God our Father

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time C-2

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Sir 36:18 Give peace, O Lord, to those who wait for you, that your prophets be found true. Hear the prayers of your servant, and of your people Israel.

Collect Look upon us, O God, Creator and ruler of all things, and, that we may feel the working of your mercy, grant that we may serve you with all our heart. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

Scripture today: Exodus 32: 7-11.13-14; Psalm 50; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-32

Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So to them he addressed this parable. “What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbours and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance. “Or what woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it? And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbours and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.’ In just the same way, I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Then he said, “A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father, ‘Father give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’ So the father divided the property between them. After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation. When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need. So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine. And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any. Coming to his senses he thought, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger. I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, “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.”’ So he got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ Then the celebration began. Now the older son had been out in the field and, on his way back, as he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The servant said to him, ‘Your brother has returned and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him. He said to his father in reply, ‘Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns, who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’ 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 15:1-32)

God our Father The Gospel of today tells the sad story of the son who was wasteful of all that his father had given him (Luke 15:1-32), and of its beautiful upshot in his restoration. Let us remember, though, that the purpose of the parable was to explain our Lord’s own behaviour. The scribes and Pharisees had criticized him for welcoming sinners and eating with them. The all-holy God who hated sin, they assumed, would not do that. The parable is primarily an image of God, drawn by Jesus his Son. It shows God to be a loving and forgiving father, the thought of whose love ought shape our lives. It is on this merciful love that we may constantly depend, provided we come humble and repentant, acknowledging God’s goodness and our own sinful condition. In the first reading from the Old Testament book of Exodus, the all-holy God shows himself to Moses as angry at the sin of his people who were abandoning him for an idol they had made. God is the all-holy One, and his chosen people are incorrigibly sinful. At the start of the saga of the deliverance of the chosen people, Moses had heard the Voice saying to him from the Burning Bush, “Do not come near; put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Ex.3:5). Moses was a sinner too, and so could not come near the all-holy God. Throughout the Old Testament there is a progressive revelation of what this holy God is like. His holiness is gradually revealed to be a merciful love. He is a father and a husband to his wayward people. In the process of this revelation of God, the Scriptures reveal what man is like. The people of God are sinful, incorrigibly sinful. Still, God promises to pour out his Holy Spirit to change the hearts of his children and unite them to himself. This was the promise, and it was fulfilled by our Lord’s sacrifice on the Cross. Because of his death on the Cross, God has given us his Spirit and his grace enabling us to repent and live for him.

We who are like the prodigal son are able to return, precisely because God is like the father of the prodigal son. Like the sinners and the publicans whom our Lord welcomed and with whom he dined, we too can feel confident in the love of God our Father for us. Our Lord reveals God to be a wonderful father. Now, when this is said of God, we ought not understand it primarily in terms of earthly fathers, although if one has a good earthly father that can help. Rather, we learn of the fatherhood of God from Jesus. We must enter into union with our Lord, and by his grace and teaching learn from him what his heavenly Father, who is our God and Father, is like. Eternal life involves a personal knowledge of God our Father — “Eternal life is this,” our Lord said at the Last Supper, “to know you, God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” It is Jesus Christ who can and will give us a personal knowledge of the Father, because God is his own natural Father. “No one can come to the Father except through me”, our Lord said. “No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.” Jesus called himself our brother. “Go and tell the brothers,” he said to Mary Magdalen when he rose from the dead, “that I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Our whole life should be lived on the basis of a constant awareness of what Jesus our God and brother has revealed — that the great and infinite God is our Father, and that we are his beloved children. I am God’s adopted child! This means that I can approach God with childlike confidence, and live constantly in his presence. Yet I must be humble, contrite, and reverent, as a child who knows he is profoundly loved yet who knows also that he so often offends his great, revered, loving and all-perfect Father. He is a Father who is loving and forgiving, and yet holy and non-accepting of sin. He will always say to us what our Lord said to the sinful woman, go now, and do not sin again.

Let us make constant use of the Lord’s Prayer in our daily life, but not just routinely. It ought be the principal prayer of our daily life, the prayer that teaches us to call God our Father, and to recognise that we are his children. It is the prayer that will help us to become the children he wants us to be, holy, humble, repentant, determined to be like our loving Father in all things.

(E.J.Tyler)

Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.2777-2785 (We dare to approach in confidence to say: Our Father)

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A Second Reflection: Luke 15:1-32

Sin Our Gospel today tells us about sin, but the starting point of the narrative is God’s love. “The tax collectors and the sinners were all seeking the company of Jesus to hear what he had to say, and the Pharisees and the scribes complained.” They were complaining, not about the sinners, but about Jesus — about “this man” who “welcomes sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:1-32). Jesus told the parable to show the scribes and Pharisees that what he was doing is what God does. God is a father, overflowing with indulgence. “A man had two sons. The younger said to the father, “Father, let me have the share of the estate that would come to me.” And so “the father divided the property between them.” God has given us life, family, so many opportunities and new starts. Above all he has given us His own Son, and with His Son he has given the opportunity of an eternity with Him for ever. When the sinful son at last came home, his father, seeing him a long way off, ran to embrace him. Then when his son said, “Father, I have sinned against God and against you,” the celebrations began. The father was always ready to forgive, had the wayward son only returned. So it is with our heavenly Father. That revelation of God’s love is the starting point for what the parable reveals of the enormity of sin. Sin ruined the younger son, and were it not for his repentance and return to his loving father, he would have been lost. In God’s sight, sin is the greatest of tragedies. It was the sin of our first parents which spoilt God’s creative work, and it was the sin of mankind which led God to send his Son for love of man. Precisely because God loves the sinner and hates the sin, he seeks out sinful man unremittingly. It is because he sees the enormity of sin that God took such great steps to take it away. Our Lord tells us that there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine virtuous men who have no need of repentance. When the wayward son returned, the celebrations began, and there was more rejoicing over him than there was for the older son who had never left his father’s presence. He had been rescued from the enormity of sin.

The tax collectors and sinners were seeking the company of sinners in order to hear what Jesus had to say. While Christ wished to tell them that God loves them and wants them to turn away from their sins, still, they had to repent. He told this to all — not only to the tax collectors and sinners, but to the scribes and Pharisees too. The Kingdom of God is near. Repent! This message of repentance is what our Lord began his public ministry with, and it is his message for every generation. The danger is that we can settle into a comfortable acceptance of our sins, especially our venial sins. We can persist in committing venial sins, rarely confessing them, rarely being sorry for them and rarely trying to root them out of our lives. The danger is that we become complacent about venial sin. Of course, it is a terrible thing to be living in mortal sin. If a person commits a mortal sin whether of thought, word or deed, it is imperative that he be like the prodigal son, and confess the sin and seek forgiveness, above all in the holy Sacrament of Penance. But there is also the danger of taking a casual attitude towards venial sin, whether of thought or word or deed. We can contentedly remain in our sins, thinking that they do not matter, and gradually coming to think that we are not really sinners anyway. It is through deliberate and unrepented venial sin that sin can grow in our lives, that we can lose the sense of sin. It is through venial sin that the way can be prepared for mortal sin. What is notable about the Pharisees is that they did not think of themselves as sinners. They had lost the sense of sin. Let us strive to please God by turning away from venial sin every day. It would be a good strategy to concentrate on a persistent venial sin for, say, six or twelve months till it has been uprooted. We should be making frequent use of the Sacrament of Penance to be reconciled to God after the manner of the prodigal son, and to have daily venial sin cleansed from our hearts. Whenever we turn away from sin, including deliberate venial sin, we bring joy to God and to those who are with God in heaven. “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine virtuous men who have no need of repentance.”

When we do not care about venial sin, we are likely to count ourselves among the ninety-nine virtuous men who have no need of repentance. I do not commit many sins! We do, but we do not think they are important, and as a result we become scarcely conscious of their presence in our lives. We ought be working continually on developing a sense of sin, a growing spirit of repentance, and praying for this as a grace of the Holy Spirit. We ought be more and more sorry for our sins, striving through acts of contrition and regular Confession to recognise them, renounce them, and with God’s grace resolving to live a holy life as Christ’s friend.

(E.J.Tyler)

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