Today, on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, the Church continues to focus our attention on the coming season of Great Lent by holding before our eyes a well-known story of repentance. We are told of a son who had been given everything he could want and had squandered it. Finding himself in misery in exile, he resolved to return to his father’s house and to ask to work as a hired labourer. However, his father, who had never ceased longing for his return, received him as a son, rejoicing that his son who had been lost was now found.
Jesus tells this parable to illustrate what true repentance is all about. This story is about the Prodigal Son, but it is also about each one of us, for we too are alienated from God. We too are in exile because of our sin and we need to return to our loving Father who eagerly seeks for our salvation.
We often tend to think of sin as breaking the law or offending God. But, although we are called to keep the commandments, sin is much deeper than what we do or don’t do. It is rather a state of exile, of having missed the mark, of not being all that God created us to be, and all-too-often feeling powerless to change things.
Today’s Gospel tells us that there is hope for us and that, like the Prodigal Son, we too can return to our Father from whom we have become alienated. But the crucial point in this story was when the Prodigal Son recognised his own situation. We read that he “came to himself.” We are often too busy convincing ourselves that we are okay, or that other people are to blame for our troubles, that we do not see our situation for what it really is. It is only by recognising our need for God, and the fact that we have become exiled from our true home, that we are able to set out on the journey of repentance which is nothing other than a return to our Father’s house, and our true home. And the purpose of Great Lent is precisely to support us on this journey.