March 30, 2025 – Fourth Sunday of Lent [C]
By Fr. Matthew Siegman
Joshua 5:9,10-12 + 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 + Luke 15:1-3,11-32
This Sunday, we hear the extraordinarily beautiful parable of the Prodigal Son. This parable comes to mind every time I hear a confession for someone who has been away from the sacrament for decades or for someone who has really wandered far away from God and made a big mess of his or her life. It is the only way I can describe the joy that God has–and that I have as his priest–when one of God’s wayward children returns to him.
Nearly every single one of us can identify with the prodigal son. We know that we struggle to follow God’s will and that we’d generally prefer to do our own thing. We have witnessed things come crashing down before our eyes. It crushes us. If we’re lucky, we remember, like the prodigal son, that we have a God who loves us and will always welcome us back home. Many of us, also, can identify with the other son. Sometimes we see people who fell much further than we did or in ways we find particularly offensive and think, “at least that isn’t me.” Sometimes, we might even think, “Don’t they know what that person did?!?! What are they doing letting them into a church?!” But, just like the father in the parable loves both of his sons, so too does our God love us. The response of the father to the elder son, “your brother was dead and has come to life again,” is deeply profound, because in just these words, Christ reveals the entire point of him coming into this world.
Through Adam’s sin, humanity fell victim to the slavery of sin. As St. Paul teaches, “the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23) If we are enslaved to sin through our humanity, and the wages of sin is death, then we are dead to sin and we are subjects to the slavery of Sin and Death. But when Christ came, he conquered Sin’s reign over humanity. That’s the whole point of him coming to this earth! It’s the whole point of His Passion, His Death, His Resurrection, and His Ascension! When Christ allowed Himself to be crucified and to die on the Cross, Death attempted to consume and drag him into Hades (which in English we call hell or the underworld). But Death did not know who it had taken. Death did not realize that it had attempted to consume Life Itself. Christ destroyed the gates of hell and conquered humanity’s mortal enemy. He destroyed the power of sin to enslave humanity, and in doing so Christ ended the tyrannical reign of Death and Sin. While we still suffer the death of our body as an effect of the original sin, we are not doomed to the death of our spirit: that is, we have been invited to join Christ in his Resurrection.
We are invited, like the prodigal son, to turn away from sin and to return to the Father who loves us. That road to the Father is a narrow road, full of challenges, but we do not travel it alone. We travel with our brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ. Even more importantly, we travel with the Son who is the way, the truth, and the life. We travel with our older brother, Christ, who unlike the older brother in the parable, has gone out to look for us and bring us home. Imagine how much more joyful the father in the parable would have been if the older son in the parable had gone out after his younger brother and helped him return home. That is the joy of our Father in Heaven when we return home with his Son who has come looking for us.
As brothers and sisters of Christ and members of his Church, we are called to follow him to the Father. We are also to be ambassadors for Christ, helping others to reconcile with the Father. We are called not to be the resentful older brother of the parable, but to be a brother or a sister who with the Son goes out looking for the Father’s lost children and helping them come home. The practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving in Lent should help us to refocus our hearts and eyes on Christ who calls us to follow him to the Father. When we follow him, we will not only return to our Father in Heaven, but we will also bring our brothers and sisters with us on the way.