IV SUNDAY OF LENT
DIVINE MERCY
By our Pastor, Fr. Carmelo Jiménez
In this fourth Sunday of Lent, the reflection is centered on Divine Mercy. If you were looking for a text to illustrate this, you could not find a better one than this text from Saint Luke which we hear this Sunday: Lk 15: 1-3, 11-32, which is known as parable of the Prodigal Son. But I would like to call it: the parable of the merciful father. If we remember last Sunday we heard the name of God: “I am” and the psalm completed it with “compassionate and merciful”. This is the name of God: compassionate and merciful.
Pope Francis affirmed this in the Papal Bull: the Face of Mercy in paragraph #9a: “In the parables devoted to mercy, Jesus reveals the nature of God as that of a Father who never gives up until he has forgiven the wrong and overcome rejection with compassion and mercy. We know these parables well, three in particular: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the father with two sons (cf. Lk 15:1-32). In these parables, God is always presented as full of joy, especially when he pardons. In them we find the core of the Gospel and of our faith, because mercy is presented as a force that overcomes everything, filling the heart with love and bringing consolation through pardon.”
The parable of the Merciful father is about a father who has two sons. The Father of these two children is God. The two children are the two groups of God’s people: the oldest son represents the Jewish people and the younger son represents the Gentiles. The inheritance received is freedom, intelligence, memory, and everything that God has given us so we can recognize him and worship him.
The figure of the youngest son represents the Gentiles. He went away from the house of the Father toward a distant country, to squander the treasure and the inheritance that God had so generously entrusted to him. And in that region of sin the image and likeness that the Creator had printed on his soul became more and more obscured. He wanted freedom without limits, which God respected and he let him leave, even though he was not in agreement, he let him. The young son lets himself get carried away by illusions, trying to quench the thirst of happiness which dwells in his heart with the pleasures of this world. We can distinguish two elements which were fundamental in his return to his home: reflection and a sense of family. The young man had gotten to the bottom: an emptiness of all kinds, of his morals, of his spirit, of his personal values and he started to reflect: “How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger.” (Lk 15:17) Reflecting on our journey is what will allow us to know ourselves better in the light of God, confessing in this way our misery. The second element: the sense of family – If this younger brother decides to return home to the house of his Father it is because he feels a sense of security, of love and affection from his Father, apart from the comforts that his family life afforded him.
The figure of the older brother represents the Jewish people who have fulfilled the law, faithful to the divine Covenant, guided by the Patriarchs and Prophets. Despite this, little by little, like a worm eating away at this faithfulness, pride enters – the worst of sins. He believed he had certain rights from his father. He believed he was just. Together with pride and a presumption of his own merits, came resentment, jealousy, anger, and sadness. What a shame that this older son ends up breaking the wonderful symphony of the house by not wanting to join the feast of mercy!
And finally the figure of the Father. The Father was merciful with his younger son and with the older one too. With the younger son, his mercy was demonstrated in the details: he respects his freedom; he waits for him with patience until he matures; he receives him with joy and splendor; and he restores his human and spiritual dignity. With the older son he shows his mercy in the details as well: he goes out to call his son; he invites him to the communal feast; he puts up with the humiliation his sons throws in his face for being so merciful with the younger son; and he lets the older son know that he is not a slave in their home, rather a son who can have all of the goods of the family.
The Father shed tears of joy upon the return of the younger son, but also of sadness and pity for the older son. “The mercy of God is his loving concern for each one of us. He feels responsible; that is, he desires our wellbeing and he wants to see us happy, full of joy, and peaceful. This is the path which the merciful love of Christians must also travel. As the Father loves, so do his children. Just as he is merciful, so we are called to be merciful to each other.” (Misericordiae Vultus #9d) Let us open our hearts to divine mercy, reconciling ourselves with God, with our brothers and with ourselves.