4^th Sunday of Lent (C); March 31, 2019

Jos 5:9-12   Ps 34   2 Cor 5:17-21   Lk 5:1-3,11-32

Deacon Jim McFadden

 

Today is Laetare Sunday, a time for rejoicing because the Father reveals to us that “Everything I have is yours” (Lk 15:31b). Lent is more than half over, and redemption and forgiveness and new life draw closer to us. This is also the Sunday when the catechumens experience the Second Scrutiny, reminding them and us of the mercy and forgiveness of God.

Let’s look at this masterfully told story from the perspective of the Father. St. John Paul II in his 1984 Apostolic Exhortation Reconcilatio et Paenitentia wrote: “The parable of the Prodigal Son is above all the story of the inexpressible love of a Father-God—who offers to his son when he comes back to him the gift of full reconciliation….It therefore reminds us of the need for a profound transformation of hearts through the rediscovery of the Father’s mercy and through victory over misunderstanding and over hostility among brothers and sisters.”

The Prodigal Son is a powerful story: its one of those rare gems that captivates the mind of every listener then and now. Like any good story this parable has us identify with many characters: the weakness of the wayward son; the bitterness of the older brother; the compassion of the Father. Taking a cue from Pope JP II, I’d like to focus on the latter because some would say that this story is best entitled The Story of the Merciful Father.

A few years before he died, Henri Nouwen, a remarkable spiritual writer of our time, wrote a book that many consider to be a spiritual masterpiece. It’s entitled The Return of the Prodigal Son and is both a commentary on Rembrandt’s famous painting by the same title and Nouwen’s long spiritual reflection on the Fatherhood and Motherhood of God. When you return home after Mass, I encourage you to pull the painting from the Internet and gaze upon it as you reflect upon this Sunday’s Gospel.

Nouwen points out that in Rembrandt’s painting, the Father-figure, representing God, has a number of interesting features. First of all, he is depicted as blind. His eyes are shut and he sees the Prodigal Son not with his eyes but with his heart (to which he is tenderly holding the son’s head). The implication is obvious: God sees with the heart.

Moreover, the figure representing God has one male hand (which is pulling the wayward son to himself) and one female hand (which is caressing his back) Thus, God is represented here as both masculine and feminine as both mother and father.

What Jesus’ revelation in this parable invites us to (which is so powerfully evident in Rembrandt’s painting) is to identify with the Father and his all embracing, all-forgiving , caressing compassion. Ultimately, we are meant to radiate both God’s masculine, fatherly embrace and God’s feminine, motherly, gentle touch.

To be able to do that, we need to first to have experienced that love ourselves and part of accepting God’s forgiving embrace is to conceive God correctly. To have the courage to let ourselves be embraced when we are sinful and bitter is to, first of all, to know a God Who—as Jesus, Rembrandt, and Nouwen assure us—is both a blessing Father and a caressing Mother. Since God does not have a gender, we’re reminded from the book of Genesis that God is a balance of the masculine and the feminine. Our Triune God sees with the eyes of the heart, and who, despite our weaknesses and angers, sits completely relaxed, smiling, with a face of unconditioned love.

That countenance, which is always evident in God’s face, is the future to which all of us, and our precious Earth itself, can look forward to. Thus, given that we live under a smiling, relaxed, all-forgiving, and all-powerful God, we too should relax and smile, at least once in a while (!), because irrespective of anything that has ever happened or will ever happen, in the end, to quote Julian of Norwich, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and every manner of being shall be well.” Amen.