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| No, I don't live in Nashville, but it does say 43 degrees! |
(Fourth Sunday of Lent (C):
This homily was given on March 6, 2016 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly,
R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Luke
15: 1-3, 11-32.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Fourth Sunday of Lent 2016]
It was the contrast that made
the difference.
For the prodigal son, it was the
contrast—the very sharp contrast—that made the difference.
And that’s the way it is so very often
for us today.
This thought came to me two Wednesdays
ago (the Wednesday of school vacation week), after I had walked the beach for
about an hour. It was a great day to be
outside: the sun was shining, the wind was light. For a day in mid-February in was very
comfortable. In fact, I was sweating a
little bit by the time I got back in my car to leave. I thought to myself, “Wow, it must be at
least 60 degrees out there!”
Then I turned the key to start the
engine, and I took a look at the gauge on my dashboard—the gauge that measures
the outside temperature. It read 43
degrees. My first thought was, “Gee, it
must be broken”, but then I checked my cellphone, and that gave me the very same
reading.
So why did 43 degrees feel like 60?
It felt that way because only a few days
earlier it had been minus 8 degrees here in Westerly! The
contrast made the difference! The contrast between minus 8 degrees and 43
degrees made 43 degrees feel like spring!
Which brings us to the prodigal
son. We just heard his story, which is
certainly one of the best-known and most-loved stories in all of the
Bible. (I’m sure many of you know it so
well that you could recite a good bit of it from memory, if you had to.) The story is about forgiveness and mercy and
God’s faithful love. That last point reminds me of what St. Paul
said in 2 Timothy 2: “Even if we are unfaithful [like the prodigal son was], he
[God] remains faithful [faithful in his love for us] for he cannot deny
himself.”
That’s a truth we should all thank God
for, because it means that no one, strictly speaking, is hopeless! If they have breath in them, there is hope for
them.
As we look at the prodigal son’s story
today, I think the important question for us to ask is: What was the turning point? What, in other words, brought this boy to the
point of conversion—to the point where he finally said, “I want out of this; I
want to go home!”
The answer to that question is: When he
recognized the contrast. He made the decision to go home to his dad
when he finally recognized the contrast—the very sharp contrast—between his
past and his present; between his life with his father, and his life without
his father; between what he had back home with his dad before he left, and what
he now had with Porky Pig and his friends in the local pigpen, rolling around
in the mud. He even became acutely aware
of the contrast between the lives of his father’s servants back home and his miserable
life in the present moment.
In fact, this was the thought that
finally motivated him to start his journey back. As we heard Jesus say few moments ago,
“Coming to his senses [the boy] 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.”
For the prodigal son in the pigpen, even
the trials and difficulties in the life of a servant were much better than what
he was currently dealing with.
This is why it’s not the worst thing in
the world when, like the prodigal son, people experience suffering because of serious
sins they’ve committed but haven’t repented of.
Sometimes that suffering can lead those people to an awareness of the contrast: the contrast between their
present condition and their condition prior to committing those sins—and that
can motivate them to repent like this boy did and make a good confession.
This is also why it’s so important for
young people to get rooted in their faith early on. It’s no secret that a lot of young people in
their late teens and early twenties drift away from the Church and from the practice
of their Catholic faith. Those young
people will experience trials and crises in their lives (as we all do), they’ll
have to deal with questions about the purpose and meaning of life (as we all
do). When they experience those trials
and those crises and those questions, they will know that there’s somewhere to
go to deal with them—if they were
rooted in their faith early on. They
will recognize the contrast between
their present spiritual and emotional condition and their former spiritual and
emotional condition, and maybe—just maybe—they’ll say to themselves, “You know,
I once found joy and meaning and peace in my Catholic faith; maybe I ought to
give it a try again. Maybe I ought to
get to confession.” But if they were
never rooted in their faith, or if their commitment to the Lord and his Church
was very superficial, the likelihood that they will return to their spiritual
home is much less.
This is why, incidentally, I have that
youth group for teenagers every Thursday night; this is why I take young people
to the Steubenville East Youth Conference every summer, and Youth Explosion
every fall. I do these things because I
want our teens to be so rooted in their faith during their high school years
that they’ll always come home, even if they do drift away for a time in college
and as young adults.
But they’ve got to know there’s a home
to come back to! That’s key! So encourage your children to get involved in
spiritual activities here at St. Pius NOW.
Think about it, my brothers and sisters, if the prodigal son had not
experienced love and happiness and peace in his father’s house in the early days
of his youth, he would never have experienced the contrast; hence he would not have known that there was a place
he could go back to where he could find love, happiness and peace again.
And he probably would have died in despair.
But he didn’t. He responded to his experience of the contrast by doing exactly what he
should have done. He responded to his
experience of the contrast by repenting
and returning to his father. And he
found what he was looking for. May all
Catholics—young and not-so-young—follow his example by repenting and returning
to the heavenly Father in the
sacrament of Reconciliation whenever they need to.