On the 4th Sunday of Lent in Year C we have before us a parable from the Gospel of Luke traditionally called The Parable of the Prodigal Son. But this parable could also be described as the Parable of the Merciful Father or the Parable of the Unforgiving Son.

How did Jesus use parables?  A parable is usually aimed at a particular audience and has one point. A point which usually means that the audience suddenly finds themselves in the parable and it now challenges them to respond.

How ever we describe the parable of the Prodigal Son [Luke 15:11-32], it is primarily addressed to the Pharisees who complained about Jesus sitting and dining with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus turns the parable on them by presenting how their view of sinners is just like that of the eldest son’s reaction to his brother being welcomed back by his father, a son who was lost and is now found, who was dead and is now alive. The eldest son refuses to enter the father’s feast for his younger bother because he stands on his own righteousness. Jesus poses to the Pharisees an implicit question as the parable does not tell us what the eldest son is going to do when his father finishes remonstrating with him; the question Jesus poses to the Pharisees is this - will you stand on your own form of righteousness and refuse God’s Feast in heaven because you are offended at God’s mercy and think that sinners should not be welcomed, sinners who, like you, are also children of Abraham and you are like them because you too are sinners?

The Church through the Holy Spirit and following Our Lord’s example has interpreted the parables not just literally but also spiritually [see the parable of the Sower in Mark 4]. Indeed, the Church speaks of the Literal and Spiritual senses of Scripture.

The Literal sense, for instance, is the single point that the parable of the Prodigal son is made to address, namely, the way the Pharisees are scandalised by Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners. But it may also include what scholars call a diachronic anaylsis which deals with what the text meant when it was written and this may use tools such as literary criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, historical criticism and canonical criticism. There is also the synchronic anaysis which deals with the question what does the text mean for us today. But the synchronic interpretation cannot negate or ignore or replace the diachronic interpretation for what it means now cannot contradict what it meant then!

The Spiritual sense has three levels: the Allegorical sense (seeing levels of meaning relating to Christ and his work of salvation eg the sacraments); the Moral sense of Scripture which relates to the moral life and the virtues [sometimes called the Tropological sense]; and the Anagogical sense of scripture which relates to the eschatological dimension of the End Times [eg The Four Last Things]. Many of the Church Fathers used this approach and indeed they became a diamond mine of spiritual insights drawn from this mine by their prayerful, meditative, liturgical and lived out interpretations of the Scriptures.

Thus, this parable speaks to each of us, in terms of the history of salvation, on how we rebelled against God; how each of us has gone away from God and gone our own way; and how each of us has ended up in a time of famine and thus starving not just physically but also spiritually. Yet God is like a Father who on seeing his prodigal Son on the horizon runs out to meet him; so too he runs out to meet us, in and through the person of His Son. Jesus Christ, reveals to us the loving countenance of our heavenly Father so that when we, like the Prodigal son, ‘come to our senses’, turn back to God, confess our sins and humbly know that we are not worthy even to be God’s servants, let alone his children, we too will have the penitential spirit of the Prodigal son. So in a true penitential spirit we seek to come back to God and God like a loving father goes out to us to welcome us back to the embrace of his loving heart and loving home, the Kingdom of God.

With an allegorical reading of the parable we can say that the text reveals that God restores to us everything that was lost by Adam and Eve through Original sin: the ring represents the gift of divine love; the robe represents the white garment of baptism that gives us the grace lost in the Fall which is called Sancifying grace; the sandals the gift of the virtues by which we can now walk in the path of God and the Feast is the gift of heaven as the Heavenly Banquet which is made visible to us sacramentally and made present to us on this side of eternity in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Now neither the younger nor the older son really loved their father. The Younger son acted like a spoilt, demanding and irresponsible child who wanted the good things of life here and now from his father and so had a mercenery type of attitude to his father: his father was only good for what he could give him and it had to be free with no strings attached. The Older son acted towards his father like a slave acts towards his Master for his relationship is all about slaving for the father and never disobeing him. So the younger son is a mercenery hedonist and the older son is an obedient slave; there is not much sign of love for their father in either!

We have seen that the younger son repents but with the older son his decision is still pending. The younger son repents when he finds himself in a far distant country [χώραν μακράν] having spent his legacy and wealth on a life of debauchery and now he finds himself alone, with no friends, no one to support him and he is starving! It is interesting to note that the Greek can speak of space [choran - χώραν] or place [topos - τόπος] but in this parable the term chosen to describe where the Prodigal son goes to squander his legacy is called ‘choran makran’ which is a distant space. Space is where there are no borders, no boundaries, no laws and no order; it is like the wild west! From an ordered life at home the Prodigal son choses to leave his home-country and go to a far-country, a space, it is the wild west. There he finds what happens when you have no legacy or wealth left: you have no friends, no support and totally alone in your poverty. He finds himself falling down so low that he ends in a pig sty - not a good place for a Jew!

However, the prodigal Son ‘comes to his senses’ and repents! He confesses that he has sinned against heaven and against his father and comes back to his father. Whereas the eldest Son is still pondering whether to stay outside the home where lies the fire-hearth of the love of his Father and brother.

But there is another unknown possibility that the parable does not articulate and which the younger son could have chosen and the older son could still choose! What is this possibility?

The possibility is that one son could choose to stay outside of the banquet and the other son could choose to stay inside the pig sty! Why would they want to stay there? Because both may not want to admit they were wrong. Indeed, they may want to blame everybody else for their predicament!

It is the choice to stay in the mess but blame everybody for being there! In such a mind set they are the real victims and the father, the brother, the servants, the friends, the women and the profligates are their victimizers. It is this choice that we find being affirmed in the culture of those who suffer the pride of the wounded ones and we call it Woke Culture!

We see all around us today a culture of the wounded ones who are quite willing to pull down everybody and everything, indeed the whole culture too, pulling it all down into the mess they now wallow in and which was of their own making but for which everyone is to blame but themselves. It is this pride of the wounded ones that C S Lewis describes through the speech of one of his characters [and one of his real life heroes], George MacDonald:

“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.” [‘The Great Divorce’ by C S Lewis]