March 6, 2016 – Fourth Sunday Of Lent – Lectionary: 33

The LORD said to Joshua,
“Today I have removed the reproach of Egypt from you.”

While the Israelites were encamped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho,
they celebrated the Passover
on the evening of the fourteenth of the month.
On the day after the Passover,
they ate of the produce of the land
in the form of unleavened cakes and parched grain.
On that same day after the Passover,
on which they ate of the produce of the land, the manna ceased.
No longer was there manna for the Israelites,
who that year ate of the yield of the land of Canaan.

Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 34: 2-3, 4-5, 6-7

Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.
I will bless the LORD at all times;
his praise shall be ever in my mouth.
Let my soul glory in the LORD;
the lowly will hear me and be glad.
Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.
Glorify the LORD with me,
let us together extol his name.
I sought the LORD, and he answered me
and delivered me from all my fears.
Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.
Look to him that you may be radiant with joy,
and your faces may not blush with shame.
When the poor one called out, the LORD heard,
and from all his distress he saved him.
Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.

Reading 2 – 2 Corinthians 5:17-21

Brothers and sisters:
Whoever is in Christ is a new creation:
the old things have passed away;
behold, new things have come.
And all this is from God,
who has reconciled us to himself through Christ
and given us the ministry of reconciliation,
namely, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ,
not counting their trespasses against them
and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
So we are ambassadors for Christ,
as if God were appealing through us.
We implore you on behalf of Christ,
be reconciled to God.
For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin,
so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

Gospel – Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus,
but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying,
“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So to them Jesus addressed this parable:
“A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father,
‘Father give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’
So the father divided the property between them.
After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings
and set off to a distant country
where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.
When he had freely spent everything,
a severe famine struck that country,
and he found himself in dire need.
So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens
who sent him to his farm to tend the swine.
And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed,
but nobody gave him any.
Coming to his senses he 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.
While he was still a long way off,
his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion.
He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.
His son said to him,
‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you;
I no longer deserve to be called your son.’
But his father ordered his servants,
‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him;
put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.
Take the fattened calf and slaughter it.
Then let us celebrate with a feast,
because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again;
he was lost, and has been found.’
Then the celebration began.
Now the older son had been out in the field
and, on his way back, as he neared the house,
he heard the sound of music and dancing.
He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean.
The servant said to him,
‘Your brother has returned
and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf
because he has him back safe and sound.’
He became angry,
and when he refused to enter the house,
his father came out and pleaded with him.
He said to his father in reply,
‘Look, all these years I served you
and not once did I disobey your orders;
yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.
But when your son returns
who swallowed up your property with prostitutes,
for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’
He said to him,
‘My son, you are here with me always;
everything I have is yours.
But now we must celebrate and rejoice,
because your brother was dead and has come to life again;
he was lost and has been found.’”

Listen to the Scriptures: click on the link below:

http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/16_03_06.mp3

4^th Sunday of Lent – C

Today’s Gospel – warm, human and tender as it is – may leave us with a certain feeling or question. God’s behavior, as exemplified in the compassionate father of today’s Gospel, is beautiful and touching – but is it fair? Is God playing according to his own rules of justice? The moral which many of us can learn from the Prodigal Son story is this: We must let God be God, and then imitate his goodness.

Point 1: Defining family ties: How the sons and the father viewed their relationships.

The younger son. The really important persons in the Gospel today are the father and the elder son, not the younger son. The younger son, who causes the controversy, comes off as a kind of “average” character, when we look closely at him. His repentance, at the start at least, was of the most minimal and selfish sort: he decided to go home because he was hungry. His stomach, not his heart, drove him back to his father’s arms. His return was an act of “imperfect contrition” at best.
The elder son. While the younger son sees his father as a kind of benevolent meal ticket, the elder son also has an inadequate, stereotyped image of this compassionate and loving father. He sees his father as a kind of employer or landlord with whom he has made a specifically worded work contract. Their relationship, as the elder son wishes to define it, is: tit for tat, fair pay for a good day’s work, nothing more, nothing less. In speaking to his father, the elder son presents him with a balance sheet, a work record of what he has done. He expects his father to live up to his side of the bargain.
The father. But the father rejects the employer-employee model for the way he should treat his children. Excitedly – where does it say that God could ever get excited, we ask – the father welcomes the errant younger son back, with a great party. The father departs from the script written by society throughout the ages.

Point 2: Letting the father be father. The younger son at least has this much in his favor: when he did return, he was willing to let the father be “father” in the way the older man wanted to be. While he sat in the pigsty starving, he too thought of his relationship with his father in a contractual way. “How many hired workers of my father have more than enough to eat? … Treat me as one of your hired workers.” Yet when the son returned, he was open to his father’s spontaneous generosity. He accepted his father’s explanation that their relationship had to be more than that between employer and employee, king and subject, or lawgiver and citizen. The younger son let his father be a father.

Point 3: Letting God be God.

Avoiding a business-contract relationship. Are we not often tempted to act like the older son? Do we not often – or maybe even always – treat God more as someone with whom we have made a contract, rather than as a loving father?
Avoiding telling God what to do. Maybe we are tempted at times to set rules for God, to “play God,” in a sense. Maybe we have set moral rules for others (rarely do we do it for ourselves) which are uncaring and harsh.
Avoiding the urge to map the road to heaven for others. Perhaps in even more judgmental ways we decide what path others must follow to heaven. Maybe we ourselves make the already narrow door to eternal life even narrower by our attitudes.

Conclusion: Remember in instituting the Eucharist, Jesus, the God-man, revolted many of his Jewish followers. Like the compassionate father of today’s Gospel, he was seen as not playing according to the rules. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they asked. As you celebrate the Eucharist at the great banquet of reconciliation God has prepared for all of us his children, we once again stand before our Father. We do it with a heart open to receive his love, as he wants to give it. When we pray “Our Father”, we are letting our father be a father as he wants to be; we are letting God be God.

The story of the Prodigal Son is a graphic illustration of the truth of the Beatitude: “Blest are you who hunger, you shall be filled.” (Luke 6:21

God has a very hard time entering into our lives when we are so filled with the comfortable security of the “status quo” or so filled with our own concerns that we do not experience a need for Him.

One of the most important things that happened to the Prodigal Son was that he “hit bottom”. His hunger was so great that “he longed to fill his belly with the husks that were fodder for the pigs.” If his money had continued to hold out and the good times had continued for him, he would undoubtedly remained comfortable and secure in the “distant land”, alienated from his father.

His spiritual and physical hunger opened the door to his conversion. Because everything he had once relied on was taken away from him, he was forced to look within himself and to reevaluate his life. From the new perspective to which hunger had brought him, he could see the lack of substance in his former way of life, and become open to the possibility of returning to his father’s house.

We, too, can profit from a similar reevaluation of our lives. Perhaps the first step could be to look a bit more kindly on our own areas of “hunger”: those places, both inner and outer, where we are weak, sinful, fearful, insecure, or confused – in a word, where things are not “all together” for us. It is these painful, desert places which can turn into blessings for us, for when we can admit to ourselves our need and emptiness, we give God a chance to fill us. Those who are too proud to admit to needs are like the Pharisee of Jesus’ parable who prayed with head unbowed, recited a litany of his virtues, looked down on everyone else, and ended up shutting God out of his life.

Hunger of and by itself is not blest. It must be accompanied by an attitude of humility and by a deep confidence in a loving, accepting, forgiving Father who waits to fill the hungry one with his bounty. Hunger, then, is blest only when it leads a person to say, “I will arise and return to my Father.”

QUESTIONS THAT MAY LEAD TO OTHERS THOUGHTS / REFLECTION / DISCUSSION / WRITTEN

What are the areas of your life in which you have grown too comfortable and too secure?

Are there hungers or needs within you that you do not recognize, or refuse to recognize?

What are some of the ways in which God fills the hungry?

How might you see both the younger and the older sons as parts of yourself?

What do you need to reconcile within yourself before you can be an effective minister of reconciliation in the world around you?

Reading I: Joshua 5:9a, 10-12
Responsorial Psalm: 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7
Reading II: 2 Corinthians 5:17-21
Gospel: Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

PRAYER OF THE FAITHFUL

For the Church: that we may be instruments of God’s work of reconciling the world and extend an invitation to all who are wounded or alienated, let us pray to the Lord.

For the grace of freedom: that we may be bound by neither our sins nor our self-righteousness but be free to receive and celebrate God’s goodness each day, let us pray to the Lord.

For a spirit of conversion: that we may recognize God’s love for us that is not based on our deeds or achievements but on God’s free and generous choice, let us pray to the Lord.

For freedom from our resentments: that we may surrender our hurts and resentments to God who calls us to reconciliation and freedom, let us pray to the Lord.

For all who are preparing to celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation: that they may encounter the abundant love of God and surrender all their brokenness to God, let us pray to the Lord.

For all who have left or become alienated from their community of faith: that God will touch their hearts and help us to reach out and welcome them home, let us pray to the Lord.

For all world leaders: that they may strive to find alternatives to war and violence so that the food and health needs of all people may be met, let us pray to the Lord.

For young people who have run away from their families: that God will protect them from harm and give them the courage to make contact again, let us pray to the Lord.

For all who seek to arbitrate disputes: that God will inspire their work and help them to find ways to right wrongs and establish justice, let us pray to the Lord.

For healing for all who are ill: that God’s renewing love with strengthen and comfort all are facing surgery or who have been hospitalized, let us pray to the Lord.

For all who are seeking employment: that God will give them courage to continue to search and lead them to new opportunities to use their gifts and talents, let us pray to the Lord.

For all the Elect: that God will help them recognize the blindness that clouds their vision and give them new awareness of God’s presence in their lives, let us pray to the Lord.

For all who lack food and water: that God will touch our hearts to feel their pain and give us courage to respond to the best of our ability, let us pray to the Lord.

For all recovering from natural disasters: that God will heal their pain, renew their hope, and speed the assistance which they need, let us pray to the Lord.

For all who are away from home, especially members of the military: may God protect them from harm and reunite quickly with their families, let us pray to the Lord.