Saturday in the Third Week of Lent, March 6, 2021

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.’ ”

It is necessary to remember that the Lord told this parable to the scribes and Pharisees who complained that, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  We hear this parable often at Mass. and we think we know it well, but without keeping the context in mind we lose something of its meaning.  

First, we must note that the younger son violates all the laws and codes the Pharisees treasure.  Worst of all, he is heedless of his contact with sinners and prostitutes, and winds up tending pigs which, for a Jew, was akin to apostasy. When he comes home, his father immediately puts rings on his fingers and sandals on his feet and brings him back to his house without any attention to the purity tenets the Pharisees emphasized so much.  They would have hated this character and how his father treated him.  They would have had the father reject this disgusting son and send him back to the pigs.  The Lord seems to have drawn up this character with an eye to arousing their ire.

We next note the reaction of the older son to the presence of the younger.  He is appalled by his brother’s behavior, alienating part of the heritage of the family, wasting it on loose, unclean living, and he refuses even to go into the house.  In fact, the older son acts much in the way a Pharisee would have.  He does not go into the house which has been contaminated by the unclean son who had lived among “tax collectors and sinners”, not to mention pigs.  This brings to mind how the Jewish leaders, bringing Jesus to Pilate for judgment, “did not go into the hall, that they might not be defiled, but that they might eat the pasch” (John 18, 28).  

Finally, we see that the Lord does not give a solution to the problem posed by the younger son’s situation.  The parable ends with the older son, to whose mercy the younger son will have to appeal after the father dies, not reconciling with his brother.  Nor does the younger son seem to seek out his brother in order to beg his forgiveness as well as he had done his father’s.  The question the Lord leaves to the Pharisees is whether the older son, signifying them, the Pharisees, should forgive the younger son, signifying the tax collectors and sinners, even if the father had.  The father in the parable clearly wants this and the older son, if he wanted to be righteous regarding the Law, should have honored his father by obliging.  But this would break the taboos the Pharisees placed upon mixing with people they considered unclean, but of whom the Law said nothing.  (And while the younger son fed the pigs, he did not eat them or touch them and so he would not have become unclean himself).  Jesus thus confronts the Law and what it actually says with their interpretations of it.

God’s love knows no boundaries or prohibitions which we would establish to protect ourselves, ultimately, from the hard work of the conversion of sinners.