31 March 2019
Fourth Sunday of Lent
With good reason, the Church invites us to return to the parable of the prodigal son/father (Lk 15:11-32) time and again during the season of Lent. Each of Jesus’s parables meets us where we are and then invites us to take a step forward in our relationship with God and our neighbor. Since we never stand in the same place twice, if we accept the invitation that God offers us through any given parable, that invitation, and even the “meaning” of the parable will shift every time that we enter anew into the reality that the parable offers us. Properly heard, a parable can never be reduced to a “moral of the story,” but is always rather an opening towards a living and ever-greater relationship of love.
Saint Ignatius affirms that we are created to praise, reverence, and serve God as Jesus does, thereby sharing in the life of God, and that all things on the face of the earth exist to help us to live this life of love that is offered to us. It follows, therefore, that we should make use of created things to the extent that they help us to live this life of love and communion, since that is the reason that things exist. If we have a relationship with some created thing that gets in the way of this life of love and communion, then clearly, that relationship is disordered: we need to ask God to help us fix that relationship, since clearly that thing should not impede our sharing in the life that God offers us, but rather ought to be an instrument that helps to support that relationship.
The father in today’s parable, unlike the two sons, does not love material possessions in themselves, but rather sees their true end: sharing in the life of love that is at the heart of what Ignatius identifies as “praise, reverence, and service of God our Lord.” Clearly, the younger son did not understand this, since he squandered his inheritance in an act of rebellion that consciously broke communion with those who loved him. But the older brother does not understand that no better use can be made of what remains than to be an instrument of love and communion. There is no point in having things other than love. We should keep things insofar as doing so helps us to love better, and should separate ourselves from them for the same reason. Things have no other raison d’êtrethan love.