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.
Good teacher that he was, Jesus knew the power of a good story. No wonder, then, that we find parables and stories at the heart of so much of the Lord’s teaching in the gospels.
Of all the stories that have touched the human heart from the heart of Jesus, there is probably no one more familiar and cherished than the one we find in the 15th chapter of St. Luke’s gospel, the Prodigal son from which our Gospel is taken today.
Prodigal means lavish and extravagant. The son was called ‘prodigal’ because he was foolishly extravagant and lavish in going through his early inheritance. In the end, his fair-weather friends abandoned him and he found himself alone and far from home.
This story could equally be called the Story of the Prodigal Father. Rather than meeting recrimination on his return shamefacedly, to his Father, he was met with lavish and extravagant love, mercy and forgiveness. In fact, so joyous was the father on his son’s return that he even ordered a party to celebrate his homecoming.
For all ages, this story has stood as a powerful image of the way that God welcomes sinners. No sin is ever outside of the boundaries of God’s loving mercy for those who ‘come to their senses’ and are anxious to come home to the Lord’s loving embrace. That is good news indeed!