Mother Church celebrates Sunday, March 27, 2022, as the fourth Sunday of Lent – Year C. In the Entrance Antiphon we pray: “Rejoice, Jerusalem! Be glad for her, you who love her; rejoice with her, you who mourned for her, and you will find contentment at her consoling breasts. Amen.”
This Sunday is traditionally called Laetare Sunday because it interrupts the general feeling of sadness that is associated with Lent to speak to us of joy, as we hear in the words of the Entrance Antiphon above. As we approach the end of the Lenten season, we meditate on the joy of the cross. We share Saint Paul’s cheerfulness when he exclaims: “Rejoice in the Lord always: again I say, Rejoice!” (Phil 4:4).
The first reading, from the book of Joshua, gives an account of how Israel settled in the Promised Land and celebrated the first Passover, which took away the ‘shame of Egypt’. The Israelites were happy to taste the first produce of the Holy Land, what they themselves had sown. The fruits of their own labour were an indication that they were at last a settled community after their forty-year wandering in the desert. They had become a sedentary people, who could feed themselves and take care of their own needs from their own land. Once they could fend for themselves, God ceased to send them manna from heaven. The days of slavery in Egypt were now a distant memory.
In the second reading, from his Second Letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul talks of God’s reconciling act in favour of sinners. Through Christ’s death and resurrection, humanity is saved and created anew. That is why we must no longer behave as we did before. Despite our weaknesses and sufferings, we share in the reconciliation between God and man brought about by Christ when he died on the cross for our sins.
In the Gospel, Saint Luke presents us the famous parable of the Prodigal Son, what some refer to as the parable of the “Father of mercy.” God, like a loving father, goes out in search of sinners and is always happy whenever we come back to him through a good confession in which we ask for forgiveness for going astray. This parable teaches us a valuable lesson in forgiveness. In the course of this Eucharist, let us pray for the grace to grant forgiveness so as to receive forgiveness in turn.
First Reading: Joshua 5:9‑12
The Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have taken the shame of Egypt away from you.” The Israelites pitched their camp at Gilgal and kept the Passover there on the fourteenth day of the month, at evening in the plain of Jericho. On the morrow of the Passover they tasted the produce of that country, unleavened bread and roasted ears of corn, that same day. From that time, from their first eating of the produce of that country, the manna stopped falling. And having manna no longer, the Israelites fed from that year onwards on what the land of Canaan yielded.
Comment
The book of Joshua is one of the historical books of the Hebrew Bible. The others are the 2 Books of Kings, the Book of Chronicles and the Book of Maccabees. They are called ‘historical’ because they recount the events in the history of the Jewish people, beginning from the time they took possession of the land of Canaan in the 13th century BC, under the leadership of Joshua, up to the point they lost it, that is, when King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem and led the king of Judah and all the leaders of the Jewish people to captivity in Babylon between 587-586 BC. These books form a single continuous history of Israel from the days of Moses to the Babylonian exile.
The book of Joshua, in particular, narrates the take-over of the Promised Land by Israel under the leadership of Joshua. Moses led the people of Israel from Egypt to the edge of the Promised Land, but God did not allow him to enter it. Joshua then assumed the leadership of the Jewish people, and directed the invasion and occupation of the land of Canaan.
God delivered this land to his chosen people so they could settle down and enjoy peace and prosperity after forty years of wandering in the desert. He did not forget what he had promised the patriarchs and he stayed with his people until he gave them the land he had sworn would be theirs. During their years in the desert, they had encountered real difficulties and many of them had even wondered about God’s fidelity to his promise. But God showed them that he was faithful to his word. The text is clear on this: “The Lord gave to Israel all the land which he had sworn to give to their fathers; and having taken possession of it, they settled there” (21:43). In response to the fidelity on God’s part, the entire Jewish people were expected, in turn, to stay true to the Covenant they had made with God.
The passage selected for our meditation is from the time the people of Israel had just settled on the land. They had just harvested the first crops from their new land and could then use the grain from their farms to make unleavened bread. This called for celebration, which became their first Passover in the Holy Land and with it, God took away the shame of Egypt from them. As soon as they had access to the agricultural products of their own land, God no longer sent them the manna which he had sent down to them daily when they were in the desert.
What lesson do I draw from this reading? Our God is a compassionate God who is faithful to his promise to free his people from slavery and give them a land they can call their own. He is a God who is faithful and who always keeps his promises, not only to people of long ago, but to us as well. This is spelled out very clearly: “Not one of all the good promises the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass” (Jos 21:45). Let us give thanks to God for always being faithful to his promises. Amen.
Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 5: 17-21.
For anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here. It is all God’s work. It was God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the work of handing on this reconciliation. In other words, God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not holding men’s faults against them, and he has entrusted to us the news that they are reconciled. So we are ambassadors for Christ; it is as though God were appealing through us, and the appeal that we make in Christ’s name is: be reconciled to God. For our sake God made the sinless one into sin, so that in him we might become the goodness of God.
Comment
Last Sunday’s second reading was from Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. This Sunday we listen to his Second Letter to the same converts of Corinth. To understand this letter, it is important to take a brief look at the events that occurred between the first letter and this one. Saint Paul had written his first letter to correct some disorders that were occurring among his Christians of Corinth. The letter failed to achieve its purpose as some preachers, Paul’s sworn enemies, had arrived in Corinth and launched an outright assault on him and on his doctrine, winning over many of his Christians in the process.
The authors of the African Bible tell me that Paul then wrote this second letter from Ephesus to defend the authenticity of his apostleship and the truth of his preaching. He sent the letter to the Corinthians through his trusted assistant Titus. In it, Paul strongly defends his ministry and his authority as an apostle.
In the passage of our meditation, he talks of the responsibility of those privileged to be the ambassador’s of Christ’s saving word. In their weaknesses and in the persecutions they may suffer, they share in the reconciliation between God and man brought about by Christ’s death on the cross. Jesus is like men in all things except that he is without sin (Heb 4: 14).
Through Christ’s work, carried out by his apostolic ambassadors, man is given a fresh start, a new beginning. In our baptism, we become part of the new creation but Paul warns that this reconciliation means nothing if we do not strive for complete conversion in our daily life.
Our Lord entrusted the Apostles with this ministry of reconciliation to humanity. This is done mainly through the Sacrament of Penance which Christ instituted in his Church “.. so that those who have committed sins after baptism might be reconciled with God, whom they have offended, and with the Church itself whom they have injured” (Saint John Paul II, Aperite portas, 5).
As we march towards the Resurrection at Easter, let us continue to pray, practice penance and share what we have with the needy and the marginalized of our society because faith without works is a dead faith (Jas 2: 17). We make our supplication through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Gospel: Luke 15: 1-3. 11-32.
The tax collectors and the sinners were all seeking the company of Jesus to hear what he had to say, and the Pharisees and the scribes complained. “This man” they said “welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So he spoke this parable to them: “A man had two sons. The younger said to his father, ‘Father, let me have the share of the estate that would come to me.’ So the father divided the property between them. A few days later, the younger son got together everything he had and left for a distant country where he squandered his money on a life of debauchery. When he had spent it all, that country experienced a severe famine, and now he began to feel the pinch, so he hired himself out to one of the local inhabitants who put him on his farm to feed the pigs. And he would willingly have filled his belly with the husks the pigs were eating but no one offered him anything. Then he came to his senses and said, ‘How many of my father’s paid servants have more food than they want, and here am I dying of hunger! I will leave this place and go to my father and say: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your paid servants.’ So he left the place and went back to his father.
While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him tenderly. Then his son said, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants ‘Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the calf we have been fattening, and kill it; we are going to have a feast, a celebration, because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.
Now the elder son was out in the fields, and on his way back, as he drew near the house, he could hear music and dancing. Calling one of the servants he asked what it was all about. ‘Your brother has come’ replied the servant ‘and your father has killed the calf we had fattened because he has got him back safe and sound.’ He was angry then and refused to go in, and his father came out to plead with him; but he answered his father, ‘Look, all these years I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed your orders, yet you never offered me so much as a kid for me to celebrate with my friends. But, for this son of yours, when he comes back after swallowing up your property – he and his women – you kill the calf we had been fattening.’
The father said, ‘My son, you are with me always and all I have is yours. But it was only right we should celebrate and rejoice, because your brother here was dead and has come to life; he was lost and is found.’”
Comment
The parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the most beautiful and well known parables in Sacred Scripture. It teaches the lesson that our God is full of compassion and forgiveness. Saint Luke starts by telling us how the Scribes and Pharisees are complaining because Jesus is socializing with sinners. The Pharisees, whose name means “the separated ones”, see themselves as the righteous ones, who have nothing to do with sinners. Only a Pharisee could come up with a prayer like: “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity – greedy, dishonest, adulterous” (Lk 18: 11). Jesus, however, sees both the righteous and the sinners as children of the same Father, who is full of mercy and compassion.
He then tells them the story of the son, who asks for his own share of the inheritance and goes off to a foreign country. There he squanders it all in loose life and falls on very hard times. The young man’s hunger evokes the anxiety and emptiness a person feels when he or she is far from God. His predicament shows the fate of anyone enslaved by sin. When we sin, we lose the freedom of the children of God (Rom 8: 21) and hand ourselves over to Satan.
The young son’s memory of home and conviction that his father loves him and will understand him well enough to forgive him, bring him back to his senses and he takes the right path that leads to forgiveness. As Saint Jose Maria Escriva de Ballaguer, the founder of the Opus Dei Movement, says: “Human life is in some way a constant returning to our Father’s house. We return through contrition, through the conversion of the heart which means a desire to change, a firm decision to improve our life which, therefore, is expressed in sacrifice and self-giving. We return to our Father’s house by means of that sacrament of pardon which, by confessing our sins, we put on Jesus Christ again and become his brothers, members of God’s family” (Christ is passing by, 64).
While the younger son is like the sinners Jesus socializes with, the elder brother is like the scribes and Pharisees, who would have nothing to do with sinners. To him his sinful brother is not a brother at all; he is ‘your son’, as he tells his father. The elder son is a self-righteous person who lacks love and understanding. He finds it difficult to forgive his brother and thus remains enslaved by his own sense of justice.
But how is the father? He is a fount of mercy. He loves his children intensely. That is why he does not wait for his lost son to reach home; once he catches sight of him at a distance, he rushes towards him with open arms to welcome him back home. As Father Denis McBride so beautifully puts it “He is a father who stays on the look-out, whose eyes hunt the horizon for the return of his son, whose love educates his hope that his son will come back. And when he does see his son a long way off, he is moved with pity to run and meet him” (Denis McBride, Seasons of the Word: Reflection on the Sunday Readings, p. 95).
He does not wait for his elder son to come into the house either; he also goes out to meet him and reason with him and bring him back into the house, where there is much joy and happiness. He teaches him, and us, a powerful lesson in forgiveness. His love takes the initiative and he goes out for his stray children. God the Father also goes out in search of those of us who have gone astray and when we come back, there is much rejoicing in heaven (Lk 15:7).
What do we learn from this reading? If we look closely, we see that there is each of these three characters in us. At one time we may be the father, looking out and longing for the return of a loved one. At another time, we are the rebellious young son who wants to grab everything and head out to the wide wild world because we are sick and tired of being told what to do and what not to do. At other times, we are the elder son, intolerant, unforgiving, and quarrelsome. But we want the father side of us to develop more. That is why we should pray during the Lenten season for God to increase our faith so that we may learn to forgive, like the father in this parable. Let us break out of our selfishness and go out to welcome a stray brother or sister who is yearning to come back home. Let us not refuse to go to the party, like the elder brother, but rather let us join God, our Father, who, our weaknesses and shortcomings notwithstanding, is always ready to prepare a banquet for us, even in the presence of our enemies (Ps 23, 5). He always encourages us to take our place around his table of brotherhood. Let us thank him for his constant mercy. Amen.
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