Homily for March 23rd, 2019: Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32.
Was the older brother short-changed?
Don’t we have a sneaky feeling that his complaint was justified? Unlike his
shiftless younger brother, he’d never left home. He’d never asked for his
father’s money. Nor had he wasted what his father had been good enough to give
him.
All that is true. But the older
brother=s reaction to his younger brother’s
shame-faced return shows that the elder brother too was in a distant country:
physically at home, but far removed from his father=s attitude of love. He never noticed
his father=s grief all the time his brother was
away. Now that he is home again, the elder brother refuses to acknowledge him. AYour son,@ the older brother calls him, as if
to say: AYour son, perhaps, but no brother of
mine.@ He is filled with resentment, envy,
and hate. Yet the father does not condemn this son any more than he had
condemned his younger son: AEverything I have is yours,@ he reminds the elder brother.
Farther than that love cannot go.
AWho in the story suffered the most?@ a Sunday school teacher asked the
class after reading them this story. One of the brightest children answered at
once: AThe fattened calf.@ Next to the fattened calf, however,
comes the older brother who remains outside while the party goes on inside. He
does not even taste the fattened calf which he himself probably helped to
raise.
Or did he? Did he change his mind and
go in after all? Jesus doesn=t tell us. Jesus
leaves the story open-ended. He does so because us wants us to supply
the ending. This Mass C every Mass C is a celebration of our heavenly Father=s freely given love and forgiveness.
The price of that forgiveness was the poured out blood of his Son, who, as St Paul
Is the Mass for you a celebration of
joy at your heavenly Father’s love, given not just to good faithful people like
yourself, but to all, without limit?
In other words C Have you heard the good news? Are you joining in its
celebration?
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