[In the Parable of the Prodigal Son,] the father keeps watching and waiting for the return of his wayward son. The father sees him from afar and is filled with compassion. He runs to embrace him with open hands. He makes a banquet in his honor.
The elder son, unaware of his fathers’ depth of compassionate mercy, sees this and is indignant saying, I have been faithful all these years, yet you have not thrown a party in my honor. He seemed to have a calm spirit before the brother arrived, however, as the African proverb puts it, calm water does not mean there are no crocodiles. At the same time, wise men avow that faults are like a hill, you stand on top of your own and talk about those of other people. The elder brother wants retributive justice applied on his brother-he wants to see some kind of punishment.
However, the father’s justice is different because it is based on mercy, love and forgiveness that leads to restoration. The father intervenes by re-awakening his conscience from a selfish spirit and rebuke to the marvels of a sincere re-entry of his lost brother who has returned, a dead brother who is alive and a repentant brother who needs love, mercy and restoration to the family.
Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli Tutti, exhorts us to this kind of re-awakening to spiritual brotherliness, sisterliness, to the sense of one family of God, a reconciled human race. In this sense, God the father draws the elder sons’ attention to true repentance and reconciliation where the old passes away and we are recreated anew.
--Anne Celestine Ondigo, FSJ
Image source: James Tissot, The Return of the Prodigal Son (1862), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Tissot_-_The_Return_of_the_Prodigal_Son.jpg
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