March 27, 2022

Fourth Sunday of Lent Cycle C

Joshua 5:9, 10-12; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

This is a terrible story, one that actually happened to a family, and unfortunately it has happened any number of times before and you might be aware of a similar situation. I’ll be vague on dates and names to protect the privacy of the individuals. A couple had a child which developed a terminal illness and died despite all the treatments that were tried. Both life-long Catholics, one of the parents, although deeply saddened, took solace from the fact, as we hear at all Christian funerals, that we will once again all be together, as one in Christ, when we too pass from this earth. The other parent, unfortunately, was not comforted by this, but instead blamed God for taking their child from them. How could a good and loving God have allowed that to happen? Despite the best efforts of friends, family, and members of their church, including the pastor, one of the parents was inconsolable in their grief, and looked at all things religious with condemnation. Today’s Gospel, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, I think speaks to this situation, and other similar situations in our life where, although most are not nearly as traumatic as the situation I described, cause us to grumble and be discontent with our situation in life.

I’ve not really asked many people about this, but my intuition tells me that most people here in this church right now identify with the older son of the parable. The fact that you are here now means that you have a sense of obligation to your God, that you have a sense of duty which overrides all the other things that you might have done with your time this evening/morning if you were not here. The people most like the younger son, the prodigal, found some reason for not being here at church. It is not that most in this group don’t love God and want to come to church, but, you know, they have things to do. And so it is easy for us that are here, the ones not playing golf, or sleeping in, or watching TV, or whatever else we might have done instead of being here, to grumble about those others.

Benjamin Friedman, in his book The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth [New York: Vintage Books, 2005], demonstrated through multiple examples that the leading cause of unrest in communities and nations is the perception by people that their standard of living is not improving. When it is improving, it is easy for them to appreciate what they have in life, and to be more content. When it stops improving, say during a recession, they then begin to focus, not on all that they already have, but on what they don’t have, what they feel like they should be getting and aren’t, and become discontented. This same principle applies to many personal interactions we have with others, where we resent someone who gets something we feel that they don’t merit, or where we experience an unexpected setback to ourselves that we did nothing to deserve. There is a business management principle that goes like this: “Praise in public, correct in private.” The idea is that calling out someone for doing something wrong is public causes humiliation to someone, but calling someone out for a good job is rewarding. My experience is that praising someone in public, while it might be good for the person being praised, often causes others in the group to resent it, since they feel that they too should have been praised for something they did. The older son in the parable lost nothing to which he is entitled in the story but still can’t bring himself to feel happy for his brother. Indeed, he is downright resentful that his brother got something that he didn’t, and therefore he feels that he is less well-off – contrary to the actual situation.

The parent who lost their child is trapped in the same attitude which brings misery, anger, and discontent to the older brother of the parable and to many people in this world. They cannot appreciate that they had almost twenty wonderful years with their child, but instead focuses solely on the fact that they expected, although it is never promised to any of us, that there would be many more. Now I want to be careful here, since I don’t want to in any way minimize the incredible grief that these parents went through. I think it is universally acknowledged that the loss of a child is one of the most terrible losses anyone can undergo, if not the most tragic. This parent needed and received medical and psychological help in trying to address the situation. But they refused to seek help from the Church to help heal the relationship with her God, and that is unfortunate. We should pray for this parent and for all people like them that experience tragic loss which causes them to question God, that the bitterness and ultimately self-defeating anger will abate, and they can once again allow God into their lives, since he is the only thing that is big enough to fill the large holes in their hearts.

Today is Lætare Sunday, the Fourth Sunday of Lent and the approximate midpoint of our Lenten journey. Lætare is the Latin word for “rejoice,” or “be joyful.” Father and I wear the rose-colored vestments mid-way through both Lent and Advent to help suggest that we take stock, half-way through to Easter or Christmas, of what we are preparing for, what is the ultimate goal of the season and of our lives. The father in the parable takes great joy when his younger son returns to him, and God always takes great joy in seeing us return to him and obey his commandment to love him and one another. Father Oscar talked last week that he especially enjoys welcoming back the “big fish” who have been away from the sacrament of Penance for a long time. We all should take joy that we have a Father in heaven who wants us to join him in that same joy. We can take joy in all that he has given us, and it is quite a lot if we would only take a moment to inventory it all. Alternatively, we can wallow in self-pity over what we don’t have. The choice is ours.

As we continue with the Liturgy of the Eucharist, I wish everyone here the joy of sharing in the Easter resurrection, which is our birthright as Christians if we accept it. I wish you the joy of appreciating all of God’s gifts that he has given us, and in a special way his body in the Eucharist which we will be receiving in just a few minutes. I wish you the joy of the love of God and neighbor that we get when we return that same love. In the words of the opening antiphon from today’s Mass: “Rejoice, O Jerusalem: and come together all you that love her: be joyful, all who were in mourning…”