LENT IV [C]: Jos 5:9a, 10-12; II Cor 5: 17-21; Lk 15:1-3, 11-32

In his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace, Phillip Yancey tells the story of Ernest Hemingway.  Hemingway grew up in a very devout evangelical family, yet there he never experienced the grace of Christ.  He lived a libertine life that most of us would call "dissolute"… but there was no father, no parent waiting for him and he sank into the mire of a graceless depression.  In Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Capital of the World”, a Spanish Newspaper El Liberal, carried a poignant story about a father and his son.  It went like this.  A teen-aged boy, Paco, and his very wealthy father had a falling out, and the young man ran away from home.  The father was crushed.  After a few days, he realized that the boy was serious, so the father set out to find him.  He searched high and low for five months to no avail.  Finally, in a last, desperate attempt to find his son, the father put an ad in a Madrid newspaper. The ad read, "Dear Paco, Meet me at the Hotel Montana noon Tuesday.  All is forgiven.  I love you.  Signed, Your Father.  On Tuesday, in the office of Hotel Montana, over 800 Pacos showed up, looking for love and forgiveness from their fathers. What a magnet that ad was! Over 800 Pacos!! We all hunger for pardon.  We are all “Pacos” yearning to run and find a father who will declare, “All is forgiven.”

The fourth Sunday of Lent marks the midpoint in the Lenten preparation for Easter.  Traditionally, it is called Laetare Sunday (Rejoice Sunday). This Sunday is set aside for us to recall God’s graciousness and to rejoice because of it.  In many ways we have been dead, but through God’s grace we have come to life again; we have been lost, but have now been found.  We have every reason to rejoice.

In the Gospel, the joy is that of a young son’s “coming home” and rediscovering a father’s forgiving and gratuitous love.  It is also the story of a loving and forgiving father who celebrates the return of his prodigal son by throwing a big party in his honor, a banquet celebrating the reconciliation of the son with his father, his family, his community and his God.  Like God, the father in the parable was ready to forgive both of his "sinful" sons even before they repented. St. Thomas Aquinas explains that God already forgives us as soon as we repent, even before we go to confession or perform any penance.

John Newton, who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace back in 1779 certainly identified with the younger son, the son who wasted his inheritance. As a young man he left home and went to sea and there lived wildly and free. Like many people who abandon God, he was highly critical of the Christian faith, and spent much time tearing down the faith of the people he met as he went from place to place. It was only in later years that he realized that he had wasted his young life, and indeed not only wasted it - but in all that time he had been offensive to God and to all God-fearing people. And like the young prodigal, he repented and sought, in humility and submissiveness, to serve God for the rest of his days. His resulting experience of God's forgiveness, of God's grace, is described well in the emotion packed words of the song he wrote.

There is the sin of the younger son which is plain for all to see. Then there is the sin of the elder brother. His sins are more subtle but nonetheless real. His is the sin of temperament and in this case resentment.

The parable this morning does not tell us what the elder brother did when his father came out to speak to him. It doesn't reveal to us whether he realized that his envy and disdain had made him just as bad as his younger brother.

The famous British professor from a century ago Alfred Momerie says that it has often been concluded that murder is the worst crime. “But this will not do. He (the murderer) is generally executed for his crime and that is the end of him. But the sins of the temper and of speech and of thought, the sins of unkindness, or un-neighborliness, are sins that we can go on committing without fear of punishment, every day, every hour, every moment. The amount of suffering, therefore, which can be inflicted by them is practically infinite.” The sin of the older brother was anger, bitterness, un-forgiveness and pride combined together.

A certain married couple had many sharp disagreements. Yet somehow the wife always stayed calm and collected. One day her husband commented on his wife’s restraint. “When I get mad at you,” he said, “you never fight back. How do you control your anger?”

The wife said: “I work it off by cleaning the toilet.”

The husband asked: “How does that help?”

She said: “I use your toothbrush!”

Lent is a time to transform hatred into love, conflict into peace, death into eternal life.  The message of Lent, therefore, as St. Paul tells us, is:  “We implore you, in Christ’s name: be reconciled to God."  The first step, of course, is to do as the younger son did: "When he came to himself, he said: 'I will break away and return to my father, and say to him, "Father, I have sinned against you.' Second step is to forgive anyone whom we find it difficult to forgive and accept the father’s invitation to be part of the feast and celebration, rather than staying outside like the older brother refusing to enter.

          For the remainder of Lent let us try to make every effort to answer that invitation from our Heavenly Father, “All I have is yours." Each Lent offers us sinners a chance to return home with a confession of sins, where we will find welcome and open-armed love.  Such a confession will enable us to hasten toward Easter with the eagerness of Faith and love, and it will make possible the rejoicing which today’s liturgy assures us in our Lord’s words: "There is more joy in Heaven over the one sinner who does penance than over the ninety-nine just who do not need penance."