Tomorrow's Gospel is one of the best-known parables in the New Testament and also one of the favourite stories in the entire Bible. The Prodigal Son is a lovely account of a father receiving his son back into his arms.
It is written in such a way that you can almost see the father waiting on the road watching as his son comes into sight. The boy has been away on the town, living a life of profligacy, spending all his money on wine, women and song. And he is not coming back out of love for his father or family, but because he ran out of money.
How could anyone blame the son who stayed at home, and is now angry with his father for killing the fatted calf for this trickster of a son, who has wasted so much of the family money? Yet the son who returns is feted by his father. "But we had to celebrate and rejoice," he says, "because this brother of yours was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and has been found" (St Luke 15:32). It's an uplifting story, it gives hope to those who have gone down the wrong road and are nervous about changing their ways. But it also gives us some idea about how Jesus looked on the sinner and the "lost sheep".
God's love for us is unconditional. He loves us whether we are the greatest saints in the world or the biggest sinners to walk the planet. It's we humans who put the labels and categories on people. God's unrelenting and unconditional love is an almighty challenge for us to go that extra mile when it comes to looking into the minds and hearts of our fellow sisters and brothers.
So often it is our limited and entirely human way of looking at things that cuts us off from seeing things through the magnanimous eyes of God. It's so easy to divide people into good and bad, winners and losers, successful and unsuccessful. But that's not God's way. Christianity at its core is a most radical belief system. If we are serious about it we have to be struck in awe at how it approaches reality. There is no limit to love, there is no time when the Christian can say enough is enough.
And for that reason Christianity affords all human beings the endless possibility of accepting the invitation offered by the risen Lord. And there are no conditions, nor is there any small print documentation. God loves us, irrespective of our state of grace. It's our challenge and our privilege to allow ourselves to be touched by that unlimited love; and once we are, it is inevitable that we will be transformed into people of love.
God's ways are not our ways and it is almost impossible for us to understand or comprehend how God can love sinners, losers and wasters. One might argue that it is part of the contradiction of the message of the Gospel. It is.
Christianity is forever saying it is on the side of the poor and the slave and the sinner. God is there in the midst of the lowliest. So how dare we look down our noses on the poor and the weak, the asylum-seekers, or whoever are not the flavour of the month.
Just as the Pharisees could not understand Jesus associating himself with the sinners, we are far too often unable to appreciate how God can have time for sinners. Maybe we use it as an excuse to be intolerant to those we consider to be failures and sinners.
The Gospel story has a completely different message to tell. And often it is at odds with the standards of the world. The criterion for the Christian is the unlimited love of God for all creation.
M.C.