February 20, 2022
Holy Annunciation Albanian Orthodox Church, Natick, Massachusetts
Luke 15:11-32
I Corinthians 6:12-20
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Today, my beloved children in the Lord, we have heard the beautiful parable of the Prodigal Son, a parable which the Holy Fathers have called a “miniature Gospel.” Now, all the parables of Christ could certainly be seen as miniature Gospels, but this one in particular stands out because it both reveals God’s great love for us, and shows us how we can truly share in this love. The parable begins in the following manner:
A certain man had two sons: And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living.
We might ask: Why does the Father so quickly give in to the younger son’s request? Should he not have tried to correct him? To preach to him about the proper disposition of his portion of the inheritance? Instead, the father is silent: he does not protest, not does he try to express his love in words. It is rather his silence and his actions that express his love for his son, and in his silence and his actions, he leaves the son free. He is an icon of God the Father, who freely and easily gives us so many gifts and blessings.
Perhaps the father knows already in his heart what will happen to his son if he leaves, but still his love goes further than the possibility of his son’s rebellion. He knows the mystery of fatherhood and sonship, which is to give to another the possibility of returning home freely. And so the father lets the son go.
The Son does not realize that all things that the Father had were already his, which is a common thought for children to have. Children often fail to understand this reality, that all that their parents possess is also theirs. But it is only theirs when they are united to the source of those blessings. So when the Son in today’s parable forcefully takes his portion, that portion dries up and withers away very quickly because it is cut off from the source of its life. And so it is not simply that the son was wasteful but rather that he himself is cut off from the source of his life, which is his father’s love.
Because the Son chose to separate himself from his father’s love, he enters into a life which can only be described as hell and death. It is the hell of the passions, where we know that we are hungry, but nothing that we eat can fill us. So we go from one thing to another, looking for something to satisfy us, but everything just makes us more hungry and more miserable. It is a pattern we see in the various types of additions that plague us. We see this pattern reflected in the adventures of the son in the foreign land: he spends all that he had, then a famine arose and he becomes hungry, so he hires himself out to someone who sent him out to feed the swine, but even here he can only long to eat the food of the swine but, as we hear, no man gave to him.
This shows that when we, like the son, are caught up in this unending cycle of emptiness and hunger that cannot be satisfied, we suffer something even worse, which is that we become separated and isolated from other men. When we are enslaved to our passions, we are not only cut off from God, but we are cut off from other people, and loneliness and despair increase in our hearts. Nevertheless, there is always hope in the midst of despair, there is always light in the midst of darkness, because there is always repentance, which is the path that the Lord Jesus Christ opened up for us.
In leaving his father, the source of his life, and descending into this life of death and hell, the son becomes an image of all mankind, which for many generations was trapped in the darkness of death and the hell of the passions. But our Lord Jesus Christ Himself paves the way out of this dark state by descending into hell in order to bring the light of His resurrection to those who sat in darkness, to offer eternal life to those who were dead and to bring freedom to those who were held captive by hell. And this great gift is available for all those who seek it and hold on to it, which is one reason this parable is offered to us during these preparatory Sundays before Lent and Holy Week.
And so the Son in today’s parable, even in the midst of the hell of his sins and passions, finds a small spark of that life in his heart, in other words, he finds room for repentance. He comes to his senses and realizes all the blessings that his father’s hired servants have and determines to go back to his father and acknowledge his sin, not the sin of taking his share of the inheritance, but for cutting himself off from the father’s love.
What is it that works the repentance in the heart of the Son? It is the Father’s love for him, that love which had been with the Son the entire time. Although the Son had not perceived it, the Father’s love had been with him, even while the Father was far away and perhaps out of the memory of the Son. Saint Isaac the Syrian says: “Though absent, whoever loves with perfect love is together with whomever he loves as though he were present, without being seen by anyone.” We are so used to the idea that love must imply some sort of physical closeness and nearness. But true love is greater than separation, true love is stronger than death.
The Son realizes this and is ashamed, not because he is hungry and wants to eat, but because he recognizes that he has rejected the Father’s love. And he realizes that, even though he has left his father’s house, his father has never left him and has remained united with him through his patient and strong love. We can see that this is true by the actions of the Father, who, when he was yet a great way off, saw the son, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. The father is not proud, but himself leaves his own house and runs to meet his son. And the father does not cover the son with reproaches saying: “I hope that now you realize your mistake.” Nor does the father demand that the son repay him in anyway, but offers him even more of his blessings by putting the best robe on him, a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet, and calling for a festal celebration.
We should note that, just as at the beginning of the parable, the father is silent, which shows that even now, he is leaving his son free, and his love for his son is expressed, not in his words, but in his action of speaking to the servants and calling for a great feast. The Holy Fathers have seen in this feast and image of the Holy and Divine Liturgy, through which we, who are prodigals in so many ways, can return with peace and with joy to the house of the Father and participate in his very life. But in order to do this, we must freely come to that banquet, we must recognize that we are prodigal sons, and in that recognition, in that repentance which takes place in our heart, we will draw closer to God.
This is the opposite of what took place with the elder son who was angry because of the way the father was treating the wayward son. The older son does not realize that he himself is a prodigal son, even though he physically remained all this time with his father. But his heart is darkened to this reality and, unlike the younger son, he is angry and will not go in. And this show that, even though he never left the father’s house, the older son was never really there. He cannot go into his father’s house to rejoice over the return of his own brother, and even justifies himself before the father by boasting about what he perceives to be his own faithfulness and virtue. He says to the Father, “I have never transgressed your commandment” but his actions reveal that he is not humble and that, in fact, he has transgressed his Father commandment, not by doing anything wrong, but by not receiving the father’s love and by not seeing that this love extends to both of his sons equally. And so the hell inside his heart is greater than the hell that the younger son endured in the foreign land.
So, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us learn from today’s parable, but let us not only learn, but let us be moved by it. For we are all prodigals who, in one way or another, have wasted the great gifts that our Lord has given us. We have wasted them, but our Lord has not cast us off for that reason; we have wasted them, and our own actions, and thoughts, and passions, have led us to a far away land of darkness and emptiness. And yet, in spite of this, our Heavenly Father continues to love us and his great love protects us, and draws us back to him. If we remain in our passions and our sins, in our laziness and in our judgment of others, then we will also remain, by our own choice and not by God’s punishment, in that land of darkness and emptiness. But if we, like the prodigal son, come to our senses, if we offer sincere and humble repentance which is reflected in the life that we lead, then we will partake of the banquet of immortality, we will truly be united with Christ, and he will continue to offer us his precious Body and Blood, which, as we pray in the liturgy, is divided yet not disunited, which sanctifies all those who partake thereof.
May this gift be our by the grace and mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is glorified with His eternal Father and the most holy, good and life-giving Spirit, both now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.