The Prodigal Son
One
The greatest short story ever written
Great literary fiction may be ranked according to the insights it gives us into the real world and actual human existence. In which case, the Parable of the Prodigal Son is undoubtedly the greatest piece of fiction ever authored.
This story tells us, in sudden, broad, and beautiful strokes, about the history of whole civilizations and peoples. It’s a story about the lost and found younger brother, and the unforgiving, ungrateful older brother. The younger brother represents the Gentiles. The older brother represents the Jews. It’s a story about the lost, dissipated secular world, and the proud, ruthless Muslim world, both of whom have rejected their relationship with their loving Father.
It’s even a story about fallen humanity which has returned to the Father in the Person of the Incarnate Son, contrasted with the fallen angels, those elder brothers who still refuse, due to their eternal pride and envy, to come back into the Father’s house. But most of all, this story is about the individual human heart and the untiring efforts of a loving Father to bring each of us home.
Two
The Younger Son – Irreligious Worldliness
Every one of us carries the temptation to worldliness, to ignore, abandon, and forget God and lose ourselves in the interests of this life. This is what the younger brother does. He thanklessly receives, actually he demands countless gifts from God, and promptly proceeds to turn his back on the Giver.
God has entrusted us with so much, bodies, minds, possessions, relationships, all for the sake of working to build up His Kingdom. And instead, we squander His gifts. We indulge our bodies. We waste our minds, we heap up possessions pointlessly, and we exploit our relationships.
The prodigal son gets his name from how prodigiously, how quickly, he burned through his inheritance. And how prodigiously we waste our time and our gifts! It’s amazing how quickly we burn through our lives, how little use we make of God’s gifts in the process.
We live for the world instead of for the Lord and then the world turns on us. The feast turns into a famine. Our self-indulgence turns to perversion and loneliness. Our plans and projects come to nothing. We’re humiliated and empty, our souls go hungry as we tend the pigs of our addictions.
Then, when everything else has shown itself to be a stupendous failure, a total let-down, we remember God.
Three
Elder Brother – Religious worldliness
Some of us realize the world isn’t a smart long-term investment, so we decide to go the religious route. We join up with God and follow the rules, we put in our time, but why? So we can cash in at the end.
It’s not because we really love God, because we really are filled with a desire to serve Him or make others happy. At the end of the day, we’re still just thinking about ourselves. And the truth is, we’re often envious of the non-religious people. They seem to have such a good time, and we’re stuck with the same old boring morality and religion.
Look at the older brother. He only thinks of his life in terms of his eventual payout. He envies the fun his little brother must be having and when that brother comes home and is welcomed with a celebration – no way! No way! It’s not fair! He gets all that fun with his drinking and his prostitutes, and then he gets his inheritance back too!
Do you see that the elder brother doesn’t care about God and doesn’t appreciate His closeness to Him? And he cares nothing for his brother’s happiness. All this time the prodigal son has been lost, confused, alone, destroying himself, living in shame and indignity, while the older brother has been able to work side-by-side with the Father who loves him, honors him, values him, and has shared His whole life with him, teaches him how to be a man, and how to be happy. Then the older brother complains about not getting a goat!?
How is it that we dare to envy secular people for their sins? We resent God for being a hard taskmaster when He saves us from ruining our lives, and then we begrudge it when He rescues our brothers from the human wreckage of their sins.
If our religion isn’t based on gratitude for the happiness of loving God, for His filling our life with good things, for His teaching us how to avoid destruction, and for His offering us, “all He has”. If our religion isn’t based on a deep pity for the suffering of those who are far from God, and a delight when they finally come back to the fold, then it’s a religion that will keep us out of the kingdom when the repentant have entered it.
Four
Avoiding the Errors of the Two Brothers
In the story of the Prodigal Son, neither brother realizes firstly, that intimacy with God is happiness and secondly, that a sinful, worldly life, a life separated from God, is pure and simple misery.
So how do we avoid their mistakes?
We seek communion with God by asking Him for that gift, by cultivating our relationship with Him in daily prayer. We refuse to hanker after (or envy) a sinful life by remembering that all sin, all worldliness, carries within it the seeds of its own misery and by praying for those who are far from the Lord, and doing all we can to bring them back to the Father’s love.
Five
Father’s Indefatigable Effort to Bring Both His Sons home
The story of the Prodigal Son is about the tension we all experience, whether in the Church or out of the Church, between the longing to find happiness in worldly things, and that knowledge that happiness lies only in loving communion with God and others. But as many people have pointed out, the most important character in the story is the Father.
The Father who leaves His house, who runs out the door, to bring His boys back home. This is a Father whose love is unconditional. It doesn’t matter what His sons have done, what they’re guilty of. One son is a moron who abandons Him, systematically wrecks his own life, and only comes back to the Father when he has no other options left. The other son treats all His Father’s love and care as a burden, and in exchange for all the blessings he’s received, he demands that his less fortunate brother be kept unhappy forever.
Doesn’t matter. The Father just wants them both to join in the feast, in the everlasting celebration.
That’s God’s love for us. It doesn’t matter what horrible children we’ve been, how disgracefully we’ve treated Him, He’ll always try to get us to come back to Him and be happy. It’s really wonderful, when you think about it, that you and I have a Father like Him.