The holy prophet Amos prophesied, “’Behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord God,‘that I will send a famine on the land,not a famine of bread,nor a thirst for water,but of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). We live in an age when this prophecy could equally apply to us as a people. We live in a culture of unprecedented opportunity and opulence, coupled with negligence when it comes to the things of God and the desperate needs of the soul. Modern man prefers the ‘far country,’ exile from God: worldly pursuit, lusts of the flesh, entertainment, and distraction, so that he doesn’t hear the hungering cry of his soul, which can only be satisfied with Christ God. As a people, a culture, we appear to take in little of the “words of the Lord,” preferring our own opinions to the revealed truth even as we seek the gratification of our senses.
Such is also the case with the younger son in today’s parable—the prodigal—who demands his share of the inheritance prematurely, as if it is his by right, rather than a gracious gift: as if he has it coming to him even while his father is still alive! Imagine! We read in today’s Gospel, that he arrogantly commandshis father, saying, “Give me the portion of goods that falls to me!”
One question we may ask is, Why does the father give in to the son’s arrogant command? The answer, as we will see, is to save him in the end. You see, the son’s heart is alreadyin ‘exile,’ in the ‘far country.’ He’s already given himself over to the estrangement from his father roused by his sinful passions, denial of his true identity as his father’s son. The father, for his part, knows that only repentance can cure this sickness of soul and so he allows him to exile himself.
The son goes off to the “far country,” squandering there the gracious gift of his inheritance—life with his father, his very identity—on riotous living. He gives himself over to his passions, only to find himself completely barren, hungry, in want. Feeding his passions leaves his soul empty.
And so it is for man: there’s no sating the passions and their greedy want. The more one gives into them, the more they demand—until the soul is vacuous… dead. This is the poison for our souls inherent in a godless, secular-minded society. Compromise with the priorities and values of this culture: humanism, secularism and nihilism, obsession with material ‘security,’ will not save us or lead us to healing, deification, or salvation. Instead, it will lead our souls step by step further into exile away from our Heavenly Father, our true identity and inheritance in Him
St. Gregory Palamas rightly says, that the devil beguiles us little by little, whispering to us, “even if you live independently without going to God’s Church or listening to the Church…, you will still be able to see for yourself what your duty is and not depart from what is good” (Homily Three, On the Parable of the Prodigal). This is the same lie he whispers to us to this day.
The reality is, if we’re too busy for church, daily prayer, regular confession, and the preparation to rightly receive the Sacraments, and still think our soul is healthy, we’re deceiving ourselves. If we compare ourselves to others who take and leave what they want from holy Church and pattern our lives the same way, thinking that’s all we need, then we’re deceiving ourselves. Luke-warmness will not grow us in Christ or heal our souls, but willkeep us in exile from God.
If such is our thinking, then only one thing will save us: repentance! The heart of the parable, the ‘turning point,’ is when we hear the words, “when he came to himself’, that is, when his right and sober mind and heart returns to him—and he realizes the depth of the mire—the pigs slop—that’s he’s spiritually sunk himself into. His physical hunger (he longs to be filled with the pig’s slop), pales in comparison to the starvation of his soul, the hunger for the identityhe sacrificed for sin, saying, “I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”
This is a true image of repentance, (Gk.Metanoia), that is, “a change of heart and mind.” Repentance is a returning, a remembering, of who we reallyare, of who we’re called to be in Christ, of how unworthy we are to be God the Father’s adopted sons and daughters, of how great is His mercy and love for us that He so desires our communion with Him, weak as we are.
After the prodigal’s right spiritual mindis restored, he remembers who he really is—one of his father’s sons. He knows now that he cannot take that identity for granted; he’s squandered it, thrown it all away. In recognition of this greatest of sins, he repents with vigor, turning fromhis sins and tohis father. The father in this parable is an image of God and His love and forgiveness for the penitent. In some icons of the parable, the Father is seen as an image of Christ Himself, Who receives our confessions, heals our souls through the Sacrament, and restores us to Him.
It’s in this repentant spirit that the prodigal goes to beseech his father’s forgiveness, prostrating himself before him. There’s no self-legitimizing pride left: the son has gained humility in his exile, absolutely necessary for true repentance. He returns a humble man, willing to be a trueson—even a servant of his father—grateful for whatever forgiveness and mercy his father might give. The father, for his part, receives him, not as the prodigal who selfishly demanded his right to abuse his inheritance, to selfishly forsake his identity, but as the son who was lost but has now returned to his true self, his true identity, chastened and ready to be the true son he wasn’t before.
And this person—the repentant son with the humbleheart, who realizes that the world cannot sate him, that his temporal lusts and exiled mind cannot satisfy, this son who has “come to himself”, returned from self-imposedexile—is re-established in the blessed life and inheritance with his father, his and our trueidentity, the truth of who we are and of who we are called to be as God’s adopted sons and daughters in Christ, vivified by the Holy Spirit.
It’s with this repentant, contrite and humble heart, that we too come to possess ourinheritance in Christ and learn to prefer the joy of His Kingdom, in the near presence of Christ God, over life in the temporal and passing world and its mistaken priorities. So, recognizing the challenge of being a faithful Orthodox Christian in our day, we have an opportunity to examine where our communion with God is amidst all our other priorities. If we desire life with God, healing from our sin-sickness, and our inheritance as His adopted sons, then He and His Church become our firstpriority. Now is the time to repent of an exiled mind and heart, whatever passions still hold the unwary in exile, enslaving one to this world.
Christ God desires so much more for us: He runsto meet us in our repentance as the father in the parable does even as he first sees his son returning. He runsto embrace us just as soon as we start to repent, to return to our divine calling, our true identity and inheritance in Him. In return, we who have put on Christ in baptism strive to glorify God the Father and live for Him by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be the men and women of God He’s created us to be. He showers us with His forgiveness and mercy even before we can prostrate ourselves before Him or muster anything close to a worthy response to His love and mercy. God receives us, loves us, embraces us. He makes us not into one of His hired servants, but into adopted sons,communing with Him, the Life of all. He feeds us with the fatted calf, that is, His Lamb, His Body and Blood, the Foretaste of the Heavenly Banquet, our inheritance with God in the Saints.
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Sunday of the Prodigal Son
February 16, 2020
Epistle: I Corinthians 6:12-20
Gospel: Luke 15: 11-32
